And Kubota used 3 digit hour meters because???????

[rbargeron]

I got mine with 640 on it, and was looking at a nice B7200 with 505 on it.......The tractors are built around the mid 80's, and usually have far more hours on them that the gauge says.........

I've had '82 L225, '82 L345, '86 L4150 - all were 4-digit meters (0000.0)
Maybe the early B's were mostly developed for small-scale domestic farming where 1000 hours was considered a lot of use. Even today in Japan a car with 50,000 miles on it is considered high-mileage.

 

[Camo]

Even today in Japan a car with 50,000 miles on it is considered high-mileage.

Probably because of the amount of time idling in traffic.

 

[irwin]

Quote:

The same genius thinking that led to computer programmers using a 2 digit year in the date program.. This by the way allowed programmers to make a lot of money in the late 1990's doing Y2K updates.

​

Back in the 60's and 70's disk drives were sized the hundred thousands of bytes not megabytes or gigabytes they are today. When creating a database of a larger size, we looked for any way to save bytes so it would fit on a drive. This was what caused the problem. Even with 30 megabyte drives, a file with 500,000 records took up a huge amount of the available storage. We did whatever we could to compact the data.

As far as the y2k problem, often times the problem was just to the rest of problems we had to solve.

Y2k was a necessary evil!

Barry

Yes indeed, we humans do tend to wait til the last second to address a problem don't we? Programing in the second half of the eighties was the right time to fix it, cost to repair went up with the delay even though money is always one of the major reasons for this type of deferral.

No offense meant to the individuals that did what they were told and waited. It's human nature to put off the hard, or expensive choices. Programing early computers may be the excuse for Y2K but we weren't ignorant, we knew the year 2000 was close by 1985-1990... yes?

I should of posted this: "The same genius thinking that led to computer programmers to continue using a 2 digit year in the date program after 1985.. This by the way allowed programmers to make a lot of money in the late 1990's doing Y2K updates.

ps: I do have a problem with lazy decisions that adversely affect future events. This by no means implies I'm without fault in my own responsibilities.

 

[PILOON]

3 digits is probably just fine.
Have you not noticed that most of those mechanical counters and tachometers always seem to quit way before they reach 999 anyways?

 

[DmansPadge]

It is because when your buddy with another brand tractor asks how many hours you have on your Kubota you can add a few thousand... and so when you sell it you can subtract a few thousand! Ok... the first reason is ok to do... don't do the second!!

 

[BobRip]

To be fair the reason for the 2 digit year is probrably the same as the hour meter- $$$$$.

Back in the 60's and 70's computer memory was highly expensive.
I worked on a radar in the Marines that had 4K of memory and the big brother that had 64K..


valid reasoning?

Later,
J

You are right. During the 60's (1960's) memory was $500,000 for 8k. Every bit was precious.

 

[Yankee Clipper]

My understanding is the Japanese farmes use their tractors very little in their working life. With Government ag subsidies, rice farmers can live nicely on a small plot of land and don't use their tractors too much.

The other side is that the Japanese govenment subsidizes industry so they raise the tax value on everything so that when it is 7 years old, you can't afford to keep it. They don't expect the farmer to keep his tractor for long periods and rebuild them several times over their working life as we do here , but rather buy new stuff and scrap the old. This is where the gray market machines come from - they cost more to keep in Japan than they are worth so the industrial "pump" stays primed constantly.

That is why the hour meters were only three digit and even today the tie in with government and industry is the same.

I just hope President Obama is not reading this as it may give him some ideas on how to sell cars for GM and Chrysler! I like older stuff myself as I am getting to be older myself!

 

[john_bud]

Yep I agree. Even with the 4 digit meter it has little to do with the real life of the tractor. My 98 Kubota 21 has a mechanical meter that is keyed off of the RPM's. Run it for 10 hours at half throttle and you gain 5 hours. My 05 Kubota L39 has an electric meter. Leave the key on without the tractor running for 10 hours and you gain 10 hours on the meter.

MarkV

And which one shows more accurately the wear on the engine? (Hint: it's not the one that racks up hours when the engine is not running!)
jb

 

[FullBucket]

2 digit dates really got their start on punch cards. You only had 80 characters to key on one card and that forced short forms to be used. Diskdrives and databases were still many years away. Back then yard long trays of punch cards where used to store the data and physical space was really at a premium.

 

[WaxMan]

The hour meters were intended to be used to schedule maintenance not to reflect the "life" of the tractor. They were (are) so easy to change they have little credibility for that. I've seen several peices of older construction equipment that had 3 digit "Hobbs" meters.

I agree makes perfect sense , what would make it any easier to keep track of maintenance without any figuring. The scheduled maintenance keep repeating itself.