Another Newbie looking to buy a tractor

[MaineBarn]

What tires did you get?

R4s

 

[paulsharvey]

I think you made a good choice. I dont think you will find many cases that it is too large, but you will have significant capability

 

[MaineBarn]

I think you made a good choice. I dont think you will find many cases that it is too large, but you will have significant capability

Now playing the waiting game.....

Gonna be a long couple weeks

 

[Carl_NH]

Hello MaineBarn - Strongly suggest you add the hydraulic thumb to your BH. Get it done now - you will thank us forever once you have it vs the mechanical.

It's not that Mech Thumbs don't work, its when you are digging and moving rocks - you want the thumb, then you don't to dig, then repeat that 5 times an hour.

I had a mechanical thumb for 10+ years and installed a "diverter valve" Hydraulic thumb which uses the bucket hydraulics with a diverter to run the thumb on the BH sticks vs a new valve and Hyd lines - It's $1500 for this setup roughly to do it later,

So get the dedicated thumb valve and foot control installed at the operators' station and spend $2K or more once now rather than adding it later.

 

[MaineBarn]

Hello MaineBarn - Strongly suggest you add the hydraulic thumb to your BH. Get it done now - you will thank us forever once you have it vs the mechanical.

It's not that Mech Thumbs don't work, its when you are digging and moving rocks - you want the thumb, then you don't to dig, then repeat that 5 times an hour.

I had a mechanical thumb for 10+ years and installed a "diverter valve" Hydraulic thumb which uses the bucket hydraulics with a diverter to run the thumb on the BH sticks vs a new valve and Hyd lines - It's $1500 for this setup roughly to do it later,

So get the dedicated thumb valve and foot control installed at the operators' station and spend $2K or more once now rather than adding it later.

Thanks Carl_NH

I'm not 100% sure I'll be requiring the hydraulic thumb outside of work near the lake. My house's soil has some rocks but nothing major. I don't think I'd be flipping between needing/not needing it a ton. More of an occasional use or if using the thumb, it would be consistently on.

That being said, any idea if Kioti makes a kit specifically? If not, pretty sure I'll have to do it down the road if it becomes necessary. The dealership said Kioti would void my FEL warranty if I had a bolt on tooth bar. Assuming if a hydraulic thumb didn't come from Kioti, they would not warranty the backhoe during that first year.

 

[Carl_NH]

Wow - Kioti voids the FEL warranty if you install a tooth bar on your bucket? That's insane and never heard of that before.

On FEL buckets, get the bolt-on bucket edge for the HD bucket as it provides 3/4" of steel reinforcement to the front edge and you won't bend it digging rocks and roots.

As far as the Hyd thumb - yea you can add it later, but your dealer should know all about adding hydraulic thumbs to these machines.

But I am not sure you are dealing with the right people at the dealership if they tell you a toothbar on the FEL voids the warranty. https://www.kentonequipment.com/kiotitractorandattachmentwarranty

 

[airbiscuit]

I could see a ratchet rake voiding a loader warranty, as users back drag with the bucket curled down and the rams extended (bend prone). A tooth bar actually diminishes the force needed to push into soil/gravel/sod.

 

[MaineBarn]

Wow - Kioti voids the FEL warranty if you install a tooth bar on your bucket? That's insane and never heard of that before.

On FEL buckets, get the bolt-on bucket edge for the HD bucket as it provides 3/4" of steel reinforcement to the front edge and you won't bend it digging rocks and roots.

As far as the Hyd thumb - yea you can add it later, but your dealer should know all about adding hydraulic thumbs to these machines.

But I am not sure you are dealing with the right people at the dealership if they tell you a toothbar on the FEL voids the warranty. https://www.kentonequipment.com/kiotitractorandattachmentwarranty

Agree 100%. I did get the cutting edge. I had sent a link to the Piranha bar and said was looking for something like that in addition to the cutting edge. Didn't care the manufacturer. That's where they said it wasn't allowed. I think he's referencing:

"C. The General and Extended Warranties do not cover the following:​

...​

3. Damage caused by the use of any non-KIOTI front-end loader, backhoe, attachment, implement, accessory or part. "​

Makes no sense to me as the tooth bar would protect the bucket.

I'll reach out and ask what the upcharge is for the hydraulic thumb would be. The mechanical one was priced at something like $300 (it was in a line item with multiple things and backing out the other stuff came to that I believe).

 

[paulsharvey]

"Voids warranty on the Bucket", whatever. A bucket can be replaced for like $1200, so as long as it doesn't void warranty on the machine or the loader, I wouldn't worry.

 

[MaineBarn]

Arrived today. The tractor/loader/backhoe got dropped off around 1:30 and the attachments around 4:30. Was working from home today so got a bit of time to play with it before it got dark. Not really a lot of stuff to do at the moment. Not enough snow to dig in and no soil I want to dig until spring. Going to attach/detach quick attach items, work on pallet pickup skills, test everything, and try to figure out the best places for front and rear cameras.

The visibility with the pallet forks is rough. Even the driver struggled to get the pallets off the trailer. Feels like a camera and practicing will make it much easier. Loving the cab space and how stable the machine felt going over a limited snowpack. I got loaded tires and also had them flip the wheels so they're as wide as possible.

The sound quality is terrible but the radio does a great job with the bluetooth connection. At one point I left the tractor running to go grab something around the house. Got back in the cab and realized a few seconds later that the phone paired back immediately and was playing music. New speakers and we'll be in business.

Much thanks to everyone who chimed in here. I ended up getting a machine that I've accepted may not be able to do the woods trail, might be able to make some progress on it before/after the fact, and definitely will meet all my needs for regular at home projects.

 

[RjCorazza]

Fine looking machine... Enjoy!

 

[mike69440]

Thanks Carl_NH

I'm not 100% sure I'll be requiring the hydraulic thumb outside of work near the lake. My house's soil has some rocks but nothing major. I don't think I'd be flipping between needing/not needing it a ton. More of an occasional use or if using the thumb, it would be consistently on.

That being said, any idea if Kioti makes a kit specifically? If not, pretty sure I'll have to do it down the road if it becomes necessary. The dealership said Kioti would void my FEL warranty if I had a bolt on tooth bar. Assuming if a hydraulic thumb didn't come from Kioti, they would not warranty the backhoe during that first year.

Read this thread and would like to offer my perspective as I have cut a 1000' elevated driveway thru a rocky tree wooden swap 18 years ago.
My tractor is a bit more suited for such a task than your tractor by a only little bit. It has gotten 20 years of good hard use and runs strong because I did not use it exclusively to build my drive. It is way too valuable a destroy a tractor doing such work.
Use heavy equipment for the real heavy lifting to clear and rough in your project.
If you're a cheap ******* like myself, you can use you machine to finish the drive.
What you spend on hiring out or renting heavy equipment you will save on wear tear, and deprecation on your tractor, saving your new tractor for all those fun smaller projects that would cost a fortune to hire out.
If you have some time to kill, for either inspiration or discouragement, see this long thread of mine.

Busy Wife This Weekend

She and our little Kubota B7200 built this terraced garden plot. All I did to help was bucket out 5 loads of clay, a bit of BH work to set the larger stones and mix up some manure and soil with the L39. My time was less than 3 hours. She did the rest, leaving me to focus on road building...

www.tractorbynet.com

 

[Carl_NH]

Congratulations on your new machine - looks great!

 

[MaineBarn]

Wanted to close the loop. I snapped some pictures when I was up there on July 4th of the terrain. Walking through it, and with a better understanding of what a tractor can do, pretty confident a path could have been forged. There were definitely some areas to avoid as they got really rocky and really unlevel. For the most part, the attached pictures are a pretty good representation of the challenge. The land was clear cut 15-20 years ago based on relative's recollection.

Alas the person who is potentially building on the land decided they aren't going to build anytime soon. If they do, it sounds like they're going to build right off the existing road. Which means there's no sense in making an adventure of it as with a dozer it will take a day or two.