Mahindra 3550

Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate it. I will continue to post my work with the tractor, learning experiences, and review of it.

 

depending on options about 8 grand... sorry I had to its eric

 

To start, thewoodlands tractor is a nice work horse. I considered it myself. Especially for the money savings difference. Good power to weight ratio.

Next, there is a 10 horsepower difference. The 3550 being 50 horse (49.5), and the 4540 being 40 horse. There is a different sheet metal design. There are some little extra things different that are standard on the 3550. Hence the $8000 difference. The loader controller is up on the operator's immediate right hand side coming up from right next to the right rear fender as I showed in the picture. A nice conveniently close location.

The 4540 is a solidly built workhorse that you can only get in a gear transmission. Good power to the ground in gear transmissions. The 3550 you can get in gear, power shuttle (PST), or hydrostatic (HST) which is what I chose. The hydrostatic is convenient if you do a lot of loader work. Which I will be doing a lot of cleaning up this woods and doing a lot of trail work. Using the loader a lot requires a lot of back and forth, so the side by side pedals for going forward and reverse without having to clutch is convenient.

That is most of the major stuff. There are some other differences as well, but you are asking me to think too hard Eric. I have the next 3 days off from work and then I took a fourth day as well. So I am thinking of all the things I am going to do with the ! And I may be sipping on something fruity with vodka in it.

 

You also quoted me to quickly. I added something at the end there.

 

The 4540 is a 41 HP with a metal body, it also has more lifting power on the loader compared to the 3550. Gasifier 's backhoe is stronger than the one we have.

We actually looked at the 3540 but didn't like certain features on it so we went with the 4540 because of they way it's built compared to the 3540. The 3550 weighs about 200 plus more pounds compared to the 4540.

 

Hence my good power to weight ratio comment. A nice work horse she is!

 

Mahindra has different series of tractor, for example:

eMax
Max
1500 Series
2500 Series
3500 Series
4500 Series
5500 Series
mPOWER Series
mFORCE

Whats funny is that Mahindra essentially went through a phase where they changed the model designation for their tractors.... kinda like when Stihl went from "O" designations to "MS'' designations. What Mahindra also did was add "00" to the series number.... when I bought my 4035, it was considered a "35" series tractor. Now it would be considered a "3500" series tractor. Another thing that Mahindra did was they switched the placement of the model number and series number for the tractors. My tractor got turned into the 3540. Im guessing they wanted to change the numbering of the series when they changed up their tractors a few years ago. Along with changing some of the tractors, came different emission standards would caused a jump in price. On a side note, the 1500 series use to be the "16" series.

Each series has different offerings/styles available for the tractor. It can be very confusing at times. What I noticed, when I was tractor shopping, was that a lot of the dealer's I went to had majority of max/emax, 1500 series and 3500 series tractors..... occasionally you might have seen a 2500 or 4500 series tractor.

Tractorbynet.com has a lot of great info in the Mahindra forum. There are even some dealers who frequent there.

 

I have been a member there for a while but haven't been on a lot. Recently I've been spending more time there. Time to learn as much as I can about my 3550. I'm going to be keeping this one for a long time. I hope!

They gave me the wrong manual with it. Just a mix up with the wrong one in the wrong place. I now have the right one.

 

So Dave from The Wood Chop Shop stopped over this morning, we swapped to the right manual for the tractor, and he took the hydraulic hoses from the grapple off after we measured how long we would need the new ones. (After we curled the grapple all the way forward and down.) Then he returned with the new ones made up at the NAPA store. Installed them and we are good to go. Went through quick how to take loader off and on and the same with the backhoe. Good to go. Time to read through the manual and start studying it.

 

Alright. Took it out and put it to work moving some brush and stumps. Grapple is working well. But the opening is definitely not big enough. I'll have to think on that a bit and talk with my neighbor about how we could increase the opening in size.

Well, that didn't take long! First ding. Right in the kisser!

 

Now the new is off. Time to really get to work.

 

Alright! I've already put 13.8 hours on it. Only had it since late last Friday, and had to work most of these days sense then! I'm off a few now though! Here we go.....

 

Trying out the grapple today. It's working nicely. I got spoiled though with the size of the opening on the large rakemaster grapple I had on the 210C! This one opens about 1/3 of that.
I'll be doing something to increase the opening size.

 

So I have been reading about operating tractors with HST transmissions. They are a different animal. I've grown accustomed to gear or Glide Shift Transmission (GST) recently on my last machines.

I am starting to wonder if I would have liked the Power Shuttle Transmission (PST) on the Mahindra more. But I think, and hope, it is an adjustment and/or learning curve. Upon starting to read the manual today I saw again what was said on one of the forums by another HST tractor owner/operator. The manual said do not put the tractor under heavy load with the engine running in low RPMs. Same thing other tractor owner said. Turn up the RPMs! So I am use to running my past gear or glide shift tractors somewhere between say 1500-2200 RPMs. Well the lower end of that is not enough. But when I turn it up to 2200 RPMs and run it, to me it sounds like the motor is running too fast or racing. Apparently it isn't though. So I tried it out today pushing heavy, wet snow to build a sliding hill for the kids. And for pushing the stumps/logs/brush up onto big burn pile while I was in fairly deep, wet snow. Wow. A nice increase in power!

Any of you tractor owner/operators have HST? What can you tell me?

 

I had a similar problem with a cheap grapple I bought. (mine was cheap, not saying yours is cheap) I scratched my head and scratched my head. and finally reached the conclusion that there was no cylinder I could get that would make it work. after a ton of geometry and calculations. I determined I had to move 1 cylinder mount and get a different cylinder. I scrounged the cylinder and made it work. I added some grease fittings too. after that it was better.

 

I am thinking of leaving what is there for the mounts(where the two bolts and the one pin go for the piston are.) Then weld, add on with steel brackets, three more mounts that would be 18" higher up. Straight up from the ones that are there. Then it would be adjustable. Put it (the lid) in the lower position if you want it to be able to close tight for say moving logs. Or put it in the higher position for moving brush/stumps. Would have to be built very solid.