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SW North Dakota | I read alot of posts on here that refer to the deere 8850 with the 955 V8 as being unreliable and short lived with overhauls after 2000 hrs. As far as my experience goes and the people in our area they seem to be a fairly solid engine. Our personal tractor has around 9700 hrs with around 700 hrs on the first OH. The other 2 in my area have about 5-6000 hrs and are still running strong. I think maybe people either have poor maintenance programs or they just were asking to much out of the 370 hp machine. We always run ours at about 1900 rpm and pull a adequate load (35ft seeder) and havent had a problem. Like they say if you take care of it, it will take care of you. I'm not saying it was a good design as its a bear to work on(cleaning radiator) but I dont think it is at all as worthless as people make it out to be. Im just curious if anyone else has had good experience with this tractor? Thanks and good luck this spring everyone! |
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Minot ND | well there is lots of them around north dakota, one farmer in western middle has 6 8850s, he was his share of broblems, 2 have water in the oil one is a kinze, that one scored a piston and it does not pull as good the v8. there is another farmer with 2 8850s , he has verrylittle trouble. another one by valva that the engine locked up, he sold it to kinze. I found out through some old enginers at deere that deere had devoloped 6 different designs of the 8955 adressing each problem , deere decided to go with eather 2 or 3 to cut costs. |
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Southeast Florida | I had one that had the orginal and 5 more engines under warrenty before we traded for a 8960 and the problems went away. The engines never made it too 2K hours before the bottom end was gone or sucked a valve. Our's like most in our area were pulling Reynold's scrapers for laser leveling. If some a manufacture want to find out how good there 4 wd is just send it to Florida to pull laser scrapers or sugarcane, they'll tell you real quick. They're all ran by hired help that don't care because the management is on there ass to get'r 'done asap. |
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Brazilton KS | Ours made it a long ways past 2000 hours, but died at 5000 something. Cost was 23000 to get it going again. Spent about 10000 on the Versatile and that could have been done a lot cheaper if we'd have known then what we know now. I don't see the criticism about "poor maintenance " as being valid....I really don't see how maintenance is going to prevent the pins in the roller lifters from wearing out, or the main bearings from wearing out. I've never really said it is a "bad" tractor, but the engine left much to be desired both in lifespan as well as in cost to overhaul. When an engine costs twice as much to overhaul as a Caterpillar, and runs for half as long, that's excessive operating cost. I'm not all that found of having to remove the fuel tanks and front axle to get to the oil pan, either. |
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Eastern ND | I MENTIONED THE 8850 TO MY LOCAL DEERE DEALER AND HE SAID THE SAME ENGINE IS IN SOME OF DEERES HEAVY CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT AND THEY DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS LIKE THE AG TRACTORS. DIDN'T KNOW REALLY WHY. |
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Fruita CO | The 844 loader used the V8 engine, same as 8850, but I don't think it was any more successful...otherwise, they would still be using it? It's no cheaper to rebuild in a loader than a tractor. although, there was an 844 working in the subdivision behind us a couple years back, & it sounded good...big ol' hog..
Ron in CO... |
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Huntley Montana | Probley because in a loader it isn't under constaint load for hours. Has some variance in load allowing "parts & pieces" to cool. From what I see the fellows with the best life on them are not pulling them HARD all day. |
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SW Ontario | I would think duty cycle would play into this alot. Ag tractors have the highest duty cylcles of most applications, in a dusty environment no less.
What other applictain does the motor run at 80% ++ boost steady all day? |
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Brazilton KS | Genset Pump A Deere engineer who used to race cars with my brother (back at the time we installed the reman) said that they had 8955's on pumps with upwards of 20,000 hours on them. I don't see any variance in load in a pump or genset application. You size the engine topull the pump and that's the load you put on it. |
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Brazilton KS | If you look in JD parts you can find evidence of repower solutions for the loader and the excavator, but I did not find anything related to the tractor repower which the two guys talked about on here (actually it was agtalk) back in the day. One of them was mike something. |
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Huntley Montana | The pump/genset didn't overload the engine like a heavy load. Pump/genset was matched to the engine capicity. |
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Minot ND | deere put 8955 in boats at 600hp and the loader 844 was way down on hp at i think at 220- there was a 844 loader for sale at our industrial jd dealer about 4 years ago with over 20000 hours on it, it came from a coal power plant, the engine was never overhauled. |
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NESD | The primary problem with the 8850 was the same problem that all 30-40-50 series 4wd tractors had, the engine is an integral part of the frame of the tractor and sees too much torsional twist on the block causing misalignment of the main bearing bores while under a load and you have bearing failures. In wheel loaders the engine is mounted in the frame and coupled to the transmission with a driveshaft so it doesn't have the external forces applied to the engine. |
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| Our 955 went 7200 hrs before kinze put cummins in. Our biggest complaints were no low end torque and 30 gallon per hour fuel consumption. But it was turned on and we pulled it hard all day. Still argue if 450 cummins has as much power. |
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Brazilton KS | 30 gallons per hour??? Prior to the rain, I was running 12-13 hour days without running out of fuel. Only holds 225 gallons. Your's must have had it's tail wound pretty tight. Running anhydrous
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Pittsburg, Kansas | I talked to a farmer once (a long time ago) that was looking at a used 8850 over at Puritons and he mentioned he had two of the 8955's on irrigation pumps that both had over 10,000 hours without problems. John |
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Fruita CO | That's why it sounded so good? I'll ask the parts guy at JD here-he used to work parts at an ind. dealer back in KS...he always has a strong opinion about JD's weak points...
Ron in CO... |
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JD 8850
