GRIT's Guide to Subcompact Tractors
Subcompact tractors are available in a wide range of capability and price.January/February 2011
Mahindra’s 1816 HST subcompact makes an excellent platform for digging attachments.
courtesy Mahindra Tractors
Most folks recognize an agricultural-style tractor when they see one, and many can distinguish a modern farm tractor from a modern compact utility tractor, but when you’re in the market for a tiny tractor to park in your garden shed, decision-making lines are easily blurred. Call them subcompact tractors, garden tractors or lawn tractors, today’s diminutive doers are available with a wide range in pricing that relates to an even wider range in capacity and capability. Work a light-duty lawn tractor too hard and you might wind up with a $2,000 boat anchor. Only use your subcompact tractor to keep an acre of lawn trimmed, and you’ve got a $15,000 riding mower in your barn.
North America’s smallest tractors were born as garden tractors shortly after World War I when folks began trading animal power for petroleum power to keep backyard vegetable gardens or small truck (from the Middle English trukien – to barter) patches producing. These early contraptions were heavy and cumbersome; most were constructed with a single pair of drive wheels. Two-wheeled tractors are still available today, and they’re capable of carrying out substantial work – the operator gets a nice workout at the same time. The first production four-wheeled, garden-sized tractors arrived shortly before the Great Depression, and the genre exploded after World War II.
Virtually all early garden tractors were built to withstand long days of hard pulling with ground-
engaging implements such as land plows in tow. Those machines had sufficient weight, traction and stout-enough transmissions for extended pulling. Before 1960, most garden tractors got the work done with less than 6 hp at the drawbar. Today, not all tiny tractors are designed with pulling in mind – even those with more than 25 engine hp – but they all have a purpose, and we aim to help you make the right choice.
engaging implements such as land plows in tow. Those machines had sufficient weight, traction and stout-enough transmissions for extended pulling. Before 1960, most garden tractors got the work done with less than 6 hp at the drawbar. Today, not all tiny tractors are designed with pulling in mind – even those with more than 25 engine hp – but they all have a purpose, and we aim to help you make the right choice.
Lawn tractor
At the lighter-duty end of the spectrum are machines that look like miniature tractors, complete with large rear tires and a simple drawbar hitch. Lawn tractors tend to be lighter overall (generally less than 500 pounds ready to work) than the similarly sized garden tractor class, and, in many cases, they are equipped with engines rated with greater than 25 hp.
Most new lawn tractors are equipped with hydrostatic transaxles encased in lightweight aluminum alloy or pot metal housings. These transaxles are generally connected to the tractor’s engine with a drive belt and are perfect if you use the lawn tractor as intended – for mowing grass and light towing or pushing. They’re easy to break if you try to mount too much weight on the lawn tractor or engage in hard pulling with enhanced traction (bar-lug tires, tire chains, rear wheel weights, etc.).If you need a serviceable and handy riding mower (for up to about 21⁄2 acres) that can pull a garden cart, leaf sweeper, grass clipping bagger, fertilizer spreader and dethatcher, or occasionally push a little snow with a front-mounted blade, then the lawn tractor is right for you.
However, just because the lawn tractor has a drawbar hitch doesn’t mean you should use it to pull a trailing self-powered rotary tiller through an acre of garden or a stoneboat across a freshly tilled field.
Garden tractor
Not always easy to distinguish from lawn tractors at first glance, when you check out the underpinnings of modern garden tractors, you will find heavy-duty hydrostatic transaxles (many connected to the engine with a driveshaft), often enclosed in cast-iron housings, and rear hitches designed to pull.
Set the true garden tractor on the scale, and it’ll likely weigh more than 700 pounds in its work clothing. Garden tractors may also come with optional front and/or rear hitches attached to hydraulic or electric lifts, and hydraulic systems designed to allow you to run auxiliary equipment or attachments such as mounted snow throwers, angle plows, rotary tillers and even small front-end loaders.
Garden tractors can be equipped with a heavy-duty, belly mounted finish mower and are particularly well suited to cutting more acres of lawn than even the most robust lawn tractors. In short, the garden tractor is able to do the same things that a lawn tractor can do plus pull or push ground-engaging tools with ease.
Most garden tractors can be safely ballasted with fluid in the tires, front or rear chassis weights, wheel weights or drawbar-mounted weight boxes to enhance stability and/or traction. You also can safely mount bar-lug agricultural style tires on a garden tractor’s drive wheels for even more traction, without worrying about breaking axle shafts.
If you have three or more acres of lawn to mow and maintain, grow a big food garden, muck out one or two stalls, routinely need to grade your gravel lane and remove snow from it in the wintertime, a garden tractor is just what you need. Expect to spend at least $6,000 for a nicely equipped model; however, don’t make the mistake of trying to use it as a heavy-duty landscaping or construction machine. The garden tractor’s frame simply isn’t up to the abuses that commercial-grade work imposes – you need the more robust four-wheel-drive subcompact tractor to extend the machine’s capability and useful lifespan.
Subcompact tractor
The first readily available subcompact tractors to make it to North America were born in Japan – lightweight and diminutive diesel tractors bearing names like Kubota, Satoh Beaver and Bolens G174 (both built by Mitsubishi) were among the first on the scene along with variously branded Isuzu- and Kimco-built machines. These tractors were classified as garden tractors at the time because the compact and subcompact designations really hadn’t been defined yet. But these small tractors were built just like larger farm tractors with heavy cast-iron housings for the transaxle, transmission(s), clutch housing and engine block that when bolted together created a virtually indestructible chassis. Today, the subcompact tractor genre is situated between the garden tractor and the compact tractor. Virtually all subcompact tractors weigh more than 1,200 pounds without implements attached, and they are stout enough to pull or push some multiple of their weight, lift roughly 50 percent of their weight and carry more than their weight.
Subcompact tractors make great platforms for attaching small loaders and backhoes; they are usually equipped with the industry standard rear three-point hitch, and front, mid and rear power take-off points, which make them about as versatile as any larger tractor – but more effective for smaller jobs. Most subcompact tractors sold in the United States are equipped with 4-wheel drive – all are diesel powered.
If you have more than five acres to mow and/or need a heavy-duty tractor to till an acre or more, push gravel, grade the landscape, clean large barns, handle tons of topsoil and mulch, haul tons of rock and firewood, mow several rough country acres, move a lot of snow, and plan to do all of that for a decade or two, the subcompact tractor is your best bet. The subcompact tractor will do it all and then some, but it won’t be the most efficient fractional-acreage lawn mower any more than the tool of choice for putting up 40 acres of hay. But for many folks with plenty of land to keep track of and budget for a single tractor, the subcompact makes sense – expect to pay at least $12,000 for a subcompact unit without mowing deck or loader.
Former owner of a 20-something unit tractor collection, Editor Hank Will currently employs two lawn tractors, three garden tractors and one compact tractor to get the work done around his place.
Choose the right baler for you!
Folks who make hay on a small scale often simply stack the dried forage — usually out of the elements — but piles of loose hay take up a lot of space and are sometimes difficult to feed from without the help of a hay knife and some serious labor. One solution to the issues associated with handling loose hay is to convert the hay into neat and tidy packages called bales. If you have priced new hay balers recently, though, you might be stunned by the size of the investment. However, if you only need relatively few bales, you can get the job done with a small to midsized investment, depending on how many bales you will make in a year and how many acres of hay you intend to put up.
People power
One of the easiest ways to get into baling on a micro scale is to build yourself a stout wooden box, roughly the dimensions of the bales you desire. You can simply position a pair of wires or twines lengthwise in the box, pitch hay into it, press it down with your hands and feet, and tie the bundles together with the twine or wire. This will get you a fairly loose bale, but one that is stackable nonetheless. This process will take several minutes per bale, so if you have hundreds to do, it might not be the best approach. Extending this model one step further would be to add a plunger to the box baler with a sufficiently long handle to help compress the hay, which would create a tighter, heavier and better-shaped bale that would stack more readily. If you build it with a door, you can also more easily remove the bale.At the time of this writing, I am aware that DR Power is in the prototype stage on a potential production model manual baler that is relatively light, easy to move around, and that allows you to lock the plunger in the compressed mode to facilitate tying a tight bale. If your hay is windrowed and ready, you might be able to make about eight or more 60-pound bales an hour with this tool. Not too bad, if your entire year’s worth of hay amounts to 100 small square bales.
These completely manual options will help you get the baling accomplished for very little investment in equipment — from virtually nothing to a few hundred dollars. You can scythe your standing forage, rake it by hand with a homemade wooden hay rake, and then bale it with your manual baler. The tradeoffs with this approach are time and physical labor. And those tradeoffs limit the total hay acreage you can readily put up in a season. However, if you have need for an acre or less of baled hay to see your sheep through the winter, this is a productive and satisfying way to get it done. Many folks simply choose to purchase bales when their need is so small — I say if you have the land already, why not put it to good use and get in shape at the same time.
Power baling
Assuming you already have a compact or subcompact tractor to help with the hay-making chores around your place, you can consider a mini mechanized baler since you already own the power unit. Using powered hay-making tools will significantly increase the hay acreage you can easily handle — and it will allow you to make more hay faster, which can matter if you live in a region where it is difficult to get several good drying days in a row. Mechanized baling often allows you to get the hay in before that next storm system blows through, dropping an inch of rain along the way. This approach will generally cost you a minimum of about $8,000 for a new, small-scale hay baler to something less than $20,000 depending on the type. Used options would come in substantially lower (see "New or Used" below).At the micro end of the mechanized baling scale, you have the CAEB mini round hay baler that runs as an attachment on the BCS and Grillo two-wheeled tractors (8- to 11-PTO horsepower). This is a high-quality implement that kicks out 40- to 60-pound round bales that are up to 21 inches in diameter by 23 inches long. These little round bales won’t stack quite as neatly as small square bales, but the baler is very capable and far less expensive than the mini small-square balers, and you don’t need a larger four-wheeled tractor to operate it.
Mini hay balers
Several of the mini hay balers designed to fit smaller lightweight four-wheeled tractors are manufactured in Japan and Italy. Relatively few lines are imported into North America, but several robust and reliable models are readily available — you may need to get comfortable using a dealer that is located several states away from you.Mini balers that will produce either small round or small square bales are available in sizes that make a good match for many subcompact tractors. For example, the Small Farm Innovations (SFI) MRB 850 is perfect for a subcompact tractor, so long as it has about 15 PTO horsepower minimum and can lift roughly 800 pounds on its 3-point hitch. This little baler and its more automated sibling, the MRB 855, are professional-quality implements designed to drop 2-foot-by-2-foot rolls in your field all day. These bales will weigh from around 40 pounds to more than 60 pounds depending on the forage you are baling and how tightly you pack it.
The Abbriata M50, which is available through Goodwin Concepts, will work similarly with many subcompact tractors to produce 20-inch-diameter-by-27-inch-long bales in weights up to more than 100 pounds depending on the forage, its moisture content, and how tightly you roll it.
If small square bales are in order, SFI offers the THB1070 and THB1071 compact square hay balers. As long as your tractor can safely tow 1,700 pounds and has a minimum of 13 PTO horsepower, you can make up to 300 bales per hour with these machines. The bales will be roughly 12 inches by 16 inches in cross section, and you can make them as short as about a foot tall and as long as about 40 inches. Weights will vary, but you can easily make bales in the 10- to 60-pound range.Phil Livengood, CEO of SFI, says the THB family of balers is popular among commercial balers in the pine straw industry and the small acreage hay industry. Abriatta’s M60 Mini/S hay baler is also suitable for use with many subcompact tractors, and will produce bales that are 13 inches by 17 inches in cross section, 16 inches to 51 inches long, and up to about 60 pounds in weight. The overall width of this machine is about 5 feet.
In most cases, a new mini square baler will be more expensive than an equivalent or greater capacity round baler.
Compact balers
Step up to a compact tractor with 25 to 45 PTO horsepower and you have even more choices for making hay. You can still utilize the mini balers discussed above, and you can add to them. If you want to make 3-foot-by-3-foot round bales, you can use SFI’s TRB 910 baler to make bales from roughly 250 pounds up to about 500 pounds maximum weight. You’ll probably want a front-end loader on your tractor or a 3-point-hitch-mounted bale spear to move these medium-sized bales around the farm. Abriatta’s M100 baler will produce 39-inch-by-39-inch bales — but the manufacturer recommends about 40 PTO horsepower for optimal results. Massey Ferguson’s MF 1734 machine makes a bale 39 inches wide by up to 52 inches in diameter and weighing around 550 pounds with dry hay — and 30 PTO horsepower should be sufficient to make it all happen.In addition to the mini square balers described in the previous section, your compact tractor should have no problem powering and pulling the entire family of SFI’s THB series balers, including the wide pickup models THB2070 and THB2071. These balers can handle a wider swath than the THB1070 and THB1071 and will produce up to 300 bales per hour all day with a minimum of 15 horsepower at the PTO. Abriatta’s M60 Super is the wider-pickup equivalent of the M60 and would also be well-suited to compact tractors.
Small standard balers
If your compact tractor offers 40 or more horsepower at the PTO, or you have a larger-framed utility tractor, or even an older model, higher horsepower tractor, you can choose from among most of the balers covered above, as well as some of the conventional equipment from major implement manufacturers. For example, most conventional small-square balers will require a minimum of 35 horsepower at the tractor’s PTO. You will want to be sure that your tractor can handle the actual weight of the baler, particularly if you plan to pull a hay rack behind it.Most manufacturers still offer large-round balers that will perform well with 40 to 45 PTO horsepower minimum. These machines typically produce bales that are roughly 4 to 5 feet wide by a maximum of 5 feet in diameter. These bales can weigh up to 1,200 pounds depending on the forage type, moisture content, and density of the bale. For example, John Deere’s Model 448 makes bales that are 46 inches wide in diameters from 36 inches to 51 inches. The Vermeer Rebel 5410 will make bales that are 4 feet wide and anywhere from 36 inches to 60 inches in diameter. Vermeer suggests a minimum of 40 PTO horsepower. You can get away with lower PTO power if you take it slow and don’t load up the bale chamber to maximum capacity — but it’s up to you to save your tractor from bale abuse.The standard balers also tend to be heavier than the compact and mini balers, so if you choose this route, be certain your tractor can handle the total weight, as well as the drawbar weight of these machines.
Hank Will employs his Kubota tractor with a Vermeer baler to make hay while the sun shines on his Osage County, Kansas, farm.
Read more: Learn about putting up hay the old-fashioned way in Making Hay in Osage County, Kansas.
Round or square bales
There was a time when most hay bales were small rectangular cubes — whether created with a manual-powered stationary or powered mobile balers. These so-called small square bales were favored because they were easy for one person to handle, they stacked neatly and tightly in the barn, and they made it easy to keep track of feeding rates. Some folks still swear by small square bales and pay a premium for them. Particularly in the realm of horse hay and small milking flock hay, the convenience and quality control that’s available with small squares makes a lot of sense. However, when you have 50 head of cattle to feed, the labor associated with making and handling small squares might give you pause. And while there are large-square balers in production today, 500-pound-plus square bales are more difficult to handle, and the high-production-capacity balers that make them require plenty of horsepower to operate and money to purchase.Most folks think large or small round bales are a modern invention, but that’s not entirely true. One of the first highly successful round balers was the Allis Chalmers Roto-Baler, which was built from the 1940s to 1960. This machine made small round bales that were about the size of small square bales. Fast forward a few decades, and the round baler evolved into the relatively simple machines that roll forage into packages from 40 pounds up to about 2,000 pounds. Round balers have a couple of advantages over small-square balers. They have fewer moving parts, are generally less needy when it comes to adjustments, and they produce hay packages that will naturally shed water should they be left out in the rain. Small-round balers offer most of the advantages found with small-square balers (alfalfa aficionados will argue that small square bales save more leaves), while large round bales are most easily moved around with bale spears on either the tractor’s 3-point hitch, front-end loader or both. If you need tons of hay and have the means to move it relatively easily, the large round bales make a lot of sense.
New or Used
While new balers start around $8,000 for some of the small round-bale machines to a minimum of $15,000 for mini small-square balers to more than $20,000 for larger, standard-sized machines, if you are handy, there are plenty of older used balers on the market that you could use with your compact tractor. In the realm of small-square balers, members of the John Deere Model 14 series are still relatively plentiful — and replacement parts are not too difficult to obtain. These machines can be run with heavier compact tractors. Newer model balers can also work. Some other brands to consider include Massey Ferguson, International Harvester and New Holland.In the world of large-round balers, the somewhat rare Vermeer 403 (makes 3-foot-wide-by-4-foot-diameter round bales) or more prevalent 504 (makes bales 4 feet wide by up to 5 feet in diameter) families of balers can work nicely, even if you have somewhat less than 40 horsepower at the PTO. Other manufacturers produced round balers in the 4-foot-by-5-foot size and smaller as well. If the hay baler you are looking at was used for making silage (baleage), you might pay a mechanic to look it over carefully since putting up wet forage is tougher on the machine. Round balers have different fundamental operating mechanisms — they all work, but some work better in some conditions than others.Do your research and talk to folks who make hay in your area to gain insight on pros, cons and expenses associated with individual makes and models of balers before you make the purchase. As with most types of machinery, individual folks may have strong emotional attachment to, or disdain for, a particular brand or style of hay baler. Take it all in with a grain of salt. If your friend seems irrationally against a Vermeer or John Deere, or IH or Hesston, or other brand of baler, you might find someone who actually uses such a machine to gain more useful information.
Functional and small-field-ready used balers of all types can be had for around $1,500 to $6,000 — or much more depending on how recent the model year is. Be sure to look carefully over the spec sheet to be sure the hay baler will work safely with your tractor.
Tractor Maintenance Tips
You’ve been living life out where the pavement ends now for a couple of years, and your machine shed is no longer empty. Daily life is a joy and, for the most part, pretty smooth, but now your tractor has sufficient hours to require service, the mower’s cut is really ragged, and the tires on the utility vehicle go flat overnight. In some ways, it feels like the party’s over — what can you do?
If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to take a good look at the service and owners manuals for your machine, grab some tools and face down those routine tractor maintenance monsters. Once you engage your machines more intimately, you’ll save yourself a ton of money, feel proud and enjoy knowing that your machinery will go the distance.
Tractor Maintenance Tips
Tackle a few fluid fills, filter changes, engine oil changes, mower blade installations and tire repairs, and you can move on to replacing the torn tie-rod seals on your four-wheel drive tractor’s steering axle. Looking at a $350 bill? For about $100 in parts and supplies, you can do it yourself in less time it would take to get your machine to town, have the service performed and haul it home again. As your experience and confidence build, don’t be afraid to take on a clutch adjustment — or even a clutch replacement on something smaller like a garden tractor. You’ll want to have a bit more experience under your belt, or a knowledgeable friend on hand before changing out a clutch on a larger compact or full-sized tractor or pickup truck.
Tackle a few fluid fills, filter changes, engine oil changes, mower blade installations and tire repairs, and you can move on to replacing the torn tie-rod seals on your four-wheel drive tractor’s steering axle. Looking at a $350 bill? For about $100 in parts and supplies, you can do it yourself in less time it would take to get your machine to town, have the service performed and haul it home again. As your experience and confidence build, don’t be afraid to take on a clutch adjustment — or even a clutch replacement on something smaller like a garden tractor. You’ll want to have a bit more experience under your belt, or a knowledgeable friend on hand before changing out a clutch on a larger compact or full-sized tractor or pickup truck.
If the machinery maintenance bug bites you in a significant way, you will be able to take good advantage of used machinery buys of all kinds.
Beyond Tractor Maintenance
That rotary cutter rusting away in your neighbor’s hedgerow might be had for the effort of hauling and who knows? It might just need some bearings or universal joints replaced.
That rotary cutter rusting away in your neighbor’s hedgerow might be had for the effort of hauling and who knows? It might just need some bearings or universal joints replaced.
For the more ambitious, you might consider taking in a homeless old tractor and giving it new life in your shop. If you fix it up too nicely, you might not save a ton of dough, but make it a project that your daughters and sons can enjoy with you, and that machine’s value will become priceless, no matter the dollar cost.
Tractor Oil Change Steps
1. Run engine up to temperature
2. Position pan beneath drain plug(s) and remove them
3. Remove engine oil filter while the oil is draining
4. Check engine oil filter seat for stuck gasket material — clean or scrape as necessary
5. Apply thin coat of oil to oil filter gasket
6. If filter is mounted vertically, fill it with clean oil and install
7. Install drain plugs
8. Fill crankcase with oil — check manual for capacity — check level with dipstick
9. Fire up the engine, check for leaks
10. Shut down engine, check oil level on the dipstick and add if necessary.
1. Run engine up to temperature
2. Position pan beneath drain plug(s) and remove them
3. Remove engine oil filter while the oil is draining
4. Check engine oil filter seat for stuck gasket material — clean or scrape as necessary
5. Apply thin coat of oil to oil filter gasket
6. If filter is mounted vertically, fill it with clean oil and install
7. Install drain plugs
8. Fill crankcase with oil — check manual for capacity — check level with dipstick
9. Fire up the engine, check for leaks
10. Shut down engine, check oil level on the dipstick and add if necessary.
Watch the full episode! Hank shares hints like these in each episode of Tough Grit. Visit Tough Grit online to view this episode and many more. The tractor maintenance hints above appeared inEpisdoe 12, “Reach for the Sky.”
Link to a video on this topic, go to: http://www.grit.com/tools/tractor-maintenance-zbhz1211zwar.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=TG%20eNews&utm_campaign=1.20.14%20Tough%20Grit
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