six helping hand with your leg Neil from Messicks here we had the opportunity to
have a bunch of current competitive models on our lot and it presented an
opportunity to go around and do some videos on them now we need to prefix
this with saying that talking down another competitors equipment is not a
way that we typically like to see business and sales transactions done
generally were the opinion that our dealership our experience the products
that we sell can stand on their own without having to talk down about other
products but unfortunately anymore we find a lot of customers developing
opinions about things through YouTube videos that may be really based upon
half-truths so while we had this product here on hand we wanted to take the
opportunity to walk around and do a video of our own and try to show how
some of those comparisons are made in dishonest ways and also make an attempt
to make our own comparisons and maybe do it a little bit more honestly than what
you typically would find so take a quick look here at this video and let us know
down in the comments how we did to be perfectly frank the Mahindra 1533 is one
of their better trackers one thing that we need to look at when we're looking at
a Mahindra machine is who actually is building the tracker the inner doesn't
actually build most of their own equipment most of it is contracted out
to other manufacturers and in the case of this machine this is actually a
Mitsubishi tractor rebadged / Mahindra as we walk around the machine here we
can take a look at the loader as well the loader is actually not built by
Mahindra either this is a kmw loader you can see very prominently what I made
them us a sticker right here on the side of the loader maybe slightly deceptive
in that this whole package is not made in the USA this is a Japanese billet
tractor with the loader that's built in the US one of the things that we always
focus on when we talk about a Kubota tractor is the fact that Kubota build
everything that you see when you're buying a Kubota tractor you're typically
buying a machine that is made front to back attachments and all by Kubota so in
the case of this machine this el 3301 is built by Kubota in georgia if one of
their factories down there this used to be a Japanese model at one point but now
they're importing this into the US to do final assembly here so it is a u.s.
assembled machine named this loader and it's entirely is
actually welded painted in the whole shooting match done at ka Kubota
manufacturing of America in Gainesville Georgia so it is a tractor that is front
to back made by one manufacturer when we get into looking at long-term support of
products now when we get 10 and 15 years down the road manufacturers who tend to
own their own machine and build their own machine usually can ensure better
long-term parts support and better initial quality there's a lot of
processes that you'll do on these machines where say taking the loader on
and off where you'll see processes that are very very similar to one in the next
and for whatever reason it is it always seems to be easier to do those things on
a Kubota and we largely attribute that to the fact that they engineer and
manufacture their own product front to back giving them complete control of the
engineering process rather than jumping from vendor to vendor for whoever is
going to sell them the cheapest thing this time well this is an economy
tractor a lot of things about it don't feel very economy simply here when
you're sitting in the operators platforms they still use a lot of modern
controls for instance my controls for my PTO are you know levers back here on the
side that make it easy with less effort in order to turn the PTO on not heavy
long throw levers like we have on some cheaper tractors the loader valve itself
right here is still a very deluxe loader valve particularly that's seen when you
get down into your corner positions and you're trying to do things like lift
your load and keep it level at the same time as you go up and down this is a
nice smooth loader valve but you can very easily do those functions being it
we're at a modern tractor here this does have some emissions equipment on it if
you're wanting to avoid those things the 25 horse model falls underneath those
requirements but a Tier four final here this uses the diesel particulate filter
with two simple buttons here on the dash in order to manage that system for the
most part of these machines you just rev up the engine and go work and it's never
anything that you have to worry about we do have some other videos that go into
more detail on exactly how those emission systems working or managed if
you'd like to learn more about that main engine makes a lot of big claims about
their tractors about them being heavier and stronger and capable of doing more
work and that's true but there's some half-truths in there as well the rated
operating capacity of both of these machines if you dig into your owner's
manual and see the amount of work that they're actually engineered to do is
virtually identical both of them are almost spot-on 5500 pounds maybe a
hundred pounds apart from each other yet Mahindra will claim a lot more weight
and a lot more lift capacity in their loader which is actually somewhat true
this loader does lift more weight than what the Kubota does the thing that we
have to be aware of though is that with this load or lifting it its full weight
it's actually over the rated operating capacity of the tracker if you've gone
further and that's that's with no ballot so in most machines we're putting five
to seven hundred pounds back of the tractor so with five to seven hundred
pounds of ballast the tractor itself and this load are working at full capacity
you're nearly a thousand pounds over the rated operating capacity of this tractor
and where you're going to see that is in your front axles if you come in here and
you look at the heft of the front axle that's under this machine this is
clearly approximately about a three inch front axle and not to say that small
things can't be stout they certainly can be but if we compare that over here on
the Kubota to the sides of the front axle and in L Series there's a five-inch
front axle underneath here it's a lot heavier so while we freely will admit
that this tractor will out lift the Kubota I'm sure you can find some demos
out there showing it doing it we have to be aware that there are operating
conditions that you can be in that are going to put this tractor over it's
rated operating capacities so given those operating capacities you would
think we'd have a really stout loader to go along with it and unfortunately
there's several things about this loader that just feel cheap to me for one is
the knock test right the gauge of Steel that's used here on the loader is
actually quite thin when compared to the Kubota version of the same thing the
difference is really quite dramatic when you have them side-by-side if you looked
at here in the skid loader a quick coupler this isn't engineered nearly as
nicely as well the levers that are on here in order to release the pins at the
bottom aren't nearly as stout as the Kubota version of the same thing so it's
a little curious we have operating capacities and lift capacities like we
spec that we don't seem to have build quality to match one of the reasons why
Mahindra tractors tend to be heavier than a lot of other machines on the
market is that there are castings on their transmissions are typically a lot
more crude than one a lot of other machines are you can see
a lot of roughness in the way that the castings are done down in here and just
mix and Marx and really unexplainably we often find to that there's a lot of
extra bulk back in here often because it hasn't been engineered away one of the
goals and modern tractors is to be able to put them into most any application in
our opinion it's often better to have a little bit lighter track because there's
a lot of applications where you don't want weight if you're going to be going
out at mowing for instance you don't want all that extra tonnage rolling over
top of your grass make it easier for you to get stuck in the mud and compacting
things having a lighter tractor that you're able to add boughs to when needed
for the right application allows you to pick the tractor that will perform
better for the right application so some of the casting tonnage that exists in
these tractors can be an advantage in the right application but there are also
applications where you don't want it so please be aware you know be looking at
the right track for the application that you have at hand keeping in mind that
you're looking for the right specs for your application not just the biggest
numbers that you can find one interesting demo here that we can do
with these two tractors is to show the differences in noise and vibration of
the engine when you start the Kubota
you'll notice it idle we get a little bit of vibration out of our bottle it
just rocks back and forth just a little bit but you know kind of shimmy the
shakes with the engine when we start to give it some revs that very quickly
screws out and a wide open throttle wider is
completely still in the bottle as I'm losing now if we hop over here to the
Mahindra we'll do the same thing we're trying to use the water bottle give you
a bit ball because you know we can say this one's wild or this one vibrates bad
but hopefully this kind of gives you a little visual of exactly how that plays
out
so at idle here you can see they've got a lot more vibration on the bottle and
it's actually slowly shaking itself off the hood and as we start to speed up
that very interestingly changes that almost every rpm as you go but you can
see the water shaking the bottle sliding around in that vibration I can also feel
in the steering wheel so that transmits back through the tractor and into the
operator by no means that isolated is just the engine compartment from the
operators platform frankly I can't find a whole heck of a lot to complain about
we did a comparison earlier with the John Deere 3-series and there are a lot
more things about that tractor but I was less impressed by Mitsubishi has done a
good job with this tractor it's been around for a long time you will notice
so there are things on here that just feel cheaper than what the equivalent
Kubota does the gauge of the fenders for instance these are really thin and
plastic out here on the edges the cheaper plastics up here around the
operators platform a lot of the choices that are made for say the hydrostatic
pedal down on the floor and stuff are just they're just a little bit more
crude not as refined from an operator standpoint this isn't a terrible tractor
actually there are a lot of things on it that work nicely but one of the things
that you always will notice about Mahindra's is the way that they tout
their value all right this is a great value tractor it is cheaper than all the
rest and in the case of these two machines actually not true you'll find
the Mahindra started with a list price of this machine at one point MSRP for
just the tractor at over $28,000 and at some point we've started to see some
varying information on that but they seem to have pulled that number back on
their website now to be more in line with Kabuto MSRP so the expectation of
saving a lot of money on this tractor is frankly often untrue now your
experiences with that are going to vary in dealer pricing can play into that in
huge ways so that's not something that may ring true for everybody but for each
individual person that this is a tractor that you're considering you really
should be going to local dealers and pricing your local market to see how
things shake out one thing that drives me absolutely batty in the tractor
business is when companies decide to go and take funny acronyms and names and
give them to things that are actually fairly standard industry practices and
options in this case it's Mahendra's emission system they call it MCRD
for their engine and actually what it is as an engine using a doc these clock
sedation catalysts in order to clean up the exhaust stream that's a little bit
different than the system that's used by deer and new darin Kubota because they
would use a DPF system and a DPF and doc actually aren't all that different from
each other the systems are almost exactly the same the only difference is
DPF has a slit capturing mechanism on it and so that mechanism captures the foot
as it comes out of the engine and once enough slip builds up inside of it it
goes to a burn cycle to burn off that foot a doc doesn't have that screen on
the end and it still needs to be outputting clean exhaust in order to
meet here for a final and the way that it does that is it is essentially always
in a burn cycle rather than having to burn every 40 to 50 hours it's burning
all the time and so the way that that happens is that the exhaust stream needs
to be abnormally hot in order to burn off that exhaust so that's done by
tuning the engine and a way to heat up the exhaust that's also accomplished by
using a lot of EGR exhaust gas recirculation so this engine is
constantly breathing in that dirty air in order to reborn' it again to try to
get it clean enough to be blown out of the engine that's been on cars and
trucks and other equipment for a long long time EGR is not a new technology
it's not new to engines but it is also a problematic part of engines so there are
issues on all this equipment potentially when it comes to their admission systems
a doc only engine does not eliminate the problems it runs hot all the time and
has EGR concerns versus a DPS system which has to burn periodically on either
of these tractors really is an operator ideally we just don't have to worry
about this stuff the goal is to get on the tractor and go do your work and not
worry about it you're not constantly thinking about what your emission system
needs to do now right rev the thing up go to town and by and large all these
tractors largely take care of themselves so in summary this is about the best
that I can feel that I can do for a fair comparison between these two tractors do
I think the Mahindra is a terrible machine no are you going to find happy
customers out there for it probably but in my opinion in order to buy a tractor
that is a lot more economy feeling to the cheaper machine there really needs
to be a large ice Delta between these two tractors and
that simply doesn't seem to exist as I've seen it in the marketplace in fact
around here this is the first vide actually even been this close to a
Mahindra tractor before I've never seen one we have a very competitive market
here for main brand tractors and because of that competitive market Mahindra has
never been able to see the price gap that they have in some other you know
more rural parts of the country so before going and watching videos on
YouTube and trying to line up data points in Excel the right way that I see
to make this decision is simply to get out and go to a local dealer visit your
dealers of all colors and have those experienced salesmen figure out the
needs that you have for your application you know choosing a particular model
really should be based upon your need and not based upon what you want for
horsepower or just lift capacity but there's all kinds of factors to consider
on these machines so find yourself an experienced salespeople that it can sell
people that can help you find those things buy from the right dealer the
right dealer and the right tractor can make a really good experience the right
tractor in a terrible dealer can also give you a really bad experience so if
we can help you through this process give us a call at Messick's or available
at 800 2 2 2 3 3 7 3 or online at Messick's calm