New Tractor - Which has best build quality / reliability?

New Tractor Build Quality - which is best?

  • Case

    Votes: 13 7.6%
  • New Holland

    Votes: 18 10.6%
  • Deutz

    Votes: 9 5.3%
  • Fendt

    Votes: 28 16.5%
  • John Deere

    Votes: 51 30.0%
  • Massey Ferguson

    Votes: 17 10.0%
  • Valtra

    Votes: 18 10.6%
  • Landini

    Votes: 1 0.6%
  • McCormick

    Votes: 3 1.8%
  • Zetor

    Votes: 8 4.7%
  • JCB

    Votes: 4 2.4%

  • Total voters
    170

melted welly

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
DD9.
Have a fendt 828 on 4500hrs, few niggles, sorted promptly under warranty, dealer very good.

Have 3 NH models hovering between 8 and 10,000hrs. Apart from brakes and leaky spools they’ve given little trouble, perhaps a brand looked down on by aficionados, but I find they are straightforward with solid engines. Again, have a decent local dealer and a good service from a non NH dealer.

Fastrac 2170 is love/hate, our most expensive £/hr to run and repairs are rarely straightforward. Most likely to let us down when the pressures on. On sprayer in potatoes, and it doesn’t like wet tramlines throwing skitter onto the brakes.

Got a Valtra 234, and time will tell. Looks well put together, feels solid. Get a lot of bang for your buck. Computer can be a bit temperamental, but turning off isolator seems to clear most problems.

I’d echo what others have said, reliability is a big consideration , but the dealer and backup is probably bigger. Ran a jd 7730 that was a pig, it was awful, but the backup from dealer and JD was very good where I think other brands could’ve/would’ve walked away, not forgotten.
 
There would be a lot more if there were more dealers, gearboxes gave trouble that were abused , like reversing with big loads in the high box with your foot half on the clutch, burning out reverse packs .
What about the circlip issue that requires the cab off and the whole tractor dismantled for it to be fixed
 
My Valtra N series has done 1100 hours since last October and apart from servicing it hasn’t needed anything

But I’m not going to say there the most reliable because my old one needed endless work and I’ve heard plenty horror stories

I think you either get a good one or a lemon
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
Its a minefield, every tractor goes into a different situation. Some get hard work, some spend half the time idling, some have one good operator, some have one bad operator, many have multiple drivers. Servicing varies wildly too.
Add in to that the number of machines in any country or area will vary wildly, you might hear 10 bad stories of brand x and one of brand y but brand x might have 100 machines in the area and brand y might have 2.

At the end of the day, buy the tractor you like that best suits your application, hopefully from a dealer you also like and see how you go.
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
New tractors ?
Of your list, at least half of them I’ve never seen here
Most reliable ?
No idea
JD & Case would pretty much dominate in sales, with a few NH & Challenger, the odd Fendt starting to get around - anything else is pretty irrelevant
 
My Valtra N series has done 1100 hours since last October and apart from servicing it hasn’t needed anything

But I’m not going to say there the most reliable because my old one needed endless work and I’ve heard plenty horror stories

I think you either get a good one or a lemon
To be fair 1100 hours is nothing ,i should dearly hope that a new tractor does that , yes they all have problems ,but i think the interface between the steering wheel and seat has a lot to do with it ,
And regular servicing and maintaince ,
In the last 26000 hrs of 3 jd ,s i have used ,have had oil ,filters , tyres , 4 batteries ,one air con fan , a set of hydraulic arm ends twice as worn ball ends out ,
Just bought another from a forum member with over 11000 hrs ,but its like new ,and been really well looked after , what does that tell you
 

Martyn

Member
Location
South west
To be fair 1100 hours is nothing ,i should dearly hope that a new tractor does that , yes they all have problems ,but i think the interface between the steering wheel and seat has a lot to do with it ,
And regular servicing and maintaince ,
In the last 26000 hrs of 3 jd ,s i have used ,have had oil ,filters , tyres , 4 batteries ,one air con fan , a set of hydraulic arm ends twice as worn ball ends out ,
Just bought another from a forum member with over 11000 hrs ,but its like new ,and been really well looked after , what does that tell you
Did you buy the ten series think it was a 6910? we run all ten series, still always have few problems but overall running cost peanuts and great jd back up keeps them running as well as new
 
Thanks for the contributions everyone.

A potential fault in the poll is that the results are somewhat linked to market shares but market share is no doubt linked to reliability.

I’m unsure of the market leading brands but I’d guess John Deere followed by New Holland.

Deere have surprised me by the poll result.

Every brand breaks but backup is so important as highlighted by many.
 

kill

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South West
Where's Kubota? 5000 hour / 5 year warranty helps!
One of my uncle's was an electrician and I remember my mother asking him what washing machine to buy and his reply was " the cheapest one you can get with the longest warranty" so tractor wise that's probably Kubota.
Which other brands can 5 years warranty be purchased with?
Claas is one but which others?
 

fudge

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire.
One of my uncle's was an electrician and I remember my mother asking him what washing machine to buy and his reply was " the cheapest one you can get with the longest warranty" so tractor wise that's probably Kubota.
Which other brands can 5 years warranty be purchased with?
Claas is one but which others?
You can purchase whatever warranty you want with whatever tractor. Who would buy a tractor without an extended warranty these days? They all breakdown which means warranty and dealer backup is everything. BTW John Deere haven’t given us a reason to change. IMO their weakest point is the price of their guidance software!
 

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
One of my uncle's was an electrician and I remember my mother asking him what washing machine to buy and his reply was " the cheapest one you can get with the longest warranty" so tractor wise that's probably Kubota.
Which other brands can 5 years warranty be purchased with?
Claas is one but which others?
Its 5 years. But thats assuming you only do 600 hours per year.
 
To be fair 1100 hours is nothing ,i should dearly hope that a new tractor does that , yes they all have problems ,but i think the interface between the steering wheel and seat has a lot to do with it ,
And regular servicing and maintaince ,
In the last 26000 hrs of 3 jd ,s i have used ,have had oil ,filters , tyres , 4 batteries ,one air con fan , a set of hydraulic arm ends twice as worn ball ends out ,
Just bought another from a forum member with over 11000 hrs ,but its like new ,and been really well looked after , what does that tell you
Ino 1100 hours is nothing but my previous tractors had a lot of silly niggily problems in the first 1000 hours then got more reliable as the problems got sorted :rolleyes:
 
One of my uncle's was an electrician and I remember my mother asking him what washing machine to buy and his reply was " the cheapest one you can get with the longest warranty" so tractor wise that's probably Kubota.
Which other brands can 5 years warranty be purchased with?
Claas is one but which others?
I’ve 5 year on my valtra
 

Norfolk Olly

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
norfolk
All this poll does is show who drives what, popularity contest me thinks
Personally all of the 6 fendts ive had have been pretty faultless but so have the couple of deeres. The 6930 i had did 6500 hrs with only a hub seal replced. The challenger was a bloody nightmare was glad to see it go
 

Norfolk Olly

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
norfolk
One of my uncle's was an electrician and I remember my mother asking him what washing machine to buy and his reply was " the cheapest one you can get with the longest warranty" so tractor wise that's probably Kubota.
Which other brands can 5 years warranty be purchased with?
Claas is one but which others?
Ive bought another motorbike recently mainly to the fact it has a lifetime warranty
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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