Buying Advice The Bathtub Curve of New Product Quality

[MHarryE]

Beginning is what we call VEHR or very early hour reliability. Primary problems are assembly, loose, leaks and electrical. Our facility paid incentive compensation to the line assemblers based on VEHR. The next step is infant mortality. Material flaws, defective welds, etc. once past this range it’s in the sweet spot. Operator abuse can cause havoc and by this I don’t mean how a person drives but rather how they maintain. Operator error can enter in but it’s often maintenance, lack of grease, no filter changes, poor quality filters or oil, not cleaning cooling systems, these are examples. I’ve witnessed mines operating around the clock get incredible hours. 22 hours operation, 2 hours maintenance every day. Machines run on a set routine, operators not pushing the envelope. They shift the upswing on the bathtub curve to the right but at some point it still shifts up. Excellent record keeping points out when this upsweep begins. Then you have the outliers. If you watch Gold Rush you will see a driver who bent his car in the middle hitting a bump. I saw a farmer with a new RAM, no doors, because of hitting a gully at high speed and bending it like a banana. Take off the doors and carry on. When I began my engineering career, agriculture, specifically self propelled combines. Target was 2,000 hours with 60% of the original machine cost in repairs. My current combine on my retirement farm has 5500 hours and only downtime last season was a flat tire. My tractors are my farm lifeblood and are all Tier 4 final for reliability because I am too old to consider spares. My nephew has 13 with the aim of keeping a half dozen running at any time. I help him on his most time critical task because of uptime. In a week’s span to perform this task his dad might run 4 tractors due to major breakdowns. These are the tractors I see here as the ones like because they can work on them. I’m too old to keep working on them so I buy ones with the best reliability.

 

[coobie]

Never trust a over educated dudes opinion with a pony tail.LOL..

 

[john reeder]

I bought new because the price difference between a somewhat low hours (500) BX size Kuboto since they first came out around 2000 and a new one was so close why not just get a new one with new implements.

 

[dnw64]

I bought new because the price difference between a somewhat low hours (500) BX size Kuboto since they first came out around 2000 and a new one was so close why not just get a new one with new implements.

I personally wouldn't be worried about early onset failure/warranty issues buying new. Yes, if you get a lemon it's a real pain to deal with, but that is a rarity.

However my 2006 B3030 was literally half the price of a new one, at just over 400 hours, and there's no way I could justify spending that much more on something that I will use maybe 50 hours a year. Now, if I had just won the lottery, that would be a different story.

 

[nards444]

All the video suggested to me was that extended warranties are a waste of money.

usually are look at the money they make off of them. In principle you are paying ahead for maint that may or may not happen. And yes the defenders will say yeah but a DPF cost 35k to replace. If you look at failure rates cost to repair, the consumers loses more times than not in extended warranties.