Fast Forward......Friday, Feb 10, 2017. Looked at TSC www and they listed their 6' roto tiller as being County Line. Got to the store they had 2 units in stock with no mfgr. ID. Sticker on the back said made in China. Black plastic paper container on the unit has Behlen Country (2015 updated ) instructions. Did a www on them and they have 3 US locations, one is in Texas and a main "International" US office. Date of mfgr was 3/10/2016.
Units are manufactured and shipped dry, no grease for the shaft bearing nor gear lube in either gearbox (from China) except for the PTO shaft which may be added upon arival at CONUS, already greased, maybe not, who knows. It had the zerks greased. The gear boxes were rusty inside as were the full pipe plugs and fill/vent port threads on the top of both. Took a 6 (not 12) sided (hexagon shaped) wrench to get the full plugs out.
Shining a flashlight down into the gear boxes showed significant rust and condensation on both gear boxes. Not really what you want to see when you pay $2000, er excuse me $1999.99 for a NEW implement. PTO gearbox is said to be rated at 60 hp making it pretty large. The whole rear of the box is a 6" square plate mounted with 4 screws (one at each corner) and a rubber flat gasket that is partially pooched out which you can grasp and squeeze with your hand. I had gear oil on the machine yesterday from filling and not sure if the gasket has started leaking already but I don't like it. It may be Neoprene to resist oil degredation.....who knows. WWW speaks of powercoat durability but all parts weren't completely covered (on the outside where I could see the voids during assy.
It took me several hours yesterday to get it put together and I'm mechanically inclined. Not sure if I'll keep it or take it back. Going to check the satisfaction guarantee time line and before it expires will determine then.
Part of my chap here is that you are led to believe something via advertising. When you go to purchase it you get something else from China made for a song and sold for what you would expect to pay for something made in the USA. I have bought some premium parts from China and some that weren't. Getting parts from China doesn't help "Make America Great Again" by providing manufacturing jobs here. We can build things here for a competitive price. We have the technology and know how for "Design to Cost". We have CNC milling machines and design engineers and all. Design to cost doesn't mean it's cheap crap. A Ford Pinto and a Cadillac Sedan DeVill are two American cars designed for 2 different markets. The Ford is not cheap junk if it it's design, components and manufacturing techniques are industry standard. It's designed for the guy/gal that wanted affordable transportation, forget the frills. That was the market. That is what they did.....yeah I know about the fuel tank. They had to put it somewhere and on that car there wasn't much room to find a place for it. Besides, how far do you have to go to "protect us from ourselves".
