Price Check on B7500?? And what about attachments?

[Tomtint]

Agree with Koua. I did some incredible things with my BX. A larger tractor would have done them faster. But I had fun doing most of them anyway. I think the drawback to the B and BX is the small loader bucket. 48" may look like it is plenty but it gets small quick. Also a machine with a skidsteer front is a great option to have. Maybe given your situation a L3200 or B3030 would be something you would not out grow to fast. Even a L3400 could be found used for just a bit more than you are talking about now.

 

[newbury]

<snip>
Newbury -can you give me an example of what you mean by a "small" tractor?

Thanks everyone!

Size is relative to what you NEED to do. Tractors are rated two ways for power, Engine HP and PTO HP. My first tractor, the B7610

I'd call a small tractor, for what you wrote you need to do. The B7610, 23 HP/18 PTO HP, will barely pull a 14" 1 bottom plow. FEL lift capacity is 352 kg or about 700 lbs. One of the reasons I bought it was for maintaining trails in the woods, where a big tractor will be a pain.

A few months ago I was in earnest search for a tractor of about 40 HP that would handle a 10' log (about 2,000 lbs) on the 3pt and cost < $15K. After scouring Craigslist, tractorhouse, dealers, etc. I ended up getting my M4700 for about $12K at a local county auction.

More power than I needed, 50HP/42HP PTO, but I'll cope with it. It'll handle 2,000 lbs on the FEL and 4,000 lbs on the 3 pt. I'll call that a medium tractor.

If your planning on bush-hogging (or rotary cutting) the 7500 will probably do it with a 4' rotary cutter or smaller. If you can move up to a 30HP plus tractor a 5 or 6 foot rotary cutter might work.

If you want to plow, again, a larger tractor would come in REAL handy. The 7500 would be limited to a 12" single bottom plow.

I'm not that familiar with horse upkeep but if they eat hay only a 4x4 round bale could be carried by the 7500's FEL. http://www.caes.uga.edu/commodities/fieldcrops/forages/pubs/BaleWeightEstimationTable.pdf .

I fully understand not wanting to get in over your head, but if you can get a good deal on a 30HP tractor it will allow you to do a lot more.

 

[joshuabardwell]

Where do I get attachments?

You can buy attachments new from online retailers like Everything Attachments. In Iowa City, IA, I believe that you are just barely within their 1000 mile "shipping-included" zone. You will, however, get significantly better prices buying used implements locally. For one thing, there is no shipping. My experience has been that you can find implements at about 80% of new price if someone bought one, used it a few times, and is now getting rid of it. You can get them around 50% of new price if they are still 100% functional, but have been used to the point where there is some rust on them and some of the paint is knocked off. The thing is, many of these tractor implements are very, very resilient, and will have a lot of life left in them even if they have been worked hard, or sitting out in a field for ten years. If you don't mind that the paint isn't fresh, you can save a lot of money. You just have to have a sense of what might or might not be a good deal. For example, a box blade? As long as there aren't any cracked welds, bent pieces, and as long as the cutting edge has some life left in it, I don't care much what it looks like. Grader blade? Same. Landscape rake? As long as the tines are all present and intact, good to go. On the other hand, a tiller or a finish mower has bearings and bolts and a gearbox--basically, a lot more to potentially go wrong. So if I didn't know what to look for, I might be a little more hesitant to buy those used.

I do most of my implement shopping on Craigslist. The Farm and Garden section is nirvana.

 

[aczlan]

We have a B7500 with the hydro transmission and R4 (Industrial) tires. It is a great machine, but if mowing, you are limited to a 4' bushhog. We have a 5' bushhog which works, but you have to take partial passes and it is like a teeter totter (very light front end).
We use it with a 60" MMM (which probbaly weighs 1/2 of what your riding mower weighs, it is a heavy deck), a 60" tiller, a 60" bushhog, various trailers and other things.
It works well to shuttle haywagons around or to park equipment in the barn as it is very maneuverable.
That one looks like its in decent shape. It has the smaller loader than ours (the LA272 is rated for ~66# less than the LA302 that we have), but the tires look to be good. The back tires can be set to various widths (setting them wider will make it more stable on hills). Additionally, I would make sure the back tires are loaded. That made a HUGE difference with ours when doing loader work.
Pricewise, I would offer $7000 or $7500 and see where it goes from there. There is someone in Oxford, IA who has a B1750 (a little less HP and an older tractor, but with a MMM) who is asking $7000.

Aaron Z

 

[eosinophil]

Thanks all for the advice!
New question - how many hours is "too many". I imagine that really depends on how it was cared for, but since most of the ones I'm seeing are at a dealer I probably won't be able to get a great sense of if it was used too hard versus just not babied.

Tom, I agree those are nice tractors. But then I get the dilemma of spending nearly as much on a used one when I could get a new one for barely more! Or, the less expensive ones all have high hours, so I worry about maintenance (see above - hours question).

Newbury, i wish I was smart / informed enough to go to an auction. Sounds like yours was a great deal! I'd probably not notice and pay a lot for one that had only three wheels! Or a giant oil slick under it!

Joshua, I think that advice on the used implements is great - breaking it down on what is easy to see versus tougher to evaluate is especially important for me.

Aczlan- I saw that ad when it first showed up last fall, when I was thinking about a bigger tractor. That it's still around makes me think it's pretty beat, but I should give them a call, thanks for the headsup!

I guess I won't know about this tractor unless I go look at it - I'll try to do that in the next couple days. I wish folks answered emails - I hate calling on the phone

 

[aczlan]

Hourswise, ours has close to 600 and is doing fine. If its a 2001 with 467 hours, it has run (on average) less than 3/4 of an hour per week, not that much when you think about it.
Looking at the pictures, I would guess that the dealership put on the tires because the ones on it were shot and they were probably the set from another tractor that someone wanted different tires on (ie: someone buying a new tractor wanted R4s, not R1s). I guess that because the front rims still have barcode stickers on them.


Aaron Z

 

[newbury]

Thanks all for the advice!
New question - how many hours is "too many". I imagine that really depends on how it was cared for, but since most of the ones I'm seeing are at a dealer I probably won't be able to get a great sense of if it was used too hard versus just not babied. <snip>

That can be a problem area, and on of the worst things is how much GAS has been put thru it, that's one thing that always worries me about used diesels. A few "whoops I filled it with gas and it's knocking real bad" can ruin an engine.

Hours - A well maintained Kubota ENGINE should easily go 3,000 hours. The rest of the tractor should be able to do that also, but determining if it was well maintained can be difficult.

The 1995 M4700 I bought has about 1500 hours, it was mainly used for bushhogging and maintained by the county. If a machine is maintained by a public facility, and it looks like they maintain their other equipment well I tend to trust it. If it's a private individual I'd want to see dealer receipts. And when it gets to the point of putting money down a face to face talk with a handshake can't be beat.

Many SCUTS/CUTS in Harry Homeowners hands average less than 50 hours per year running time.

And that brings up another matter - Time - What is Time? Many small Kubotas figure clock hours based on time at PTO running speed. So if your SCUT is supposed to run at 2,600 RPM (like mine) to achieve 540 RPM at the PTO and you piddle around with it doing loader work at 1800 RPM with lots of idling (like I do) it may take 2 hours to register 1 hour.

Once again, I'd recommend Barlow's. Inventory | Barlow Equipment, and they DO email.

good luck.

 

[eosinophil]

Thanks for all the input.
I sent an email to the Barlow folks mentioning I'm coming from here - hope they'll have some decent options for me!
thanks again!

 

[Apogee]

Make sure whatever you buy has 4wd.

Also, I agree with the others, get the bigger tractor if you can. You won't regret it down the road.

Good luck!