Recently talked to a dealer I used to work for. Guy running the shop is a friend of mine. Anyway, they have an RTV-X1100 in the shop, engine is junk (knocking horribly, no compression on front cylinder). Guy changed his own oil and left the filter loose-which looks to me like it's easy to do given the location of the filter. It's a bear to get to. Anyway, the guy has it covered on his homeowner's insurance. They won't touch it. So he's got to eat a potentially $5000 repair. When I was working at that dealer, about 2 years ago we had a L3200 come in for almost exactly the same thing. Kubota insurance covered it no problem. $250, owner got a new engine, even though it was his mistake for not checking the filter. Leaked oil out while in operation, trashed the engine.
Over the years when I was doing this more for a living, I have seen guys run their equipment into ponds. Run them in fallen timber, I mean they should've been using a bulldozer, run sticks through the radiator. I remember one where a guy was using his tractor on a river bank and rolled the tractor off into the river. It was stupid, just dumb, to operate the tractor along the hillside like that, but Kubota insurance covered it, $250. Numerous times have had them in for tornado and/or storm damage. Hundreds of hoods, fenders, destroyed gauge clusters from hail, wiring harnesses eaten by rats. On the wiring, a harness for an L3301/L3901 is over $1000, PLUS labor for someone to install it (and it's pretty involved). If you have insurance, it's $250. Just before I quit, had a guy bring me a L3301 with a knock, smoke, and beeping in the dash. Diagnosed as a stage 5 DPF failure; in other words the DPF was plugged. The tractor had around 600 hours on it. DPF stage 5 happened at 280, so the guy had been running the tractor with a beeping noise which is VERY annoying, as well as a check engine light and 2 flashing lights, for 320 hours. Well for those who do not know, the DPF is just basically a screen inside the muffler that catches diesel soot. When it gets stopped up, the internal engine temperature runs really hot...hot enough to eat itself if it's allowed to continually run. Well what the man was doing was to start the engine, and it would run "normally" for about a minute or so, then it would de-rate the power automatically. It is programmed into the ECU to de-rate after a period of time with a stage 4 and 5 DPF. Guy had repeating this process for who knows how long. Absolute stupidity. There are flashing lights and buzzers and beepers telling him that there's a problem, and he ignores them, and destroys the engine in doing so. $250, and he got another tractor. The engine and DPF parts are so expensive to repair on the L3301/3901/4701 that it was enough to Kubota insurance to total it. Around $18,000 if I remember right. I seriously doubt homeowner's would touch a situation like that.
It is seamlessly operated. If you have accident or claim, you call the insurance company to report it. The dealer comes and gets it, or you take it in. Dealer takes care of the rest. Then you go pick it up or have it delivered. $250.
