kornowsd
New member
There's one other thought, here, in that you can't design for everything. There are always compromises. I'm an engineer, by trade, though I design in the "electrical" space, more so than the mechanical, the principles are, very, very, much, the same. If you haven't read about the sameness of everything check out the 1943 book "Dynamical Analogies" by Harry F. Olsen, wherein he outlines how much the same electrical, acoustical, mechanical, rectilineal and rotational systems are exactly the same and follow the same rules, equations and laws, just in slightly different application. 
Good read, if you're up for some calculus.
In my job, I design environments comprised of millions of interconnected devices. Our design goals, for each installation, vary and, as a consequence, the design principles used for each deployment are different, as well. The long and the short of it is... if you build a piece of equipment to withstand the wear and tear of constant use - which is what the 3029 motor, and other components, in this tractor are specifically designed for - you can't also build it to withstand years of standing around idle, in the sun. The two design principles are on opposite ends of a design continuum and to build exclusively for one element forces you to compromise the other, considerably. To have them both meet in the middle means that you've compromised both, equally, and you end up, still, with an entirely unique set of problems that didn't exist on either end of the design continuum. You can't end up pleasing everyone, and the compromises are not, uniquely, flaws, they are compromises that any design engineer has to make, in order to achieve the desired design goal, to meet the core design criteria of a product.
Let's take another case-in-point, on these tractors - well, in this instance, many of the newer Deere tractors - the brakes. Another common complaint, on these units and many of the newer Deere tractors, is the very "spongy" first press on the brakes. This is another example of the design continuum. Solid brakes every push, or less wear/tear on brake pads, linings and other components, less heat build up, better fuel efficiency, etc. In the early days, Deere had the pads rest lightly on the linings. This caused a bit of friction, took away a fractional amount of horsepower, burned extra fuel, heated up the hydraulic reservoir more, required larger hydraulic fluid capacities to support extra cooling required, and the list goes on and on. Now we're in this "green" era, where we have to reduce environmental pollution, reduce resource consumption, etc, etc, etc. So, Deere put a spring in the brake system that pulls the calipers off the linings when braking is complete. This causes some fluid to drain from the cylinders which, in turns, requires a pump or two to build the pressure back up in the system. However, in doing that, Deere was able to reduce reservoir size a small amount, reduce fluid required a small amount, decrease heat buildup in the hydraulic system, decrease frictional drag on the driveline, increase fuel efficiency, lower emissions... and the list goes on and on... at the cost of a weak first pump on the pedal. Design continuum... you choose the compromise, and that is it. With that design, which works for them, you can't have it both ways. So, they had to choose...
With any given product you make compromises... buy your clothes from Wal-Mart and get something without a warranty, cheaply constructed and low-cost... or, buy your clothes from Niemann Marcus, get a designer name and be able to take them back, even after six-seven years of wearing them and get new stuff, but you pay $300 for something that Wal-Mart charges $15 for. You compromise one thing, for the other. In my experiences with these tractors (and I grew up on a farm, overhauling them, working on them, etc, I'm ASE certified in diesel and gasoline products, so I do understand the basics of what's going on, here), these 505x series of tractors are designed for constant use... and, when you use them constantly, they run, flawlessly and have failure rates far below 1%, which is crazy amazing - typically a 1-2% product failure rate is kind of "OK" for many things. If you let them sit in the backyard, under a tree, for 80-90% of the time, they don't run so flawlessly. What I have, also, seen, is that the pure "utility" tractors, (3000/4000 series) in the Deere line are very resilient to being parked most of the time. Of course, you compromise a LOT of things in those series that you don't compromise in the 505X series.
As an example, I had a 4500 prior to my buying the 5055E. The 4500 was underpowered for what I used it for... but I could let it sit for months, start it up and drive off, no issues. It was a "weak" tractor in terms of driveline and other components - for the way that I, personally, used it (which was like a bulldozer). Eventually, after folding up three buckets like an origami project, I went to drive off with the thing, one day, and heard a distinctive "pop" in the rear-end, at which point all forward motion stopped on the tractor. That pop was my intermediary drive shaft - the one that drives the planetary gears, snapping in half. The compromise, there, was a 30HP driveline (to keep costs/weight/size/fuel/fluids down) on a 40HP tractor that I was pushing to do 60HP work. Now, I could look at that as a design flaw (850 hours on the motor), but it wasn't that. It was a tractor who's design goal was on the other end of the continuum from where I was using it. This was a "weekend warrior" tractor, designed for light dirt work, pulling small implements, etc... and I was pulling things that constantly forced the clutch to slip, bear down the motor to snubbing out, knocking trees out of the ground, and otherwise tasking it with loads designed for equipment much more powerful/sturdy than it was. Should it have held up? I think not! I wasn't using it within the design parameters for which it was made. When I told other Deere mechanics what I did with the tractor they were incredulous... they didn't expect that it would have lasted that long given what I did with it. Now, the 5055E does ALL that stuff... but with a driveline built for an engine 2x the power the current one can deliver. I wouldn't expect the same self-destructive mechanisms to surface, on it but, also, I wouldn't expect it to just sit, parked, either.
The 5055E's design continuum is very different from the 4500. The 5055E's design was not for the weekend warrior, parked most of the time... it was designed as a "utility" tractor (sized smaller) but with a constant use design criteria in mind. In order to keep things "operating" efficiently, for hours on end, every single day, they had to place different parts, different seals, etc. in the tractor. If you under utilize a 505E series tractor you'll notice that all the seals gunk up... every seal around the motor/transmission develops a film of oil/dirt and it gets thick... if you use the tractor all the time, the constant "fluid bath," from the inside, swells the seals, and the "leaks," for the most part, go away entirely or are very benign. They look "dangerous," though, when the thing isn't used hardly at all, with a constantly spreading amount of fluid/dirt collecting around the various parts of the tractor.
My Chevy Duramax (2013) starts to leak fluids after just a month in the garage with no use. I use it constantly, and it doesn't do it, all. It sits idle, brakes start to stick, especially the rear units... it runs rough... the list of maladies goes on and on. I drive the thing every day, push it hard, and it runs like a top all the time. I paid more than double, for that Duramax, than I did for my 5055E. It still has issues when it sits around... in the end, all things are designed to be used... like humans, when they sit around, idle, bad things happen to them. These are products designed by humans with all the imperfections that humans can provide for them... there is no such thing as perfect and we need to understand the design continuum and criteria used when we purchase a product. If we use it outside those bounds, it will fail, and fail miserably and repeatedly. It has to... in fact, I would want it to, to be totally honest. Otherwise, you're just waiting for the catastrophe which is far worse than the minor nits that show up, now.
The 505X series is a tough breed of tractor. Because of some other issues I created, I ended up pulling the head at 250-hours. This has NOTHING to do with product quality, I assure you. Entirely my fault, on that one. I had a gander down into those cylinder sleeves and the cross-hatches were still present, from the hone, like it had just come out of the factory... 250-hours and it's been through some relatively hard work already, for all of those hours... and the cylinder sleeves still looked like brand new. I have another 3-400 hours, at least, before that motor fully breaks in. Most of the Deere mechanics say between 6-700 hours is when these motors finally "run-in" and really start to perform. The rest of the tractor is built the same way... it's not a design flaw, the "flaw" is, is that we severely under utilize these things to the point where it's destructive to the machine... that's not so much Deere's fault as it is ours for buying a product whose design criteria does not meet our usage criteria...
Just my $0.02 worth on the thing...
Good read, if you're up for some calculus. In my job, I design environments comprised of millions of interconnected devices. Our design goals, for each installation, vary and, as a consequence, the design principles used for each deployment are different, as well. The long and the short of it is... if you build a piece of equipment to withstand the wear and tear of constant use - which is what the 3029 motor, and other components, in this tractor are specifically designed for - you can't also build it to withstand years of standing around idle, in the sun. The two design principles are on opposite ends of a design continuum and to build exclusively for one element forces you to compromise the other, considerably. To have them both meet in the middle means that you've compromised both, equally, and you end up, still, with an entirely unique set of problems that didn't exist on either end of the design continuum. You can't end up pleasing everyone, and the compromises are not, uniquely, flaws, they are compromises that any design engineer has to make, in order to achieve the desired design goal, to meet the core design criteria of a product.
Let's take another case-in-point, on these tractors - well, in this instance, many of the newer Deere tractors - the brakes. Another common complaint, on these units and many of the newer Deere tractors, is the very "spongy" first press on the brakes. This is another example of the design continuum. Solid brakes every push, or less wear/tear on brake pads, linings and other components, less heat build up, better fuel efficiency, etc. In the early days, Deere had the pads rest lightly on the linings. This caused a bit of friction, took away a fractional amount of horsepower, burned extra fuel, heated up the hydraulic reservoir more, required larger hydraulic fluid capacities to support extra cooling required, and the list goes on and on. Now we're in this "green" era, where we have to reduce environmental pollution, reduce resource consumption, etc, etc, etc. So, Deere put a spring in the brake system that pulls the calipers off the linings when braking is complete. This causes some fluid to drain from the cylinders which, in turns, requires a pump or two to build the pressure back up in the system. However, in doing that, Deere was able to reduce reservoir size a small amount, reduce fluid required a small amount, decrease heat buildup in the hydraulic system, decrease frictional drag on the driveline, increase fuel efficiency, lower emissions... and the list goes on and on... at the cost of a weak first pump on the pedal. Design continuum... you choose the compromise, and that is it. With that design, which works for them, you can't have it both ways. So, they had to choose...
With any given product you make compromises... buy your clothes from Wal-Mart and get something without a warranty, cheaply constructed and low-cost... or, buy your clothes from Niemann Marcus, get a designer name and be able to take them back, even after six-seven years of wearing them and get new stuff, but you pay $300 for something that Wal-Mart charges $15 for. You compromise one thing, for the other. In my experiences with these tractors (and I grew up on a farm, overhauling them, working on them, etc, I'm ASE certified in diesel and gasoline products, so I do understand the basics of what's going on, here), these 505x series of tractors are designed for constant use... and, when you use them constantly, they run, flawlessly and have failure rates far below 1%, which is crazy amazing - typically a 1-2% product failure rate is kind of "OK" for many things. If you let them sit in the backyard, under a tree, for 80-90% of the time, they don't run so flawlessly. What I have, also, seen, is that the pure "utility" tractors, (3000/4000 series) in the Deere line are very resilient to being parked most of the time. Of course, you compromise a LOT of things in those series that you don't compromise in the 505X series.
As an example, I had a 4500 prior to my buying the 5055E. The 4500 was underpowered for what I used it for... but I could let it sit for months, start it up and drive off, no issues. It was a "weak" tractor in terms of driveline and other components - for the way that I, personally, used it (which was like a bulldozer). Eventually, after folding up three buckets like an origami project, I went to drive off with the thing, one day, and heard a distinctive "pop" in the rear-end, at which point all forward motion stopped on the tractor. That pop was my intermediary drive shaft - the one that drives the planetary gears, snapping in half. The compromise, there, was a 30HP driveline (to keep costs/weight/size/fuel/fluids down) on a 40HP tractor that I was pushing to do 60HP work. Now, I could look at that as a design flaw (850 hours on the motor), but it wasn't that. It was a tractor who's design goal was on the other end of the continuum from where I was using it. This was a "weekend warrior" tractor, designed for light dirt work, pulling small implements, etc... and I was pulling things that constantly forced the clutch to slip, bear down the motor to snubbing out, knocking trees out of the ground, and otherwise tasking it with loads designed for equipment much more powerful/sturdy than it was. Should it have held up? I think not! I wasn't using it within the design parameters for which it was made. When I told other Deere mechanics what I did with the tractor they were incredulous... they didn't expect that it would have lasted that long given what I did with it. Now, the 5055E does ALL that stuff... but with a driveline built for an engine 2x the power the current one can deliver. I wouldn't expect the same self-destructive mechanisms to surface, on it but, also, I wouldn't expect it to just sit, parked, either.
The 5055E's design continuum is very different from the 4500. The 5055E's design was not for the weekend warrior, parked most of the time... it was designed as a "utility" tractor (sized smaller) but with a constant use design criteria in mind. In order to keep things "operating" efficiently, for hours on end, every single day, they had to place different parts, different seals, etc. in the tractor. If you under utilize a 505E series tractor you'll notice that all the seals gunk up... every seal around the motor/transmission develops a film of oil/dirt and it gets thick... if you use the tractor all the time, the constant "fluid bath," from the inside, swells the seals, and the "leaks," for the most part, go away entirely or are very benign. They look "dangerous," though, when the thing isn't used hardly at all, with a constantly spreading amount of fluid/dirt collecting around the various parts of the tractor.
My Chevy Duramax (2013) starts to leak fluids after just a month in the garage with no use. I use it constantly, and it doesn't do it, all. It sits idle, brakes start to stick, especially the rear units... it runs rough... the list of maladies goes on and on. I drive the thing every day, push it hard, and it runs like a top all the time. I paid more than double, for that Duramax, than I did for my 5055E. It still has issues when it sits around... in the end, all things are designed to be used... like humans, when they sit around, idle, bad things happen to them. These are products designed by humans with all the imperfections that humans can provide for them... there is no such thing as perfect and we need to understand the design continuum and criteria used when we purchase a product. If we use it outside those bounds, it will fail, and fail miserably and repeatedly. It has to... in fact, I would want it to, to be totally honest. Otherwise, you're just waiting for the catastrophe which is far worse than the minor nits that show up, now.
The 505X series is a tough breed of tractor. Because of some other issues I created, I ended up pulling the head at 250-hours. This has NOTHING to do with product quality, I assure you. Entirely my fault, on that one. I had a gander down into those cylinder sleeves and the cross-hatches were still present, from the hone, like it had just come out of the factory... 250-hours and it's been through some relatively hard work already, for all of those hours... and the cylinder sleeves still looked like brand new. I have another 3-400 hours, at least, before that motor fully breaks in. Most of the Deere mechanics say between 6-700 hours is when these motors finally "run-in" and really start to perform. The rest of the tractor is built the same way... it's not a design flaw, the "flaw" is, is that we severely under utilize these things to the point where it's destructive to the machine... that's not so much Deere's fault as it is ours for buying a product whose design criteria does not meet our usage criteria...
Just my $0.02 worth on the thing...
