Why is modern machinery so flipping unreliable?!

Steevo · Jun 28, 2020

I disagree on the electrics. I've found electrics have rarely caused issues.

More than that I'd say it's the constant cost cutting that has come about due to increasing legisltation taking priority in design and adding cost.

Things aren't built like they used to be.

Cowabunga · Jun 28, 2020

Dan Powell said:
It gets to about 3000 hours and hey presto, air con failures, ad-blue faults, pipes leaking, going into limp mode for no good reason and all costs a fortune to fix.

I'm fed up with it frankly. I want to go back to a John Deere 10 series before the build quality of everything fell off a cliff and prices went through the ceiling....

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this on a regular basis...

One word. Or two actually...

OLD AGE.

It deceives the brain.

Dukes Fit · Jun 28, 2020

My guess is there are several reasons.

1st is stress modelling. To ensure manufacturing is efficient everything is modelled on stress calculations, this simply didn’t happen with older stuff. It was made with rough calculations and if it broke it got made bigger. Try putting 500hp through the back end of a 50hp tractor these days and it will break. It’s both good and bad. It means manufacturing is more efficient and ultimately cheaper for the end user, it also means there’s less leeway for error or manufacturing/material flaws.

2nd would be design life, it comes down to cost and efficiency again. Friend in the motor industry told me 100,000 miles is now considered the reasonable life expectation of a modern car, i.e that’s as far as components can reasonably be expected to last.

3rd is simple ignorance. In old tractors if it made a funny noise you simply kept going until the noise got worse or something stopped working. We’ve all driven tractors that have quirks and those quirks might have been there for years. Maybe it makes a funny noise between 2nd and 3rd. Maybe it always starts 2nd try rather than 1st but in modern tractors with the use of can-bus systems and diagnostics etc, things are linked and so if something small or seemingly unimportant goes wrong, it can affect the whole system to the point of failure.

Discovery foot brake switches were famous for failing and causing the suspension to drop and put the vehicle in to limp mode, just because of how the system was configured. Not a problem in town but serious problem on a hill in the highlands.

There are of course other factors, designers having no real life experience of their products, suppliers being given a part to produce on price rather than on design/material spec etc.

Bob the beef · Jun 28, 2020

Totally agree with the OP. Traded a JD 6610 with 9000 hours on the clock for a 6430 four years ago . 6610 hardly had a spanner on it in 10 years. 6430 needs a whole toolbox carried round with it

Found the same with cars. Had 3Audi A4’s . First 2 were bomb proof great cars. Last one was an electrical disaster area. Traded in last November as my local garage said there was nothing else they could do without renewing whole wiring harness and engine management system

Sid · Jun 28, 2020

How often is it the actual part is it the sensor installed to tell you the part has failed and prevent a large bill?

Cowabunga · Jun 28, 2020

Steevo said:
Things aren't built like they used to be.

More old age befuddling the brain. I've said it many times before but my father used to say that regularly over the years. When the MF 35 replaced the Field Marshal. When the 165 replaced the 65. When we went to Aberystwyth show once and looked at a Moskvitch car, when he said "they don't build British cars like this any more" as he pulled the choke out and the knob came off in his hand.

What I say is THANK GOODNESS. Things last longer even though they work harder than ever before and with less maintenance and repairs generally. Not everything has gone downhill since your ideal time of life, which you probably gauge as being around the time you were between 15 and 25 years old, no matter how old you are today. Before you had the responsibility of getting the crops in on time and footing the bills.

Barleycorn · Jun 28, 2020

After the VW emissions fiasco, it seems to me that manufacturers could easily programme a tractor to, say, have a hydraulic fault at X number of hours. Symptoms are low pump pressure new pump needed. The dealer has it in for a couple of days for show, couple of minutes on the laptop, problem solved, and nice fat bill. I'm sure they do this with washing machines.

Farmer T · Jun 28, 2020

This thread times a thousand.
Machinery costs are getting ridiculous now. All labour £80/hour and impossible to almost do the most basic repairs because of the magic laptop needed to access the codes/ reset the sensors.

It’s impossible to plan to breakdown repairs and when they go wrong the seem to cost £8-10,000 per repair.

Is hiring the only way forward?

Cowabunga · Jun 28, 2020

Barleycorn said:
After the VW emissions fiasco, it seems to me that manufacturers could easily programme a tractor to, say, have a hydraulic fault at X number of hours. Symptoms are low pump pressure new pump needed. The dealer has it in for a couple of days for show, couple of minutes on the laptop, problem solved, and nice fat bill. I'm sure they do this with washing machines.

The design age of washing machines has reduced over the years but so has the relative price. It no longer pays to repair a five year old washing machine because the labour and part cost, but particularly the labour, gets near to and often exceeds the cost of a new machine. Same goes for almost all consumer electronics including most televisions.

Steevo · Jun 28, 2020

Cowabunga said:
More old age befuddling the brain. I've said it many times before but my father used to say that regularly over the years. When the MF 35 replaced the Field Marshal. When the 165 replaced the 65. When we went to Aberystwyth show once and looked at a Moskvitch car, when he said "they don't build British cars like this any more" as he pulled the choke out and the knob came off in his hand.

What I say is THANK GOODNESS. Things last longer even though they work harder than ever before and with less maintenance and repairs generally. Not everything has gone downhill since your ideal time of life, which you probably gauge as being around the time you were between 15 and 25 years old, no matter how old you are today. Before you had the responsibility of getting the crops in on time and footing the bills.

Never assume the age of a poster based on what they write.

lloyd · Jun 28, 2020

slackjawedyokel said:
My perception is that cars are less reliable than in the past, but that many will think they are more reliable because they have shorter life cycles than cars in the past. My first car was a 13 yr old merc 190d and that was fairly bulletproof; I has it for several years. My last two cars (Audi A4 and Volvo s40) I had to get rid of because of electrical issues (Audi-immobiliser, Volvo dpf electrical system economically unfixable at less than 10yrs old).

I have a 2yr old loader, which has already had dpf issues, so I fear for it’s long term economic viability (if I buy a new machine I’d like to keep it good and keep it long term ideally).

I think a lot of the unreliability, particularly in farm machinery is all of the electrics, sensors etc associated with the engine and particularly with emissions control systems. I assume that in the future, if electric loaders etc become commonplace, it will be possible to once again make machines with fewer breakdowns.

What make loader if you dont mind telling?

bobk · Jun 28, 2020

Dan Powell said:
It gets to about 3000 hours and hey presto, air con failures, ad-blue faults, pipes leaking, going into limp mode for no good reason and all costs a fortune to fix.

I'm fed up with it frankly. I want to go back to a John Deere 10 series before the build quality of everything fell off a cliff and prices went through the ceiling....

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this on a regular basis...

One word , potentiometers , f**kin things are always failing

Cowabunga · Jun 28, 2020

Farmer T said:
This thread times a thousand.
Machinery costs are getting ridiculous now. All labour £80/hour and impossible to almost do the most basic repairs because of the magic laptop needed to access the codes/ reset the sensors.

It’s impossible to plan to breakdown repairs and when they go wrong the seem to cost £8-10,000 per repair.

Is hiring the only way forward?

You are quite wrong about the cost of machines on a basic level. Machines are more productive than ever before and last longer. It is our income that has become unsustainably low to the extent that not only we cannot justify labour costs any longer but it has come to the point where we can't afford the machinery or even the running costs of the machinery that replaces labour and has made us as productive as we are.
Many farms on the verge of or are already unviable at current income levels. That's not the machinery manufacturers fault and in fact it does impact seriously on their own viability, which is dependent on agriculture's viability and prospects and confidence.

However, notwithstanding the above, farmers and contractors continue to buy ever bigger and more expensive machinery both to buy and run.

Dan Powell · Jun 28, 2020

Cowabunga said:
You are quite wrong about the cost of machines on a basic level. Machines are more productive than ever before and last longer. It is our income that has become unsustainably low to the extent that not only we cannot justify labour costs any longer but it has come to the point where we can't afford the machinery or even the running costs of the machinery that replaces labour and has made us as productive as we are.
Many farms on the verge of or are already unviable at current income levels. That's not the machinery manufacturers fault and in fact it does impact seriously on their own viability, which is dependent on agriculture's viability and prospects and confidence.

However, notwithstanding the above, farmers and contractors continue to buy ever bigger and more expensive machinery both to buy and run.

I think you may have a point, but I still think the unnecessary complexity of modern tractors is causing reliability issues. When I need to repair the older tractors I run, it's usually because something has worn out from being used a lot. When I need to repair the newer stuff it's because of component failure, not from overuse but because it wasn't up to standard.

Steevo · Jun 28, 2020

Dan Powell said:
I think you may have a point, but I still think the unnecessary complexity of modern tractors is causing reliability issues. When I need to repair the older tractors I run, it's usually because something has worn out from being used a lot. When I need to repair the newer stuff it's because of component failure, not from overuse but because it wasn't up to standard.

Adblue systems are a perfect example of this.

Chae1 · Jun 28, 2020

bobk said:
One word , potentiometers , fudgein things are always failing

Solenoids on new Hollands.

hally · Jun 28, 2020

Jackov Altraids said:
A local contractor has been saying that new tractors having been getting increasingly unreliable.
This is having tried a few different brands.
They have just returned 4/5 new tractors to dealer as not fit for purpose.
This would be genuine and not any kind of shenanigans.

I have done that myself before, all products sold need to be fit for purpose especially given their price. It is surprising how many protections you have as a purchaser but modern kit imo isn’t tested as rigorously as it should be, so often they only have themselves to blame.

Drillman · Jun 28, 2020

Last basic tractor (3ft long gear levers sprouting out the floor and manual hydraulics) we flogged a couple years back as everyone hated it.
got one with a vario gearbox recently, like getting out of Fred flintstones car into the space Shuttle comparing the 2.

will the new one be more reliable?

who knows.

which is nicer to live with on a long day? Vario every time

would we go back to a bedrock mobile? No way!

Red Fred · Jun 28, 2020

On my small scale operation, the only electronics are the boxes on the baler and wrapper, but the trouble is that I can't fix them and nor can the local mechanics, so a simple fault can lead to a week's delay while they are posted off, repaired and sent back. As a result, I still have the '80s RP12 and wrapper in the shed just in case, and both have been in use in recent years. As for the electronic logic behind my Disco 3, that is another story.

GeorgeK · Jun 28, 2020

The way new tractors depreciate it's fair to say the people who buy them used have their reservations. Meanwhile usable 80's/90's classics in good condition are worth more than they cost new

Why is modern machinery so flipping unreliable?!

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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