That is just the price of the part. My neighbor at the farm, who is quite a mechanic among other things, concurred with my diagnosis and made a call to a friend that does air conditioning on the side and the cheapest one to work on them in town. He will get back to him sometime tomorrow when he gets off of his regular job. This was a lot simpler than getting the tractor to the dealer which is eleven miles through two towns and across interstate bridges to cross the river. It requires special tools as in pullers, other than that the job looks relatively simple which sometimes gets me into trouble and with these parts prices, I will let someone else tackle it.
The neighbor is a welder for a local manufacturer, builds houses on the side. He also overhauled a transmission on a old explorer of mine. He overhauled a neighbors diesel engine on a pickup. Last year when he was using my backhoe on a house he was building some bolts on the rear end went out, which involved pulling the entire rear end and transmission. John Deere's fix for this is to replace the hub to the tune of a couple of grand. He hauled the hub out to a cousin of his in Montana, they built it up, turned it town, put in a bearing and was good to go, this saved me over $1500. He has also painted his pickup and a swather for a neighbor. This guy can do almost anything. If he cannot do it, he knows someone that can get the job done and not at the prices that the machine shop will charge.
