[HoRFarmsJesse]

I replaced this fan bearing two years ago (harvest 2000ac per year), and it failed yesterday with 100yds of wheat left. The first time it went out, i caught it with play and replaced before incident. This time despite checking every morning, it just imploded.

Im tired of the cheap ass designs, cheap ass bearings, and no updates.

Wrecked the radiator, intercooler, fan, fan bearing, bearing housing, belt, tensioner pulley, and shroud. Im just waiting for the water pump to fail the minute we get it back running, so we can wipe out the motor just for good measure.

Last season it was the unloading auger. First the splines stripping in the horiz. auger. Then the entire pivot wearing out and cracking the support plates all down in the tank.

My point is, whats the use in spending another 100-200k or so to get into an S series, when all of the previous weak links still exist? Okay so it has nicer looking styling, quiter cab, a bunch of new convenient features....but now i have to deal with DPF, it STILL has a water pump that will seize up the motor when it fails, and has an auger that cant handle the load of the crop? Another one I can pretty much scrap at 1500 sep hrs.

I want to move to a different color so bad, but theres no dealer support. Get your act together competitors! You have a huge opportunity to take control of a market by simply expanding and offering quality, rather than throw away items with a short shelf life.


Pic wont work, just picture a fan wedged sideways between motor and radiator on a 9860STS.

And why ia it okay that these things can run 2300rpms all day but tractor motor data suggests 1900-2100 ideal operating range. Get rid of the buttons and give us a throttle, or at least an rpm limiter. Never been a fan of screaming a diesel motor that hard.

 

[johndeere95]

Sounds like your sts was as reliable as our piece of junk! I'm a deere guy but we switched to a lexion last year and so far it's 10 times the combine. We've had a lot of trouble with our newer deere stuff, 4940 sprayer, 1910 air cart, and 9860, just very low build quality, however our tractors have been excellent.

 

[SWFarmService]

I don't blame ya for being mad, manufacturers often do ask what would make our machine better but all to often people reply back "bigger" and "better cab", I hate that, part of it is the manufacturers call to soon after you purchasesd the machine so you may not even know whats wrong with it.

I don't know if they would listen anyhow but if no one tells them how do they know.

When I bought my Deere 333e they called me and asked what I thought should be different and I asked them to call me back in 6 months and surprisingly they did, by then I had a whole list of things for them and nothing had anything to do with the cab.

Our custom cutters a few years back didnt think they had enough for the proto type guys to cut, a month later he said he would not go to the other crew again cause they praised the combine vs. My cutters complaining about diff things, no feed back is bad

 

[doorknob]

I replaced this fan bearing two years ago (harvest 2000ac per year), and it failed yesterday with 100yds of wheat left. The first time it went out, i caught it with play and replaced before incident. This time despite checking every morning, it just imploded.

Im tired of the cheap ass designs, cheap ass bearings, and no updates.

Wrecked the radiator, intercooler, fan, fan bearing, bearing housing, belt, tensioner pulley, and shroud. Im just waiting for the water pump to fail the minute we get it back running, so we can wipe out the motor just for good measure.

Last season it was the unloading auger. First the splines stripping in the horiz. auger. Then the entire pivot wearing out and cracking the support plates all down in the tank.

My point is, whats the use in spending another 100-200k or so to get into an S series, when all of the previous weak links still exist? Okay so it has nicer looking styling, quiter cab, a bunch of new convenient features....but now i have to deal with DPF, it STILL has a water pump that will seize up the motor when it fails, and has an auger that cant handle the load of the crop? Another one I can pretty much scrap at 1500 sep hrs.

I want to move to a different color so bad, but theres no dealer support. Get your act together competitors! You have a huge opportunity to take control of a market by simply expanding and offering quality, rather than throw away items with a short shelf life.


Pic wont work, just picture a fan wedged sideways between motor and radiator on a 9860STS.

And why ia it okay that these things can run 2300rpms all day but tractor motor data suggests 1900-2100 ideal operating range. Get rid of the buttons and give us a throttle, or at least an rpm limiter. Never been a fan of screaming a diesel motor that hard.

Competitors? As in market competition? What an odd concept. Heard about something like it in history class back in high school.

 

[Millner Harvesting]

How many hrs on your 60?

 

[HoRFarmsJesse]

How many hrs on your 60?

1700sep hrs

Unloading auger was the first major issue last year. I had to tear the auger off completely, twice, around 1500hrs. Updated to the plastic wear plates at that time, versus the greasable plate that we had. Did the first fan bearing the year before.

Another thing that is just pushing me over the edge, mandatory updates. Dont get me wrong, its great that they are improving something thats outdated, but not offering a stock replacement is ludicrus in my mind....

Couple weeks ago i noticed so really horrible handling in transport. Checked and found a tie rod with a lot of wear. Order up a new tie rod, $425, ouch, but expected. Get the rod and do a quick side by side to make sure it looked right, it did. Spend half of a sunday torching and using a hydraulic press getting the old one out of the sleeve, new one in, threaded back on the combine. I go to put it in the knuckle and it stops short, not even one thread through the taper. The taper is larger, not to the eye, but enough to not get in at all, or a nut ontop.
Furius at my parts guy, look online to see the new rod requires a new nut AND new STEERING ARM to bolt to the knuckle
Okay so they gave me the updated rod end without the new goodies, sucks but whatever. Call them up for just a standard replacement since we want to trade in soon. NOPE. You HAVE to upgrade, to the tune of roughly $1000 per side.
Suck it, running my worn out rod end until it goes, then ill chain the **** axle up, pull the tire off and three wheel that sucker until we can dump it on their lot for a company that doesnt bank on their income coming from handcuffing and scamming their customers.

Weve owned just in my lifetime two 6620s, a 7720, two 8820s, a 9750, and now a 9860. Ive seen them improve greatly through the years in many areas, but they havent really improved anything maintenance or functionality wise since the introduction of the STS combines in the 50series. Crazy to me that people even consider the S Series which is more of the same, with more emissions garbage on top (obviously not deeres fault). They have truly lost touch with what the farmer needs.

 

[MNfarmer85]

Most of our stuff on the farm is quite a bit older and does a lot less acres per year but have noticed that some of the new replacement parts just don't seem up to par anymore. Some things have been built better, but bearings sure aren't. Seems it depends a lot on the color, brand, and type of equipment.


You speak of buttons for throttle, I haven't looked in a cab of a JD combine but when I worked at a canning company in this area they had FMC and Oxbow pea combines that had a 12L JD engine in them and the only throttle control was a 3 position rocker switch... Idle, medium, and wide a** open. Have seen one of the tensioner pulleys have a bearing go out but didn't do any damage since someone happened to walk by it while it was idling and seen something was wrong.


Seems the trend is towards bigger and larger cabs that might soon fit a king size bed, but anything is better than one of the first combines I learned how to drive... The picture is of an 801 New Idea Uni system cab. That lever beside the seat was a couple inches away from the door, and the other side about 2 inches from the console, with a hydraulic drive speed control lever for something like a windrow pickup head jammed in between. If you needed to carry a toolbox, (and you always had to with the POS combine that was attached to this thing) you ended up with your feet on top of it. We haven't used it in years, hence the dust and junk all over.

 

[doorknob]

Do you honestly think Case IH, Agco or Claas is going to be any better in the long run?

I should'nt use this analogy, but as they say "the grass is always greener on the other side". All of the brand manufacturers play on the same golf course.

 

[Don Boles]

Do you honestly think Case IH, Agco or Claas is going to be any better in the long run?

In North America things get skewed by the fact Deere sells more units than anyone else put into more hands, operators and conditions than anyone else and it's therefore more likely to build what seems like the odd lemon.
Also more likely to build the odd gem as well mind you.

But to suggest that's any different from what generally would occur with any manufacturer, nah.

 

[HoRFarmsJesse]

I expect every manufacturer to have their plaguing issues. However, ones faith can be tested when known issues over the past decade have yet to be addressed through newly released models.
They can get reports on what service work their dealers do most, and also what parts they sell the most of, which would glaringly show their weak links.
Instead they update minor areas to make it seem like they are trying, yet walk a fine line allowing more major problems to linger, which im sure account for some very hefty income. $9300 on this job for us. A neighbors motor was $50,000 for the motor after the water pump. How hard would it be to retrofit a hydraulic or electric driven water pump, which when fails, simply overheats the engine, rather than locking up the crank.

Fix the $400 tie rod to appease, leave us hanging for $50,000.


I dont care if other companies have failures or not honestly, but when it comes time to upgrade, i want to know we arent getting the same crap with new packaging. Improve. And its weird that I dont feel this way at all about JD tractors. Our 8130 with IVT had been the most trouble free, comfortable, do its job tractor weve had. I cant wait until the articulateds have IVT and we can run our grain cart with one.

 

[farmerSK]

When I hear stories like this...it makes me think that I will stick with my 9600's for as long as possible. Think my repair bill for last harvest was under $5. Just picked up another one in decent shape for under $17,000. Seems like anything new I get is just harder and harder on fuel.. Combine is one of the last hold outs for "upgrading"

 

[Prairie Boy]

I don't think looking over the fence at the competition is going to solve any reliability issues. All manufacturers have become very global in the manufacturing process which I think has lowered overall quality. I also think we as purchasers are partly to blame as we are always demanding increased layers of complexity in the equipment we buy. Of course governments are also to blame for forcing emissions compliance on manufacturers.

 

[kendalwpg]

When I hear stories like this...it makes me think that I will stick with my 9600's for as long as possible. Think my repair bill for last harvest was under $5. Just picked up another one in decent shape for under $17,000. Seems like anything new I get is just harder and harder on fuel.. Combine is one of the last hold outs for "upgrading"

I have a 9600 and a 9770.....of course the 9770 uses more fuel and is more expensive to fix !!!.......its does at least 70% more work per hour over the 9600.

 

[Highmarker]

i

I have a 9600 and a 9770.....of course the 9770 uses more fuel and is more expensive to fix !!!.......its does at least 70% more work per hour over the 9600.

I have to disagree with you on this one!

In our conditions our 9760 is between 15% - 30% bigger in capacity as far as acres per hr or bu per hr than our 9650 W's (same capacity as a 9600). This is in wheat and if its really tough the old conventionals look better. in canola the difference is even less cause the sts has such a narrow sieve it can actually be less productive in really dry high mog conditions(9600 has wider sieves than the sts's). This is using losses as the limiting factor, if we were just thrashing as fast as we could the sts can definitly put it thru faster. I an guessing that if we grew corn the story would be different.
weve been running these combines side by side for 3 years and that is our experience.

 

[aussie.ltd.]

At the end of the day it's all about backup from the dealers and the manufacturer the company that gets my vote is the one with the machine that does the superior job in my situation and the dealer and manufacturer that isn't affraid to admit that a component on their product has a problem, but is willing to do something about it, ie: recalls, product clinics and bulletins for their customers, I would rather have a list of known issues and possible hours before part failures have occurred, (preventative maintenance is so much better than catastrophic failure) fix when fail really sucks for the owner because it normally happens outside of the warranty period and especially when some of these failures can amount to 50k plus with some of the major component failures. But also when manufacturers start sourcing bad quality components to cut cost and increase profit that really sucks for the person investing in thier machines especially considering how much some of these items cost these days

 

[Millner Harvesting]

Our 9860 has 4200 eng and 3700 Sep hrs. Did the same hub bearings to be proactive still weren't out. Replaced vertical and first horizontal auger this winter, spline was about to strip out... lucked out. Major issue was the front plate for the conveyor augers. Was broke in half. Not an easy part to replace at all but upgraded to a 70 series one so big plus in the end. Most plaguing thing with ours is electronic issues. Last year header wouldn't reverse, unloading auger wouldn't swing out after pressing the button, then wouldn't unload, had to hold button and unload in 3 second bursts. And now the engine starts missing around 3 o'clock in the heat of the day. Other than that its been a great combines for us. Sorry about your fan just had a custom buddy's 9860 do the same thing.

 

[Don Boles]

Our 9860 has 4200 eng and 3700 Sep hrs.

88% sep/engine hours, pretty good.

 

[HoRFarmsJesse]

Our 9860 has 4200 eng and 3700 Sep hrs. Did the same hub bearings to be proactive still weren't out. Replaced vertical and first horizontal auger this winter, spline was about to strip out... lucked out. Major issue was the front plate for the conveyor augers. Was broke in half. Not an easy part to replace at all but upgraded to a 70 series one so big plus in the end. Most plaguing thing with ours is electronic issues. Last year header wouldn't reverse, unloading auger wouldn't swing out after pressing the button, then wouldn't unload, had to hold button and unload in 3 second bursts. And now the engine starts missing around 3 o'clock in the heat of the day. Other than that its been a great combines for us. Sorry about your fan just had a custom buddy's 9860 do the same thing.

I replaced this bearing two years ago when it showed play one morning in the field. This time it went out less than 25acres after my morning check. I personally feel that it was a lower quality bearing, and there are no lube ports in the housing to help it out.

Last year we stripped the inner horizontal unloading auger splines, and also had to replace the 90* gearbox. Then shortly after was the top ball joint bushing on the pivot. Than replacement didnt last 2 weeks because we overlooked the cracks and worn out plates on the sliding disk portion of the pivot. When we updated and replaced all that, noticed the top ball (its literally just a 2" boat ball) had significant wear on one side as we let it grind metal too long. Contacted Deere engineering to see if we could just get the ball to weld in, no go, they I guess didnt want to assume the risk. Instead its the entire inner auger housing, at $3500. We ended up just building the ball up with weld surface and grinding round. Tedious.

Our front converyor auger plates cracked as well, just welded it up real well and have been lucky so far. Was unaware you could update to 70s series. Well look into that if it occurs again for sure.

Now on this radiator thing, called the other day about getting the rubber strips that cushion the radiator and intercooler inside the frame, just some 3M double sided foam stuff, they will only sell it as a "gasket kit" that includes the entire frame surround...$700. Guess ill have to stick to Home Depot on this one. They could easily sell this inserts, but want us to blindly stroke checks because they think they have us pinned. Well in some cases they do, and its pretty disheartening.

The local dealer has a combine in the shop right now with the same problem, and the bill is over 10k, and they are hardly surprised to hear of another. My parts bill was originally $9225 but is sitting around 5k after cutting out a lot of parts, including the intercooler, after seeing that ours had no air leaks even though its caved in from the aide about 4"

 

[lanwickum]

I used to get asked, "what is the best combine John Deere makes?" I have always had to reply. "The newest ones." In all, I still agree with this. How can anyone compare a combine with twice the power and does twice the capacity saying it is junk. It needs rebuilt at half the hours. Ya, and did just as many bushels or more. In half the hours.

 

[SWFarmService]

I don't mean to be hurtful but I still have never seen a combine that would do twice as much as say a R-72 gleaner "I pick this as my example because I feel the headers were probably the best capacity wise in that time frame that could be considered old" if you find me one I would consider upgrading. But here is where it turns crappie, if someone biulds a combine with twice the capacity of the machine I mentioned and its doubtful we will see such a thing in a long time it should have twice the longevity. I swear once these newer combines have a 1000 hrs on them you end up spending more hours with the machine rather than in the seat, any other piece of equipment that wass that pisspoor would be considered junk but they get away with it leaving the brain washing theory that it did twice as much.

Sad............ really