Wishing I still had a Deere!

[proudestmonkey]

Oil plug drain plug: Pretty important that it stays in place. If you have any doubts about doing it yourself get the dealer to do the job and make sure it is well documented. You may even want to invest in a torque wrench.

Just as a suggestion without proper knowledge of your tractor setup would jacking up either end and placing it on stands help your situation.

My Kubota B7100 is a charm to change oil on. All filters readily accessible and none in easily hit places. Only complaint I have is that checking the rad level or filling is a little hard with the loader on.

Yeah, I figure making sure engine oil isn't leaking out the bottom while its running is pretty important, which is why I called the dealer right away when I could neither get the plug tight enough for a seal or get it off again.

Jacking the tractor is not really necessary, although I am sure it makes things easier for the mechanics at the dealership. There was no issue with ground clearance for draining either the engine or transmission fluid, even using an oil drain bucket fully enclosed (the flat kind that has a built in cap and spout.

I have a torque wrench, and have used it already for checking and tightening the wheel bolts (I do that every 10 hours). I also use it to make sure the blades on my Kubota and my other lawn mower are properly snug.

 

[proudestmonkey]

You know, if the Kubota is in great shape, you will never get more money for it then you can right now. Warranty, no tax to the new buyer, its an attractive option. Sure you will take a loss, but minimize it now and go get that Deere.

I thought I might get a suggestion to sell it, after I started a thread with a pretty extreme title. I can't sell it even if I wanted to. I'd be looking at a $2,000 to $3,000 hit and then would just need to buy another tractor. There is, of course, no guarantee that whatever tractor I buy won't have a screw overtorqued or inadequately threaded at the factory, or that there won't be other issues making it as bad or worse than the Kubota.

I suffer from one bad experience with this tractor, which in the scheme of things shouldn't be a big deal. Problem is, this is my first real experience working on it in any serious way. So, I have little evidence that quality control from the factory is up to par, and a fairly good piece of evidence that quality control is questionable. Maybe after owning for a few hundred hours, and if I dare ever service it myself again, find that this was an isolated issue. Then, I imagine I will feel differently about it.

Part of it too is that I am new to the whole "rural" lifestyle, so the whole idea of even needing to pay for, use, and service a tractor is all new to me too. Depending on the cost of this repair and service, I imagine my wife will remind me of her suggestion before we bought the tractor: "wouldn't it be less expensive to just hire a landscape company?" I'm beginning to wonder. I like doing much of the yard work myself, even including removing several old barbed-wire fences, fence posts, dead and dying trees, re-grading hills for paths, and even like checking over how the tractor is doing periodically. I want to be able to feel "good" about owning this tractor. I will again, but I am anxious about its "sensitivity" to regular service needs.

 

[Sully2]

You know, if the Kubota is in great shape, you will never get more money for it then you can right now. Warranty, no tax to the new buyer, its an attractive option. Sure you will take a loss, but minimize it now and go get that Deere.

Get A WHAT??????....LOL Where's the tar and feathers!!....lol

 

[Doc_Bob]

I will again, but I am anxious about its "sensitivity" to regular service needs.

Enjoy the journey. Tractors are not cheap. Time to realize that fact now and just deal with it.
Bob

 

[Berniep]

I think if you priced just how much a landscape company would charge you to do all those things you would find that it can get pretty expensive. Not to mention what the sense of acomplushment is worth all by itself.

 

[bx23barry]

Let me tell ya little story I had with Harley Davidson. I took my new bike to the dealer for the first service and they stripped the oil plug. They blamed me (said I must have stripped it before I took it to them). Long story short I went round and round with the dealer and the company and in the end they provided the labor to install a heili-coil and drain plug I had to pay for.
The fact is no one wants to take responsibility for anything and customer service just sucks out there. I don’t do any business with the motor company but they don’t seem to care much.

 

[proudestmonkey]

Doc and Bernie,

You both have good points. I told my wife I wanted to have the ability to do the work when I thought it should be done, at my pace, and we could hire people to do what we are ourselves coudn't do. In fact, this just happened last week, we just had about 30 trees removed by professional tree removers because they were too near the electric wires for our neighborhood for me to feel safe doing it-- we saved ourselves some money by telling them if they just felled the trees, we'd cut them up and deal with the timber. 12 trips from the road to our fire pits with loads of logs and branches brought me up to 52 hours last week, which explains my timing for the 50-hour service.

Sometimes I enjoy the journey very much, and at other times it just seems like a big hassle. Like I said in a previous post, part of my frustration and disappointment in the stripped drain plug was that I could not finish the 50-hour service that day, having taken the day off to do it, and looking forward to it. What's that saying, victory stolen by the jaws of defeat, something like that. I know I'll get plenty of chances down the road to do my own maintenance. I just wish this hadn't happened the very first time because it sours me on the whole tractor experience. I tend to think of these machines as being built like tanks, and in some respects they are, so you don't expect something as trivial as a drain plug to put you out of operating the tractor for several days (at this point, I have no idea how busy my dealer is with scheduled work, how long it will take to fix it and finish the 50-hour service, or when I will get my tractor back).

 

[Doc_Bob]

Doc and Bernie,
Sometimes I enjoy the journey very much, and at other times it just seems like a big hassle.

I understand. All of us have had hassles like yours (I can tell you some stories) of hassles that were not my fault but I get to pay for with time and money. I sort of expect folks to do the right thing and not give me a hard time. Some times that does not happen. But, then I try to get philosophical (does not always work) and realize that in the whole scheme of things, it does not matter. Like I said, I am not always successful and I still get pissed off.

Hang in there. Get the drain plug fixed (helicoil??) and hope that whoever helps you turns out to be a blessing, a new friend, a new journey.
Bob

 

[rosey]

.........and to think about all of those folks out there with really life threatening PROBLEMS........geese....get it fixed and move on!!

 

[proudestmonkey]

.........and to think about all of those folks out there with really life threatening PROBLEMS........geese....get it fixed and move on!!

Let me see if I understand what you are trying to tell me: since people have life threatening problems, or because there is war going on at all times, or people starving somewhere in the world, then relatively trivial things like having a mechanical problem that takes your tractor from you for at least the better part of a week and may cost you hundreds of doallars, that cannot be important enough to start a thread about it on a tractor forum? If that were true, the internet would not even exist, let alone this forum, where stories of frustration, concern, and also tribulation about something so trivial as tractors is not just the typical post, it is in fact, the only kind of post allowed. But, um, thanks for the unsolicited advice anyway.