Broken Hoe!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rjp444us]

Well I broke my new #7 Hoe agian, (less then a mounth old) it is the third problem I have had with it. I am ready to give it right back to the dealer. Bent the bucket cylinder looks like a pretzel and bent the crowed boom as well denifitly not hardened rod. What a cheap piece of junk. should have bought some thing else like a KUBOTA. I will never buy another JD that is for sure. I went with a JD 790 #70 FEL and that other piece of junk that I mentioned above. I have a small busniess doing Walls Walks Patios and drive ways. I do this part time so I don't have time for the brake downs this is why I bought a brand new machine, dealer says that this was the machine I needed SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT THE KUBOTA!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sleepyhollow]

Just out of curiosity, what were you doing when hoe broke?

Good tools are built to be strong for the jobs they will face, but it is inevitable that there will be situations where the tool is more vulnerable to stresses. There is no such thing as a universal tool that is equally up to all tasks and can survive all possible situations.

The 47 hoe is well designed (I think you will find little argument here) and barring any manufacuring defects, it should perform without incident. It is up to the operator to understand the purposes for which the tool is designed and to be aware of situtations where the tool might be damaged.

The 47 hoe is a wonderful tool, but it has its limits. It is a hoe for designed for digging. It is not a crane, battering ram, rock breaker or plow nor is it designed to endure the stresses of a hoe twice its size. If your projects require any of the above, then some more implements and/or larger tractor may be in order.

A tractor is a versitile tool, but we need to have resonable expectations with respect to the work it can perform without causing it damage. This applies to all tractors regardless of color.

Perhaps your dealer misled you or maybe you did not communicate the scope and intensity of the work you expected the tractor to perform. In any case, I would hesitate to dismiss Deere so hastily. There are many people who have used the 47 hoe for several years with no issues. You had yours for a month. Is this your first CUT or maybe the first time with a backhoe perhaps?

I'm interested in hearing specifics about the situation in which the hoe failed so we may all benefit.
Thanks,
J

 

[JohnMiller3]

Hi Sleepyhollow,

Very well said…

A lot of mishaps occur from a tractor owner’s improper maintenance, exceeding the machine/implements rating, ignorance of the proper techniques of use and lack of instruction…
(then the problem after the fact... nobody will admit it...)

It would be like giving a 16 year-old kid keys to the car… and say “go at it” down a freeway by himself… and for the most part, the “lone weekend tractor warrior/farmer” has nothing but trial & error to go by… keeping his fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong, doing what he “thinks” may be right, mostly from hearsay or book reading… without any formal training…

The farmers have one another to consult, meetings with the ag people, many farm activities and get togethers, dealer & ag seminars, etc. to hone/learn their tractor/farming skills… and yes they have their mishaps as well…

The bottom line… proper tractoring is an art that is learned/developed from years of experience…

I don’t want this post to suggest that rjp444us did something right/wrong (I wasn’t there), I just wanted to point out… to whom it may concern… you just can’t jump on a tractor, turn the key, and off to work you go… there’s much more behind it than meets the eye… /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[pfoxy]

JD had a run of soft cylinder rods a while back, sounds like you got couple of 'em. The Compact Tractor Board had quite a few posts on the problem.

I've got a Woods hoe on my JD750, and it's about as bullet proof as anything can be. I've blown a few hoses, and broke a weld on the main boom, but that's in over 10 years of HARD use.

How's your 790 holding up, other than the hoe?

 

[rjp444us]

To answer pfoxy question I had problems with the tractor at the start but is doing fine now. The spur gear on the left front axel broke. it looked like play-dough inside. dealer agreed that it definitely wasn't hardened. There were a few other things also-nothing too bad. Now to the rest of the story!
Some background about me. I have been around equipment for 30 plus years-15 as a heavy equipment mechanic and operater, owning several pieces of equipment along the way. I have another tractor also in my arsenal. it is a S370D Satoh Beaver 1982 . So getting the question about experience out of the way let's talk where and how. I am doing a 66' long 4' high rock wall. I am prepping the area which consists of removing quite a few stumps. Now I know that the first thing that comes to mind aaaah he's doing stumps that's too much for the machine. But I am not your average lever jockey. I have a lot of experience at stumps in 2,000 pound machines and in 100,000 pound machines-I have operated them all. I had already removed 6 stumps. ground was soaked from all of the rain we received from the storm this past week so there was no challenge getting them out. when the rod bent all I was doing was moving dirt off of the top of the next stump and caught a root. then all I heard was what sounded like a rock stuck in the bucket area everytime I moved the lever. when I looked over the top of the boom I could not believe what I saw, I immediately brought it back to the dealer. The saga will continue when I find out more! It definitely looked like the cylinder rod was not hardened. It was not cracked or checked where it was severely bent which leaves me to believe that it was not hardened.

 

[Gary_in_Indiana]

<font color=blue>"The 47 hoe is a wonderful tool, but it has its limits. It is a hoe for designed for digging. It is not a crane"</font color=blue>

I have a model 47 backhoe on my JD 4200 and have nothing but praise for it. I have to say I do use it as a crane on a regular basis and it does a fine job there, too. Even my owners manual has instruction for using it that way including where to mount the chain on the hoe for lifting. I've used mine to pull fenceposts, lift logs & rocks and even load & unload my trailer and carry things from the trailer into the barn. I haven't used it to pull an engine yet, but only because I haven't needed to pull an engine since I've had it. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

If you've got a 47 backhoe and haven't used it as a crane yet, you're missing a marvelous utilization of the equipment and a lot of fun, too. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[centex]

I bent the same cylinder on my 48 BH and found that this was a fairly common problem. My dealer said that JD had a problem with missing or improperly installed relief valves. It was fixed under warranty. If you were not doing anything improper with the BH it should not bend itself under normal digging use. After I bent the shaft I looked at some other BH's and decided that these are definitely light duty machines. The bucket cylinder is small and long and really very fragile but the pressure releaf valve should keep it from bending.

 

[sleepyhollow]

Centex,

Which hoes did you find to be more heavy duty? (I'm assuming the same size/class backhoe here)
Thanks,
J

 

[gerard]

I agree totally with centex - if the relief valve is properly installed you should not be able to bend the rod. To think you should have to "guess" how much resistence you're going to meet each time you curl the bucket is ridiculous. That's the whole point of a relief valve and this one is either set too high, improperly installed, sticking etc OR the rods are faulty and need to be replaced. SHould be a simple test for a machine shop to give you the rockwell number of the rod and see if it matches specs. I'd be a pretty unhappy camper too if I were you. /w3tcompact/icons/sad.gif

 

[rjp444us]

The saga continues!
Had a good conversation with my dealer, MidState Tractor in Middletown Connecticut they have been great to deal with. I was a little upset when he said to me and I quote (You should have bought a bigger tractor) I almost came unglued sense he led me toward this tractor, when I went to buy a tractor I was going in to buy a B21 Kubota. But the 790 felt more comfortable then the B21. But the B21 is built like an adobe latrine the 790 light-duty. Now knowing that I am not doing heavy- duty work just more then average homeowner his and my thought was I should have no problem with the 790. I am coming to the conclusion that we were wrong! In my opinion JD has done an injustice to this machine It is a great machine The tractor has enough power to pull a house down but the implements are far inferior to bad,
I am not sure exactly what we are going to do but they want me to give it one more shot I will give them that. I may trade the whole tractor in for the B21 or I may trade the backhoe in for another brand I just don’t know. I do know one thing I am losing money with this tractor this tractor has been back 5 times to be repaired It is just about a month old I have just made the first payment if it keeps going down it is going to have to go can't afford to play with it. I get it back on Thursday with 3 new cylinders 2 left to right and the 1 bucket cylinder. Hope I have better luck this time.