Tractor complaint

[wasted years]

'Discovering' that the clutch being pressed 10mm halves the pressure is hardly evidence that the driver was riding the clutch!
Though of course you may be right.

 

[kiwi pom]

Buying a tractor that was a year old with 80 hours on the clock would make me nervous. I assume you got the history of it and tried to find out why it was sold?
The fact that the clutch went 30 hours later would suggest bad things happened to it with its first owner.
What was the engine problem you mentioned and what happened to the diff?
If the dealers trying to put things right you really have to let them take the tractor back, find the problem and fix it, then decide what you are going to do.
Them suggesting 'operator error' is a bold statement and i'd be surprised if they just made it without any evidence. Not accusing you of anything but we're only hearing one side of the story on an internet forum. We know nothing about how the tractor is driven or what tasks its performing. I do wonder if its a smaller utility tractor carrying out heavier work than it was designed for?

 

[7610 super q]

As above.....sounds like someone else had 80 hours of grief, and chopped it in for something else.
Interesting that tractor manufactures can sell a death trap, and that's perfectly OK, but if a farmer sets out on the road with a worn trailer tyre, all hell breaks out on TFF......

 

[tweedale terrier]

How did you get on with the dealer today?

 

[Speyside]

Still can’t get to speak to dealer today. The tractor is not a utility tractor and in fact a 150hp supposed heavy duty machine. The jobs it does is 4 furrow plough, Kuhn baler (1600 bales a year), 2.8 metre mower etc etc. No road work, heavy cultivation’s or sowing. Whilst it is broken down we were using our other tractor of farm a 90hp green tractor with bright wheels that has done the tasks and never given a problem in 3k hours... also never had clutch issues before on previous tractors. Father can’t ride the clutch as he has had a be knee last year and not fully recovered. Cheers for the replies guys!

 

[Speyside]

Buying a tractor that was a year old with 80 hours on the clock would make me nervous. I assume you got the history of it and tried to find out why it was sold?
The fact that the clutch went 30 hours later would suggest bad things happened to it with its first owner.
What was the engine problem you mentioned and what happened to the diff?
If the dealers trying to put things right you really have to let them take the tractor back, find the problem and fix it, then decide what you are going to do.
Them suggesting 'operator error' is a bold statement and i'd be surprised if they just made it without any evidence. Not accusing you of anything but we're only hearing one side of the story on an internet forum. We know nothing about how the tractor is driven or what tasks its performing. I do wonder if its a smaller utility tractor carrying out heavier work than it was designed for?

We trusted the dealer when he said it was a genuine straight tractor and he’d reset the warrenty. The engine problems were fuel related. Last year hoses were cracked and it couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding, fair enough had them replaced. This spring tractor was out for 3-4 weeks and couldn’t find fault. Eventually found an electrical switch was worn (at 750 hours!!!) and was shutting off fuel. Tractor would just switch off engine as you were driving along either under load or just sitting idling. The tractor is actually bigger than we need for the jobs it should be doing. The 90 horse tractor has do all cultivation’s in the spring. Haven’t been able to get use of the horsepower it was bought for.

 

[Dman2]

As mentioned above
Try and find out from previous owner why it was traded at a year old

 

[solo]

80 hours could well have been a demonstrator.

 

[7610 super q]

80 hours could well have been a demonstrator.

Only 80 hours in 12 months ? Anything's possible, I suppose.

 

[Ali_Maxxum]

Our new digger was ex demo, 150hrs. Apart from 1 error code and just a couple of leaks it's been faultless, hell of a tool, although our dealer (who I wont name because people would be VERY surprised at my experience) has been pretty sh1te! I'm still waiting for a promised seat cover from when I took delivery in March and a visit from a fitter that was promised in May....

 

[kiwi pom]

We trusted the dealer when he said it was a genuine straight tractor and he’d reset the warrenty. The engine problems were fuel related. Last year hoses were cracked and it couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding, fair enough had them replaced. This spring tractor was out for 3-4 weeks and couldn’t find fault. Eventually found an electrical switch was worn (at 750 hours!!!) and was shutting off fuel. Tractor would just switch off engine as you were driving along either under load or just sitting idling. The tractor is actually bigger than we need for the jobs it should be doing. The 90 horse tractor has do all cultivation’s in the spring. Haven’t been able to get use of the horsepower it was bought for.

Sounds like you just need to have it fixed and get it traded, which seems to be what the first owner did.
I thought clutches on modern higher horsepower tractors were supposed to last for thousands of hours, I wonder if that's why they're suggesting driver abuse?Maybe the first owner destroyed it or there was a factory fault that has not been noticed/fixed yet.
You say its also been split recently for a diff repair, did they say what caused the problem? It certainly seems to be having a lot of driveline issues.
Problem is if you trade it to another dealer for another brand will they want it?
A very difficult situation.

 

[betweenthelines]

OP is very trusting to accept an unwritten warranty on a secondhand tractor.

TBH as he's had it over a year I think it's more his problem than the dealer's now. Get it fixed and get rid off it would be my advice.
But would he be legally obliged to inform purchaser of past issues?

 

[manfromhill]

I bought an ex hire with 150 hrs on it was a year old but dealer gave us 6months warranty and stood by it but nothing was in writing

 

[ollie989898]

It is this simple.

A machine has developed a fault and has subsequently tried to kill a member of staff or your family- it should be returned as unfit for purpose. You are being an extremely brave man to accept anything less as your insurers will not like it one bit.

If the dealer or manufacture will not accept there is an issue, write a letter mentioning sale of goods act and also mention that you have been obliged by your legal representative to inform the HSE of this incident, the focus of the HSE will then be diverted to the manufacturer, who could in all likelihood, be supplying a dangerous machine to many many customers.

 

[Cowabunga]

It is this simple.

A machine has developed a fault and has subsequently tried to kill a member of staff or your family- it should be returned as unfit for purpose. You are being an extremely brave man to accept anything less as your insurers will not like it one bit.

If the dealer or manufacture will not accept there is an issue, write a letter mentioning sale of goods act and also mention that you have been obliged by your legal representative to inform the HSE of this incident, the focus of the HSE will then be diverted to the manufacturer, who could in all likelihood, be supplying a dangerous machine to many many customers.

All tractors have the potential to kill if they fail in certain ways. I've had several try and kill me and my brother. Clutch issues, whether wet clutch as here, or dry clutch as was the case with two different brands of tractors in my instances, can be particularly dangerous. So can any driveline issues on slopes, which can happen at any time to any tractor.
If the HSE get involved they might suggest all kinds of over the top rubbish, like supervisors/lookouts on every job, as they do on building sites where a digger is working. You just don't want to go there. sh!t happens. Be somewhat prepared for it to happen and know how to fail safe if at all possible. I was particularly lucky when a clutch linkage broke, an external rod sheared [the replacement had a clevis, so they know there was a problem and I'm fairly sure that the dealer had been paid to do a recall but hadn't] suddenly on one of mine while I was rolling a field. If it had failed two days sooner when it was being intensively used while rolling the top of a silage clamp, who knows what the consequences would have been.

 

[T Hectares]

Still can’t get to speak to dealer today. The tractor is not a utility tractor and in fact a 150hp supposed heavy duty machine. The jobs it does is 4 furrow plough, Kuhn baler (1600 bales a year), 2.8 metre mower etc etc. No road work, heavy cultivation’s or sowing. Whilst it is broken down we were using our other tractor of farm a 90hp green tractor with bright wheels that has done the tasks and never given a problem in 3k hours... also never had clutch issues before on previous tractors. Father can’t ride the clutch as he has had a be knee last year and not fully recovered. Cheers for the replies guys!

If a dealer hadn't got back to me within a day I don't think I would wait days more for a reply !!
Nothing aggresive, but a drive to the dealership and a face to face frank, calm conversation would be what I would do and I would question how much he valued my business if he couldn't be bothered to reply to me promptly given the serious nature of the issue...

 

[ollie989898]

All tractors have the potential to kill if they fail in certain ways. I've had several try and kill me and my brother. Clutch issues, whether wet clutch as here, or dry clutch as was the case with two different brands of tractors in my instances, can be particularly dangerous. So can any driveline issues on slopes, which can happen at any time to any tractor.
If the HSE get involved they might suggest all kinds of over the top rubbish, like supervisors/lookouts on every job, as they do on building sites where a digger is working. You just don't want to go there. sh!t happens. Be somewhat prepared for it to happen and know how to fail safe if at all possible. I was particularly lucky when a clutch linkage broke, an external rod sheared [the replacement had a clevis, so they know there was a problem and I'm fairly sure that the dealer had been paid to do a recall but hadn't] suddenly on one of mine while I was rolling a field. If it had failed two days sooner when it was being intensively used while rolling the top of a silage clamp, who knows what the consequences would have been.

So you are telling me, that if you purchased a car, and it developed a fault of the kind described earlier in this thread, the manufacturer would not want to know?

If the machine had a fault of that nature, and an accident resulted, the HSE would be notified immediately in almost any other industry, probably even if it resulted in only a near miss. I certainly would not want to be in a position of responsibility with that on my conscience.

 

[stevedave]

You have very little 'consumer rights'. For one thing, you are not what is considered to be a 'consumer'. You are an industrial business conducting a business to business transaction. It is, at the end of the day, your tractor, not theirs or the manufacturer's. It is out of its warranty period and you have obviously not bought an extended warranty, so any help you get from either manufacturer/importer or the dealer will be on a 'goodwill' basis.

That, I'm afraid is the bottom line. I've had my share of such issues, the most serious was with a MF595 back in '77 '78 and '79 when the tractor was split four times for different transmission issues. All started out of the one year warranty and the dealer and manufacturer did not contribute a farthing to help. It was sold with only 1050 hours on the clock and I know the dealer hired it out for a short while before resale and it again needed splitting, this time at the dealer's expense, because its auxiliary pump gave out. Before that is was PTO clutch, main clutch cover, Multi-power and lord knows. After he sold it on it had many new head gaskets, oh and it also had a power steering repair and new exhaust and an injector pump repair in the two years it was out of warranty.
I changed it for an MF590 4wd only because the MF dealer was the only one who would even consider taking a 595 back in part exchange at any price. That was a pile of poo too and I could write a book about that one. In the meantime I'd also bought a Same and a J Deere and could compare the massive improvement in reliability and lower running costs these gave me. After five years and 3500 of grief, MF were gone and I didn't even consider another until the 3000 series came out in 1986 but didn't actually buy one until 2004. It and another since, both here today, have been very reliable indeed, touch wood.

MF and the dealer [who years later went very big then bankrupt] lost ten new tractors when I was at the peak of my career during that time, when I bought various other Same, New Holland and John Deere models and had very few problems with any of them. No skin off my nose that they lost me and those sales between 1979 and 2004. I only gained.

So if your dealer and your importer/tractor brand is serious about their business, there's a lesson in there for them I'm sure. On the other hand they may be as completely arrogant as MF and Willis Bros were with me. Its not just tractors they lost from me, I bought virtually everything from them, including slurry stores, implements and Subaru pickup even. They lost me for many years and even 'banned' me for buying another brand early on.

Even after all that hassle you still went to sell them.

 

[kiwi pom]

So you are telling me, that if you purchased a car, and it developed a fault of the kind described earlier in this thread, the manufacturer would not want to know?

If the machine had a fault of that nature, and an accident resulted, the HSE would be notified immediately in almost any other industry, probably even if it resulted in only a near miss. I certainly would not want to be in a position of responsibility with that on my conscience.

If you read the first post the op said after clutch replacement the tractor still didn't feel right. That was the time to address the problem and insist on an investigation by the dealer/manufacturer, not carrying on driving it then when something goes wrong playing the HSE card.
It sounds like the manufacturer, not the dealer, wants to take the machine in to find the cause, so that's where you start. It doesn't mean you couldn't have it independently inspected later should you disagree with the findings.
I'm guessing the manufacturer wants to find out if the factory had something wrong or the dealer got the replacement wrong, if those two things are as they should be, the operator may be the next possibility.

 

[Speyside]

If you read the first post the op said after clutch replacement the tractor still didn't feel right. That was the time to address the problem and insist on an investigation by the dealer/manufacturer, not carrying on driving it then when something goes wrong playing the HSE card.
It sounds like the manufacturer, not the dealer, wants to take the machine in to find the cause, so that's where you start. It doesn't mean you couldn't have it independently inspected later should you disagree with the findings.
I'm guessing the manufacturer wants to find out if the factory had something wrong or the dealer got the replacement wrong, if those two things are as they should be, the operator may be the next possibility.

They have finally agreed to take it in at their cost and investigate, but no guarantee of who will pay the overall repair......We’ll see how things progress. As far as I’m concerned we couldn’t have driven the tractor any differently. There is a warning alarm if you try and ride the clutch, so we use the shuttle lever all the time. My little John Deere has had to do the same work and had 3k hours now and never a spanner near it. The problem tractor was with the dealer at the start of August to fix the spring that engages the diff lock as they had a fault that they weren’t strong enough to engage under load. The dealer was going to check out the clutch as I had been harping on since last November about the tractor not being right. Here we are30-40 hours later it’s totally knackered. All I want is something that is as reliable as our other machines on the farm.