Broken Bucket Joystick Support

[Bill_Ryan]

TC35D with a 16LA Bucket.
The bucket control joystick came off in my hand while doing some bucket work.
2 screws hold the plastic joystick handle to a metal rod with curved flat piece (aka support rod). The screws are theaded into the curved flat piece. It broke clean through on either side of threaded hole of botton screw.
Under warranty, so part is free. A no brainer to replace. Just wondering if anyone else experienced this failure?
And I am gentle on the joystick...I realize that pressing harder doesn't move the bucket faster or raise a heavier load

Bill

 

[Anonymous Poster]

It's always good to be gentle with your joystick.
You're very lucky yours is still under warranty.

 

[edt]

HI BILL ONE OF MY BOLTS PULLED FREE AT ONE TIME NOW I CHECK IT REGULARY LUCKEY IT WASN'T SPRIPPED
EDT

 

[gmason]

Bill,
Yep mine broke off about a year ago, 4 months old then. Looks like they drilled the holes out for the screws and didn't leave enough material to support the stress.

Dealer replaced it under warrenty, no problems.
Looks like it's the weak link in the whole 16la loader.
I would hope the factory is looking into the problem after a number of failures like this.

gary

 

[mikim]

<font color=blue>Looks like it's the weak link in the whole 16la loader.</font color=blue>
it's the "D" models that have the weak joy stick - I have the 16LA loader on my plain 'ol 45 and it has a different joy stick - simpler/stronger
mike

 

[jinman]

Bill, here is a link to my thread titled "No Joy Joystick" in which I documented the same problem back in March of 2001.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=nhown&Number=36994&Search=true&Forum=nhown&Words=no%20joy&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=50&Old=allposts&Main=36994>Joystick</A>

After replacing my joystick with a new one and having it break in the same place, I gave up on the "Italian engineering" and came up with my own solution. You are exactly right that the metal support is weakened ridiculously by the screw hole at the point of highest stress. What I did was to slide the bracket down to where only the top screw hole is aligned to the bottom hole in the black handle. I put in one screw and let the broken piece stick out the bottom. I placed the whole unit down on top of the joystick shaft and used two hose clamps to secure the handle to the shaft. It doesn't look pretty, but it works like a charm. The joystick is actually much stronger.

My guess is that New Holland will eventually come out with a fix for this problem, but like many other snafus in the tractor's design, this one is really frustrating. I'm glad you got yours fixed...for now./w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

 

[Bill_Ryan]

Thanks jinman.

If it happens again and it's not still under warranty, I'll use your idea to fix it.

Bill

P.S.: While I waited for the part to come in, I did something a bit less glamorous involving a wooden doll rod and some electrical tape. Wasn't pretty, but it held up until the replacement part arrived.

 

[jinman]

Here is a drawing of what I actually did for my joystick. It doesn't look like much, but it's amazingly strong compared to the original design. I think it's because the joystick sits further down on the round shaft and the screw just keeps the plastic handle from sliding up and down. I'd take a picture, but you couldn't see anything but a joystick with two clamps below it, so it wouldn't be as good a representation of the "fix" as this illustration is. I'm sure there are a lot of non-deluxe model owners out there that are getting a few laughs about our "deluxe" model tractor's shortcomings./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

 

[mikim]

<font color=blue>I'm sure there are a lot of non-deluxe model owners out there that are getting a few laughs about our "deluxe" model tractor's shortcomings.</font color=blue>
not from me bud ... everytime I look down and want to see what my oil pressure is and all I see is an "idiot" light ... well ... they don't name 'em idiot lights fer nuttin'. Problem was when I ordered my 45 what I really wanted was a "D" model with manual transmission - but I guess I couldn't get it that way at the time - don't know if that's changed or not.
mike

 

[Kodiak]

And now New holland is going to allow that option. All the Boomer models with the exception of the TC18 will have all the Deluxe features, no matter what transmission you purhase.