[greedyguts]

After this harvest I thought I would change my 1680 tank unloader belt. I thought I would get a genuine one as I think they last longer. My dealer had to order one and it arrived the next day from France. It had the same number stamped on it as the old one but was 3 inches longer. Basically I figured straight away that some Spanish factory had measured the belt on the inside. It took Case about 4 days to work this out and eventually sent me one from the US. I think their whole European stock was wrong, I wonder if the same firm manufactured other belts for them. I bet there was some angry phone calls behind the sceanes. I thought I might have got a thankyou call for finding this out for them but you guessed it,----nothing!!!
At least I wasn't waiting for it!!!!

 

[jonhagen]

Re: European belt measurements

I had a situation a bit like that one winter while doing off season repairs to my 1482 combine. The 1482 is a pull type,PTO driven version of the 1480 combine. One of the rotor drive pulleys was badly worn,so we had the dealer order one from the parts warehouse. When we were assembling the pulley assy, something about that new pulley did not look just right. Close inspection showed that the grease passage that runs from the pulley hub to the thrust bearing was missing,we looked at the belt side of the pulley,and there was our grease passage on the wrong side.
Took the unit back to the dealer who announced that instead of having the part with a bearing lubricator hole,we had a special one with a belt lubrication hole. This was the off season so no one got excited,he said he would order another one from the parts warehouse and we would have it in a few days.
A check of the parts place reported that it was no problem,they had many in stock and would ship one right out. At that moment it struck me that this incorrect grease hole was not a machining error where the hole was drilled from the wrong side, this was a cast hole,where the error had to have happened at the foundry where the part was cast. Thinking that there may have been an entire casting run of those pulleys cast wrong which no one spotted ,made us decide to call the parts warehouse again to check if the new part they were sending was correct,or another that was also cast wrong. An hour later the parts warehouse called back saying that every one of those pulleys they had in stock were defective and would be on backorder for two months until the foundry could cast up a new batch of correct ones. Right at two months later I got my correctly cast pulley. I sure was glad I got into this many months before harvest,and I have wondered who got fired for the screwup and how large the pile of new scrap pulleys might have been.