Camron takes an in depth look at the new RTV-X from Kubota. Taking it on the road, he highlights the differences between it and the Kubota RTVs it's replacing.
Sorry it has taken so long to get back with you, I reached out to Kubota directly to see if they had an actual rating. They said due to the variability of those situations they couldn't divulge that. That said, we took up a relatively steep incline and it felt fine. We haven't tried it across anything steep yet but I would imagine it would do well, they have a fairly low center of gravity!
So we have the x1120d, so in theory we can input on this with some experience since the x2 is supposed to be similar. Going uphill is excellent if you're not in a hurry. It has a certain speed, as the youtuber described, above that speed it can't speed up anymore, and below that speed, if you petal it too much it'll lug the engine and possibly stall it. You have to listen to the engine. If it gets quieter and the rpm's drop while petal is stationary or going down, then you need to lift on the petal until the engine rpm's come up again, or if it's not lugging too low, you can let it struggle. It's not a terribly heavy momentum engine though so if the rpm gets too low it quits immediately with no chance to stop it, and then you're in gear on a hill and it won't start while in gear, and you may have a tough time getting it out of gear. That said we stalled ours twice, once in the parking lot before we bought it testing the hydro. Pull the parking brake hard, press the brake petal and press the gas relatively quickly with it in high gear and nothing in front of you. If the brakes hold, it'll either reach a certain rpm and stay there, or it'll stall the engine. Stalling is better. Some of the RTV machines have a problem where the hydro seems to slip, and that's what you're doing if you have the petal all the way down and the engine is still running. If you have one which is doing that, you can have trouble getting started on a hillside or risk coming to a stop without meaning to and then not being able to proceed. You'll have difficulties with things like driving up into a trailer. More common with the original RTV900 and RTV1100c, improved in x900, x1120d, x1100c, x1130 and x1140 and hopefully the x2. It still happens, I have a friend with the x1100c which has this problem. Ours stalled out in the parking lot with that test, and it's never offered not to be the bulldozer it should be. The hydro, when properly adjusted, will out crawl the CVT offerings on everything else. The guy on the 140hp rzr will slip his belt trying to ease up over a log. Belt will churp, vehicle won't move until enough petal is applied and then vehicle will lurch all at once, with very little possibility for driver to control it. This machine even in high gear will happily hum along at idle while you very slowly creap up over it. If you put it in low, it'll even creep down the other side without speeding up even if you don't move the petal. The control you get is very impressive. If you really want to you can make it take 20 seconds to ease your front wheels over a log. Going downhill, the hydro's dynamic braking is amazing. In low range you have to petal if you want to make any progress. This allows easy controlling of speed, as in you have to give it gas if you want it to speed up, and if you let up on it, it'll slow down even on some really steep angles. In high it may still not require using brake petal if the descent isn't terribly steep. The brakes don't get a lot of workout on these machines. You don't have to replace cvt belts or cvt clutches, but you have a 400 hour service interval replacing the Super UDT2 hydraulic fluid. If you do kill the hydro, have fun paying for a repair on that. In my mind, it's ideal to have something with higher speeds to augment this. This is better for being around the farm and crawling through the woods or doing the heavy work. Maybe the rzr or something like that would be a good second machine to go with it, but then again, if you don't have more money than we do... If we had to complain, it has a long chin and gets high centered relatively easily. Sometimes you can lock the diff, put on 4wd and back out of such situations, sometimes you cant. A time or two we've loaded the bed with rocks to weigh the rearend enough to get it unstuck. Another complaint is that you have to remove the skid plates to access oil drain plug. You must remove both skid plates, using several bolts. Hopefully you can get under there, and putting them back on afterwards can be entertaining. The 2 inch receiver on rear may be too far forward, with a protective panel above that protrudes in the way of certain hitch configurations. I did get a hitch riser that extends far enough before the rise, and it works well. Our wood splitter is very close to hitting the tailgate if we put it just on a normal hitch directly installed in the receiver. On the other hand, so far, I haven't managed to get the hitch riser to go into the front receiver for some reason. Wanted to have the extra maneuverability to back, front? a trailer into a tricky spot. More directly answering your question though, the center of gravity of these machines is really low, they're not very tippy at all. They like to slide left or right sometimes if going around a hillside though depending on your tires. Ours can hold 29mph on flat ground. No idea if the x2 is going to be slower, I think they only reached 26 in the video? or that machine just needed to be broken in or warmed up some more. Ours takes a long time to warm up the hydraulic fluid, so for the first 5 minutes or so it won't go much over 20. We've had ours in for recalls and repairs a few times, but all in all it's been a very positive experience. When we bought, it was a toss up between this and the Mule Pro Fxp, and we went with this one for the diesel tractor engine and the included powered bed dump.
We have and love the x1120d. As you mentioned, not being able to go at anything approaching highway speeds is a bummer. I have a bit of a dream about some kind of lockup gear that could bypass the hydro and direct drive the wheels for more efficient high-speeds. Ours eventually got better with the shift lever, and there's a bit of a trick to it. In general, if ours is nose downhill and we need to change gears, that's always the most difficult. It seems to work better if you stop the machine with the breaks quickly a fair bit before it has stopped on its own, then it may come out. If ever you end up facing downhill with the push bar against something, and it's stuck, good luck with that. If you back around to turn around and your rearend has to go up an imbankment, stop the machine with the breaks before it stops going backwards uphill. There's a clunk in the brake petal for some reason when you do that and it's easier to shift.
