How to Determine Year tractor was made?

North Idaho Wolfman

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so I have also followed this thread and went on tractordata.com but under my tractor it says serial numbers unknown? I have a b6100HST-E Serial number i believe is 11123.

Any help guys?
Nope, All I can tell you is it was built somewhere between 1978 - 1984.
Information is just not available.
 

sagor

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Call your local dealer, they can look it up.
Or, find the engine serial number. There are many Kubota lookups for the engines. Add a few months to the engine date, and that would be an approximation as to when the machine was built/shipped.
 

JeffL

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Just thinking: if enough people that know when their tractor sold new would list tractor model, serial number, and date maybe we could fill in the missing gaps we find in Tractordata.com. Example my father in law wrote the purchase date and amount inside his Owners Manual back in '92. Even if the tractor is ever sold this is a permanent record. Jeff
 

mdhughes

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Just thinking: if enough people that know when their tractor sold new would list tractor model, serial number, and date maybe we could fill in the missing gaps we find in Tractordata.com. Example my father in law wrote the purchase date and amount inside his Owners Manual back in '92. Even if the tractor is ever sold this is a permanent record. Jeff
I would be willing to set up a web page and write some code to keep track of this data if everyone thinks this would be a good idea. I would also host the page on my sever.
 

scdeerslayer

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Just thinking: if enough people that know when their tractor sold new would list tractor model, serial number, and date maybe we could fill in the missing gaps we find in Tractordata.com. Example my father in law wrote the purchase date and amount inside his Owners Manual back in '92. Even if the tractor is ever sold this is a permanent record. Jeff
The problem comes when some tractors may spend no time on the dealer lot but the same model may sit at a different dealer for over a year.
 

North Idaho Wolfman

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Tracking serial number's for age sounds like a good idea, but it simply just does not work.
Just because serial #xxxx1 sold on 12/14/2011 does not mean that serial #xxxx2 sold on or after 12/14/2011.
In fact Serial #xxxx1 could have been sold 4 years later than serial #xxxx2, and so Serial #xxxx2 would be much older than serial #xxxx1.

Unlike an automobile, or your house, quit worrying about it's "age" it does not matter!
Like an automobile with mileage, Hours of use is a better determiner of "age" and of course wear and tear.

Also another note:
Kubota uses a 5 digit serial # system, in conjunction with the model #.
Do you think simply tracking the serial #'s would work? If you do then you think Kubota only made less than 99999 tractors in it's life time! ;)
 

rentthis

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Sometime these machines sit on a dealers lot for over year or two or three. For my money, one 3 years old and one 3 days old are much the same machine. Dealers will reduce the price on old machines if they are paying floor plan on them or if they are about to have to pay off the floor plan. Other than that, having a build date on the machine would tend to be a horror story for the dealer. Most people think in terms of model year and aren't realistic about how comparable machines are the same thing regardless of when they were built. They tend to want a much deeper price reduction if they know the machine was built 2 years ago. I was sales manager for a Ford-Kubota dealer before I started renting them.
 

JeffL

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I agree with all the comments about importance of SN and build date. I think it is more of a curiosity for most, but would be helpful to new owners and potential owners.
Who would not agree given two identical condition/hour tractors we would pay more for a 10 year old than a 20 year old.
Example: a mid 80's vs a 90's B7100HST

Yes SNs are only comparable within one model range.
 
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mdhughes

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I would think if we would get enough serial number per model that we could come up with a close year for a given model. I could have both the date of purchase and the year the tractor was manufactured. I was told that when I bought my L3901DT that is was manufactured in 2014.

Plus it would be nice to get insight on where most models are being used. I was thinking of having fields for state and country. I don't want city as this would be more information than we would need.
 

torch

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The problem comes when some tractors may spend no time on the dealer lot but the same model may sit at a different dealer for over a year.
There's no guarantee that a particular serial number build date is not considerably older than it's sale date, but we can be assured that the build date is not younger than the sale date.

So it would still be a somewhat useful database in the sense of establishing the minimum age of a tractor and establishing trends

For example, mine is serial #B7100HD71379 and the date on the original bill of sale is January 1995. This would tend to support the TractorData.com list that says the first 1994 serial is 71302 and rule out the possibility that an earlier serial number could be a later year.

So in post #8 of this thread, where Amishkingpin says

the person I bought the tractor from, stated he was the original owner and he bought it around 1996 from a dealer new... ...but my serial number is 66850 and we could only guess. His book may be out of date too. He then looked at my Operator Manual I got with my tractor and he thinks it may be one of the last B7100 made in the mid 1990s.
he can be sure that his tractor was made much earlier than the 1996 date of sale. (Probably in 1992 according to the TractorData.com list.)
 
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autolover70

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I'm looking a B7100 HST and the serial number is 50826 The guy bought it in 2016 and the gentleman before him said he had the motor redone at 1700 hrs.He thinks it's a 1994 but he's not sure.Anybody help.
 

torch

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Another clue might be the number of studs per front wheel. The early models had 4, later models had 6.
 

North Idaho Wolfman

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Another clue might be the number of studs per front wheel. The early models had 4, later models had 6.
I just found out recently that's not 100% true.
I have a very late model B7100 HST and it has 4 lug rims.
and I have an early model B7100 HST that has 6 lug rims.

So now I don't know why they had 2 different hubs, I will note the rest of the assembly looks the same. :confused:
 

torch

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I just found out recently that's not 100% true.
I have a very late model B7100 HST and it has 4 lug rims.
and I have an early model B7100 HST that has 6 lug rims.

So now I don't know why they had 2 different hubs, I will note the rest of the assembly looks the same. :confused:
Well a late model with 4 lug rims could be explained by the factory stumbling across a stash of older parts in the back of a warehouse. There were a few years when the B7100 model wasn't produced, Maybe it was even a deliberate decision to use up stock reserved for repair parts.

But new style rims on an old style tractor? Retrofit? Because the factory used up the stock of older repair parts?

(Just guessing here...)
 

aaluck

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I am trying to find out what year my tractor is. The plates or stickers on the frame near the front are unreadable. Is there someplace else on the tractor that a person can find the serial number to determine the year of the tractor?

Thank You

This will tell you.