Bought new tractor, broke, disappointed..

[RCL]

I bought a New Holland TC18 tractor with a loader attachment in 2003. I use it on my big 3/4 acre spread. Well I went to back up and it made a cracking noise, then it hissed from the breather on top of the 3 point hitch and then all the oil leaked out from the right rear axle.
The tractor had 141 hours on it and most of those hours were from snow plowing my driveway.
I approached the dealership I bought the tractor from in Massachussetts and they said that I should get her in so they could take a look at it. I pointed out that I was just over the warranty as far as years owned but well under on the hours used.
Well $800. later I am told the tractor is fixed. They said the right rear wheel bearing had broken! I asked if New Holland had had any other problems like this. The dealer stated no. I asked why did it happen. The dealer said they had no idea and thought it was strange for a bearing to fail like that. So now I am the proud owner of a New Holland tractor which apparently eats wheel bearings every 141 hours. Anyone else thinking of buying a tractor might want to think of another brand with better wheel bearings.

 

[Billy_S]

Parts fail, no matter what brand.

I broke my Kubota (rear axle seal) when it had only 28 hours on it. It was not a warranty issue and cost me a little over $300 to fix.

 

[DavesTractor]

I suspect you will run it thousands of hours without another wheel bearing failure. The bearing was probably built by someone other than New Holland and it was likely flawed in the manufacturing process and took until now to totally fail. We just replaced a bunch of parts in the front of an L35 Kubota because a bearing failure. It appears the L35 has a well built front axle, but when part of a bearing race went between a couple gears, it was bad news. So it happens on all brands, but I'm sure that doesn't make you or your wallet feel any better.

If you were just barely out of warranty I would think they might consider helping you some on the cost, just as a neighborly gesture?

 

[Bob_Skurka]

I guess I look at this as an unusual occurance and agree with the other folks before me.

Any mechanical device can break at any time, regardless of brand. What would worry me is if there was evidence that there were regularly reported failures of the same thing in the same model by many people. That is when there is a real design flaw. Personally I don't blame you for being upset, if I had to part with $800 for seemingly a stupid reason then I would be upset too. But I don't think that any single failure is reason to condem any brand. And if the failure is clearly and isolated case, then we cannot rule out some sort of owner abuse, neglect, or unknown. And that would be true with any brand.

I do believe that some brands are generally more reliable than other brands. Kubota has certainly earned my trust over 6 years of ownership and zero failures (other than operator induced problems). New Holland has also earned my respect (but I'm only on 3 years of ownership with that unit). Both brands have problems reported here on TBN. Rarely to you see the same problem reported by numerous people, but given how many tractor they sell, it is surprising that MORE problems are not reported. The same cannot be said for some other brands.

Heck I know of one Kubota & New Holland dealership that sell more tractors out of their dealership than some of the minor brands sell in a year nationwide, but if you read around some of the minor brand forums you see repeated problems reported by owners.

 

[bbse]

Bob_Skurka "Heck I know of one Kubota & New Holland dealership that sell more tractors out of their dealership than some of the minor brands sell in a year nationwide, but if you read around some of the minor brand forums you see repeated problems reported by owners."

Now I see why everyone gets so stirred up when you get on those other forums. Of course with that kind of reasoning Kubota would have never got off the ground in the USA because people just like you, were saying the exact same thing about Kubota when they were the new kid on the block. You got to start somewhere.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

Now I see why everyone gets so stirred up when you get on those other forums. Of course with that kind of reasoning Kubota would have never got off the ground in the USA because people just like you, were saying the exact same thing about Kubota when they were the new kid on the block. You got to start somewhere.

OK. I understand your statement. But you are completely wrong. My statement had to do with quality, not with being a new comer.

If a brand sells 3,000 or 4,000 or maybe 5,000 tractors a year and it has multiple reports of the same problem then it is a real problem. It is simply not reliable. Justify it any way you want, but it is not reliable.

On the other hand, a brand, take Kubota for example, that sells perhaps 100,000 to 120,000 tractors in North America per year, and it does NOT have multiple frequent reports of the same problem, then it is apparently a pretty darn reliable brand.

I pick on all the brands, including those I currently own (4) and see no reason why any brand should be cut any slack at all for multiple common problems. Perhaps you think that because the brand is starting out that it should be allowed to be unreliable? Sorry, but I do not. It doesn't matter who you are, if you are dropping your hard earned cash on equipment, then you deserve to have reliable equipment parked in your barn. So I dismiss your comment "You got to start somewhere" completely and I attempt to buy reliable goods. People have no problem supporting newcomers to the market if they are reliable, Lexus automobiles proves that!

You are free to dismiss whatever I write, and I am fine with that. But you should at least understand what I write before jumping to incorrect conclusions.

 

[N80]

There was a report here recently of a very new Kubota L4400 (the same tractor I have) that busted a huge hole in the rear axle housing during normal operation. This is a catastophic failure in a brand and model that is typically very well regarded and respected. Last I heard it was being repaired under warranty. My point, which is just echoing what the others have said, is that these rare occurances are just a fact of life. If the frequency of the problem rises to the point where a single freak breakdown becomes a known defect, that's another matter.

In regard to the new brands out there, I understand what you mean by "you have to start somewhere". But it is a two edged sword. When you buy into a brand that hasn't been around long enough to establish a reputation you are taking a certain amount of risk and it is clearly more risk than buying from one of the big 3 or 4 brands. The risk is that the machine might be a piece of junk. On the other hand, the payoff can be that you are buying into a new quality brand destined to become the next Kubota at a really great price. The key is that first, you have to take the risk and second, the new brand has got to prove itself.

This really isn't relevent to this specific discussion though since NH is a pretty old and respected brand. but in the situation of the original post this really just comes down to 'manure happens.'

The good thing about the internet, and this site in general is that if there are known and recurrent defects in a tractor the world learns about it pretty quickly. This makes the stakes for the new brand on the block very high: if you make something good, word will spread fast and you'll do well but if you make junk, it isn't going to stay a secret.

 

[bbse]

Bob,
This thread started with a bad wheel bearing. I agree also that it was probably bad from the beginning and was not NH fault. Then there were a couple of posts about Kubota with bearing problems. The next thing I read is an attack on anything not from the big three. I do not want to cut any maker slack either. I was just jabbing you in the ribs because you seem to be kinda biased and you get on those other boards and stir them up . You can have any opinion you want as can I. I just took it humorously that you turned a wheel bearing into a brand slam when the said wheel bearing was not even on one of those other brand of tractors.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

bbse, I bashed no brands I simply provided a legitimate example of what other people were discussing, that being that fluke breakdowns are flukes and not reason to condemn a brand. I then provided only the broadest and most obtuse reference without naming any brand and you take it as bashing? Sorry but you missed the point. I'm all in favor of supporting a new comer, one of my tractors is a recent brand (Ventrac) and it works great. I've highlighted the positives and pointed out the one problem I have had with it. "You got to start somewhere" totally misses the point, and now you are saying it was fun poke in my ribs. Sure.

 

[Soundguy]

I feel your pain.. but breakages and repairs 'happen'.

I'm the second owner of my 2002 NH 7610s. It has 8?? hours on it now. Last month I went to use a mower that needed 2 remotes on it.. I had never used remotes.. well.. one remote didn't work.

Was about a 2 week ordeal to fix... Nh tech manager even called the original owner, who had only ever used 1 remote...

Ended up being a casting flay in the spool body. Course I was a year out of warranty.. so it cost my 700$ to fix.... to fix a problem that came from the factory.. but you know what.. It's a great tractor and i wouldn't trade it for the world.

Everybody has problems with parts.. just a thing...

Soundguy

I bought a New Holland TC18 tractor with a loader attachment in 2003. I use it on my big 3/4 acre spread. Well I went to back up and it made a cracking noise, then it hissed from the breather on top of the 3 point hitch and then all the oil leaked out from the right rear axle.
The tractor had 141 hours on it and most of those hours were from snow plowing my driveway.
I approached the dealership I bought the tractor from in Massachussetts and they said that I should get her in so they could take a look at it. I pointed out that I was just over the warranty as far as years owned but well under on the hours used.
Well $800. later I am told the tractor is fixed. They said the right rear wheel bearing had broken! I asked if New Holland had had any other problems like this. The dealer stated no. I asked why did it happen. The dealer said they had no idea and thought it was strange for a bearing to fail like that. So now I am the proud owner of a New Holland tractor which apparently eats wheel bearings every 141 hours. Anyone else thinking of buying a tractor might want to think of another brand with better wheel bearings.