Good Evening,
I did manage a test drive at the LS dealer this afternoon, he's actually more like a distributor. This guy's property was huge, and he wholesales tractors all over the Western US. Stacks of riding mowers, rows of tractors in all sizes, and a pretty good selection of attachments, too. He had tires stacked in columns high enough to be a fence, and they want on for several hundred feet. David, if you need tires, Lane Tractor Supply in Los Molinas, CA can surely help you out. Anyway, they put me on an XR4150H, a 50 HP CUT, the largest frame they sell with a Hydro transmission. It drove/rode similar to the JD, and like the JD, the FEL performed pretty sluggishly. Even when I bumped the hand throttle up to 1500 RPM, it was noticeably slower than what I'm used to on the Kubota running at maybe 1000 RPM. Also, unlike either the orange or green tractors, this blue one wouldn't go very fast until the hand throttle was used to boost the RPMs. On the other two, the pedals act like the accelerator pedal in your car; the harder you press, the more RPMs/speed you get. I asked the LS dealer about using the hand throttle, and he said they're all like that.:shocked: Basically that means that when doing loader work, or any time you need power, the hand throttle would be set to 3-4K RPM and left there to keep the tractor and FEL moving at an efficient rate. Or at least that's the impression I was left with. Am I wrong?:confused2: I'd also asked if I could take a scoop or two of dirt, and was told fine, but they wanted to put a used bucket on the tractor first. Even better, as I wanted to see how easy it was to swap implements on the front. Turns out visibility of the SSQA isn't very good, being mostly blocked by the bucket arms. Or was it the front tires, I forget. Still managed to hitch and unhitch the bucket without any problems, so it wasn't a show stopper. Between the two, though, I'd rather operate the Deere, but I'm not sure it's worth another $22K.
But the really big news of the day came when I stopped by a Mexican concrete statuary yard, which just so happened to be right next to a very large adult store.:laughing: They had a perfect little birdbath and wanted only $35 for it, so it came home with me. I wasn't out of anything, so I skipped going next door and finished the day grocery shopping in Chico.
I hit the road early tomorrow, so I hope you all have a productive and/or restful weekend!:drink:
