plojin said:
Hi Rob! I'm a newbie allright, and will present myself "as times comes". But i just want to add my experience to further mess this chinese confusion. I have a JM 254 with the Jinma FEL ZL03D. It has the paralellogram for keeping the forks horisontal at lift. It has the QA for rapid change from bucket to forks. The FEL works well with the forks, but the bucket lacks downcurl. When using the BH, the bucket cant get grip in the ground to prevent the machine from dragging. So, there are obviously no backcheck at the factory to what really works with the tractor. Probably obsolete contructions are used together with bits and peaces from near and far.
You Rob, should work at the Jinma factory as a R&D consultant. You could live on a chinese salary? not!!
Per (in Sweden)
Hello Per in Sweden. Welcome to TBN!
From your description, you have a self-leveling bucket, right? I have not worked one so I can't say to much about them, other than I was under the impression that you CAN curl and dump the bucket and it would just stay in that position as you raised or lowered the FEL arms. From what you say, you cannot dump down far enough, right? So I think you are right to a degree about the Chinese "backcheck" system. I think we call that quality control or engineering control.
My personal opinion is they do not use obsolete parts, but just the opposite.
Again, this is only my personal opinion though...
I think they see innovations such as a QA or self leveling system on other tractors and they want to offer them on their tractors too. They've actually made great improvements doing that such as now having all "spin-on" filters and such. My guess is that they design (or use someone else's design) and ADD them to their tractor without really checking to see if it indeed does everything it's supposed to. Perhaps they "assume" since it works on other tractors it automatically works on theirs? I can only imagine that they make these improvements in a hurry to capture more and more of the market. But they seem to do it without really checking them out thoroughly? For instance, a little checking would have revealed my problem, and the solution would be to re-arrange the pivot or mounting points...much as I'm trying to do.
It seems they could have done the same for your self-leveling system.
As an "aside", another thing I want to make clear is this.
I am aware that I will most likely not get the same quality or features on my Chinese tractor that I would have gotten on a name brand tractor. The difference, however, is the price I paid. For me, this was well worth it since I can (was prepared) to make upgrades. In fact, everything I've done as an upgrade to my Kama and now the Jinma will still be thousands below what I would have paid for a name brand tractor. I know ... I priced them seriously before making my decision. I have now had over 500 hours on the Kama alone and it has done everything I could have done with any other tractor of similar size and hp. My numerous threads sharing what I've done with it are a testament to this. That is not to say I wouldn't want one of the super deluxe name brand tractors. Just the opposite is true. I wish I did, but for me the Chinese tractor will certainly do the job. It's not that I couldn't afford one either, it was something I chose to deal with.
People are funny that way, placing personal values on items. What's of value to one is not necessarily the same to another. I think it has a lot to do with the individual and what he thinks he can do for himself. Such as in my case, where I'm in a position to rebuild (my retired time) as needed. That is no big deal to me. Other things such as painting for example ... I hire it out every time since I hate doing it. I am not a cheapskate either, just have a different opinion of what's valuable to me, I guess. To give you an idea, the Rolex I wear cost 5 times as much as what I paid for the tractor. All it does is tell time ... go figure.
So this thread is not about bashing the Chinese tractor as much as it is about how to get them to work better for us. My disappointment lies with the fact that this problem is an engineering (mechanical) problem and they didn't check it out enough to find it on the Jinma. Like I said, my Kama didn't have those kind of problems, they were more quality control issues such as loose bolts or electrical connections and old school technology. But if all that were done and checked, that tractor would work perfectly as is designed. The stuff I've done to it are upgrades like a guy would do with a car to get more hp to make it faster or the like. As far as the Jinma, with all the upgrades I've done to it so far, and once I fix this problem, it will give us years of service as a fully equipped working tractor. For what I paid including the upgrades, using rates out here, I figure only 100 hours and I got my money back easily. (you can't believe what I paid for it) Anything after that is gravy.
So in my case, it is still a bargain, even with this problem.
