Review and Issues

[nater]

deadstick,
The poly tires are the same ones as you have on the 60" mower. It cost only $20/pair to have them poly filled at the local tire store, and it took 3 days to get them back. The nice thing is that unlike foam-filled, they will always keep the correct shape and never develop flat spots.

It sounds like the handbrake is an issue with many PT owners....some tooo tight and others too loose. I will mention a possible fix to the PT guys. If they bless it, I will post it with some drawings. Should cost less than $5.

Nate

 

[nater]

duane,
I did check if the brake was rubbing, but it has at least a half inch of clearance.

I will call PT about the squeal and post thier reply.

 

[nater]

bmac,
The core aerator is awesome. Yes, it does bore out cores even in the hard clay. To assist the depth of the core, I have my wife turn on the sprinkler for a couple of minutes just before I go over it.
I overseed with a good grass mixture and then spread a thin layer of pulverized black dirt over the holes and use the large bucket to drag backwards over them. The dirt packs down very well into the cored holes. I am going to try and do this every other week for the remainder of the fall season.

Trust me that I consider NO question as stupid. My decision to purchase this PT took over a YEAR! And about drove my wife to the funny farm.

I have no regrets and would buy the 422 over the 425 again. I realize that the Kohler engine has a lot of fans, but I acutally visited both factories (Kohler and Robin). (Now you can imagine my wife's state of mind) /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif The Robin engine's oil pump moves 4 times the amount of oil as the Kohler, resulting in a lower operating temp of at least 25 degrees. Since the machine is so simple, and engine parts are available directly from the regional rep, I have all the confidence in the world in handling any service issues myself.

What I would do different is hold off on the trailer and the stump grinder. I would probably have instead ordered the trencher and the seeder/spreader. The trailer and the stump grinder are built extremely well and perform as expected, but I just don't see us using them very much from now on.

Yes, you have my 100% recommendation. You will NOT be dissapointed with this machine. It will continue to impress you with every task you throw at it. I find myself willing to tackle projects that I would never have considered before.

 

[nater]

PTRich,
Thanks for the tips that you use. I will definitely use some of them.

Where do I find the tractor reviews?

 

[bmac]

Thanks for the reply, nater. Down here in the deep south, the prevailing grass is hybrid bermuda (no seed available - must be sodded or plugged). There is a company down here that does core aeration and top-dresing with sand/top-soil mixture. It was going to cost me about $4000 to have just my front yard done (probably about 1/3 acre). Ouch. They claim that when they are done, the yard will look like a golf green. May take more than one treatment to get this result if the yard is real rough when they start. Needless to say, I passed on this. But, I was wondering if I could get reasonable results by doing it myself. The core aeration is straight forward enough, I just wasn't sure how I would get the top-dressing smoothed out. Back-dragging a wide bucket sounds like a good place to start. Would the 60" rake help work the sand/top-soil down into the cored holes?

Back to my previously mentioned stupid question. What does one do with a boom lift?

Thanks again, nater.

 

[nater]

bmac,
I do use the 60" rake, but I have not used it to fill the core holes. I use the 60" rake to cut grooves into the clay and break it open. Once open, I again overseed, spread pulverized black dirt and heavily water it. I suppose it would work to use the rake to drag back across the core plug holes with sand or some other type of top dressing. I would also probably assist in breaking up the cores that are laying all over the lawn.

The boom lift is used to extend the forward lifting capacity of the tractor. It has two grapple hooks that you can hook up any type of towing strap and lift/drag trees......or just about everything else. When angled up the lifting height extends to 8+ feet! I actually, with the help of some additional rear ballast weight, was able to lift the front of my F150 supercrew so that both front wheels where 6" off the ground!! Wast of time??? Probably lifting the truck is not all that beneficial, /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif but this boom lift is awesome when your lifting large tree trunks or rocks. It also makes you look like your ready to take on the neighbor in a jousting match./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif I will post some pictures of my PT in action, with all the accessories over the weekend.

I wish I had the skills and resources to put together a web site like Moss's, but I am just a mortal./w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif If you would like to see anything being done special with the tractor, just let me know and I can try and have the wife shoot a digital movie clip of PT and me in action and email it to you.

 

[deadstick]

How about a clip of you lifting that F150 with the boom /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[davesisk]

<font color=red>I actually, with the help of some additional rear ballast weight, was able to lift the front of my F150 supercrew so that both front wheels where 6" off the ground!! </font color=red>

Wow! That's pretty impressive! Jeez, how much ballast weight did you need? I know that I can pick up about 600 lbs in the bucket on my 1418, any more and the back end lifts up, leaving the machine standing on the bucket and front wheels. You must've put quite a bit of weight on there to do this! Please, do tell, or post a video clip or picture here on TBN!

Dave

 

[Schultz]

Great review, hopefully PT is reading them as well & taking notes. Being a development engineer I see this a great source for them. I too have been tossing around the idea of a new tractor, and looks like there is enough convincing info here to make it a PT. Unfortunately, it won't be for another year or so.
Regarding LOADNESS: I have given this a lot of thought, and thought of requesting the following when the time comes. I would even pay extra for it if I had to. Anyway, get the 425 but have it factory set so that the RPM's are limited to say 3000 or 3100rpm. Looking at the power & torque curves of the Kohler this would still provide about 22-23hp but at much reduced noise levels. This still provides about 200-300rpm of torque rise so you wouldn't be bogging the engine down when mowing or working the tractor. So far I haven’t seen a good reason not to do this.
All this would involve for PT would be resizing the hydraulic pumps for this RPM range - not a hard calculation. The only down side I see is a compressed speed/power range.

Just something to think about.

 

[bmac]

Thanks, nater. Would love to see the boom lift and core aerator in action. I will second the request to see the SuperCrew on 2 wheels. As a fellow SuperCrew owner myself, maybe some day we can have a competition lifting our respective trucks. Thanks for the generous offer for the videos. If its not too much trouble, I'm sure lots of folks would enjoy them.

As I haven't seen the rake in person, I didn't know how aggressive it would be. When I asked, I was thinking light pressure with small tines to smooth things out. Sounds like that thing would be hefty enough to rip out my existing grass.

Thanks again.