Efreet
Member
Well, after a month and a half of waiting Hendy Bros. of Middlebury, VT (some of you know this dealership well) have delivered my new tractor and implements. The wait has been kinda hard, but the 2320 has been taking a few weeks to get in, and the turf tire option forced me to wait a while longer still. I am glad I waited though, as it has been a blast, having put 15 hours on it over the last few days.
Just a quick rundown on the configuration:
* 2320 w/ loaded turf tires, iMatch, ballast box, block heater, extra forward lights
* 200cx loader
* 62D MMM
* 5' box blade (Frontier, iMatch)
* 4' rotary cutter (Frontier, iMatch)
* JD 46 backhoe
I put several hours of work in with each attachment. The biggest bang for the buck has been the box blade; I have used it to shape my driveway to mirror smoothness and while I was at it take care of my neighbors' nightmarish, pothole-littered road. After an hour of work (first with the tines down, then pulled up for the finish) I turned 2000' of awful dirt road into a driveway to be proud of. I also used the box blade to even out some old "axle breaker" tractor ruts in my fields. And when not in use, the box blade still makes a great counterweight to the loader, making the ballast box somewhat superfluous.
The rotary cutter ate its way through 6' high grass and thickets of bushes without a complaint. I am very glad I got the 4' size, as I have to meander through some steep, twisty forest path on my way to the fields. For those of you with flatter or less complicated terrain the 5' may be a better choice, but the 4' is all I want to handle on my land.
62D MMM: amazing cut quality, and provides such vacuum suction that it whips up a veritable dust storm if you drive it over dirt or gravel road (don't ask how I know
). The only (very minor) disappointment has been that the iMatch carry pins have to be moved to a "storage" position when the deck is mounted in order to avoid interference with the backhoe front brackets. It takes 30 seconds to do the move, but hey, I am lazy...
The backhoe has been powerful, fun, and super easy to install. Now that I have done it a few times, I can go from MMM to backhoe and vice versa in less that 15 minutes without any hurry (about the same as the 3PH/iMatch-to-backhoe conversion). My guess is that if I really raced to get it done, I could do the switch in 5 minutes. My one negative comment about the backhoe is that it seems a tad expensive. $6K is a lot of cash, and my sense is that the materials and the complexity of hydraulics do not quite justify this amount, especially when compared to the BH that you can get for the 2305. Maybe a thousand dollars less would seem the right price? In any case, I will work the heck out of it on projects for the next year or two; we will see if it can still earn its keep afterwards.
Thanks for all of you on the board who provided great information, insight, and useful points of view. You made the shopping / buying experience a whole lot more fun! Below is some "tractor ****" to share with all.
Just a quick rundown on the configuration:
* 2320 w/ loaded turf tires, iMatch, ballast box, block heater, extra forward lights
* 200cx loader
* 62D MMM
* 5' box blade (Frontier, iMatch)
* 4' rotary cutter (Frontier, iMatch)
* JD 46 backhoe
I put several hours of work in with each attachment. The biggest bang for the buck has been the box blade; I have used it to shape my driveway to mirror smoothness and while I was at it take care of my neighbors' nightmarish, pothole-littered road. After an hour of work (first with the tines down, then pulled up for the finish) I turned 2000' of awful dirt road into a driveway to be proud of. I also used the box blade to even out some old "axle breaker" tractor ruts in my fields. And when not in use, the box blade still makes a great counterweight to the loader, making the ballast box somewhat superfluous.
The rotary cutter ate its way through 6' high grass and thickets of bushes without a complaint. I am very glad I got the 4' size, as I have to meander through some steep, twisty forest path on my way to the fields. For those of you with flatter or less complicated terrain the 5' may be a better choice, but the 4' is all I want to handle on my land.
62D MMM: amazing cut quality, and provides such vacuum suction that it whips up a veritable dust storm if you drive it over dirt or gravel road (don't ask how I know
). The only (very minor) disappointment has been that the iMatch carry pins have to be moved to a "storage" position when the deck is mounted in order to avoid interference with the backhoe front brackets. It takes 30 seconds to do the move, but hey, I am lazy...The backhoe has been powerful, fun, and super easy to install. Now that I have done it a few times, I can go from MMM to backhoe and vice versa in less that 15 minutes without any hurry (about the same as the 3PH/iMatch-to-backhoe conversion). My guess is that if I really raced to get it done, I could do the switch in 5 minutes. My one negative comment about the backhoe is that it seems a tad expensive. $6K is a lot of cash, and my sense is that the materials and the complexity of hydraulics do not quite justify this amount, especially when compared to the BH that you can get for the 2305. Maybe a thousand dollars less would seem the right price? In any case, I will work the heck out of it on projects for the next year or two; we will see if it can still earn its keep afterwards.
Thanks for all of you on the board who provided great information, insight, and useful points of view. You made the shopping / buying experience a whole lot more fun! Below is some "tractor ****" to share with all.
