You know, I must belong to the luckiest farming family on earth. First, I read about all these people having woes with disc mowers and we've had only a couple of problems with our Kuhn since 1985 (I'll admit this year, just a week ago, a weld on the break away arm broke and we had to have it rewelded, and also had to replace the PTO shaft because when the mower bent backwards too far, it bent the shaft). Anyway, that same mower is hooked to the back of, you guessed it, a Ford 5000 (1968 model, I think) with a Select-o-Speed tranny. This has been our hay mowing tractor since 1985, as well has plowing, disking and seeding for the years that we did corn, tobacco plots, general farming tasks, etc etc. We've had some problems with the carbuerator (gas engine), power steering and blew a hydraulic line once, but never any problems with the transmission.
But it's not just the guys on this board; guys at work talk about the select o speed like its a dog, although I don't think any of them personally had one go south. It's similar, I think, to the JD 2010 that I had; about 2/3 or people say it is an awful tractor, 1/3 say it's fine - it all depends on who you ask. I think the bad news is usually more overwhelming because folks talk about stuff when it goes bad but not so much when it goes right - not too many posts where folks log on just to say - hey, my transmission has had no problems!
I have no idea if parts are difficult to come by or not; I contend that in this day and age of the internet, every part is findable. When working on my 2010, I had to do a lot of searching and calling, but I found everypart but 1, and I had it fabricated at a local machine shop. I'd check to see if the part you need can be had fairly easily/cheaply and go from there.
