Gav836

I only know of one in this area, think the chap still has it and it spends most of the time sitting in his yard now that he's retired. It had a short life on his tankers in his septic tank emptying business, the drivers prefering the Ares and 54 series models he had so ended up on the farm most of the time. Its the only one I've ever seen out at work and this was a good sales area for Renault \

Someone has to ;D I know all brands are the same, we just happen to have got two friday afternoon tractors whereas our neighbour has a 6920 thats never been any trouble I do agree with you there though Jez, best dealer and back up goes a long way when it comes to purchase decisions

Spoken like a true JD employee and not end user Why should it? I've not once slated the engine nor have we had any problems with the engine in any of our tractors (yet!!), its whats attached to it thats giving the problems. The engine in the Claas tractors may be DPS but it has Claas's software in it as well. I won't stop slating the two we have trouble with either for as long as they kep being a pain in our ass, but if you read my posts elsewhere you will see I have nothing but praise for our older 10 series tractors.

No I had an 820 C-Matic on demo and was very impressed with it, it pulled like a train, used next to no diesel, less than the JD in fact doing the same job even though it was 30hp more, had a nice light, comfortable cab and great suspension. Well balanced tractor with a lot of features on it, when the time comes to change the Deere we'll certainly be seriously considering one. Definately won't be having another John Deere tractor after the current two 20 series and with the trouble local chaps are having with 30 series models

They certainly aren't about here, they're inundated with work, both the branches of our dealer have workshops full of 20 and 30 series tractor in various states of repair including our 6420s which is suspected to be suffering from a internal gearbox fault at 3500hrs! My 6920s has cost just short of £9000 in the past 10 months and thats not through any operator error either, all our tractors are meticulously maintained and looked after. At one time I'd say that John Deere had a good reputation, trouble is they've been living off past performance and the cracks are now starting to appear. When two large estates who have been green for as long as anyone can remember change brands it says something. All tractors have their problems, theres good and bad ones in every production run so JD aren't alone there but they no longer can claim the reliability record that they once had. If it was my money I'd be looking at Claas, MF or NH, all now have a good reputation and product in my own opinion. The days where people can refer to Claas as a green Renault are gone, they are a vast improvement on the orange tractors and have the best cab suspension set up of any conventional tractor on the market, I've driven a lot of them now but still haven't found one that rides as well.

Been stripping more bits off the de-stoner and putting a few new bits back on, ordered yet more bits for it, needs over £6000 spent on it excluding my labour to get it ready for the season. About halfway through it now. Had another calf born jut before we left off today but we won't go near it, colleague reckons the cow was roaring like a lion just at the sight of him......worse than Angela (extremely bad tempered, chases you out of the pen, permanent PMT, kicked another calf across the shed last year )which is very hard to believe

Not a hope in hell I wouldn't have thought with the Case, 6m yes, 8m no way on all but the firmest of seedbeds with none of the cultivation equipement on the front in the ground. Vaderstad rate our 300S for 90-150hp, there's no way that 90hp would handle that drill with anything in the hopper. Its all our two 120/5hp tractors want to handle (JD 6420s & 6810) with 500kg on board, the 6910 copes better with it but with a full hopper (1000kg) its even possible to make my 6920s pull hard but for the most part its the master of it and will pull it at the speeds its designed for. I don't know where Vaderstad get their minimum figures from but with any form of cultivation equipment working in the ground the drills do take some pulling \

Some complete ass has nicked my bank card details, no idea how they got them, and tried to use them online, luckily Barclays were on were the ball and blocked them........got to wait for a new card now >

On the way to pick some parts up this afternoon seeing what I think was either a JD 6930 or 7530 complete with Pearson Enterprise Starstream carrot harvester a little bit bogged down in the far corner of a field, the harvester must have been in nearly 3 feet deep at the back as it was in up to the chassis rails

Going into a dealers this afternoon and being told that our new sprayer had just come into stock, will get some pictures next week when I go and collect it

Had one of those days today where nothing goes to plan, original being to muck out the cow sheds after feeding.....no such luck. Had our first three calves of the year over the weekend out of our heifers so they needed tagging and ringing, not too bad however calf number 4 was born last night and the cow managed to push it out of the shed beneath the door into the frost and snow so it hadn't had any milk and was frozen when we found it at 7am. Cow showed no interest in it si we had to get it into intensive care under the heat lamp and feed it with a stomach tube. Sadly our efforts didn't save it, it lasted till mid morning To top it off the cow has mastitis so thats going as well now. Other than that its been a cae of feeding and chasing about after silage, straw and parts

Very nice, I have a couple of mates who own them, one has one as a play toy the other has 2 4 wheel ones and a 6 wheel one along with a Latil or two that they use for extracting stuck plant and machinery. Yours looks really true to life there

Well look at it this way David, you may look like a chimp if the hair growth occurs but at least you wouldn't be itchy ;D

Great looking model you've got there so far I think I can tell you now what McConnel will say about producing them to sell from their responses to other people that have asked the same question \

Thats what the sales pitch is, our neighbour had to redrill alot of their rape last year though due to excess compaction caused by the Challenger on the drill, that what wasn't you could see the track marks in for a few months, was so hard that the plants were stunted

Must be about 5 years ago when we looked at changing the beet drill where I used to work that I found out, they were new on the market over here then, looked well built but we didn't like how they folded so took it no further and bought something else

They're sold in the UK as Kuhn Sean, not too many about though. Great review Sascha, will have to get one of them in my collection thats for certain

I wouldn't as its probably the crap holding the tin work together ;D ;D

We just plough and drill for actual kale but for kale/rape hybrid or turnips for out wintering cattle we give it a pass of the cultivator then got straight in with the drill. If you were going to put grass in behind kale it would be a case of ploughing then drilling it followed by a pass of the rolls, cattle do compact the ground fairly and you do get a lot of stalks laying about on the surface that would need burying

Why would anyone get a rollocking for it? Happens to us all at times, looks dry on top or ploughed over dry and then once you start to go through it you sink, not easy to get out of either with a trailed drill as reversing them is often out of the question

De-horning is fun isn't it Tris, even if it does take 3 of us to do ours, one to push them in the crush, one to dehorn and one to sit on the neck trap, the joys of having limousin/limousin cross calves ;D

Bought a couple of wool jumpers on ebay at the weekend, got one of them today that cost me just over £10 including postage, looked at it and its a Le Chameau so I'd say I got a bit of a bargain there ;D

Pulling weed beet has to rank pretty high on the list for me as does levelling off the corn in storage bins in mid summer inside a oven like barn. One other hated job is wrestling the webs back onto the potato harvester and de-stoner, the latter being the worst

So did some of the 20 series, mines on its second transmision, went at 3000hrs. Round this way the 30 series seem to be having trouble with turbo failure, cracking manifolds, overheating engine, head gasket failures and the odd transmission problem. Its certainly put us off buying another one, the repair bills for mine in the past year are frightening

While on the subject of small scalemodel producers, I've had a few negative comments in the past about the price I charge for the beet harvester models I produce, to give people a little idea of how a small production run of 50 in resin pans out these are the ball park costs involved...... Master production, by myself, materials £40 + approx 100hrs of my time Molding costs £600 Resin Kit each £40 Additional materials per kit for assembly £30 (wheels, decals, plasticard, rams, wire) Painting costs each £10 for red, £15 for green You can then add electricity for the painting, hole drilling, cutting, shaping and trimming up involved plus yet another 10-12 hours of my time to put each one together along with phonecalls to casting firm and carriage costs. If I were to charge for my time at what I could be getting doing other jobs then the model suddenly becomes very unaffordable to 95% of collectors. There's absolutely no way that I could sell them for less money than I currently am having trimmed the price as low as possible in the first place. Should the likes of one of the big boys decide to build a similar model then I know full well that the chances of me selling many more of mine are slim and I'm sure that day will come in the not too distant future with the amount of companies springing up these days