Real Fixes for Real Farm Equipment

Most lists of tractor models to avoid boil down to somebody’s opinion of a brand, and that doesn’t help much when you’re standing in a seller’s yard with cash in your pocket. In April 2026, AgWeb reported a 2011 Kubota M9540 with 4,524 hours bringing in $45,650 at auction, the second-highest price on record for that model. At that kind of money, the problems worth…

Hydrostatic transmission cold start problems on a bulldozer rarely look like a slow tractor on a frosty morning. More often, one track pulls, and the other drags, or the machine sits with a warning light on and barely creeps. A Dozer Hydro Isn’t Built Like a Tractor Hydro A compact tractor’s hydro typically feeds one drivetrain (covered in tractor hydrostatic transmission problems). Most hydrostatic dozers…

Tractor DPF regen problems hit compact tractor owners harder than anyone, and the reason has more to do with how the tractor gets used than how it was built. A diesel particulate filter only cleans itself passively when the exhaust runs around 1,100°F, and mowing a couple of acres, idling between loader jobs, and shutting down after 20 minutes never gets it that hot. The…

Knowing how to use AI to diagnose tractor problems can save you a trip to the dealer, or it can send you chasing the wrong part for a week. The difference usually comes down to what you feed it and whether you check what it tells you. A chatbot is a fast research assistant, not a mechanic, and it doesn’t always let on when it’s…

Electric PTO clutch problems have a habit of costing people twice: once for a clutch they didn’t need, and again when the blades still won’t turn because the real fault was a seat switch. A replacement clutch is a sealed, all-or-nothing part, so prove it’s bad before you order one. Two Different Systems Wear the Same Name On a zero-turn or lawn tractor, “electric PTO”…

Figuring out what size bush hog you need for a 40 HP tractor sounds like a five-second lookup, but the number that actually decides it isn’t the one stamped on your tractor’s hood. Getting it wrong means either a cutter that bogs down in anything thicker than pasture grass, or a gearbox that doesn’t survive the first season. The Number on the Hood Isn’t the…

What counts as high hours on a tractor depends far more on the tractor than on the hours. A twenty-year-old row-crop machine with 8,000 hours and a shoebox full of service receipts can be a smarter buy than a five-year-old compact with 900 hours that sat outside all winter and got started twice a month. The meter reading is a starting point for a conversation…

Most skid steer hydraulic problems get misdiagnosed in the first five minutes, because the owner treats the machine like a tractor with a loader bolted on. The Keller brothers built the first one in Rothsay, Minnesota, in 1957 to help a farmer clean turkey manure out of a barn, and the choice they made still trips people up: the hydraulics run everything. Steering, travel, lift,…

A zero-turn mower and a compact tractor share a lot of vocabulary — PTO, hydrostatic, clutch — and almost none of the actual hardware. Treat a zero-turn like a small tractor, and you’ll end up chasing the wrong repair, because nearly everything that goes wrong on these machines comes down to one of two systems, and both work differently than what’s sitting under a tractor’s…

Kioti skid steer repair splits cleanly into two piles: the maintenance and adjustments KIOTI expects owners to handle themselves, and the handful of systems its own manual says to leave to a dealer. That line gets blurry on a lineup this new — the SL750 and TL750 have only been on dealer lots since late 2023, so factory service literature hasn’t filtered into general repair…