Thanks, I hope you are right. The dealer brought it out for me to play with for a couple days while he's waiting for his shipment of fluid for the rears. I didn't put much time on it because 1) the bonehead in the shop didn't put fuel in it as promised 2) I soon discovered that the loader has almost zero down pressure! Not only would it not lift the front wheels off the ground, it wouldn't even try! If I rolled the bucket with the loader arms fully down, it just lifted the arms. If I raised the arms, tilted the bucket, and tried to drop the arms, it just squealed. Adding throttle just made it squeal louder but didn't add down pressure. Not only does this make back dragging virtually impossible, even attempting to skim some dirt with the bucket didn't work. I had to tilt the bucket down so far it just wanted to dig in too deep. I also have the BH75 backhoe ordered, so I see the lack of down pressure as a safety concern as well, since the loader bucket is part of the stabilization system for the hoe.
I called him and told him if that was the way it was going to work, no money was going to change hands. The came an picked it back up. I'll be back down to the acreage on Wednesday, so we'll see if I'm going to make a purchase or have them bring the old IHC 454 back. It needs a new distributor, and it leaks from a few locations, but at least the loader will lift the front end off the ground!
To be fair, the dealer just got the tractor and probably hadn't had a chance to check it out very much before he brought it out to me. Can any of you shed any light on this? Am I correct that there is obviously something amiss with this loader?