John Deere 1025R Vs. Kubota BX!! Round #1 of 8

folks this is something i've been wanting to do for a long time we've seen a lot of reviews on youtube comparing the one series deer the bx series kubota quite frankly when christy and i sit down to watch some of those reviews they're very frustrating and it doesn't matter who's doing the review it seems that the the bias is just overwhelming it it takes all the objectivity out of the reviews and so we're excited to be able to do one of these for ourselves and hopefully we can actually provide some useful information obviously anyone who's looking at any piece of equipment or any topic has a bias we can't help that but hopefully we can show some objective points and then state specifically where we're sharing opinion and you can make your own decision you must understand i don't really care which tractor you buy i do like all tractors it it doesn't really matter to me so i i don't have that kind of bias here now full disclosure we do have a relationship with ahw llc a local john deere dealer and they've provided johnny 2 the 2038r and johnny 5 the 5075e as well as the gator ali the gator that's a rental agreement where they're subsidizing the rent we still pay what i consider to be a lot of rent on it so it's not a free arrangement it's still costing us some money having said that there's nothing with that relationship that prohibits me from having this tractor here and showing it in great detail there's nothing that prohibits us from saying whatever we want in fact there's no contract at all there further on the bias i chose the john deere 1 series for myself so having said that i'm going to do my very best to provide you objective information and in the areas that are opinion i'm going to share that that this is an opinionated area now don't expect this series to focus on the same cheesy arguments that you've seen in some of the other reviews this is not a metal versus plastic hood kind of discussion quite frankly i don't enjoy those i feel like we just tend to divide ourselves over over silly items so that's not our objective here we want to try to provide useful information that you can use to make a decision for your tractor needs one point i should mention why kubota versus john deere well between these two they cover most of the subcompact tractor market i'm sure i'll get a lot of comments and say yeah but i love my massey ferguson or i love my mahindra or i love my branson or i love my ls tractor yeah there's a there's a bunch of different brands out there competing for essentially that third place in this marketplace but these two are at least what i consider the premier tractors in the subcompact line so i think it's the ones that that i want to focus on now the first thing that i notice with these two tractors is how physically different they are in size everyone seems to view these tractors as a direct competitor and i think that's probably still a good idea but they look drastically different in size from a total width standpoint the kubota bx is about three inches narrower i measured to the bulgy part of the back tires it's about 45 inches the deer is just about 48 inches maybe just a smidge in less than that the same seems to be true on height the deer is a little taller you can see that the hood is taller the seating position is taller maybe a couple inches will measure that at some point overall it just looks like a bigger machine i also noticed a difference in wheel base the kubota wheelbase slightly smaller than the deer but when we get to the front loader the front loader extends a little further at ground level extends a little bit further on the kubota than the deer it's a little further away from the tractor i don't know what to do with any of this yet all i know is it's different it looks different we'll kind of file that away and as we go through the review we'll bring that up in more detail i expect this review to take several episodes i'd like to go through it in in some depth different angles hopefully with a little bit more information and more practical information than what we've seen in some of the other online reviews so plan for this to be a series and hopefully an informative series we're going to start on the three-point hitch that should indicate right now this is going to be a different type of review than what you've seen on other channels i don't know that i've seen much discussion on the similarities and differences of the three-point hitch of these two tractors and you know maybe some folks don't care i do as you've seen we use a lot of three-point hitch attachments we find them very useful so it's important one of the challenges that a sub-compact tractor has is lift height that's probably the number one so we need to evaluate that we also want to evaluate lift capacity typically i haven't had a problem with lift capacity on the 1025r let's just see how it compares just like we said at the top of the episode the 1025r looks bigger i don't know if that's going to translate into larger capacities higher lift heights etc i haven't measured this yet you're going to see it live with me but what i do notice is things just look bigger for instance the lift arms are longer now how's the best way to measure these i i chose to kind of measure just kind of haphazardly measure from the center of the ball joint down at the bottom up to the ball joint up here now there's an angle in this arm so it's not a perfect measurement but it's somewhere around 24 and a half inches i might do it on this other side here yeah somewhere around 24 and a half inches now on the bx if i make that same measurement it's about 20 and a half inches so something's going to be different here better worse i don't know but something's going to be different both machines have stabilizers to keep the arms from going too wide to allow you to put some control on your attachment so if for instance if you have a tiller you don't want it to trail on its own off to one side or the other you can use these stabilizers to prohibit that i mentioned this because they're done totally differently on the two tractors on the kubota it's on the inside between the arms okay it doesn't do anything to keep the arms from going inward i see that as kind of an advantage when you don't have anything attached if you don't run a quick hitch on your tractor this tends to gravity kind of pulls the arms together and and keeps them out of the way i kind of like that to adjust these stabilizer arms you you simply turn this rod and that will allow you to limit the outward swing of the arms now on the negative side i've seen some folks complain about these being in the way of certain attachments that are on the inside by the way on these small tractors there always seems to be something in the way so everything is a compromise there's just not much space on these smaller tractors if you have both of these turnbuckles cinched tight or almost tight that's the way i would typically run them so that there's not much play in fact i would tighten them up tighter than this on my tiller if you have them that tight then you're not able to get the three-point hitch arm detached so see now they're absolutely tight and it's still on and it would be worse you know if i had them tighter so i can't find any alternative other than to loosen one of these sufficient to allow it to swing once i get one of them loosened i can get it off now this only applies if you're not using a quick hitch for using a quick hitch you don't have to move these arms in and out to get them off the pin right so if you're using a three-point quick hitch this is a non-issue but if you don't use a quick hitch this would be frustrating to me let's move over to the green tractor okay on the one series we see that the stabilizers are on the outside of the frame and the outside of the arm that keeps this area open so with this approach the arm is prevented from moving inward on the kubota approach the arms are limited from moving outward now i do see a lot more space in here so if there is an attachment i have seen plows that have a portion of the plow come up through here sometimes other attachments have things in front of the actual three-point lift arms there's more space on this tractor than the other let's see if i can measure that this doesn't really count this is an add-on so let's measure to the pto shield i'm going to lower these lift arms to roughly level with the pto shield i see 17 and a half inches or so don't take that to the bank but it gives you the idea on the bx if i measure to the pto shield on the bx here it's about 15 inches it looks like maybe 15 and a half maybe i'll be able to measure this again with an attachment on board and that might help us get some more objective numbers in general there's not as much room in here with the bx as there is with a deer i'm not sure if that matters with most attachments everything's behind the three-point hitch we'll see how that works out on our attachments one thing i'm a little nervous about is whether i'll be able to attach my tiller if this is going to be a long enough area if i can attach my tiller without cutting the pto shaft further that will really dampen my enthusiasm because i'm not going to cut the pto shaft on my tiller who knows i may have to call for help and get somebody else's tiller to try out on this tractor okay i'm going to choose to the measure to the bottom of the tip of this pin right here it's 25 and an eighth i'm going to do all of my measurements on the left-hand side of the tractors the reason is this is where the fixed bar is i don't know if you can see it right here the right side has a turnbuckle that you can adjust so that you can angle your attachments as you wish the left side is fixed on both machines so it's the most objective place to test 25 and 8 25 and a quarter on the kubota we're in the lowest position now i need to measure that as well but i'm going to adjust the three point top link here such that my heavy hitch bar is level at the lowest point and then i'm just going to let you visualize how much it tilts inward as it goes up still trying to find some differences in the geometry between the two machines does that help you to see any perspective it tilts inward a little bit it looks like about three quarters of an inch between three quarters of an inch and an inch that the hitch is tilted inward when it's all the way at the top it actually stays pretty level now if you shorten your three point it will begin to pull it obviously do with it as you wish hello can we go looks like about eight and three eighths to my same measuring point here okay as i hook up the attachment here on the deer i do see an advantage to the stabilizers being on the outside allowing the arms to swing freely outward but restricting their inward movement is easier when it comes time to take off the attachment you don't have to loosen the turnbuckle to remove the attachment if you're restricting the arms to move it outward like on the kubota you'll have to have them tight against the attachment on both sides to operate and then you'll have to loosen them to allow it to to come free okay let's start with the low on the low side we're at about eight and three quarters so about a quarter inch higher than the kubota on the high side about 23 and a half so this is less than the kubota it's an important measurement sorry about the rain guys okay we're all the way down i've chosen this level let's see how much it turns in we're going upward [Music] it's about two inches so it tilts more as the three-point hitch is raised what does this practically mean this means that your actual three-point hitch attachment say especially a longer attachment like a brush hog mower will actually be lifted higher since it's tilting more as it goes upward i don't know if there's a disadvantage to that i can see the advantage in that scenario where you are trying to lift something you want it to to to really get up high out of the way maybe that compensates a little bit for the decreased lift height on this machine okay some commentary on the lift height and the geometry based on the size remember we started this episode saying how much larger the 1025r appears on the outside than the bx when it comes to the extremes of the lift heights both low and high the bx has an advantage seems interesting with shorter lift arms shorter stance overall it's got the higher lift height now where are the limitations of the bx well because of that shorter coupled nature there's less space in there between the arms uh when you've got an attachment on than there is on the deer let's move on to lift capacities for this part of the episode i'm going to have to work i've chosen to use a heavy hitch bracket here that i haven't shown you before i've chosen this one because well it's too big for a subcompact tractor it's just not necessary this bracket is made for 100 pound john deere weights you can find weights more cost effectively in this 100 pound size than you can in the 42 or 70 pound size so it might be an option for you i chose this bracket because we can load it up heavy enough that neither tractor should be able to lift it and hopefully that will give us some objective measurement here okay so i'm pretty certain that's the max i don't think we could have lifted another 15 pounds even with this it took a good while to get lifted but it did eventually get to that max height this is a thousand pounds of weight plus 65 pounds of heavy hitch bracket this is 1200 pounds plus the 65 pound bracket the bx lifts it handily well until it gets right up at the top of the range looks like that's about the maximum we can get all the way to the top now i've tested the hydraulic pressure on both of these units the deer is right at 2100 psi which is spec that's uh well publicized in the in the deer documentation i tested the bx it is at 1900 psi at full throttle i can't find a spec on that i did take apart the spring mechanism in the back where people insert shims to get higher pressure since this is a used tractor i have no idea of its history i did not see any shims all i saw was the solid piece right at the bottom in fact i couldn't get anything out of it so no shims were added to this machine it's 1800 psi at idle 1900 psi at full throttle let me know if you think that's in spec i couldn't find anything definitive on that okay that's it for the academic portion of the test and uh the kubota won pretty soundly in that aspect lifted more lifted higher lowered lower and only had a couple of things that i just didn't really care for that much but you know what what really matters is how things behave in the field and uh how it works out here you know when i first get here to the field i'm reminded that the kubota does not have a position control i should have mentioned that in the earlier section so what does that mean what it means is that the deer has a lever that if you push the lever further the three point is allowed to go down further so wherever you position that lever is the point at which the three-point hitch will stay the kubota and as far as i know every other brand does not have a position control it's got a simple up down lever basically like your loader i see two issues with that one of them is obvious it means that you can't lower your three-point hitch to exactly the same point on each pass that's illustrated in a video that's done by deer and they like try to lower the tiller right on a can or something and that's that's interesting and all but i found another point when i was doing some tilling here just to get ready for this i always push my lever all the way forward on the deer with the tiller because i want it to float i want it to go as low as it can we have a lot of humps in this garden as you've seen over the course of our earlier episodes and i find with it without the position control i'll push it all the way down as far as it'll go but it won't go on down when we go over a little hump so if we go over a little hump a place where the tiller i have to push the lever further to go down i don't know if you'll be able to see that or not but it's something that i didn't expect other than that just have a look we've got a mechanical pto engagement the deer has an electronic i don't know if it really matters mechanical gives you a feel of what's going on but both the ventrac and the deer have electronic ptos now you deer fans are saying what do you mean you're not taking the mower deck off before you till well of course not it's too much of a pain to get off in fact my friend john ritter was using a flail mower the other day in one of his videos but he had left the mid-mount mower on okay at least allow me one little jab come on overall this machine handles the tiller just as well as johnny don't really notice a lot of difference in power i do notice that position control issue i was talking about i wish i could find a way to illustrate it but as i go over a hump and my machine is faced downward a little bit the tiller actually comes out of the ground and i'd have to push that lever down again to make the tiller go lower you think the orange tiller looks better on this orange tractor [Applause] it looks like i really need to just keep holding that lever down even after the tiller's all the way down maybe that's how i can make up for that i think that pretty much covers the tests i had in mind for the three-point hitch you may have more ideas if so leave them in the comments section below so let's summarize what we've done we started with some academic testing first we tested how high the three-point hitch would lift and how low it would go the kubota one on both of those tests it would lift higher and it would go lower next we tested lift capacity again the kubota lifted 200 pounds more now this doesn't compare to the specs you see online because they talk about being 24 inches back from the lift pin we weren't that far back that's why our numbers are going to be higher but it's fascinating how much different they were than the specs published by the manufacturers they differ by one pound for the 24 inch back maybe we need to repeat that if we can figure out a way to get some weight 24 inch back and i'm just not sure how to do that yet without doing some fabrication the next thing i looked at was a little bit of how the three-point hitch was made or constructed the stabilizers are on the inside on the kubota versus being on the outside on the deer i prefer the outside and i explained why so deer scores a point there the last thing i talked about in the shed was the distance of the attachment from the tractor i thought there would be a problem connecting this tiller i thought that my shaft would be too long because i thought johnny was longer in that area but it connected right up without any issue at all maybe that's a non-issue so i'll just kind of throw that out we get out here in the field the first thing i notice is the lack of position control after having that for five years on my deer tractor and growing up with it on every farm tractor i've ever used i find that a severe limitation so who wins i don't know that's for you to decide the capability tests were clear if you don't care about position control if you don't think the stabilizers bother you then i think kubota won this round on the contrary if you think that position control is an important feature there's no way to work around that to my knowledge on this machine or any other brand other than deer that i know of i hope you've enjoyed this this is kind of the flavor that we have in mind for testing a lot of different areas don't hesitate to leave your comments i i enjoy your feedback what do you think anyway thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time on tractor time with tim [Music] do do [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Tractor Time with Tim

Views: 614,232

Keywords: tractor time with tim, ttwt, john deere, john deere 1 series vs kubota bx, john deere 1025r vs kubota bx, john deere 1025r vs kubota bx2680, 1025r, kubota, bx, bx2680, john deere 1025r, kubota vs john deere, john deere 1 series, sub compact tractor, traktor, heavy hitch, everything attachments, 2018 kubota bx, 1 family, bx series, good works tractors, compact tractor comparison, review, comparison test, unbiased, fair review, compact tractor, which is better, tiller, king kutter

Id: E1sAJirhCeQ

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 28 2019