Hydrostatic vs gear drive

[Rkh]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

 

[Tony in SD]

I’m guessing you are talking utility tractor. If so, my vote is Hydro. They are way handier than a gear transmission. First forward and reverse transitions are smother, second, you will have infinite speeds which is very handy to creep up to obstacles, then back to full speed once past. Not sure about Kabota but my John Deere Hydro will go as fast in reverse as it will forward which is advantageous when clearing snow.

 

[rick n ohio]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

I have a Kubota L4310 with a tajfun logging winch on the back and a grapple on the front the hydro works great for handling brush or bucket work

 

[BarnyardEngineering]

With the hydro there's more upfront cost, more to go wrong, a different way of driving to learn... So if those are types of things that bother you, you might want to stick with the tried and true gear drive tractor.

Conversely, the hydro is probably the better-selling tractor by far, which means there may be a parts availability problem for the gear drive much sooner than the hydro.

 

[VicS]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

Hydro, hands down. And Cab . We have a JD with all the options. 2008. Have 3000 hrs. Set out hay for my neighbor when its really cold.

 

[Larry H.]

Hydro.

 

[centash]

Just bought a Kubota L3560 HST. Just getting the hang of it but liking the hydrostatic Trans so far. Much handier for loader work.

Ben

 

[Tim in New York]

Hydro for sure. But be aware, it steals significantly more power than the gear drive. My B2620 is 26 hp gross, 19.5 PTO. It does struggle a bit when mowing heavy brush with a 4' hog. But no way would i want anything else!

 

[showcrop]

I had a hydro, It had a lock lever for maintaining constant speed, but it was not effective. Speed would gradually decrease. Doing field work holding constant speed was a major pain. I traded for a 2001 3010 with the "Glide shift" transmission. It has worked great for 23 years and 1800 hours.

 

[DaveBN]

Hydro for sure. It takes a little getting used to so practice with it in an open area. The Kubota I use at work is really nice to operate and it is a L3010 HST. Letting off on the Hydro drive is like putting on the brakes, it comes to a stop right away, which is handy. One word of caution, if you set the cruise control it can be confusing to stop it. You must touch a brake pedal or in my case touch the hydro pedal. That was not intuitive for me at first.
Dave

 

[Butch(OH)]

Unless you plan on pulling a plow day after day the HST wins hands down. I maintain a 150 acre estate that has approximately 35 acres of lawn with plenty steep grades. They bought me a new tractor 3 years ago and instead of a gear drive they bought a NX6010 Kioti HST. I pull a 18 foot finish mower with it and between the PTO requirements and pulling the hills it works it extremely hard. When doing loader work you can "link" the HST to the engine and everything just speeds up or slows down with the HST pedal, real nice. It also plows snow and maintains a mile of stone driveways, cleans up brush, spreads fertilizer etc. Been very satisfactory for our usage. Personally there's no way I'd go back to gear drive in a utility tractor.

 

[jm.]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

Been doing it over 30 years "PAY THE DIFFRENCE" the hydrostatic is user friendly and last longer no comparison. Trust me you will thank me latter

 

[RCP]

There have been a couple of videos about power loss through the hydrostatic system, one Kubota dealer tested equivalent Kubota tractors, one hydro and one gear, weighted heavy to assure maximum traction. The hydro tractor had about 25% less pulling power than the gear tractor, I have not seen a test on PTO driven equipment. If you go hydro, I suggest you get a bigger tractor than the sales literature says you need.

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Just bought a Kubota L3560 HST. Just getting the hang of it but liking the hydrostatic Trans so far. Much handier for loader work.

Ben

I hope you have a fat checkbook.
I took my L3560 to dealer for the first 50 hour oil change.
$800. This was 5 years ago.
I only have 138 hours total on my tractor. I bought it to mow a rental property, then 2 years later sold the property.
I mow my lawn with it and it takes 25 minutes each time. This tractor will last forever.
It cost me $190 for an anomaly code. The dealer couldn't find what caused it to throw a crankshaft code, so they called it an ANOMALY,
$190 to connect their computer to it. OUCH. I took it to the dealer because the tractor is still under its 5 year warranty. ANOMALYs are not under warranty.
You will need a fat check book. I don't have any other brands in Terre Haute to pick from.
I love the HST. I love the air conditioning too. However if you have a cab, you can't have a backhoe.
My Kubota has stall guard which will stop you before you spin the wheels if you run into a pile of dirt with loader.
The loader is similar. It will stop if you try to lift something too heavy and damage the hydraulic

 

[Blackhole49]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

Like others said, hydro, hands down. I have 4 compacts (3 Kubotas and 1 JD). All bought used (88, 92, 2000 and 2015). Zero issuse with the hydro (or any thing else for that matter) in any of them.

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Been doing it over 30 years "PAY THE DIFFRENCE" the hydrostatic is user friendly and last longer no comparison. Trust me you will thank me latter

Good to hear from you young man.
I wish you lived closer.

 

[Texasmark]

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

I'm an old school guy and when I wanted a little odd job around the farm machine I chose gear drive with gear driven PTO. It took half a dozen or so years for me to realize it but I made a mistake. So I traded for a hydro with all the trimmings including Independent PTO. My take is that if you are going to do a lot of close in work the hydro is the way to go. If you are just going to mow/plow fields and such, then mechanical will work but with something other than a transmission driven PTO......Live or Independent, both having their sweet spots.

 

[Butch(OH)]

I'm an old school guy and when I wanted a little odd job around the farm machine I chose gear drive with gear driven PTO. It took half a dozen or so years for me to realize it but I made a mistake. So I traded for a hydro with all the trimmings including Independent PTO. My take is that if you are going to do a lot of close in work the hydro is the way to go. If you are just going to mow/plow fields and such, then mechanical will work but with something other than a transmission driven PTO......Live or Independent, both having their sweet spots.

I didn't know they even built a tractor with non-live PTO any more.?

 

[showcrop]

I didn't know they even built a tractor with non-live PTO any more.?

My Kubota with Glide Shift is not independent. There is no reason for it to be.

 

[E.B. Haymakin']

Getting new Kubota & was wondering which I should get. I have 800ft driveway that I maintain snow removal & road maintenance & my personal blacktop driveway snow removal. Any recommendations?

Whatever, hydro hydro hydro! I have never had any mechanical problems with my gear tractors, and very much appreciate their lower purchase price and the fact they have never needed repairs to the drive train of any kind.