Thanks for replying
you machine has been well used then. what you have said reinforces my decision to try to get a kubota or iseki.
thank you

"Answering you and Mithral. This is a Kubota B1750HST, imho one of the
best of the bunch. We bought it 'ex demo' with 250 hours on it about
10 years ago. Since then it's done 5000 hours of work, some of it
operating implements designed for slightly larger tractors. It's
worked hard but been well maintained. This is only the second major
repair we've had done and I can only really justify spending that much
on it because we have a backhoe made only for this tractor - that is
indispensible to ourselves in the garden and to the estate building
team. Labour costs are around £45 per hour at our local Kubota dealer.
We know and trust the folk there from the MD to the fitters and
storekeepers and would be happy to recommend them to anybody. There
are probably cheaper firms around but we like to work with people we
can trust. The dealer is Major R Owen Ltd of Penryndeudraeth and they
operate over the whole of North Wales, Mid Wales, Cheshire, Shropshire
and a good bit of N W England. Their rep drops off spares etc for us,
collects/delivers machines and shows us anything new he thinks may be
useful to us. Most items are left with us for a few days for us to
test under our conditions. I would expect this kind of service from a
good dealer but not from the cheapjacks. We need good kit, operating
properly to run this garden on a minimal staff so we use suppliers who
can deliver that.
We own and use 2 Kubota machines and I've operated and evaluated
several others as well as the New Holland equivalent models and I've
never been tempted to change to another make or another dealer. I
can't comment on other makes but I think good maintenance and the
choice of a suitably rated machine are more important than the label
on the side when it comes to getting good service from the machine.