Gav836

I sincerely hope so otherwise its a waste of time them bringing it out to us \

Yeah, the JD ones catch fire too easily : ;D

Still the same really, damn good tractor just a shame the cab is pi$$ poor in design and layout from a drivers point of view. We now have a JD 7430 coming next week as well

The Claas is ruled out by its size and poor maneuverability when put into 72" track centres unfortunately. Got a few pictures of the 7490 when I was finishing drilling with it tonight, had ploughed the ex potato land as well today so we decided to use the MF to drill it as well as its on wider tyres than any of our JD's And one video of it ploughing as well, computer screen doesn't show very well but the tractor was running at 1550-1650 rpm

Unfortunately they don't make a Deutz the right size with the variable transmission Tris, also the nearest dealer hasn't had the franchise long and I don't reckon much to the salesman's attitude at times......known locally as the little weasel out of earshot and as two faced as they come I don't think the Valtra stands a chance, price considered and all, the salesman scores highly though and in my own bosses words "He'd go a long way with a more popular brand". Its the tractor itself, Valtra have taken what could be a good transmission and over complicated it in their usual fashion making it harder to set up. Not content with having 4 ranges to the transmission they then put an under drive and over drive in each range meaning if you are in B range and want to do say 12kph and you slow down in a tough spot the transmission will change down to the under drive when you drop below 10kph so the engine revs will be up and down meaning you'd have to change to C range to do it without changing from under to over drive in the working speed range you want, makes it a right pain in the backside to set up. Then theres their wonderful idea of putting the closure bar for the back window right down the centre of it : They have the fundamentals right with the tractor but it nees some fine tuning to make it operator friendly unfortunately \

This is exactly it Marky, its a brilliant tractor in every other respect until you get to the cab, one other niggle I forgot to mention is the lack of a park position on forward-reverse shuttle lever, I believe its an option but a very costly one, puts them well behind all the competition in that respect alone. It does score high on braking though with it having a braked front axle and also having a front diff-lock as opposed to a limited slip affair in the front axle

I don't get involved in that side of things so not really sure, from what I've picked up though the Fendt is the most expensive and the Valtra is the cheapest to date, not had a price for the Massey as yet. There's still a small posibility of a 7430 demo but its not a tractor that I'm overly interested in anyway so won't change my current opinions on what we've tried so far

They were all much the same lock wise Ol so not much to compare between them really in that respect

Well it finally dried out enough to use the 7490 for some ploughing today, overall its not a bad tractor but it only makes it to number two on my preferred choice list, New Holland still being the favourite. The MF had some nice features but the positioning of the foot throttle/accelerator pedal let it down, can see it being a real pain when baling in "forager" mode on the transmission, the windscreen washer also lets it down as front and back operate together, talk about daft ideas!!!! Lack of self cancelling indicators was also a let down for a high spec tractor like this one is meant to be It wasn't too bad on diesel at all really though as bottom left of screen shows for spot rates

I can almost hear what the mighty Duck on there would have to say on this subject right now and quite rightly so ;D

No we haven't had a Deere out Jez, for one thing 7430 autopower's seem hard to come by and for another we really aren't that interested in them anymore

If you mess about with a 50k tractor and get it to go any faster it will then not be insured and should anything untoward happen you will get the book thrown at you so be careful. I'm sure Robbo will be able to expand on the exact legalities involved with it but I think it would come under construction and use rules. The only real way to do it and stay safe would be to buy a Fastrac or Fendt capable of those speeds as standard as all the componants of said tractors will be up to the job, remember at the end of the day though 30k is still the legal limit for tractors speed wise even if it is out dated and most tractors can now exceed it

All good fun isn't it? We had our whole herd TB tested last Tuesday and Friday, Friday was the easy one, Tuesday was hard work as we were weighing the cows as they passed through the race and crush as well so we could keep the poor looking cows inside while the others went out onto the fodder rape. Our cows have a percentage of limousin in them at the minute as well making the younger ones a bit nutty and lively.......cow number ***747 is now known as Boeing as she tried to vault the 5 foot high cattle race All passed as well though which was good

I've just spoken to my supplier and they are due in the country the first week of December at the moment

That was the neighbours Alex, he still has all three of them, even if they did all breakdown in the space of 90 minutes a few months back

Watch this space is all that I can say :-X

No we always wanted a 7485 or 7490 on demo as we wanted the cvt transmission for the spud harvester, local dealer couldn't find one and still hasn't so we've gone over the border

This little red thing also arrived on demo today but its too wet to do anything with it yet, will get some better pictures of it next week when its in use. First impressions of it are good though from taking it round the roads for a bit

Heres a few updates for you from the past few days, we had our first visit from the sugarbeet harvesting contractor on Monday so have been drilling behind that until it turned too wet. He's changed his harvester again this year and this time has gone for a Beet Eater 625 instead of the smaller 4 wheeled 617 model he normally has. Its certainly a better machine performance whise and leaves the ground alot better to plough being more level and less compacted

Definately grading into store in my opinion as it speeds the operation up in my experience, there's also not the worry of 2/4 people standing on the back of a travelling machine to worry about. Stone damage is usually down to a minimum anyway due to the destoning being carried out pre planting, not usually anything big left in the rows after that.

Most people around this way are indeed on 36" rows, our neighbour does actually run a Tectron and it certainly is a bit of a beast to get about across the large area they farm, they also run a 2 row machine as well as a back up and for smaller fields. In the three seasons that I've been working here I've yet to be able to get up close to it when its working as its always gone away by the time I'm free to go look at it.

I'm afraid you would find that accidental damage doesn't cover damage by pets either I'm afraid Mandy......I found that out the hard way after Buster knocked my Laptop off the sofa shattering the screen in the process

Aaaaaah so its your stubborness thats going to be the problem ;D ;D

I bet you'll end up having it fitted to that as well in the end as you'll get fed up reaching for the button on the box each time when you do use that feature ;D ;D

Have you got the optional remote "enter" button on your weigher Marky? We had one fitted on the lift lever on the JCB so it was easy to press every time we raised the boom rather than reaching for the monitor