Bought a tractor!!
 

I just bought a tractor from my neighbor last night. It is a Kioti brand 4x4 22 hp with a loader. 3 cyl diesel with a 4 speed trans and high/low gearbox. It also came with a scraper box, rototiller, and a posthole auger. I am stoked to have a tractor again and it seems like a sturdy little unit. Anyone know about the Kioti tractors? I had not even heard of them until I found this one. I think it is a Kubota clone.

Pictures!

Kubota and Kioti had some joint-venture efforts in the early 1980's but they had some disagreements and parted ways in the early 1990's IIRC.

I think Kioti is actually a south Korean company and I've generally heard good things about their products, congratulations on your purchase!!!

Do they also manufacture the NorTrac and Montana tractors? They all look similar. Maybe some are Chinese?

congrats dude. I've used a couple of Kubotas over the years, but I'm not familiar with Kioti.

AFAIK, the Kioti is a direct knock-off of a Kubota. It is a result of early South Korean reverse engineering. They're still around, so it must be a decent alternative.

My neighbor has one about that size. Never had a problem with it. Nice tractor for small acreage and the attachments you got should come in very handy.

Congratulations on the new toy !!
Now make sure you play nicely with it !!
No doing stuff you shouldnt !!! :P

:tank:

A boxblade is just about useless if the tractor doesn't have a load/depth sensitive three-point. My old German-built Deere (which wouldn't run more than about 45 minutes without overheating) had a fairly sophisticated control on the three-point and you could set the three-point to a depth and forget it. Perfect for surfacing the roads out here.

But, I got tired of shredding my place 6 ac at a time (because of the old Deere's terminal overheating problems) and bought a 50hp Kubota. The thing runs for hours without complaint but I've destroyed more road surface with it's crude three point control than I'm willing to admit.

Nowadays, I use other blunt instruments to do road work and the tractor pulls the 10' shredder and hauls hay.

Being quite the part-time hack on my lil' 3130 Kubota, I'll defer to those of you who have the experience...but I've become quite proficient with the box blade.

Couldn't do it without hydraulic top and tilt, though - how anyone gets by manually adjusting tilt on the smaller tractors is beyond me.

Also, a good way to "cheat" with a box blade - pick up a landscape rake w/gauge wheels. If I've an area I want perfectly smooth/level, I just drop the rippers all the way down on the box blade, go over the area a couple times, then swap out for the landscape rake with the gauge wheels set a few inches above the rake tines. Perfect every time.

I already managed to do something I shouldn't while I was getting familiar with the tractor today:eek: but thanks to the 4 wheel drive I was able to extricate myself:D All the other tractors I have owned were larger but only 2WD and in my steep neck of the woods would get stuck often. I am really liking the lower center of gravity and manuverability of the smaller tractor. It should work great for mowing my property. And for some reason the primitive 3 cylinder diesel engine sounds just like my 240D so I am already making it a beloved member of the family:)

Aren't new toys fun.
The person that built my house said he would have his dozer operator blade out 6" of top soil so I could build the road to the house. Had to tell him he was not going to do that. I don't even have 1" of top spoil.

The auger I borrowed from a friend (Bush Hog brand with the down force cylinder) blew the metal hydraulic line on my 886 International trying to auger out some holes for posts.

Kiotis are durable rugged tractors. They came to the US badged as MF and Ford, and parts are more available than the Yanmars.
IIRC, the FEL on those was a bit floppy, and the front frame mount was weak. I had to rebuild one a couple times after guys caught rocks in the potato cellars.

I'm tired of fixing tractors. I have been spending nearly every weekend fixing one of three handmedowns: A 1950's Ford gasser (a farm tractor for sure, 4 cyl), a 1970's Ford diesel kamikaze (an 1100 that wants to tip over when it hits a pebble) and a 1963 Farmall Cub. I'm going to put the herd out to pasture and buy either a Mahindra 4010 or a Kubota L3900. Need 4x4 and FEL.

I'm leaning toward the Mahindra because it's about $5K cheaper for approx equal HP and config.

Last year somebody (AKLIM?) suggested some websites for tractors which I joined and learned a lot from. Thank you.

Y'all have any opinions (pa-hahahaha!!!)? In the town I live by there is a Kubota, New Holland, Deere and Mahindra dealer. New Holland was higher than Kubota so I eliminated that one. Deere is just a green Kioti (nothing against Kioti, but it's still priced like a Deere). So I narrowed my list to orange or red.

I have a lot of implements except my bush hog equivalent is worn out and I need a 5 ft cutter. But I don't need anything else.

Tell me what you think?

Move to a condo?:D