Pros & cons of a RK37 Tractor - 2 YEAR UPDATE

foreign welcome back friends today we're going to do a two-year update slash review of our roking tractor we've owned this rk37 now for it's coming up on two and a half years and uh by popular requests we're going to do kind of an overview of the last two years and and how it's been having this tractor so without further Ado let's jump into some of the pros and cons first let's talk about the exterior so starting at the front we've got the bucket this this front end loader bucket has been a huge blessing it is a good sized bucket you can lay shovels and rakes and pretty much any yard tool that you want right here in the in the bucket and it stays in there it's plenty big enough for hauling whether it be Hauling manure or dirt brush you name it this this thing is coming handy and uh of course it being that big I've had my tools in there before my nice brand new Farm Boss steel chainsaw was the first thing right after we got this and uh I had done some work left it in there brought it to the barn and like a dummy I left it in the bucket so the next time I went to pushing up dirt I went to pushing up dirt hauling it dumping it on my next load when I went to dump it I saw what looked like part of a chainsaw sticking out of my dirt pile I'm like huh so I got out to look and that's about time I was starting to uncovered I realized what I had done and it uh boogered up my chainsaw I had to take it to the shop and get it fixed which was not cool but that being said the tractor bucket's amazing the other attachment that we got were the pallet forks and I will say I highly recommend pallet Forks even if you don't move pallets we don't we don't really move pallets around that much but as far as like just simple stuff moving firewood moving logs we use those bulk containers for firewood and Scaffolding and you know if you're trimming trees in your yard you can put one of those on there strap it on the pallet forks and raise it up it becomes like a snorkel lift uh feed barrels getting them in and out of the truck um the possibilities are endless so I highly recommend pallet Forks we use those more than we use this bucket for sure and it's funny because I toyed with getting the grapple or getting Forks because I really wanted to Grapple and I know they're handy as well for moving brush but that's kind of what they're limited to we're Forks you can you can pile the brush up on there or pick the brush piles up and move the firewood onto the Sawmill like I say just endless possibilities and very very happy with that next I want to talk about the tires so originally when we bought this tractor we went off of pictures on the internet which I explained in the first video as well for a second video and uh we got the AG tires those things are garbage at least on the on this tractor from Rural King they were half the width of these industrial tires and they had a lot more grip but those things would beat you to death they were skinny tires the ones on the front were like about the width of a motorcycle tire it was terrible and the ones in the back that they were so skinny that you'd try to push up dirt even in four-wheel drive it would just bury right in the ground it would just dig a little trench and so they ended up switching those out for us to these industrial tires and this is the way to go I would definitely recommend the industrial tires they've got plenty of grip they're they're not uh they don't make divots in the yard or the hay field or anything and uh yeah very very happy with the industrial tires for sure so the last thing I want to talk about on the exterior uh is the it's kind of a two-fold deal so this would be in my book of Khan and I don't know if you can tell from the video this this hydraulic cylinder is a little bit bent down and what happened was it's 100 my fault I have my Forks hooked up and I was helping my neighbor she had a big tree come down Big Oak Tree and the logs were really big I cut them up into probably four foot sections five foot sections to where my tractor could handle it and uh I had cut them and they were all still in a line well I wanted to get the I was starting kind of in the middle because the top was here and the butt of the tree was down that way and I was starting in the middle so what I was going to do is lower my Forks kind of flip them down and roll the log out so that way I could get to the rest of them because they were kind of wedged in there well amongst trying to Back Drag I had my Forks down and had this fully extended and it ended up rolling off the The Log and banged and it bent this cylinder and I didn't catch it at first I just was like man hopefully that didn't mess anything up I'm looking out there didn't see anything I didn't get out and check well when I come brought the logs to dump it it was barely moving barely moving I'm like what's going on so I got out looked at it noticed this that this was all the way up against this this metal bar here I'm like oh dear me that is not good at all so I got a two by four or four by four I can't remember got a block of wood put under and kept working it little by little until I was able to get it bent back to almost all the way in line and uh finished with what I needed to do because it was not functional at the time got done with with moving her tree and because it was right in the way over Barn had to finish brought it home parked it called Rural King finally got a hold of somebody so the guy we originally dealt with is no longer at this Rural King store local he went down to Central Florida so I'm dealing with somebody else got on the phone with with this guy that's in the parts department finally and he wasn't frustrated with me he was but you could tell he was frustrated with Rural King and he's like man I'm so sorry I've been telling my bosses for a long time now we've got corporate coming down here today to have a meeting about it we have no parts we don't have parts for anything a lot of it was due to the to the pandemic but we don't have any parts I can't help you I'm really sorry the best thing I can do is tell you to go to a tym dealership or somewhere else to to try to find what you need so that was that was a con in my book because they're selling tractors that can't provide parts for and that was frustrating to me so I went to tym of course Tim thinks it's made out of gold and this lift cylinder is about eight or nine hundred bucks which is a no-go for me I'm not spending eight or nine hundred dollars on something that uh I was hoping I could Rob one off of a used tractor they would sell me one sheep that was used or something like that because they had a few tractors in their Boneyard that uh are non-functional anymore and I would really like to be able to just buy one of these used to put on here so honestly I've got it close to where it's not messing anything up on on the tractor as far as being out of whack so I've just been using it and this I've been using this for probably close to a year now and it's uh it's been fine I don't like doing that I don't like having a bent cylinder but uh I don't have a just a eight or nine hundred bucks laying around in the backyard either that can just go and throw it away on something that's technically still working so that's the only problem I've had so far and yeah it was self-inflicted but uh yeah it'd be nice if Rural King had parts while we're on the subject of hydraulics I did want to say I've used a lot of different brands of tractors so like Yanmar Kubota John Deere Ford and all of them the Hydraulics were faster than on these these tractors here so on this tractor and on the loan or tractor that we got uh the the loader Hydraulics especially are super slow takes a little while for them to dump I'm used to working with quicker Hydraulics so you can get work done super fast scooping dirt dumping dirt whatever so it took me a little bit of adjustment to get used to these being so slow I'm used to them now so it's not that big of a deal just a slower Pace you know if you're you're Mowing and you're going to go up to a fence and need to turn you know you raise the bucket just make sure you allow enough time to be able to get it up or stop and and pull them up so there's an adjustment knob in the cab that says it's for faster or slower hydraulics but it only seems to affect the back three-point hitch Hydraulics as far as how fast or slow those go up and down it doesn't really affect the the front loader for some reason so moving inside it's a little bit dirty I apologize this thing gets used a lot I'm going to turn the key on here so you can see at Blair 319.3 hours is what we have on here right now so in the last 313 hours the only issue that we've had mechanically is when we were bailing hay last fall and I had the Baler going and the that little Ford Baler that we've got it's a little square baler it'll run on a 30 horse tractor 25 horse tractor so it's not like it's too much for this tractor at 37 horsepower it's got plenty of horsepower it's got a great Yanmar engine in there and uh so it wasn't like I was overworking it or anything but we were not very far into baling and it started knocking like crazy blowing a ton of smoke out the exhaust scared me to death uh so I immediately cut it off left it sit right there we've sent it off to Rural King they actually they come picked it up they gave us a loaner tractor while they were working on it which was awesome and it was it made it nice to where we were able to finish what we needed to do and we had a tractor the whole time that they they were working on ours because it took them several weeks to be able to look at it and try to figure out what was going on so they took it they looked it over said nothing was wrong with it there was there was too much oil in there so that was probably my problem and they wanted to know who did my service told them you did my 50-hour service Lee took to Rural King and had them do everything because it's a it's a pretty detailed service with all of the fluids getting changed and everything so we had them do it and uh he's like well that's probably the problem then I'll take that for what it's worth it concerned me a little bit the fact that they're the ones that did the service and they they thought that was what probably caused the problem with too much oil I told them originally it did not have too much oil to begin with I checked my oil I made sure that it was fine so when I got it back the oil was perfect out there it was not perfect there was too much oil in there so they end up charging me a service fee naturally uh which I was not too thrilled about but especially since it's under warranty and there was a problem with it so I guess they just drained what extra oil they had I don't know when I got it back it wasn't long I ended up just doing the service on it myself that was right at 300 hours so we went and changed the oil and the filter and everything just to be safe but near as I can tell we had an ejector stick open it's the only thing I can think of and it it flooded into the um it caused fuel to go into the oil that's I don't know I'm not a mechanic but uh after talking with several people that seems to be the consensus between everyone was an injector stuck because it hasn't done it since and it's been fine ever since so um it was one of those fluke things I guess now as far as inside the tractor the AC is wonderful in the winter time the spring the fall it blows extremely cold so much so that you cannot run it on full blast it will freeze you out during the heat of the summer it's not an insulated cab of course it's just glass right and it's plastic up top uh you got to run it full steam and it keeps it down to about 80 degrees I would say probably 78 to 80 degrees in the cab is about as cool as it's going to get it's fine it's definitely better than sweating you're in a closed box and it's 105 degrees outside it's going to be expected to to not do wonderful um but the cab man that cabbage I would not get a tractor without a cab anymore the cab is awesome when you're bailing hay it's extremely Dusty even mowing very nasty Dusty it'll get your allergies kicking that cab right there you don't have allergies it's it's Pleasant even if it's looking like rain it's a misting rain you can you can still do your thing you know even in the pouring rain I've actually used it so it's uh it's definitely a handy feature is the cab I would I would recommend it I would say I only have two cons two things that I do not like about the inside and let me turn the camera around and I'll show you first thing is this right here this is the three-point lift arm and it's it's tiny it's a little bitty old handle down in there hard to get to very hard to get to and that's one of the main things you use in a tractor so let me let this down all right so I can let it all the way down and it's right there well technically it's not it should be all the way up here right I didn't notice this until about a month ago I noticed that my attachments were not coming off off the ground very much and I had it all the way back like I had it all the way back which would be up well this is a flimsy piece of metal right here and it's bent down in there I didn't know that so whenever I put it forward and actually bent it back forward it it wouldn't whenever I would pull it up the attachments would come up like they're supposed to way off the ground the problem is it keeps bending back and sooner or later you bending metal back and forth back and forth this is going to break off so it's only a matter of time before this breaks um so I've got to figure out a way to get this reinforced before it does I wish this was a stronger piece of metal or even a piece of uh harder pipe or something like like the gear shifters are that would have been ideal but I've got to figure out a way to get down in here and see what's going on to be able to reinforce that because that's that's no bueno the other problem is right here so this is the throttle you've got a throttle right up here that you can run they're kind of interconnected okay so when you're in here using this it's gotten worse recently and I've got to figure out a way to to grease it up or whatever but when you're using this actually right there you can see so I push it down foreign you got to flip it to get it to come back so down here if you can see right here is the throttle cable okay when I move that so it's catching there but up in here it's one of the it is the problem is it's cable it's one of them wire ropes versus an actual steel rod so it catches it it freezes up and it'll stick which makes your throttle stick now it's only gotten bad here recently but you'll be driving you'll let off the throttle and it won't let up you tap it it'll push down more and your engine's revving up even higher and it takes it a few minutes to tapping to to get it to actually come loose which is very very annoying and not cool so I've got to figure out a way to either put a spring on the other end ideally what I'd really like to do is find a steel rotted throttle cable that I can replace this Old Wire Rope Style with and then it would be good to go because you don't have any pushing strength with a wire rope it's only like a pool pool connection so maybe a spring will fix it who knows uh it is is a little frustrating but that's pretty much the only two problems that I have currently with this tractor so so I mean is it a John Deere is it a Ford is it a Kubota absolutely not um but it does pretty much what we need it to do around here on the farm sometimes I wish I would have gotten the 55 horse instead of the 37 horse we have 11 acres here and it does a good job keeping up but it would be nice sometimes to have something with a little bit more power a little more lift and Power but all in all it's a very strong tractor it's I've been very very pleased like I say it's got a few quirks after you're running it for a few hours the the frame the entire frame which includes where your feet sit gets really hot I mean that steel gets extremely warm I have no idea why it's done that since day one all this back around the the case the hydraulic oil all that area maybe the fluids warm it up I really don't know um but every so often I'll pop the hood I'll spray the radiator out I'll spray the air air conditioner cooler out uh because that's one thing that is not covered under warranty is if the tractor overheats and dies so that's something you want to keep in mind if your tractor is under warranty the one one thing that's on I think all new tractors and I absolutely hate is that stupid regeneration system from what I understand it either has to have the regen or it has to have the DEF fluid which is is idiotic I mean it's farm equipment for Pete's sake so regen doesn't warn you when it's going to do it it just pops up a light congratulations you're right in the middle of regeneration and it's usually if you're not paying attention you'll smell it first if you don't see the light come on because it's just a little bitty light and uh it smells like your tractor is burning up so freaked me out the very first time it ever happened and it's not any increments of hours I mean it's happened at 50 hours then it didn't happen again until like 150 to 200 hours and then this happened like three times since so they say you want to rev the engine up and just let it sit not really use the tractor which is kind of a pain in the butt when you're out baling hay and it starts so it is what it is you know it's modern day politics involved in our equipment farm equipment so anyway I would still if I had it all to do over again I would still definitely buy this tractor like I say the service isn't that great as far as Parts the guy that we dealt with that we bought the tractor from originally Brian he's the man um I think the Rural King tractor program as a whole is struggling I think uh that's just their business problems within their business I don't know if they'll last I really don't I know they're going through a lot of changes right now and uh who knows but I mean it's it's a decent tractor for the money so hopefully this is helpful to somebody thank you all so much for watching we'll see you next time

Channel: Maynard Family Homestead

Views: 599

Keywords: Rural king tractor, RK37

Id: E47qEroTQls

Length: 20min 41sec (1241 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023