As a heavy equipment mechanic by trade I feel like I can give a little input here. I don't work on farm machinery that much but in the grand scheme of things a tractor is a tractor and the technology is spreading through the tractor world as a whole. True every machine requires maintenance wether it's old or the newest one off the dealerships lot. The differences I see are in the ways things were done then vs now. On an older machine if the throttle broke it was usually an easily diagnosed problem. Replace a ball end or linkage shaft, something that could be done both easily and cheaply by anyone with readily available parts in an hour or two. Nowdays if a throttle goes on many machines it's a matter of a $1000 stepper motor, $2500 worth of wiring harness, or a $1500 computer, or a combination of all three none of which the dealership has in stock. Then add labor and mileage for a day to pickup and change the computer and stepper motor, over a week to change the three wiring harnesses and it gets pretty pricey. I just went through that fiasco with a CAT excavator just to be able to flow test the main pump which was bad so there's another $5000 in the machine. All the electronics, the computer, etc is all supposed to save the customer money on fuel by making the machine more efficient and maybe it does when it's all working properly. Problem is when one or more parts go bad the whole machine is down for several days in order to troubleshoot, order parts, and get them replaced and hole the next week link doesn't show up when you get the one part replaced. All of this is money out of the customers pocket in repair cost plus downtime when the machine is setting. In the case I just mentioned there was $4000 worth of parts just to fix the throttle and get the engine to go to full RPM's, plus nearly two weeks of labor and mileage and downtime. The electronic throttle setup may have saved him a thousand in fuel each year but all that money saved on fuel just got spent buying parts and labor and lost in downtime. In the end where is the savings when it's now gonna take several more years of operation just to make back the money spent over and above the fuel savings, and that's not factoring in the possibility of any future problems? Knew another customer who spent several weeks down while the dealership trouble shot his machine and eventually replace the computer several times along with various other shot in the dark repairs. After all that time the root cause of the engine smoking and shutting down was a minor restriction in the fuel filter that was causing just enough differential pressure drop for the computer to sense and change the timing of the engine. Fortunately his problem was under warranty but the end result was weeks down and labor costs because of a slightly dirty fuel filter. That wouldn't have happened with an older machine. Fenders now being made of plastic instead of metal so if the get hit and crack they aren't repairable. Huge pieces of specially curved glass to give better visibility, which is great until you have to pay to have them replaced. Then what happens in 20 years when the tractor, by some miracle, is still going and you want to replace a piece but it's been discontinued. Flat glass or a piece of lexan never goes out of style and is always available. These are just a few of the things I see on a continuing basis that, to me, make the new machines junk. They have come "so far" technologically that the smallest thing, that comparibly on an older machine would have been a minor nuicense or a cheap and easy fix at the most, will shut down the entire machine and require weeks of troubleshooting and expensive electronic parts to repair. You can't bypass the throttle with a piece of bailing wire, you can't jump the starter and get the machine running because the alternator has a bad diode and is telling the computer the engine is running (yes they do that nowdays), and on and on. Give me an older machine any day. Yes they might not be as cushy to operate but at the end of the day they are simple, easy to work on, and are as if not more reliable than a new one. But that's just my opinion based on the machines that I work on.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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