Re: Old iron verses newer iron???

Posted by NCWayne on March 22, 2015 at 08:53:33 from (173.188.169.54):

In Reply to: Old iron verses newer iron??? posted by JD Seller on March 22, 2015 at 07:43:28:

I agree, you don't have to go back 60 years to find a good 'analog' machine, and the "thousand" series Fords were great machines with far more features than say an old Jubilee.

Having said that, the newer machines often do make sense for a large operation, that do the volume of work necessary to generate the profits needed, to afford to keep the newer equipment. This allows them to buy new equipment often enough to either keep the equipment under warranty, and/or at least keep them at, or near the top of, the dealerships priority list. Without that, a minor breakdown can cost the small guy several days while he waits on the dealerships guy to get out to him.

As far as the hours on an older machine -vs- a newer machine, that often comes down to both the materials available when the machine was new, as well as the quality of the lubrication used in the engine.

I say this because the machine I replaced the plastic front cover on, as well as the one that had the leaking oil fill, was a JD 6400. It's not extremely old, and in this case didn't have a huge amount of hours. Thing is TIME was the problem when it came to the plastic parts. In the case of the filler neck it had basically shrunk. This left caused the metal tubes the bolts went through slightly longer than the material was thick. Between the extra thickness, and an o-ring that was as hard as a rock, it was pouring oil. I refaced the neck on a disc sander, put in a new o-ring, and problem solved. The front cover looked good, but leaked. Turned out it was where the cap that held in the spring on engine oil pressure relief valve screwed in. Again there was a metal insert, and the plastic had started cracking around the insert, I assume from the spring working against it all the time. There was no fixing it, and the fact that Deere decided to make the new ones out of aluminum tells me they realized they had a problem. I understand things break, and change all kinds of parts that are identical to the one that broke, However, to me, a company that does something blatantly stupid like making a part such as this out of plastic, and then remakes it right, should warranty their initial screw up through the life of the machine. By remaking it out of another material they clearly knew they messed up, and the owner would have problems..... but in the end it comes down to the customer/owner having to pay out of his pocket for t heir screw up, so it's not their problem. In any case, while the cover may have been cracked in just one area, it was as brittle as glass. In fact it snapped in two as I tried to get it to come off the locating dowels.

Ultimately, as I said, the new machines are OK for a company large enough to afford them. Sadly they were designed to be, and in fact are disposable. I've heard that now days a CAT machine is designed to last 10 years before being scrapped, and based on what I see that's often just about right. Often part of that designed obsolescence is related to the emissions, and when you throw in the 'maintenance free' part, things that shouldn't wear (but do) and can't be maintained (but should be) wind up costing more to repair than the machine's worth. Case in point, a neighbor told me last night about a backhoe that was worn excessively on the swing post. It was maybe a $4000-$6000 machine on a good day. They took it to the dealership to be looked at.....and they fixed it without bothering to call and let them know the cost. The repair wound up costing them nearly $7000. Two weeks later he said the turbo went out, shortly after that several other thing went wrong. In that case, and many others I've seen, the newer machines simply are not worth repairing and holding on to.

As far as wear on the engine, and other parts, GOOD lubrication plays a huge part in that. I've mentioned one of my customers who uses nothing but oil and grease from a place called Lubrication Engineers. He had a 3306 that was in a 235 CAT excavator working in a gravel pit/quarry. When electrolysis put a pinhole in a liner he decided to do a complete rebuild since it had been 12 years since the last one. If you average a 40 hour week for those years, and he often did more than that, it works out to nearly 25,000 hours. He ran nothing but LE oil in the machine from the day he got it. When we opened it up, the rods, mains, bores, and everything measurable in that engine was still at the high end of the standard. When the pump on his 345 excavator finally needed a rebuild it was just shy of 10,000 hours. The guys at the pump shop said those pumps usually got 5000, maybe 6000 hours before they needed to be rebuilt and asked me how he got such a long life out of it.

I've turned other customers on to LE's products, and use them myself. In all cases, just the use of really good oil and grease has more than made up for the extra cost involved in getting the good stuff. That return has been anything from cutting greasing intervals by two thirds over the competetion, to turbos lasting three to four times what they had been running other brands of oil. In the end it all adds up.

Now if you could just put good oil in the newer machines and get the same kind of return on life, it would be a good thing. The problem is the computers will still continue to be obsoleted, and the oil will never help. Nor will the typical independent ever be able to afford to buy all of the different, proprietary software necessary to work on all of the different brands of equipment. When, and if the construction and ag industrys could ever get their crap together and go with something like the OBD2 setups used in the automotive world, it would open up doors to all kinds of "affordable" new possibilities for us independents...

So, if you buy a newer machine, with all of the bells and whistles, you might as well plan to call the dealer, or park it. Personally, until that time comes, I'll just continue to use my God given computer to work on the old stuff.

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