John Deere plastic hoods

[WVAhills]

The newer tractors that have thermoplastic elastomer rubber in them are better hoods , the old plastic hoods had no advantage for the customer PURE plastic. I don't know what they were thinking. I like that idea about a hood from another brand of tractor.. Where to start ??

 

[WVAhills]

Good point why are there so many posts about John Deere hoods ?...my hood has not been abused . I would think reinforced fiber glass would be stronger than a thin sheet of plastic. A five to ten pound rock would more than likely bust mine can't say for yours sounds like you have some good plastic. If you like I will go find a 5 pound rock and drop it on the remaining section of the hood and take it up to 10 pounds if needed. You tell me how high to hold the rock before I drop it and I will take pictures . I am going to have to get a new hood anyway.

 

[TomSeller]

I am partial to Deere as well , it aggravates me that they shoved one into the customer and they know it. I bought the John Deer X 758 signatures garden tractor for mowing purposes and I love , it has a much better hood etc , they finally started using more rubber in the hoods , impact resistant.
One of my favorite old tractors is a Farmall 140 , had it on the farm growing up , learned to drive on it.

All brands (and I have Deere tractors in addition to other brands) have an issue here and there. I suggest you roll with the hood issue. It could something more serious.

 

[WVAhills]

I might add the cowing around my instrument cluster where the screws hold it in place have cracked and broke in a couple of places. The side panels have these little spring loaded latches that turn and you flip them over on there side to hold the panels in place and one or two of them have cracked.
The fenders you can stand on them and of course the floor boards and fenders are made out of different type of reinforced plastic

 

[sd455dan]

The newer tractors that have thermoplastic elastomer rubber in them are better hoods , the old plastic hoods had no advantage for the customer PURE plastic. I don't know what they were thinking. I like that idea about a hood from another brand of tractor.. Where to start ??

Possibly someone could do a mold from a good hood and then make some replacement ones out of fiberglass?

What kind of money are the JD replacements selling for?

 

[Deere Dude]

Good point why are there so many posts about John Deere hoods ?...my hood has not been abused . I would think reinforced fiber glass would be stronger than a thin sheet of plastic. A five to ten pound rock would more than likely bust mine can't say for yours sounds like you have some good plastic. If you like I will go find a 5 pound rock and drop it on the remaining section of the hood and take it up to 10 pounds if needed. You tell me how high to hold the rock before I drop it and I will take pictures . I am going to have to get a new hood anyway.

It rolled off the back of the bucket full of dirt onto a new 3720 from about 2-3 feet or so above the hood. It seemed like slow motion. If you hold your hands together like holding a basketball then have all the fingers apart about 2 inches, that was about how big the rock was. Needless to say I expected the worse and I said, "Oh ****," but all was well.

Another time the hood was wide open and the wind slammed it shut, not a problem but I cringed. The same hood on my X740 my wife after washing the tractor would just let it drop until I saw her do that and ripped he a tad, but nothing broke.

I take pride in my tractors and try to keep them looking nice if possible.

I am not a nutso fan of plastic by any means but never had a problem with plastic. Maybe it is luck. Tractors are always stored inside so no fading exists.

I have plastic fenders which may be a different material on my dually and a tree backed into me and cracked a fender. I had to replace that but I don't know if a metal fender would have fared any better. I could have pounded the dents down but if I wanted to keep it nice it would have been replaced anyway.

 

[beenthere]

New hood for 4300 is $299 on Amazon.. that is not high priced in my book.

No complaints on my 4300 hood.. dropped a good size tree limb on it without a crack or even visible scratch. Tractor is 18 years old now and have many people that can't believe that it isn't brand new.
If I would manage to abuse a hood and have it crack, I'd be real happy that Deere would even carry such an item in their inventory after 18 years.. regardless the price.
Anyone want to make an aftermarket hood... then which model would one pick to invest big bucks in tooling.. of the many many models of JD out there. It would be curtains for sure... and then how to reach out to those who might need a hood? And to have an off-green hood on one's JD would be embarrassing, to say the least.

My old 2cyl JD 420 had a small limb drop out of a tree and creased the top bend in the metal hood.. no way to get that out and it dropped the resale value by a lot when it happened. Just had to live with it, as bad as it looked.

 

[bigtiller]

Possibly someone could do a mold from a good hood and then make some replacement ones out of fiberglass?

What kind of money are the JD replacements selling for?

I don't know this as fact, but I doubt if JD makes the hood. It is most likely outsourced to a molding company. So if you were to get serious about it, you might be able to find that company and buy one direct from them.

 

[beenthere]

Possibly someone could do a mold from a good hood and then make some replacement ones out of fiberglass?

What kind of money are the JD replacements selling for?

Only $299

 

[murphy1244]

It might of been a few bucks in plastic but I can assure you the mold was expensive.