The radiator drain plug is on the bottom of the radiator on the left side. You may have to remove the left body panel to gain access to it. You need to clean the radiator screens frequently, remove the screens and spray the radiator fins from time to time with a garden hose. This is something you have to pay attention to, because Kubota will not warrant damage from overheating the engine due to a clogged radiator. It is hard to imagine how you clogged the radiator fins after 4 hours use on a brand new tractor, it must have been some severely dusty work you were doing there. I have owned mine for 6 years and not had that kind of problem. Sounds like you took care of that part of it. I would not change the coolant unless the dealer tells you to.

You may have just entered the twilight zone. Questions: *How could left bank be this far out on valve adjustment, and right side be OK, unless it was built this way to begin with? (You did not state whether the "out of spec" valve adjustments were "too little clearance" or "too much clearance", but due to the ingestion of abrasives being part of the story, I'm figuring "too little clearance".) > With no IPL to view, and with Deere & Kaw in the bedroom with the door locked, it's hard to guess just how this FD671D engine is configured on YOUR Deere! But there are some "possible" conditions that "might" produce a condition of excess valve clearance on one cylinder and not the other......and it has NOTHING TO DO with the initial, factory adjustment. And you should read carefully here, it could have some significance in regard to whether this engine should even be repaired, whether you and Deere split the costs, or Deere pays all, or you pay all. Here Goes! If this engine has either of the following induction system types: (1) Two-barrel carburetor with separate plenums from carb inlet to the intake valves. (2) EFI with twin throttle body injectors and separate plenums from TB inlet to the intake valves. Either of those could result in one cylinder receiving the lion's share of airborne dirt that was entering "down stream" from the air filter. This would have caused the intake valve of one cylinder to be fed MORE abrasives than the other cylinder. This grit wears away the faces of the valves and their mating surfaces on the valve seats, resulting in the valves "sinking deeper" into the head, and the neccessary valve lash disappears. The intake valve suffers more than the exhaust valve because of the inherent stickiness of the intake valve surfaces, the exhaust valve surfaces are "blistering hot' and so less of the abrasives get "caught" between valve and seat. But the problem goes way beyond just the valves. The piston and rings get slammed too (and ultimately, the entire engine). And the piston feature two distinct types of rings. They are the compression rings, and the oil control rings. Piston compression rings are not "just sitting there" with a nice tight fit to the cylinder walls constantly. Piston rings are flexible (and must be free to move) and actually inflate when the piston moves upward to compress the air/fuel charge in the cylinder. The compression rings are pushed to the bottom of the ring groove where a "contact pressure seal" is formed between the ring and the bottom of the ring groove. With the seal established there, the compression pressure builds against the piston ring "inside diameter" surfaces causing the ring to expand and make contact with the cylinder walls. When this occurs, the rings are fully inflated, and the maximum affordable seal has been established. The topmost compression ring (sometimes a.k.a. "fire deck ring") inflates the most and therefore is the ring that wears the most. The second groove compression ring inflates less because it basically inflates using only the "blow by" pressure that escapes past the top ring. Dirt and grit gets blown into the rings and grooves and immediately begins to compromise sealing of the surfaces against one another. This leads to a steady buildup of dirt and eroded metal in the grooves. Not all of this material stays in the grooves. Because of blow by pressure, the dirt and metal is transported downward until it reaches the oil control rings. The oil control rings do not inflate by compression but instead are held tightly against the cylinder walls by an expander/spacer "spring". The edges of the oil control rings are rather sharp and squared off and essentially act as "squeegees" to scrape excess oil downward, and keep the vital oil film from migrating upward into the combustion chamber. The abrasives will soon wear away material from ALL of the piston rings, and the ring grooves, and the piston skirt (which, by the way, is THE ONLY INTENDED part of the PISTON touching the cylinder walls) and of course, the cylinder walls themselves. This produces a rather steady "rain" of junk into the engine crankcase, right into the lube oil. And, if all that wear resulting from direct exposure of the engine surfaces was not enough!!!, there's more. As time goes by, the air filter begins to collect dirt and as a result, is less able to pass air through the filter media, restricting the air flow to a lower volume. But.....the restricted air filter just means that more air volume will be drawn through the breach in the filter system, along with more grit. As the wear in the cylinder worsens, all the abrasives have a much larger and easier path to the engine crankcase. Very soon, the lube oil filter will have collected and trapped enough of this material to reach its "capacity" and the bypass valve in the filter will unseat, permitting unfiltered oil to be fed to all parts of the engine. The concept of a bypass valve in a full flow lube oil system is based on the idea that "dirty oil is better than no oil". That could be true, but only if the bypass condition was temporary. How would you KNOW if the filter was in bypass mode? You wouldn't! The oil filter on this engine was almost certainly bypassing unfiltered oil, and abrasive material. These small oil filters have just a very small capacity for catching solid particles under NORMAL conditions. They are actually only intended to screen out the occasional piece of grit or carbon that makes its way back to the oil pump inlet. The volume of solid material getting into an engine through a breach in the air filter system is several times greater than what the capacity of the oil filter amounts to. *? Any advice on how to handle this? I would not personally feel comfortable with accepting this engine if repaired, and I mean no matter who foots the bill. For all the reasons I cited above, this engine can not be returned to a satisfactory state in regard to all the wear that takes place when an engine is operated with a constant diet of dirt and grit. My position is that the entire engine has sustained premature and excessive wear to ALL internal parts that come in contact with the dirty induction air stream or the resultant contaminated lube oil, and that means NO engine parts have escaped the abrasion and wear. Nothing less than a complete engine would be acceptable for me. How you handle it is up to you and your own convictions. I think it is significant to your case that the comment was made by the shop personell that it "doesn't look like it has ever been sealed". Whether they are willing to admit having made that statement, remains to be seen. Situations like this almost never get resolved to the full satisfaction of the consumer because there are usually too many technical concepts to get across to a judge and jury for your case to be realistically argued. Plus the fact of "Burden of proof". How would one ever PROVE that they themselves did not take that air filter loose on the first day they had the machine because they wanted to see everything?? As outlandish as that comment may sound here, it would certainly be brought up in court by any defense lawyer. Good luck in your pursuit of a settlement but unless Deere or Kaw are feeling "charitable", I think they will just offer you minimal consideration, or none at all.

No brand is immune from failures unfortunately. Even the so-called high end brands. Appliance manufacturers just don't see any point in reliability. I'm doing a kitchen upgrade. The oven, microwave, fridge are just over 7 years old and all happen to be Whirlpool. With the exception of the fridge which had a bad start capacitor which I replaced, they have been relible. They are simple, few bells and certainly no whistles. I feel like I want to upgrade them with convection ovens but part of me is convinced I'll spend good money on appliances that will be less reliable than what I have. More research to do... sigh...

All very interestng arguments; however, I am convinced that all the CFC hype is just so much mfr BS just to get new patent royalties and to charge more for equipment. EPA and other gov't agencies don't care a hoot about atmospheric CFC's. My brother lives in a large Virginia city. Their City refuse collection department requires junk refrigerators to be placed by the curb by a specific early morning hour and the disposer must call a number before a specific time to report a refrigerator on the curb for pick up. He told me - and I believe him- that he placed an old refrigerator which was still fully charged with F12 by the curb, called per the City's rules. Soon afterwards, a city vehicle pulled up outside, a man went to the refrigerator for three or four minutes and left. He walked out to see what the man did. He found that the city employee had cut the refrigerant line and dumped all the F12 and had placed a sticker on the refrigerator that read "No Freon". Later that day, a truck arrived, loaded the refrigerator and hauled it away. I have access to a municipal refuse disposal site. County trucks pick up refrigerators from various county public refuse collection sites and haul them to the county refuse disposal site. They are picked up with a machine that regularly damages the refrigerant systems. The refrigerators are off-loaded at the county disposal site by dumping them off the truck. Heavy equipment is used to push the refrigerators - along with the washing machines, driers, bicycles, etc. - into a pile about thirty feet high. Periodically, a large truck comes and hauls all the crushed junk to some recycle center elsewhere. NONE of the refrigerant is evacuated for recyle. I filed a report, nothing ever became of it!! Likewise, junk automobiles go to the junk yards, I don't regularly go to pull my own used auto parts but when I do, I see evidence that no CFC is evacuated for recycle. It is not economically feasible to recycle CFC's; HOWEVER, if CFC spillage were such a problem, there would be better controls. It's all hype to protect new patents and royalties and to justify mfrs' gouging the public for more profit on replacement equipment. If they can make repairing a system expensive enough - like extreme prices to recharge a system - people will buy new equipment; and they do! When our grand leaders in DC start sending inspectors out to find and penalize people who dump CFCs then you guys can continue your argument!! Otherwise, its all irrelevant!!!