Is There Anything Else I Need to Look Out For?

Here's my list of things that I need to fix on my 340 utility. Broken steering gear, warped cover on engine oil pump, and a warped engine manifold. All these things seem to be design flaws in this model. Is there any more surprises I need to keep a look out for?

There are no design "flaws" remaining. If it was not for the 50 years of service it has given, there would be no flaws in it now.
Take a 50 year old car that has been run wide open for most of its life and evaluate it !! Jim

(quoted from post at 18:23:54 05/01/15) There are no design "flaws" remaining. If it was not for the 50 years of service it has given, there would be no flaws in it now.
Take a 50 year old car that has been run wide open for most of its life and evaluate it !! Jim

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Flaw isn't a very good term in this case, I must admit. I'll just call them engineering oversights. I wonder how long it took before the first steering gear failed after the design was put into use?

(quoted from post at 12:23:22 05/01/15)

(quoted from post at 18:23:54 05/01/15) There are no design "flaws" remaining. If it was not for the 50 years of service it has given, there would be no flaws in it now.
Take a 50 year old car that has been run wide open for most of its life and evaluate it !! Jim

Click to expand...

Flaw isn't a very good term in this case, I must admit. I'll just call them engineering oversights. I wonder how long it took before the first steering gear failed after the design was put into use?

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I would guess about 40 years.

Actually, the FARMALL 340 used at the Nebraska tractor test lab suffered a "manufacturing defect failure"
when the differential casting broke because of a casting defect. That comment was in one of my books on
tractor tests, and also in the actual test report available as a PDF file off Tractor data. But was NOT a
design flaw.

IH maybe could be said to have areas of their tractors that could use improvement, but not design flaws
like other manufacturers.

You are probably lucky your list is so short. I read a story about almost all the early row-crop Farmalls had to be re-called because to much dust & Dirt could enter the tractor in various ways and ruin the tractor and they had to spend lots of money to fix the problems just to stay in business.

One recently was the gas cap problem which International-Farmall replaced a lot of caps for free. Lots of people got free caps just for asking but I could not really see what the problem was???? If after this long the original cap has been okay I did not get it???Cleddy

(quoted from post at 01:01:15 05/02/15) You are probably lucky your list is so short. I read a story about almost all the early row-crop Farmalls had to be re-called because to much dust & Dirt could enter the tractor in various ways and ruin the tractor and they had to spend lots of money to fix the problems just to stay in business.

One recently was the gas cap problem which International-Farmall replaced a lot of caps for free. Lots of people got free caps just for asking but I could not really see what the problem was???? If after this long the original cap has been okay I did not get it???Cleddy

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One engineering oversight I remember reading about was the 460 and 560 final drives not holding up when those models first came out. I was just wondering what oversights might have came with the 340 utility, other than the ones I mentioned?

The 460 was (IIRC) not prone to rear drive issues. The 560 was recalled and fixed with better bearings and strengthening (the added power of the engine pushed the limits af a design based on the Farmall M. Really the tractors are pretty robust. Worst issue on the Utilities of that generation 300/350/340 was the steering. Its issue was mostly inadequate for a heavy use loader. Jim

Talk about bad timing for the one bad casting out of tens of thousands of good ones.

The way you hear talk about the 4 & 560's rear end failures you would think they all broke down and were recalled the first week they were out. I personally installed the improvement packages in the first 10 (no, first one we sold went out of the area and that package had to be installed at a different dealer) that we sold. Some of them were going on three years old by the time they fit into our shop schedule and the farmers schedule. I don't recall any with broken gears, some had bearing failure which prompted the installation of the kit. Good grief, they were the same rear ends that had and still are running in the earlier tractors. Sure, with the increased horsepower the failure rate was higher but , they did work. Some in areas of the country that did not do heavy tillage never did get changed from what I am told. The first I ever heard about doing a update was at service training in the winter of 1960 at St. Paul. The ripped apart a tractor and showed us the procedure they recommended to use. Actually the 460 was the worst offender around here. Too many were sold to replace super M's and 400's. Well, they could not do it and suffered. In later years, after the change over, the 460 was always the worst offender. There was a lot of them trying to pull 4 bottom plows and that really took it's toll on the bull gears, bull pinions.
Very little experience with a 340 Farmall or Utility but a warped manifold is just a product of a lot of long hours of hard hot work. They had a good manifold. Oil pump covers, well they could have and did eventually improve them I think. I don't know why they used pot medal as all the larger tractors used regular old fashioned iron. Steering on all those utility models were over taxed with front end loaders that could lift more than that little tractor should have been asked to do. My two cents.