John Deere and Yanmar

[ccsial]

A manufacturer may have had to take any tires they could get if a strike or some other problem was going on causing a shortage. I've seen this a lot more than once.

 

[sunnyside360]

I measured the diameter of front and rear tires on all three tractors as follows. Only slight difference was found on the 4320 and this may be due to not checking/adjusting tire pressure since last summer. The air pressure was checked on the other two tractors about two weeks ago and those diameters were dead on. Will measure the 4320 again after air pressures are checked.


JD 3720 R4 Galaxy Front Tire Diff = 0 Rear Tire Diff = 0
(made in Serbia)

JD 4320 R4 Titan Front Tire Diff = 1/4 in Rear Tire Diff = 1/8 in
(made in USA)

Kubota M8200 R1 Firestone Front Tire Diff = 0 Rear Tire Diff = 0
(made in USA)

 

[Rob-D]

A manufacturer may have had to take any tires they could get if a strike or some other problem was going on causing a shortage. I've seen this a lot more than once.

I'm not saying it's a bad tractor. I simply don't know but they let those tires go out the door and no one in the final inspection said, "hey this thing is noticably off we have to fix it". Worse yet the dealer couldn't find two right tires in his stock. What, No one at Kubota noticed? What if you went to get tires today? You may have older tires and their quality control my be going down. If I had a Kubota I'd want to know.
Toyota has cut their standards, I remember reading about it years ago when they said they were cutting back. They actually admitted it! Maybe this is the way of the world and Deere will be forced to do it too but right now I check everything with a micrometer and they are still right up there.

Here's the way it works. Company 'A' sells a car that cost a little more. They know that after 100 cuts with a line boring machine they have to change the ceramic cutter to keep tolerances to spec. so they do it. Company 'B' charges a little less but they push the ceramic cutter past the 100 cuts and if you get that engine it's simply not as good. So one guy from company 'B' could say, "Hey this thing is great" and another guy with the same logo could say, "Mine didn't hold up." Now if you have a product with low tolerances from the get go or a company that tells a supplier to work to the low side of tolerances you get an Edsel or a lot of tires that don't match.

By the way, this is classic WallMart. I won't buy electronics from them.
Rob

 

[JANDG]

If JD had a Chinese drivetrain in my 3032e, I would not have bought it. Simple as that for me. There is a few chinese parts on it, not many, but some. The tires are most definately chinese.The next JD I get in 6.5 years will be over 40hp & better be USA built drive train or Yanmar. If not I will be going Orange. Chinese drivetrains for JD would be a terrible move if you ask me & most will go orange for superior compacts . Heck even CC/Yanmar would be were my money would go if I bought another sub 40hp compact & orange was priced to high at the time. This all would only be if JD started messing about with chinese drivetrains. I could care less what kinda QC they had on them, wouldn't matter to me & many others
Joe

 

[MessickFarmEqu]

The tires are most definitely Chinese.The next JD I get in 6.5 years will be over 40hp & better be USA built drive train or Yanmar. If not I will be going Orange.

FYI - the current drive train is not USA built. Its done in Japan, mostly by Yanmar. New Holland and Kubota all do the same thing (so does the auto industry). They do just enough work here in the US to avoid tax penalties on imports. To say any tractor under about 150 HP is 'made in the USA' may make someone feel good, but in the end its a global product like any other.

And one more time. IT'S NOT THE MANUFACTURERS THEY BUY FROM. It's the tolerances they dictate to those manufacturers!

I don't know how much you know about modern manufacturing, but what you are saying is simply not possible. These tractor companies, as well as their suppliers have their inventory levels calculated down to the day, hour, minute. Literally. I've been to the Kubota factory in GA and they hold about 20 minutes worth of inventory on the production line. The suppliers work just the same way as inventory overhead kills profitability. They don't build tires and make one stack for Deere, and one stack for everyone else. They knock out whats required for that day and get it out the door. If a vendor had tolerance problems like you describe, their days in business would be very short.

Incidentally, as a retailer I can never recall us replacing a set of tires on any tractor, from any vendor because the rolling diameter was different. The standard of initial quality thats put out today is far beyond whats been put out over years past.

JD would be a terrible move if you ask me & most will go orange for superior compacts .

A few may, but not many. This goes back to my statement that what Deere has done best is the way they sell themselves. Unless they start selling complete and utter crap, people will continue to buy because of their perception of the company as a national icon of sorts. Deere people, but Deere equipment... then there is everyone else. We see very few customers crossing back and forth between brands. The product is pretty much irrelevent, thus why they have gone to marketing other companeis equipment under their name and selling more and more economey lines from India, China, etc.

 

[megotatractor]

Might be a good thing in the end, there are design "flaws" in the Deere/Yanmars. Hopefully Deere can design a better seat suspension than what they had on my 2210, and a better mower lift system. I also hope they cut down on the use of aluminum! Whoever heard of a tractor designed to be LIGHT anyway?

 

[Rob-D]

I don't know how much you know about modern manufacturing, but what you are saying is simply not possible. These tractor companies, as well as their suppliers have their inventory levels calculated down to the day, hour, minute. Literally. I've been to the Kubota factory in GA and they hold about 20 minutes worth of inventory on the production line. The suppliers work just the same way as inventory overhead kills profitability. They don't build tires and make one stack for Deere, and one stack for everyone else. They knock out whats required for that day and get it out the door. If a vendor had tolerance problems like you describe, their days in business would be very short.

Incidentally, as a retailer I can never recall us replacing a set of tires on any tractor, from any vendor because the rolling diameter was different. The standard of initial quality thats put out today is far beyond whats been put out over years past.


A few may, but not many. This goes back to my statement that what Deere has done best is the way they sell themselves. Unless they start selling complete and utter crap, people will continue to buy because of their perception of the company as a national icon of sorts. Deere people, but Deere equipment... then there is everyone else. We see very few customers crossing back and forth between brands. The product is pretty much irrelevent, thus why they have gone to marketing other companeis equipment under their name and selling more and more economey lines from India, China, etc.

First off, I know a lot about manufacturing. I ran a business, bought products from several manufacturers and assembled a final product.

Let me give you a real life example:

Wallmart sold Hills Bros. coffee and so did another major food chain. Wallmart ran an add showing the same can of Hills coffee and their much lower price next to the competitors. Turns out that Wallmart demanded from Hills that they put less coffee in the same exact can.

Now, back to the tooling cutter that one company changes and another doesn't. This is real life stuff. It doesn't matter how short stock is on assembly lines, procedures AND tolerances can be cut in an instant especially with CNC controlling everything like it does. Ask yourself this, how does a manufacturer insure their product goes to market with the tolerances and specifics they claim AND PAY for?

Do you remember years ago when a major manufacturer cut corners on tires and got caught? Wasn't it Ford and BF Goodrich with Ford putting tires on SUVs that were failing? It came down to what Ford's specs were.

You wanted "facts" and I gave you facts.

Kubota sent out bad tires. That means they either have poor quality control or that's what they specified. Which one do you want? Either way you're in trouble.

People stick to brands? It's all "irrelevant"? You think a Kmart lawn tractor gets the same Briggs engine a JD gets? Good luck with that!

 

[TripleR]

Might be a good thing in the end, there are design "flaws" in the Deere/Yanmars. Hopefully Deere can design a better seat suspension than what they had on my 2210, and a better mower lift system. I also hope they cut down on the use of aluminum! Whoever heard of a tractor designed to be LIGHT anyway?

The seat and mower lift are two of the complaints I have on my JD 2305. I have on occasion hauled my Kubota to our other farm where we have the 2305 so I won't have to use it.

 

[Rob-D]

Might be a good thing in the end, there are design "flaws" in the Deere/Yanmars. Hopefully Deere can design a better seat suspension than what they had on my 2210, and a better mower lift system. I also hope they cut down on the use of aluminum! Whoever heard of a tractor designed to be LIGHT anyway?

What I've noticed is that Deere fixes their problems. The battery leakage problem in the compacts has been corrected for example and they went to a beafier front drive shaft for the 4WD.

Things like that tell me a company cares about what they sell.

 

[mfreund]

FYI -
I don't know how much you know about modern manufacturing, but what you are saying is simply not possible. These tractor companies, as well as their suppliers have their inventory levels calculated down to the day, hour, minute. Literally. I've been to the Kubota factory in GA and they hold about 20 minutes worth of inventory on the production line. The suppliers work just the same way as inventory overhead kills profitability. They don't build tires and make one stack for Deere, and one stack for everyone else. They knock out whats required for that day and get it out the door. If a vendor had tolerance problems like you describe, their days in business would be very short.

They do not fire up the plant for 25 tires for Kubota and go home for the day. While it may be true they have low inventory at the assembly station. There is a vendor with a large inventory that supplies the assembly line. Yes, tires and everything else on the tractor are made for the MFG to a spec. Some spec's may be the same between competitors, there can be and is differences in the same tire size.