NO REGRETS! Most Useful Attachments & Accessories for Subcompact Tractors

no one's with us again today and in our first episode we talked about maybe what kind of tractor you were gonna be looking at going to different dealers what you needed to think about before you purchased a tractor and then for the second episode I think you had kind of decided that a 1025 R John Deere was pretty much what you were headed towards and yeah so we got to do some mowing with that and I think you found that educational then we got to change some attachments on it some of the loader and the mower and got to see the load and go if you have missed those episodes go check them out but today we're gonna talk about attachments right you said you had a series of questions on attachments so what do you got well I think for myself it's kind of wandering for someone using general purposes around the house would you recommend what are some things that you know someone buying a 1025 R should really invest in as far as some of their first attachments that's a that's a very good question I I think may be a good way for us to divide this is between attachments and accessories some of them are kind of confusing right I mean it's hard to know whether we're talking about one or the other but from an attachment standpoint I know I'm assuming that you've got the tractor and the loader and the mower deck already right so that's I don't consider those to be in question here I actually don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to get a 1025 r without a loader be interesting to hear if there's anybody watching this episode that's got a 1025 or without a loader and why did you choose that I I would typically go with an X 700 or a zero-turn if I didn't want to have a loader but for me assuming that I've got the tractor the mower the loader my first add-on from an attachment standpoint would be pallet forks you ever thought about pallet forks no why would I need pallet forks I'm glad you asked and you'd say well I don't have a pallet on my property why do I need pallet forks well I find that pallet forks are great for brush they're great for some simplistic digging you can actually use but like won't will only use one fork on your and you can do some digging with it you can carry lots of different things logs you can set your Forks out you can set them in and then once you get the concept of pallets and you begin to use some pallets you can you can get pallets for free a lot of different places you get started storing stuff on pallets life just gets a lot easier we've shown that a lot on our channel where once we get everything organized we're not quite there yet in our new shed but we like to store things by category like we want to store our compound miter saw along with some of its accessories some of the stands and some of them and then anytime we want to do some woodwork we'll bring all that down work on that we can put it back up on these shelves like you see behind so for us pallets become a way of life when we begin to think like that right but even without the power we find if Forks do you think you'd have any use for something like that yeah maybe moving logs around and whatnot or or large I guess brush maybe we have a lot of that at home also or even use it for basic digging like you said it's seen that a couple years where you've used them to you know a couple smaller things yeah yeah they're good at moving rocks yeah big rocks a lot of things that you can do with a grapple much easier quite frankly you can still get by with Forks okay so you know you can't you can't clamp down on them but you can move them with Forks now maybe I'm jumping out a line here but there is an attachment to a set of pallet forks to turn it into a grapple it's called a a de grapple and it clamps down on a set of forks and it's $500 or so with our TT WT discount at AG folks comm it does require the diverter valve but with a diverter you know diverter is probably seven hundred dollars five hundred dollars in fit so twelve hundred dollars or so you'll have something that can clamp like a grapple it's not as good as a good dedicated grapple but it can kind of get you there but Forks even without that I just think are probably the most valuable attachment for my front end loader probably use Forks 90% of the time and the bucket only 10% of the time okay so that's my Sultan think about that's my number one attachment my number two attachment tiller tillers well I'm interested in I love the tiller I think with a tiller at least in our Midwestern soils I mean there may be places that a tiller is kind of useless because it's it may be too rocky or just entirely too hard to use it I understand that and our soils if you give me a tiller and my front end loader I can make a lot of things happen we have dug swales six or eight inches deep with a tiller and the bucket on the loader it's amazing what creativity and a tiller and a loader can accomplish so yeah I think that's that's very important we have a lot of episodes on tillers talking about what features we like we try not to necessarily force you into a brand we don't say hey by the when this is the one to get rather we we try to show here some features that we like right because there are several manufacturers that make tillers with those features just from what I observe here it looks to me like you enjoy tilling I do I can see what you like doing this so much I don't know what it is about telling but it's a fascinating job to me Christy gets tired of she says why do you enjoy telling so much I don't know it's just you can just see what you did after your dog that's very fulfilling yeah plus you're tearing up stuff that's always fun you're tearing up stuff but you make it look better in the same pass absolutely you can really feel the tiller working I've been doing it those neat so those two attachments tiller and forks I think are useful for almost everybody at least in a region that has softer soil like we have and then I think some of the other attachments get a little more specific to people's uses what kind of uses do you think you might or needs do you have to solve mostly our needs are going to be moving around mulch and whatnot and then some tilling would be what we're going to be using those for we also have some brush so we need to move around but that's mimo see are you gonna do a lot of wood cutting I hope not but I mean it just depends on if we have a tree go down or something along those lines do you have a driveway to maintain no concrete driveway okay so we're good on that how about snow removal if it would snow more but like you said in your episodes we just don't get snow around here that much anymore yeah we need more snow well maybe we don't pens how you talk to you if we got more snow I think maybe a blade or something like that would be enough for what we do around here you know if we lived in more northern areas I would think the snowblower would be good but for what we run into at least in the past several years I don't know that's something that okay I think we might have an accessory item maybe we should shift into some accessories yeah that we should talk about just accessories that make life easier right I mean and sometimes they allow you to get by let's start with the heavy hitch tooth bar I think this is one of the most effective accessories that that I've ever dealt with right I mean this totally transforms the bucket and the tractor into a digging machine now the way this does that is the you've got a 53 inch solid cutting width without the tooth bar on there and when you engage the soil you're engaging all 53 inches in one time whereas when you have the teeth on each one of these is about a quarter inch wide right so there's what seven of these so you've got three and a half inches now that you're engaging into the ground and by the time it begins to spread out and the whole bucket needs to go in there you've already broken the soil so it effectively concentrates your your you're pushing power into 14 small surface areas surface area yes so I find this to be an incredible value if you're gonna do hardly any digging at all it's easily removable so any disadvantages that the tooth bar has like it's not quite as easy to back-drag or you know some other items take it off it's no big deal at all so my next favorite accessory I haven't even put on my bucket that is the bolt on hook I've got the bolt on hook for the top and this little shackle that is it turns out to be a backing plate for the bolt on hook typically you put two bolt on hooks on your machine one on each side even with this adq a clip this allows you to grab a big stump or something set it in there chain it from one side to the other now you might ask well if it's so important why are they not installed I'm lazy that's them that's the main answer but the other answer is once you have a set of pallet forks and grapple these become less important but this is a poor man's grapple and sometimes a poor man's pallet for it because let's say you want to pick up a washing machine and you don't have pallet Fork without the tooth bar you can slide the washing machine under one side here run a rope around it strap around it and hook to your hooks and you can get the job done yeah so these are a cost-effective solution to get you around the pallet forks or to get you around a grapple my next accessory this is snow removal I don't know if you've seen it on the channel or not but it's called an edge tamer usually you put it on right on each end like this you tighten that down and this will keep your cut from digging in on your driveway pretty simple - yeah and you you put maybe one maybe two maybe three of them you can put one in the middle one on each end or maybe just two one on each hand if your driveway is good and flat and this allows you to not dig in it works really well now it leaves just a little bit of snow on your driveway it won't be perfect yeah but in our weather that melts off yep right it's sometimes same day yeah I always say that I have to go out and remove the snow before it melts but no seriously it doesn't melt you know all the snow in the hardest of the winter and so you have a six inch snowfall you want to get most of that off that last half inch we can we can allow in our in our conditions a pair of these is about $100 with t TW t edge tamer comm that can get you by without buying that blade or the blower those more expensive things and then maybe someday when you can afford it you can you can upgrade your solution so it about a game more bang for your buck yeah you know it's making this more usable until you can get maybe you have afford the extra yeah there's an example right you would you would go in there and your dear dealer would say well you need something for snow removal right oh well you need that front blade for the free loader well yeah you're right I gotta remove snow do that but if you study a little more then you say you know I probably could get by that took me $1000 or defer $1000 sometimes $1000 deferred is the same as saving it entirely because next year you might have that thousand and you can spend it easily right whereas this year might not be the right time might be the difference between going and not knowing this is the next accessory that I really think is important and that's the heavy hitch I've got eight seventy pound weights on here now I'm showing the double bracket with a few 42 pound weights on the front for the 1-series tractor these 870 pounders are enough okay you don't need these but this is very important good ballast so you can get this at heavy hitch comm get the coupon code what's a coupon code TT WT that's right five percent off well worth it so we've talked about a couple of the accessories are there a mistakes that you would say that you've made that you would warn someone like myself and not to make now let's don't talk about that but since you mentioned it yeah there are a few now I'll start with this one since we're standing right here rear ballast number one thing that I see people struggle with on a compact right they just don't think it's necessary oh yeah yeah the guys talk about it on video but it's not important to me I can go ahead and use my tractor without rear ballast well you just can't I mean you pick up almost anything with the front loader and the rear wheels we're gonna come off the ground and and that's not good on the front axle it's not good on safety it's not good for a lot of reasons so this is one mistake I made was thinking that very thought was that I didn't really need rear ballast didn't take me long to learn otherwise but I've seen another 10 25 are a Johnny inspired Johnny just this week didn't have any rear ballast on it yeah not gonna not gonna let that happen you just can't now there's a couple of ways you can get rear ballast we've already talked about the heavy hitch you can also get liquid ballast rim guard in the rear tires and out of adds about a hundred pounds per tire it's it won't freeze okay and it's non-toxic to anything like so if we'd happen to have a flat tire or it spill out on the ground your cats could eat it I guess technically we could eat it probably it's it's beet juice it stinks I don't think we would want it I don't even like beets anyway yeah I don't either but it's real heavy and that's what makes it about the best ballast for these small tires right you need to get every pounds you can get in here so you can get almost ten gallons it's 11 pounds per gallon so maybe 110 pounds and each tire there's also rear wheel weights that you can get that go right in there now the wheel weights and though and the rear tire ballast won't help you as much with the loader as a back here simply because of the of the physics again we've talked about physics too so several times off-camera you just kind of have to have an idea right of how things are working but this is so much further from the pivot point of the loader which in that case is the front axle right if you load something it's trying to pull the rear end off the ground you put this out here another four or five feet that's a lot more leverage but you still need that ballast in the rear wheels and on the wheel weights it all works together and those give you help when you can't have this on say when you even run your a tiller or something else where you need to have some traction it always helps so I think ballast that's my first mistake okay two mistakes in one here Nolan I don't know if you've noticed the position we're in but we're backed up toward our garage door and this thing is pretty tall you know when you're driving in your garage and you know you feel a thump and all of a sudden your front end starts to come up the best solution there is to back up and hit it again a little harder more power more power yeah it's exactly right right yes it's easy to run this ROPS into your garage door mistake number two take the wraps off that's not that hard right that is not a very good plan either I actually took my wraps off when I first got my tractor for that very reason my first one I'm telling you what these things are more tipsy with a loader than what any of us expect and they react quickly I mean it can go from feeling entirely stable to you're just about to lose it in almost no time make sure you keep your wraps up when you can but make sure to remember to put it down before you go in the shed and it's easy to do there's one little pin on each side you rotate it down it'll stay at 90 degrees or so I've run it into not only the garage I've run it into a big tree branch and and got it a little bit bent because I hit that mowing one day really really firmly we might we might stay on green tractor talk.com there's a whole thread dedicated to joining the club of the folks that have torn up their garage door or the you know the the entrance right there so that's my Nessman next mistake good to know okay so I have a confession to make of a mistake that I did I was mowing and I wasn't totally watching all of these lights so I pretty much didn't completely tear it off but enough where he had to fix it I think replace it yeah I had to replace the whole light and we had already had these steel guards on yes this is an option the guard here is an accessory because I figured I would be a blockhead and it didn't even fix it you know when you hit it good and hard I was trying to watch and I was watching on the other side and I hit it against a tree on this side so the guards here is the first line of defense if that doesn't work and if you don't have a backhoe you can rotate these and put them inside if you do have a backhoe there's simply not room to have the lights in there and you'd be able to get your seat in there it is just not enough room so they have to stay out here that's why mine are outside but a lot of folks do move them inside without a backhoe it's good tip Tim before we forget uh I think one of your favorite accessories I've noticed your videos right here yeah have you used that today I have I didn't start off using it but a couple of times I caught myself without any thinking using it and it's good accessory now this is the one I've always recommended in the past it's the prettiest one it's got the nice deer logo embedded in it the problem with it it is is it doesn't fit the steering wheel as well and it's also got the the nuts in it that you try to tie you down there they're real loose I probably need to change my recommendation on that to one that's a bit more Universal it'll fit the two series as well as this one and it's a little more utilitarian but it's a little bit tougher I think so this one's pretty but I don't know if it's quite as functional but it works it works great Nolen one more mistake that I made as a rookie was I left my mower deck on all the time and I say all the time I left it on too much of the time right now if I was gonna get really serious with it I'd go ahead and take the mower deck off but if I was gonna do just a little load of work I'd say oh I'll get by I can leave the mower deck on er I found that I had to change my practice once I realized that the auto-connect deck is so simple to remove so simple to attach I changed my process to where I put the mower on before mo and I take it off just as soon as I'm finished mowing and so I don't leave it on the tractor as standard operating procedure because all the other times during the week I want to do something really quick with the tractor you know I don't want to take the time to take the deck off now so I just make it a part of the mowing process to put it on use it take it off with the load and goes that makes it even easier that was a mistake that that I made and I learned a little bit later I just don't want to damage that deck it's very expensive so if I hit get it in the dirt and pry it around on everything I just don't want to damage it and for as quick and easy as it is there's no reason not to take it off and put it right back on okay so knowing we've dealt with a lot of questions over the last several episodes do you have anything else anything that you just Dianne to ask before you can go take the plunge I don't think so I feel a lot more comfortable now and a lot more informed you and Christy I've answered a lot of my questions and give me an opportunity to try things off for myself and it's been very informative if you do have more questions and if any of you viewers have questions I recommend going to green tractor talk comm even if you're not interested in a green tractor there's guys out there that know a lot about many different brands of tractors and I think you'll find those guys to be compelling and they'll be informative and they'll answer a lot of your questions it's not a good resource we do thank you for coming no one I really appreciate it that's been informative for me too because just hearing some of your questions has kind of reminded me of some of the challenges that we had originally and we try to focus on new purchasers especially this time of year if you're a new subscriber to our channel we've got over 600 episodes now the first 400 the first 300 at least were all dedicated to the 1025 R and we've mixed it up a little more sense because we kind of ran out of material specifically on the 1025 R but we still try to make at least about half of our episodes related to the 1025 R in some way and so we appreciate it thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on tractor time with Tim Mary Martha time to get up you're not one to give it up are you Mary is that Lana I'm not even awake yet

Channel: Tractor Time with Tim

Views: 485,832

Keywords: Tractor Time with Tim, compact tractor, John Deere, Kubota, Kioti, Yanmar, john deere 1025r, deere 1025r, deere 2025r, no regrets, mistakes, attachments, precision manufacturing, heavy hitch, tractor ballast, sub compact tractor, subcompact tractor, buying tips, artillian, pallet forks, hobby farm, rural life, utility tractor, modern homestead, rural living, tractor attachments, jd 1025r, bolt on hooks, snow removal, tractor time, small tractor, john deere 1025r attachments

Id: jzSvTeuSUMQ

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020