I had my first opportunity the other day to dig some dirt. I needed only one bucket load of subsoil from a mound of it that I'd placed a few years ago with the Cub Cadet. What I found was far less breakout force with this loader than with my little Cub Cadet. It was pretty discouraging. The only way I was able to fill the bucket was to repeatedly ram the mound until the dirt was broken up and softened enough that the loader could get through it. This is dirt I'd originally dug from the ground, with much less effort. Pretty discouraging indeed.
Yes, for dealing with logs, with four times the leverage over the bucket forks, the log forks are now about equivalent to the bucket forks when they were on the little Cub Cadet. The loader is my biggest disappointment with this otherwise satisfactory tractor. While the physical size of the pumps, steering and loader/3PH, is about double that of the CC, and the relief pressure a few hundred pounds more, what it can do is notably less (with a slightly narrower bucket, a third more weight, and a third more horsepower).
Maybe it's about time I heard from the the big boys at LS (do you suppose this thread would catch their attention?). I admit I'm pretty ignorant, as this is only my second tractor. All I have for a reference is what I got used to. Were the Cub Cadet's loader and hydraulics so much better, or is this one that much worse? It's obviously built strong enough to take more force, but where is that force? Or maybe, as one with limited experience as an operator, it's me. I could be doing it wrong and/or expecting too much. If this had been my first tractor, I would have figured it was normal.
If I could, I would refit this loader with bigger, longer, bucket cylinders and change the roll-back geometry by raising the upper pins a few inches. I'm never in so much of a hurry that I couldn't wait a few seconds longer for the power I'm needing.
