Deere 1025R vs Kubota BX! Mower Operation! Round #3 of 8

hey folks welcome to round three of the kubota bx 2680 versus the john deere 1025r these two machines have really been going toe to toe in the first two rounds and we're going to continue that today we've got seven different tests we're going to go through today and after you see these tests we'd like to hear your feedback below which of these tests do you think are most applicable to your needs and which of them are you know not as relevant to you as you know we haven't covered anything with the loader yet there's many more areas of these tractors that we have to look at but today we're focusing on the mower operation subscribe to our channel so you don't miss the next round we're going to start with what i consider to be the most surprising test we did here this week check it out now we've done both two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive tests trying to test the turning radius so what we did was we just went in the continuous circle you saw me painting now it's time to measure color-coded what do you think guys we're quite professional here right somewhere between 48 and 52 inches but probably about 50 inches this is not pure science right i mean i'm out here in kind of dead grass okay about 78 inches what yeah it's a lot bigger in it yeah okay 78 let's measure it in one more spot and see if we get a different measurement yeah that's about 77. okay one thing i noticed in the two-wheel drive setup both of them stayed right there in the tight circle on the kubota i had to keep turning it so you just had to keep putting pressure on it if you held it consistently it would come out of the circle my neighbor is actually the one who pointed that out to me he's got an older bx and that's just something he says that frustrates him i don't know if it would frustrate me in the long run or not you'd kind of get in the habit of it i specifically noticed then with the deer you did not have to keep turning you put it against the stop and it stayed there okay what do we got here let's say 102 to 104. again a nice tight circle it stayed in the same circle i went around and even painted probably several circles three four circles with the painting let's go look at the john deere now this one's a little different i mean maybe it's not perfectly level or maybe something's different about the john deere i don't know but christie notice how my early rounds it shifted it didn't stay in that tight circle i think the rear wheel may have been dragging more or uh you know how when you turn with a four-wheel drive it it kind of tries to locks up part of it and i wonder if that had more of an impact here more of an impact on this tractor than a kubota i don't know but one thing i noticed is the paint was always consistent here this direction so let's measure that so this is about 88 to 90. i think that does it for the turning radius tests at first these results are a little bit puzzling the bx is two inches shorter than the 1025r from a wheelbase standpoint and it's narrower you would really expect the bx to be able to turn a lot shorter have a lot tighter turning radius that got me trying to figure out what was going on and i don't know if you can tell it from this angle but the deer front wheels turn at a much steeper angle than the kubota front wheels i can't fully explain that i may have to leave that to some of you experts but i believe it has to do with the way this steering mechanism works with the way this one works another aside while we're mentioning the steering we may not mention it again the cylinder for the steering and the ram is all on the back side of the deer it's exposed on the front side of the bx i don't know if that'll make any difference i don't know if there's any danger but i kind of like having that back there deer does have a tie rod that runs all the way across the front to tie the two front wheels together but it doesn't have any you know hydraulic hoses there or anything else exposed for damage overall it's clear the deer can can mow a tighter circle and really can turn shorter than the kubota it kind of defeats one of the concepts that people have talked about where they say i want the smaller tractor with better mobility i i don't think we're seeing the better mobility at least when it comes to navigating in tight spaces this was a big surprise to me i did not expect this so i mowed for exactly one hour i mowed for exactly one hour because i was trying to come up with a way to do a fair fuel consumption test before i started i filled the fuel tank all the way up to the neck not the top of the neck but just the bottom of the neck and it would bubble and gurgle down and i would keep adding until it stopped bubbling and was just at the top of that neck that's as accurate as i could figure out how to make it so we'll see how much it takes that's two quarts okay this is my fourth quart okay so that shows 24 ounces left so that means i used three quarts and another eight ounces i just finished one hour exactly mowing with johnny i filled the fuel tank to a known full position and now i'm getting ready to do the same fuel consumption test that we did on the bx i just put two quarts in and didn't spill any okay this is the third quart okay this is the fourth quart the deer one series used four quarts plus another 16 ounces there you have it christy one of the things that's been requested is a hillside stability test and for us i think the best place to do that's on this ditch bank over here yeah i'm just not sure i'm gonna like this i think i get the pucker factor more than you do hey pucker factor that right there is a technical term and if you've been on a ditch bank or any sort of a steep hillside you know exactly what we're talking about unfortunately pucker factor is not objective now while it's not objective you need to pay attention to pucker factor yep that is your number one gate and it doesn't matter that it's different than anybody else's let's tell you a little about the course we're going to operate on today first thing we do is we cross the ditch and get on the road side of the ditch that's the steepest part of our yard it really is about one and a half more widths for each of these but we're going to focus on one width and that's the width next to the the bottom of the ditch the one with the most pucker factor the first half of this is very consistent very smooth and then we have i would call it the dip when we get to that dip the tractor will turn will twist toward the bottom of the ditch hopefully it won't turn over usually we mow this with vinnie the ventrac my favorite vinnie has no issue on this at all but vinnie's built specifically for this type of slopes these guys are more general purpose they're not going to be as good on this slope so i'm going to make a run with the bx then christy's going to make a run with the bx then i'm going to make a run with johnny christie's going to make a run with johnny and the only thing we can do is provide subjective feedback now the first thing i noticed is this engine started vibrating and making a lot more noise when we got on the slope i'm not really comfortable with that i don't know if that's specific to this tractor or not now i'm not going to go wide open you know i'm half throttle here 2300 something like that here we go i'm in low range and i'm in four wheel drive if you're mowing something like this you need wheel drive well i can easily mow this now you need to pay attention to your factor we tease about that term but it really is real and you have to pay attention to it it's different for each person i'm trying to mow right down next to the bottom of the ditch thinking that i would get the rest of them from the other side right i still feel that extra engine rattle now we're approaching what's the worst spot it's right up here in front of us there's a little dip so one of these little dips right here now this is getting see when you drop off in a hole like that if you do that fast it's going to make a lot more difference than just doing it slow for instance if there's a little bounce in it it could be more tipsy that's what makes this subjective it's almost impossible to say the specific angle that you're going to tip now we're sliding here you have to find my diff lock misty's holding her cheeks that usually means she's scared my pucker factor really wasn't too bad i mean yeah this is not like level mowing there's a little ditch cut out here where the water stood and there's no grass that's making it a little extra challenging here this was really wet in the spring now of course i want to dodge this cover here because it's steel and i don't want to tear up my blades this is going to be a little bit tricky now i'm scalping here so i'll have to raise this now when i say scalping of course you're going to scalp on something like this i don't care what mower deck you've got if you put it in a bind like this you're going to scout i'm raising the deck all the way up and i'm able to get out of there okay we mowed it successfully with the bx christy your turn yeah i don't like this vinny is my job doesn't feel near as tipsy i guess i would do it but i wouldn't like it i feel like i want to hang on no no no no no no no no no how do i get out of it keep going i'm trying to stay with the the tires out of that little ditch tim hit i think it's making it a little bit better for me i really don't care for that but i think i would be mowing most of it i think because nope one might be able to say that we can't do this objectively because we have a lot more experience on johnny on these types of slopes or any any mowing scenario the thing is these things feel quite similar the two tractors aren't that much different so i feel comfortable on either one from that standpoint i don't really think there's anything lost in that sense one thing i noticed initially is that we don't have that rattle when we turn sideways that the the bx really had an engine rattle that kind of bothers me okay to this point in the ditch i've not had any problem with either tractor i could mow it fine and i'm sure christy could melt with practice we'll see what she says on it now we're getting to the the little dip that we've got the real challenging point we'll see how they behave so at this point we have a mower lift height issue we talked about the deck lift height the difference in deck lift heights in the previous round in round two you should check that out but the context we were talking about it there was mainly on how it impacted use with the loader well what we're seeing here is a scenario where it impacts the use of mowing itself i'm actually high centered the deck has been pushed all the way up actually in my case against the ken's bolt-on hook step and there's nowhere else for it to go we're in the ground we would be hitting rocks if we had the mower deck on so i really have no choice but to force it through or to back it down that extra inch or two of kubota deck makes this possible on this particular angle who's to say whether you have angles like that at your home or not i'm going to force it through so how do you handle that let's say you want the john deere machine but you can't quite handle that particular angle well in this case i can change the angle i'll use my loader i can put a little bit of dirt in here and i can slope that just a little bit and improve it over time there's no reason why you have to leave your ditch banks exactly like they are you can you can reshape them a little bit to make them fit for you and by the way whether you have kubota deer or whatever you might have places in your yard that don't work very well with your lawnmower well think about it see if there's a way that you can find to to slightly reshape your yard to make that work like for instance you may have some roots that just come up over the ground and your mower wants to tend to hit them well you can probably cover those with a little dirt it's not going to hurt not next to the tree but out of ways a little bit when you hit those roots so something to think about okay christy obviously this test was subjective we have no other way to do it but what are your thoughts i preferred the john deere well i didn't feel like i was going to slide as much with the john deere and i didn't feel like i was quite as at an angle okay that makes sense from my standpoint i can mow that bank with either of these tractors with no issue from the ability to stay up on the bank i felt like that johnny did a slightly better job i felt like he was able to stay up on the bank just a little bit better but when he did slide down he slid down hard yeah i did notice that i found when we were in a really bad pucker situation the dip as well as coming up out of the driveway at the end that the extra lift height of the kubota was a big benefit now we have rim guard in the tires on both of these tractors and that lowers the center of gravity significantly we also have the loader off on both of these tractors that lowers the center of gravity significantly don't mow with your loader on if you're trying to mow on a steep bank because well it's higher we highly recommend rim guard it's the heaviest fluid you can put in your tires it adds about 100 pounds per tire to these little tires these aren't very big tires wow same tires on either track and it's situated much lower than the cheeseburgers i've got and having that center of gravity lower is actually an advantage johnny is wider but he's also a little bit taller your seating height is a little bit higher so when i'm sitting on it it it's a disadvantage for johnny when christy's sitting on it well it doesn't make as much difference hey these are not going to be your optimal mowing machines if you want a pure mowing machine there are many other choices zero turns the ventrac many many other solutions these are great multi-purpose machines mowing being one of those purposes right okay let's get on to the next test for our scalp test this is going to be our testing area this is a hump that's very narrow at the top got a lot of got a lot of contour to it that i have actually scalped on this before with johnny so i thought it would be a good place to come out and try okay so what i think i might do is drive right down a straddle of that hump so that it's right on the center this should put the kubota deck in the best possible light because it's got that nice center roller on it and i suspect we'll see some scalping by the deer that'll be our first test and then maybe the next test will be off to the side just a little bit one way or the other to see if we can generate any different behavior it seemed like i thought i thought i heard or felt something right in here so i did three strips along there at varying levels this deck did a great job that was pretty much inconclusive i'm not happy with this test i i want a test that's realistic both of these mowers did a great job on this particular slope i know that i can make this one scalp i'm pretty sure i could make the other one scalp too but i'm not sure where right now so let's move on to the next test i did some noise level testing with an app on my phone the app isn't calibrated or tested so the actual numbers are probably not relevant rather just look at the differences here's the bx showing the max i captured as well as an instantaneous reading and here's the deer similar fashion the max and an instantaneous reading again i have no way to know if those numbers are even close to accurate but it was clear that the deer was louder okay christy you've got a chance to mow now a little while what do you think i think it mows pretty well if it's gonna mow um the one big difference to me of course is the treadle pedal my foot is small yeah so i tried going around our gas tank and for me to back up i have i had to look down to find where the reverse was sure now i would get used to that you might not have to do that in the long run right um but it's just a long ways for me between forward and reverse now what i didn't try was putting my foot under it under the forward pedal to reverse it so i could try that uh later but yeah i think it would be a fine mower yeah i i feel like it mows almost identically with the exception of the turning radius test i think it does tend to scalp a little bit less with the center roller other than that i think it's going to be hard for us to do a cut quality test i know everybody's wanting that but you take one look at our yard and yeah it's dead folks in round two mower setup and specs we forgot to do any looking or inspecting of the underside of the deck and that's my fault but it was 35 minutes long so well this is just gonna have to fit into round three which is mower operation we had one question in round two that question was how do i remove the mower blade if i don't have an impact wrench now i believe what they were saying was if you have an impact wrench and a gloved hand you can usually just grab the blade and might be careful to avoid the sharp part but grab the blade and usually with an impact wrench you can you can buzz it off without an impact wrench i know of two choices number one there's a hex head nut or bolt on the top side of the spindle you take that little plastic cover off you can see that the other choice is a simple block of wood this is the approach i used in the self sharpening mower blade episode from just a few weeks back you can put a block of wood in there and you can stop them from turning no problem at all and then you can you can loosen that up okay when i take a look at these decks i see a lot of similarities i want to point out a couple of things i there was a video a while back somebody talking about how the back side of the deck looked so much bigger on the kubota so there must be a lot more room for air and everything to navigate and they were actually talking about this portion here well if you notice that's all blocked off it's all baffled off that is for appearance only apparently because it is not used as a part of the actual mowing deck you can see that it's totally clean under there at least from a grass standpoint no cut grass ever gets in there so the deer deck is actually made open in that area rounded there a little bit i think that's a wash i don't think that's anything that's really any different the blades are offset basically the same way the middle one is closer to the front just like this mower like any three bladed mower that i've ever seen and that allows you to have a little bit of overlap okay some measurements i tried to do rough measurements on the outside but now that i'm underneath the mower i think there's a couple of things we can see that's a little more clear in the round two follow-up video i talked about neil mentioning that there were three different decks for the kubota's i hope he has an episode on that or puts out an episode soon because it would be nice to understand the true differences there but i want you to see that there's about three and three-eighths inches between the cutting edge of the blade and the top of the deck on the back side three and a half on this one three and three eighths on this one i understand i may be hitting some crud in there so that may not be a perfect measurement now what happens is is on the front side of this deck there's this big cavity i believe the marketing term is it's a wind tunnel over here on this side from the cutting edge it's about five and a half it broadens it's about five and five-eighths here and it's about six and a quarter here so it gets more and more airflow can get through here so we start at three and three-eighths on the back side and it increases all the way to six and a half here let's look at the deer as we saw from the top side in round two the bottom side looks identical the deer is flat all the way across the deer is five and a quarter here five and a quarter on the back five and a quarter there five and a quarter there five and a quarter there so the deck depth on the deer is essentially five and a quarter from the cutting height from the cutting edge all the way across the deck so on the back side of the deck you actually have more space on the front side you have less i also realized that we were able to measure deck thickness i didn't realize i wasn't sure i could find a way to do that but as soon as i tilted them up i realized i could got a set of calipers here i'll fold this up i can measure it anywhere here i think it should be the same this is the rolled up portion take some measurements here now i understand my measurements are against some grass here it's not going to be perfect my measurements are showing anywhere from 145 1 000 of an inch to 171 thousandths of an inch and that's i don't know sort of as accurate as i can get without cleaning this up a lot let me check the deer now this is supposed to be seven gauge so i see two hundred and two one thousandths now that must be a pile of gunk there because that's reading a lot thicker two hundred one thousandths can i get a hold of it anywhere else well that's what i'm getting 200 or 202 one thousandths i'll have to see what seven gauge actually is i'm sure that i'm reading a little extra thick on each of these because there's grass built up i think that about covers the underside of the deck overall these tractors are very similar from mowing we found a few differences right and those differences may or may not matter to you that's why we do this we show all these different tests some of them you may say hey that's critically important to me another one you may say okay that's not relevant we can't make that decision that's that's not our objective we're just trying to point out some details a lot of commenters have said these two machines are basically identical there's a lot of similarities when it comes to mowing at least we we understand that but our job is to try to point out some differences thanks for watching everybody look for updates either in the pinned comment below check out our website we've got write-ups on all the rounds so far you can read about them you can find the episodes and their corresponding follow-up episodes so far each one has had a follow-up this one probably will too i hope you're enjoying this series we're enjoying putting it together and we're doing our best so thanks for watching everybody we'll see you next time on tractor time [Music] i hear chicken i hope our neighbors chickens aren't in distress it really does sound like the chickens are in distress you hear it yeah i don't know if they're in distress but okay i don't know a chicken in distress i don't either but i've never heard it sound like that

Channel: Tractor Time with Tim

Views: 142,974

Keywords: Tractor Time with Tim, compact tractor, John Deere, Kubota, Yanmar, good works tractors, john deere 1025r, bx series, compact utility tractor, compact tractor comparison, kubota vs john deere, john deere vs kubota, competitive comparison, john deere 1025r vs kubota bx, sub compact tractor, drive over, kubota bx2680, comparison test, mower deck, john deere tractors, ttwt, hillside, stability, noise level, fuel consumption, scalp test, turning radius

Id: WiHwIJzm1VQ

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2019