My 2025R Thread

[jeepcoma]

July 3 - Mowing Madness - 150 hours

OK first up, I'm happy to report that the "pull up on the pedal to go backwards" trick does work. It's not great, but at least the tractor isn't disabled if a pedal goes down. My replacement arrived (along with the autothrottle!) but I haven't had a chance to put it in yet. A piece of bailing twine tied to the pedal is the temporary fix. One advantage to this I've found is that I can kneel on the seat, look over the back, and pull on the string - lining up the backhoe is much easier when I can see the subframe!

Weather has been crazy this year. If it's not raining, it's 90+. I think we had three days in a row of 100+. High was 105. This has wreaked havoc on my mowing plans, so I've been sneaking in mows when I can. We do a big party around the 4th of July and I had hoped to have the lawn finally nice for once, but nope.

Mowing in the afternoon a few days ago...

Thought I could sneak some time in between storms, but nope. Mowing in the rain today, not enough to make me stop but enough to get wet and muck everything up.

Need to spend some TLC on my tractor. Right panel looks like crap, awful discoloration, noticed a crack near the axle, bailing twine on the pedal and holding the side chute up... Wet grass everywhere. It's a hot mess.

Yay, more work to do.

That's a lot of buildup...

Last time I sharpened the blades I did the height check when balancing, and found at least one blade bent by a good 1/4". Makes sense why the cut is so poor. Going to look at the JD mulch kit, or maybe just start with some Gator blades (Oregon 396-730 seems to be the correct part number) and see how it does. If I leave the side deflector down, I end up with huge clumps of grass in rows. If I angle the deflector up, it spreads out more evenly, but then there's dead grass everywhere. Can't win.

No pictures since I wanted to get the job done, but I mowed that big paddock (~2.5 acres) until 10:30 PM last night, it was finally cool enough to be outside.

It's funny, when I got the tractor I said "nah, I don't need a cab or canopy, I'll never use it during winter or the rain". Turns out I do! "nah, I don't need rear work lights, I won't use it at night". Turns out I do! The LED lights and those side work lights have been incredibly useful. Might go with the Artillian ROPS-mounted lights for rear work lights.

Been getting a lot done with the backhoe too, it's a handy landscaping tool.

Digging some steps down to the river:

Moving all those rocks I dug up to be more scenic along the river's edge.

The hydraulic thumb makes it so much more useful than "just digging". It's great being able to grab rocks and position them, reach down into the water and grab logs and branches, hold logs off the group for chain sawing. The extra GPM does more than make it faster too - being able to grab with the thumb, curl, manipulate the dipper, and swing the boom all at the same time means you can put all sorts of varying force on tree roots and other stuck things instead of only applying force in a single direction at a time. (OK so it does make the job faster.) I can move rocks that are too big to lift, by grabbing with the thumb, applying maximum boom and dipper lift, and push/pull/swing to move the rock around. I've got the itch for the Hydros+ cylinder upgrades...

 

[jeepcoma]

7/16/25 - Bunch of delayed updates

Finally got around to calling Heavy Hitch and they send over the missing parts for the dethatcher. I did a quick test by mounting it to the Artillian frame on the FEL. It was OK in that config, but I plan to run it on the 3PH while mowing to minimize weight. Float mode simply did not work, there was far too much weight and it simply drove the tines right down. The dethatcher is very heavy duty though and looks like it will take a lot of abuse.

Oh baby...

I take the BH off and on a lot, sometimes multiple times a day. And I hate hate hate those Ag connections that spill fluid each time. Now, I can use the dolly on the driveway to park it and not leave a mess. I got three pairs to do the power beyond, the BH, and the rear remotes.

Don't think the routing is right... I've futzed with it a few times now and am still not happy with the routing (I've changed the config since this pic but it's not quite right). Still, the flat face couplers make it easy to couple and decouple as much as I want with no waste. These are also "connect under pressure" couplers so hopefully they deal with changing ambient temps better than the factory setup.

Fixed my broken pedal. Did it twice, because I missed that there were press-in bushings in the old pedal that I had to swap over. Also fixed the creeping forward issue by adjusting that hydraulic eccentric bolt under the seat.

Installed the auto throttle. Took me a long time, I had to do it in stages after work. I think I could do it in an hour the second time around. Not sure how much I like it, based on how I use the tractor. Will leave it alone for a while and see what I think after some use.

 

[jeepcoma]

August 2, 2025 - ~155 hours

Mowed the paddock. Got the riding half done early in the morning. In the afternoon I finally got around to putting the 3-point hitch on so I could use the Heavy Hitch de-thatcher and landscape rake! Here I am testing it out on a couple spots on the lawn. I ran it through the woods too and it seemed to do a nice job picking up all the pine needles

Still not loving the hose routing. I am enjoying the flat face couplers for the power beyond and how they don't dump fluid every time they are used. Cost for upgrading the Summit rear remotes is a lot however... think I'll live with the Ag couplings there for a while longer.

Put the landscape rack back on, pulled several loads of sticks to the burn pile, and then mowed the rest of the paddock in the afternoon. Our paddock needs some help so I mowed and ran with the landscape rake down at the same time to help bust up some clumps. It was a lot less aggressive on the grass than I thought it might be, but my plan for now is using the landscape rake on the paddock and the de-thatcher on the yard and see how it does.

Didn't do much this July - we had 21 days that reached 90*. 5 days that were 100. We moved here 12 years ago and hadn't had a single day reach 100* until this year. Good summer!

 

[beenthere]

Any action video of moving pine needles with the thatcher and sticks with the landscape rake ? Tryin to visualize how well it works. thanks

 

[jeepcoma]

March 8, 2026 - ~170 hours

Wow... haven't posted in a while. Everything has been good! Can't believe I haven't posted about this already... Well, when I got the tractor, I figured I'd be using it only in the summer, during the day, when the weather is nice, but I've found myself being baked, rained on, snowed on, working in the dark, out in the woods, etc enough that I decided increasing my comfort in adverse conditions would be worth my while.

Last autumn I drove back down to MA to the Artillian depot on a tax free weekend to pick up a canopy and the rear ROPS lights. I put the canopy on right away but didn't get to the lights until today. Hit 50* and was a nice day to be outside figuring out how to install.

Here's the canopy installed and I'm test fitting the lights and wiring. I got the XL canopy and it's a bit awkward to handle by myself (I know one day I will drop, bash, dent, or otherwise damage it somehow) but the increased coverage is nice, and the ability to swap it around to shade the BH was an awesome feature that sold me on the Artillian unit vs some of the competitive models.

Here's the factory bullet connectors on the right side. They were zip tied to another part of the harness and had dummy caps installed to keep them clean. Took a bit to find it since everything was dirty. I didn't have heat-shrink bullet connectors so here I've just shoved the wiring into the bullets to make sure things work, until I can get down to the hardware store and grab some.

Closeup on the right. Everything is typical Artillian high-quality (the canopy and the lights!).

Here's the left side. For some reason this was harder to get at. Letting the backhoe stabilizer down a bit made reaching in easier.

Both test-mounted and test-wired. Despite the directions, I set mine up so that the light switch would be on top when in the rear-ward facing position - I did this since I only really intend to use them facing backwards, so the top would be better weather sealed.

Both lights are actually on in this picture.

Here it is lit up at night. They definitely don't seem as bright as the OEM work lights. But, aimed properly, they seem to do a pretty good job illuminating where I'd be able to dig with the BH, and also see behind better to reverse. Here the BH is at full extension:

Once I get the whole thing wired up, I'll take it out and do some comparison shots of the OEM frontward lights compared to the Artillians. The light output seems... OK, in both pattern and intensity, but it certainly didn't knock my socks off (I've had some VERY bright aftermarket lights on various equipment).

Time will tell!