Headaches and Heartaches.....long rant

I"ve always thought I"ve just had the worst luck. Then I started to convince myself that things just happen when you own anything and are trying to do something. Well now I"m back to thinking that it"s just my luck.

Just this year alone the tractor has been down twice(retrofitted a delco alternator to a Ford 4830 early in the spring and the steering cylinder blew out while raking first cutting hay, nobody had the parts, had to order, borrowed neighbors 4610 to finish), disc mower has been down twice, inlcuding down right now(belt tensioner broke, and the lower gear box seal apparently just vanished, gear box won"t hold any oil), was trasporting the New Holland 256 rake across the county to another field when I looked out my window and noticed a pretty New Holland yellow rim and tire passing me by, tedder has had 2 flats this year, one in the field, the other tonight while moving across county to another field(of course every place is closed and can"t get it fixed till morning, ended up having to get a trailer and got a buddy to help load by HAND, no fun at all, forget about how far its put me behind trying to get this late hay up, I"ve lost an entire day tomorrow as I work till 5), the Baler gave me fits ALL of the first cutting, about 1600 bales worth, all while fighting this crap weather and working more overtime than I ever have on the job that "allows" me to farm.

Between all this, the lowballers on hay, the twice flooded basement(finished basement no less), the idiot family memebers who either have their hands in my pockets or on my tools, the crap job that puts food on the table(the biggest reason for the job jab is they could care less about us as employees, they"ve laid off, not replaced retirees, and cut us all to bone to where we have been working 13 days on, one off, 7am to 7pm pretty much the entire year all while the company is making BILLIONS in profits) and just the over all crap of day to day business, has got me to the point to where I really wonder if its worth it??

I just don"t think it is. A small house in town, with a small yard, and NO headaches....maybe even rent so the land lord has to worry about it. I LOVE this way of life, but I don"t know how much more I can take...

That's why I don't farm. I would be there in a heartbeat if I could afford to lose that much money that fast.

I totally understand how that goes. We started this year bad also. Mower apparently sheared some blades. NH screwed up on the order and it was delayed. So mowing got off to a late start. Not long (maybe a week or two later) hydraulic seal blows on JD tractor. Few days for parts to come in, i find how that i cannot get the plunger assembly apart. After struggleing for a week, and the JD shop manager looking at it and saying I have never seen that before (parts kid knew exactly what i was talking about when i gave him a rough description). So off to our massey dealer I go several towns away, i needed to pick up some maintance parts for our massey anyways. After about 30 min of their shop guy getting frustrated he gets it apart (thankfully). So I proceed to start rebuilding it. When i about get it together i accidently crush a spring (somehow loaded in wrong) so another several days go by waiting for the part. I finally get it togeher. And guess what the leak started again in a different place. Now the tractor we use to rake with decided to have multiple problems (i noticed the start of it when we were pulling it up on the trailer). When we pulled it up there was a trail of oil going down the trailer comming out of the clutch weap hole. So I have to pull the front axle in order to drop the pan and replace the pan gasket. I also find pieces of the clutch in the clutch housing. So off to split the tractor. I reciently got it back together and guess what now it has a hydraulic leak through the clutch housing. So that tractor is still sitting in the garage half split again. We have been using our other tractor to rake, but guess what now. The other tractor decided to quit charging. The generator tests good, the voltage regulator is brand new, and its still not charging. So i'm trying to put it off through the rest of this hay season. Due to the late start we are about 1200 bales short. Luckally our hay press has been working just fine. (also it seems like our mower is eating through blades, i have already flipped them and sharpened them once)

Welcome to the Big Daily Kick in the Balls called life, ohh and farming too.

Oh ya, also to top off all the excitement i quit my job, because i got tired of them bouncing checks, or listening to excuses as to why they cant pay me.

Casey, sorry to hear about your bad luck. I have had a fairly good summer with my old equipment except for trying to beat the rain. Two more acres to role on Wed and im DONE. Finally. Here is the secret when you use old equipment like I do. Get two pieces of everything. There is some really good deals out there on used farm equipment if you keep looking . When I sling a chain on my old 472 Haybine, I just hook to the other one and keep going. If my better square baler gets to missing bales and I can't fix it in a hurry, I hook to the backup which is greased and ready. If you have to order a part for an old piece of New Holland equipment, it is a weeks wait to get it. You can loose lots of good hay that way. New Holland dealerships do not stock many parts on older equipment. They care nothing about keeping farmers going. You can still have two pieces of older equipment much cheaper than you can buy new stuff and have to make payments. It simply makes life easier and haying more enjoyable. It is what has kept me from getting agravated and quiting the hay business. Good luck with getting back going again. Hang in there.

Best lesson I ever learned was years ago in high school when an old timer told me....if its got teats or wheels it'll cost you money....boy was he right.

Casey I live in Ky an as much as a hate to say it I've have about the same luck In March I had to put a radiator in my diesel witch by the way now the water pump is leaking on it I broke my tractor twice as well MF165 Had to find a new carter pin an stick back through the drive coupler second time the pto quit working had to switch out another pto stifter I had, I tore the guard off a tedder an then my 268 New Holland baler broke......I guess 5 years from now it might be funny but

Our disc mower is only about 3 years old . You would think the new holland dealer would keep them in stock. TSC sells the blades and bolts but they dont sell the washers or cups that bolt down to the blades (you would think they would sell these with the other parts) I'm thinking a mower/conditioner would do much better than a disc mower, or maybe a sickle bar. I saw the vemeer video of their disc mower and they were flying along. I'm wondering whats going on with ours when i have to be in 1A (low low) of our JD4430 (130 PTO HP) and hitting around 1200RPMs to keep it from kicking out on mine. I was always told to let it slide along the ground so i do, and it will sometimes kick out for no apparent reason. The belt guard melted last year when one of the belts decided to shread and the friction melted the cover. Also last year it seemed like we were shreading one belt after another.

Sounds like there's something wrong with your mower........should run at rated pto speed to give you 540 rpm and as fast as you care to go or can sit on the tractor.

Casey as the song says "sounds like life to me" stuff happens all you can do is look for trouble, grease is an axcuse to check a machine, most need grease once a year but checking every hour! TIM come off that 1200rpm pto+ tighten the belts fuel is high but get on with it!

Amen

Sounds like you have the blades on wrong, right on left and left on right...



MAY GOD BLESS THE USA

I understand. We"ve all been there. Had times when multiple tractors and every piece of equipment we needed broke down. It can really get to you sometimes.

Something is wrong with that mower. What model is it?

This your New Holland HM? The break away arm has some settings to watch, owners manual covers the procedure.

Yep its the new holland HM. I set the breakaway according to the manual (it helped some). But there is something not right, especially since i do not have a lack of hp. I grease equipment about 3 times a hay season. (i know its overkill for what i do, but i have never heard of a failure of lubed equipment). I will try to kick up the speed some and see what happens. Also how do you switch out the PTO shaft to 1000 RPM? I was thinking about doing this before to run a spreader once we get it.

(sorry i didnt mean to hijack post)

Yep its the new holland HM. I set the breakaway according to the manual (it helped some). But there is something not right, especially since i do not have a lack of hp. I grease equipment about 3 times a hay season. (i know its overkill for what i do, but i have never heard of a failure of lubed equipment). I will try to kick up the speed some and see what happens. Also how do you switch out the PTO shaft to 1000 RPM? I was thinking about doing this before to run a spreader once we get it.

(sorry i didnt mean to hijack post)

Is it one of the economy models or the heavy duty ones??

And don't worry, no hijacking thread here, I think everybody is brokedown right now.

Its the economy. I think it was bought the year before the Heavy duty came out but i could be wrong. Also at the beginning of the year the blades were on backwards, someone switched them around. According to what i interpreted from the manual the blades are supposed to be facing with the cutting edge down.

Not that you want to hear it, but I"ve had 2 different dealers(one of which I ALMOST trust) tell me that the HM economy mowers have been nothing but trouble. I think they are actually made by Sitrex. One guess would be that maybe you actually using to much HP. The HM 236, which I think is the largest of economy mowers only requires a minimum of 50 pto hp. 130 might be a little much for that mower...just a guess I do know the older 61X series mowers were excellent machines, very heavy built, really overbuilt. Never really heard anyone complain about them.

LOL, We've got a new HM235 sitting in the shed now, I had it on the tractor long enough to move it inside...hasn't even cut a blade of grass yet....so I've had lots of time to read the manual, so I can be a paper expert until the real world use comes...

Appears you need to spend several hours setting the thing up to work on the specific tractor correctly, 20" end link height/support chain, check chain limits, cutting height chain etc, to set the cutter bar float set correctly (bar dragging on the ground hard can cause breakaway)

Sounds like you aren't operating at PTO RPM either, i.e. not giving the disks a chance to cut, versus snagging the crop. Book says 6 MPH ideal cutting speed. Not sure on the 1000 RPM...the HM's are only 540!

The HM series came out only a few years back, ours is stamped "made in Italy" The Heavy Duty (615/616/617 etc have been in production a lot longer. We don't have a big enough tractor for an HD machine, so the HM fit the HP and price requirements.

Is there a way i can get a copy of the user manual. I only have the service manual. The dealer didnt even have a copy for me to look at when i dropped by. Today when i went out to mow i ran the tractor pretty hard trying to get it to cut better. It cut better until the belts started to slip. Every time i tighten them up it shreads them. I have lots of shreaded belts. I would occasionly hear it speed up, I heard it do it a couple of times when i wasnt even mowing anything. Once it made a loud clunk i'm not sure what it was. I think our next mower will be a haybine.

(quoted from post at 21:16:39 10/20/09) Is there a way i can get a copy of the user manual. I only have the service manual. The dealer didnt even have a copy for me to look at when i dropped by. Today when i went out to mow i ran the tractor pretty hard trying to get it to cut better. It cut better until the belts started to slip. Every time i tighten them up it shreads them. I have lots of shreaded belts. I would occasionly hear it speed up, I heard it do it a couple of times when i wasnt even mowing anything. Once it made a loud clunk i'm not sure what it was. I think our next mower will be a haybine.

Click to expand...

Order the manual from New Holland

http://www.dmcretail.com/newholland/

Looks like $24 bucks for an op manual.

Belts have to deflect 3/4" Book says belt must be tightened and checked daily after initial run in, and then weekly to keep tension correct.

I'd say 130 HP is smoking the belts, the tractor would never lug down, just burn up the mower. Try running on a smaller tractor if you have one available. If the mower works that poorly, I'd be having a tech look at it...t

As soon as I get the case up and running, along with the trailer fixed I'll be taking it up to try running it on the mower. It is just over the minimum hp so it should give the tractor a good working after sitting for 2 years. I have the service manual just not the operators manual. We talked last night about looking for a haybine. I also thought about just using our shredder in a high gear for the thicker grass the mower doesnt like to cut at all. Also I think this winter i'm going to tear into the mower and clean it up really well and see if there is anything obvious. I was thinking what if i put a chain drive on the mower instead of the belts all the time? I know it will need a shear pin but it will take care of my belt problems.

I'm thinking there must be something wrong with the mower(?), I'd get the op manual and start from scratch on your Case setting up the mower. I plan to take part of a day just to set up our HM before it even cuts.

I've run discbine mowers, and there is ZERO plugging, so I can't see there being issues on a 3pt.

Don't know if I'd want a chain drive....likely be more headache than it's worth.