[AT] Misc tractor recommendations?

Ken Knierim ken.knierim at gmail.com
Sat Nov 2 06:02:32 PDT 2013


Lots of great comments here folks. I'm with Henry and Al on several points.
I have a 1.2 acre irrigated place inside town limits (used to be hay ground
back in the day). I started off with an 8N (worlds most wore-out tractor, I
think) and a blade behind it. Added a Mott 3-point flail mower and then a
743 Bobcat that was in dire need of assistance (arms were bent). After
putting new flails on the mower and using the Bobcat to get the irrigation
going, I've kept the place mowed with the 8N and a decent weedeater.
A couple notes. As soon as I got the Bobcat the back blade got relegated to
the iron pile. Then I straightened the arms (20 ton hydraulic jack, log
chains, inappropriate language), fixed the hydraulics, got a new starter
from DB Electric and put a new edge on the Bobcat bucket. Now it's like I
have a new one... and they are HANDY.
Along the way I also planted a bunch of trees. This is where the flail
mower falls down.. it's not handy around the trees and a ZT mower is on my
list of things to get. Open terrain, the 8N is just fine but close quarters
it's a 60-something year old, wore out, leaky, hard-to-steer,
harder-to-stop, smoking, stinky, brutal, difficult to back-up but reliable
and fuel efficient tractor that I can work on and get parts for. Well, fuel
efficient may not be entirely true, since it uses engine oil as part of the
fuel too (probably 2 quarts of oil per gallon of gas going through that
engine) but you get the idea.
Not sure about the snow; been too long since I had to deal with that and
-40 temps but my current fleet would be dead in a Montana winter. Dad keeps
his Bobcat in the garage with his vehicles and uses it all winter feeding
animals and moving light snow. As I've learned (then Dad, and then my
uncles) once you have a skid-steer of some sort, you FIND uses for it. Mine
ran a backhoe before I got it (hence the bent arms) and there are a lot of
attachments for them.

I also have an old TD-14 crawler but that doesn't get much usage. Kinda
tough on the small amount of yard (even tougher on a '72 Cadillac Sedan
DeVille but that's another long story).

Ken in AZ




On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 3:57 AM, Dean Vinson <dean at vinsonfarm.net> wrote:

> Thanks very much, everyone.
>
> I'll see what happens with the zero-turn mower; sounds like that'd be money
> well spent.  The sellers have a nice 3-pt wood splitter I'm thinking about
> also, so perhaps I can do a package deal.
>
> Will start looking around at the local used-tractor market and see what
> turns up.
>
> Gene, this place isn't quite as far north as yours but can't be too
> far--it's a bit west of Urbana.  The land and woods don't have quite the
> heavenly feel that the place Tracy and I looked at last August had, but the
> house and barns are wonderful.
>
> Dean Vinson
> Dayton, Ohio
>
>
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