When I bought my L, I had a pretty long list of deferred maintenance that needed doing. About 10% of the way through that project, just a couple months and under 100 hours, I got a stop use notice due to some potential issue with an under torqued bolt in the HST that could fall out and possibly cause loss of control of the transmission. They initially weren’t sure how many tractors were impacted and the fix, according to my dealer, required splitting the tractor to replace the HST.
There was no timeline on repair and the whole thing was pretty vague at the outset. Of course I wasn’t happy about it, but that kind of thing is a new vehicle problem. And it’s the reason for a warranty. After thinking about it for a bit, I was kind of impressed Kubota was aggressive in addressing a potential issue and was clear it was covered under warranty despite it being a rather pricey fix on a stop use order that originally applied to several thousand tractors across several model lines. Turned out my specific tractor wasn’t impacted so it was down for only a couple weeks and no corrective action was needed.
By contrast, while that was going on, I had a 2006 Nissan Frontier. There were several years around then they had a problem with the automatic transmissions grenading. The transmission cooler was integral with the radiator and there was some internal defect that allowed engine coolant to mix with transmission fluid. That didn’t hurt the engine cooling system but it did toast the transmission, requiring complete replacement, before the operator had any signs something was amiss. Everyone anywhere who knew anything about the issue (except Nissan) knew it was an obvious defect in the radiator/transmission cooler. Thankfully, mine had a 6 speed manual so there wasn’t a transmission cooler.
A class action lawsuit ensued. I got so many notices on that lawsuit my stupid self eventually pulled some skid plates to confirm there were no cooling lines on the manual transmission. I don’t know how it turned out other than Nissan never owned up to it being a defect or covered under warranty and there was some sort of settlement. I got the notice for that too, but paid it little mind as it wasn’t applicable to me.
Point if all that being I wasn’t happy about having problems with a new piece of equipment, but I was happy Kubota stepped up to take care of it rather than deny, delay, defend. And splitting a tractor, cabbed or not, should be routine for a dealership shop. If they can’t do that competently, they shouldn’t be masquerading as a full service shop.
