[music]
Neil from Messick’s here, with a Mahindra 4550.
We're going to do a little walk around on this tractor and show you some of its intricacies and little quirks.
This is going to be a little bit different for us.
It's a little bit hard to imagine a dis tractor even exists in 2017, but here it is in the flash.
So let's do a quick walk around here, and we'll show you what a tractor from the 1960s is like.
So this walk around is going to be a little tongue-in-cheek for me,
because this tractor is quite unlike anything that I have ever been on before.
Normally, we would do a competitive comparison with another competitive tractor side-by-side and honestly it's a little bit hard [to] know what [to] park this
thing beside because I'm not aware of any manufacturer who really sells a tractor [like] this anymore you go get on a
Case in New Holland [a] Kubota John Deere of an ag code tractor [just] about anybody
Tractors have improved and come a long way in the last 50 years and
Somehow this thing has been stuck in its own little time capsule and not progressed with the rest of the industry
One of the things that you need to be aware of and watching when you're looking at a mahindra product is who is manufacturing it?
Most of the more popular models that they sell are either built by Mitsubishi or by Tym
They simply will say mahindra on the side of the hood they buy most of their more popular
Models from other companies and put their name on the side [of] the hood [in] the case of this tractor
This is a machine that [mahindra] themselves does actually build there are a large Indian company much like Ford in the United States
Mahindra is their domestic car and tractor company much like Ford was for us
[the] interesting thing is these tractors really have only ever developed to the point of meeting the needs of a third world country?
[they] haven't progressed with Modern Standards and
Transmissions like we've come to expect in the United States
And so when mahindra took their own product that they built here and shipped it to the us it came along with all those
Interesting intricacies that are passable in India that are just things that we've moved past here in the us
there's a lot of the things that we can go through here from transmissions to
Vendors to is the bulk of your three-point hitch and implements and just come along with me here
And I'll point some of these things out to you
We'll start here with the loader this loader while it says mahindra on the side isn't actually a loader that they built
It's made by a South Korean company called an sung and sung builds loaders that will fit onto a lot of different tractors
But one thing that will typically notice about an songs loaders is they are very
Economy oriented loaders when they go around through the Noc test
Right there [on] the side, and you look at the gauge of the steel around here at the top you'll see that
There's not a whole lot of heft and bulk in these loaders the size of the torque Tube across the bottom here is
Really light for the capacities of this loader and tractor?
So the ability of the operator to tweak or to bend something in here it could happen
[when] we look at the steel here in the back of the quick coupler. [no] skid steer quick coupler. [goodbye], Hendra
Thank you for doing that supporting industry standards
You'll just notice some cut steel on things that just look
Matters refined is what you typically would find in a modern loader from a modern loader manufacturer the valve body
Hangs right up here off the side with all the hoses piped up directly into it
this loader
stick isn't too terrible to move and it's not in a horrible position from the operators platform, but a
50 horsepower tractor today, you just expect to see more than this you know I did my
[Eight-year-Old] could have come up with this
The one fun thing [that] you often will find about aftermarket loaders
Is that there's varying degrees of skill and the development of the mounts to go on to the tractors so companies like woods who makes?
Aftermarket loaders has really advanced engineering teams into a great job of fitting their loaders on to a variety of tractors this one is different
[we've] got this grille guard thing around here with another piece in here with a bunch of bolts there
We've got more bolts going back in here. We've got another piece to the loader housing running back to the rear axle
there's three different parts [in] probably 16 18 different bolts that are holding this [thing] together and
Interestingly when we get to the back of the tractor back here we took some rather thin pieces of sheet metal holding pieces in place
This is a heavy tractor with a [difficut] capacity loader [I]
Don't know there's a lot going on
My biggest pet peeves on tractors. [I] get on the loader and start moving things up and down and start to stroke multiple functions
Right I'm what I'm looking for [are] large
sweet spots where I can raise the loader up and level the bucket at the same time and get those functions going smoothly up and
Down this is not as bad some
but particularly when I'm coming down and rolling my bucket back on having a hard time getting that function to happen in a
smooth and predictable Manner
Going up I kind of have some of the same problem
You know if I'm going up I can get the function going to start the level
But I can't manipulate the speed of my leveling very much like it'll go, but it
Doesn't go [the] way that I want it to go
So it's not the worst
But there's room for improvement
When I joked about this tractor being from the 1960s this is what I was talking about the operators platform of this tractor feels
Ancient it feels like an old tractor
The Throttle for instance is up here on the dash with this long lever that can pull back and forth like an old ih tractor
Would have been from years ago
[the] gear selectors are down here on the floor with a [high-low] and a one through four and it reverse
All of these gears are unsynchronized
Which what that means if you're not familiar with transmissions? Is that you can't shift these gears without bringing the tractor
[what] stop so if you're rolling along?
And you want to go from second to third
You either have to magically get the gears to line up and jump them into place without grinding them somehow
Or you're going to get a little bit of grind action is these straight cut gears drop into place as you're moving and I'll do
A quick driving demonstration and show you exactly what this is like in operation, but what you should know is more or less
You know we take your loader for instance you drive into your loader pile, you push your clutch down
You're in first gear. You're going forward now
You want to go back stop the tractor clutch bring this thing over here in [reverse]?
Let the clutch out again go [back] and reverse up clutch
You know any?
Modern gear drive tractor is going to have a reverse or up here on the dash to change directions
Or at the very least one down here on your left hand side where you can pop between low
Forward and reverse on the side very easily and quickly and most of the time leaving the most
Economy tractors from a major manufacturer are going to have some synchronized gears and sometimes not every year
But some synchronized gears at least in your top-end range say between third and fourth
Where you're already cooking down the road, and you want to go a little bit faster
[you] [know] you could slide into the next gear up without coming to a stop
changing gears and taking off again
ok so
This is an unsynchronized if you can even hear me this thing is so loud
I'm in second gear now when I want to go to third. I need the clutch
Wide over to third, and you hear that groin okay? [I] basically happen to stop to get into third gear
I'm going to try to get some speed here
and I grind there when I go in the fourth right, so if a synchronized
Transmission has what's called a synchronizer gear in it that helps those gear teams
Happen while you're moving it on the fly and on this tractor. These are non synchronized gears and so
They're simply not easy to change
Also, if I want to go into reverse [reverses] here on my main shifter
So when we go back [to] our common loader application every time you're changing directions. You're going down reverse and
then changing and going over here in the first gear and
While this is an inexpensive simple transmission
one thing that we kind of have gotten at selling modern tractors is frequent sun job and
This guy you're on and off the clutch every time for [every] moment. It's a big heavy tractor with a dead simple transmission
This [thing's] going to need clutch jobs
I mean, it's as simple as that that that would have to [be] expected on a machine like this
another thing to notice [-] if I look at the location of all my controls I can look down and see the ground and
Virtually every tractor anymore is going to have
Cowlings down in here around the sides you know if your cell phone falls out of your pocket
Then it doesn't drop down and get chopped up by your mower behind you
But in this case I can see clear down to the ground
All the cables and stuff are saying my parking brake
You know are right here straight down to the bottom of the tracker
My pto lever I can see goes down to the transmission housing right down there
across the deck of the machine
Most tractors are going to make some effort [to] have a relatively
uncluttered
Operator's platform now one where you can get your legs from one side to the other right get on this tractor and have to get
my legs across I got a wiggle around the gear selectors here to get to the other side and
You know there's just so much going on down here
It makes it very difficult to do [that] and most companies have moved far Beyond that at this point
I even got two hydraulic hoses wrapped across the operators platform zip tied together here
Running back to something. I'm not sure where they're going exactly [up]
When I rest my foot here on the platform
I'm on top of a hydraulic hose
It just seems unbelievable that in this day and age [that] this kind of thing actually exists in the marketplace
If you paid attention to any of messengers marketing they very loudly will trumpet themselves as being the largest tractor company in the world
Many of us in the industry will laugh at that because it is a really [unusual]
Tractor in a lot of parts of the United States
I myself don't have a viable good mahindra dealer anywhere around our dealership because we have a healthy market for Mainline tractors
But there is actually some truth to mahindra being a huge tractor company
India China these countries are some of the most populous countries in the world and their rural economies that demand tractors and equipment
and
Simple basic tractors and equipment, and in those markets mahindra has done very very well for themselves
They build a lot of tractors
One of the things that you would notice about India you know you see some [pitchers] floating around the internet
Sometimes of people with you know their whole family sitting on the side of these vendors now part of the reason why these?
Vendors are flat or because in India in some of these countries people use tractors as cars
right we're talking third world economies where somebody's out working in the field and when they want to take their family somewhere for
Transport you know your pile people on the fenders to get from place [to] place
So we forget in the u.s.
That we've moved far past many of these things
but this is the reality in a lot of places where these tractors are sold and designed for
and thus the reason why we would speculate that this tractor has a flat fender as
Emissions changes have happened as years. Have gone by Mahindra has managed to keep up with them
biggest and most dramatic change has been [tier] [four] final which most
Manufacturers have addressed with one of two solutions either a diesel particulate filter or a diesel oxidation
Catalyst the hinter uses what's called a Doc diesel oxidation catalysts, they put their initials [m] c or d in front of it?
I believe I'm not sure exactly what their branding of it is but essentially it's a Doc only engine. This is not technology
That's not sound from other companies
[New] Holland Bobcat Several other companies also use Doc only engines
The selling point of being Doc only is supposed to be that there's no soot capture device on the back side of the engine
Right which would typically be the particulate filter sex section of the engine that during kubota and a lot of other companies also use
By eliminating that particle collection screen on there the engine never has to go through a regen cycle to burn those particles off
But you always have to go back and ask yourself. How are they still meeting emissions requirements, [okay]?
So the way that a Doc only engine meets emissions is by running hot continuously it is essentially always burning the soot off
Rather than collecting it and burning it right so the end result is Doc only engines run hot all the time
When you look around the engine compartment here you can see that there's heat shielding here up
Against the firewall and around several [the] components here related to the emission system to hold down the heat coming off the engine
[all] of these pieces right here in the egr
Another thing of [Doc] engines is they use a lot of Egr exhaust gas recirculation
circulating dirty exhaust back into the engine [ok]
Your egr components all of your doc components up here are heat sealed because of the amount of heat that the engine creates
It's a little difficult for us to sit here and say that that's necessarily going to shorten the life of the engine
We don't know you know a lot of companies are using this engine technology
And it's going to take years [for] us to see exactly how these things hold up I
Can say from my vantage point up here looking around the inside of this engine?
Kind of like the rest of this tractor. It feels cobbled together
[there's] some scariness going on here and another thing [that] I learned [too] if you look around the side of the engine here
The electronic control systems on this tractor are very simplistic compared to modern equipment
right over here on the side is the diagnostic port
For the emission system, and you'll notice that this is a regular Odb port like you would find in a car
the emission system in the engine will throw codes
But it won't give data and that can make diagnosing an admission system really really difficult
We work on a lot of other bigger equipment and a lot of more advanced equipment
And typically when we're plugging laptops into things that machine and that engine can give us a lot of data about its operating condition
We can get charts and that kind of stuff showing
You know the phases of regen and the operating conditions of the injectors and stuff in the engine and real data in ways
That you just can't get when an engine throws a code
So in this case
this is nothing more than a code scanner like you'd [find] in a twenty dollar code scanner from Napa and so if you get into
A situation where you're having complex engine problems and admission system issues
This is going to be a vastly more difficult tractor to work on and diagnose than a more modern piece of equipment
There's some fun caution labels down here on the front of the tractor [too] that I would be interested ask some questions about
One of them is to not start the tractor with a battery disconnected and when the alternator is fitted on [the] tractor
[not] sure when the alternator would not be fitted, but it sounds like you always want to have a battery there
I'd be curious electrically. What's happening in that condition?
Another thing down here at the bottom is to say put to protect the engine and hydraulic components
Idle the [engine] for one minute before shutdown or full load operation and do not exceed half throttle for the first five minutes of operation
[I] could tell you pretty
Confidently the not exceeding half throttle for the first five minutes of [operation] has to do with the dock admission system
[for] that thing to work properly it has to be hot and you probably need that first five minutes or so to get the dock
Up to operating temperature so that it's able to adequately scrub the exhaust when you take the machine up to full revs
One thing that you'll often hear about major tractors is how inexpensive they are
[I'm] not sure that that's really something that we've seen playing out in the marketplace now dealer pricing can
Always swing the pricing [attractors] fairly dramatically right so a low price mahindra dealer versus a high [priced]
Dealer of another Brand can make it look like there's a big difference
But if we look in the MsRp s of a lot of the tractors, they're more expensive than what you would expect this
[4550] that we're out here with today tractor and loader has an MSRP of over
$32,000 that's in the same neighborhood as a machine like this a Kubota [M50] [660] that specs out
Very close to what this machine does and is something that you would actually want to own and drive
So that's the mahindra [40:55] if you can't tell I'm a little taken aback by this tractor, right?
I'm very willing to give competitive equipment credit where credit is due but this one is a
Struggle for me is this is very obviously an old piece of technology, and it's hard to see its place in the American market
Nonetheless
Here it is. So you have question about tractors like this. We can help you give us [a] call of Messick's
We're available at [eight] [hundred] [to] two two three three seven three and online at [Messick's] calm