Jeffersonville, OH | BobNESD - 1/22/2026 21:17
Ok, I’m not trying to be an ass and just argue, I respect you as a wealth of knowledge on Agco equipment, and have been helped by your answers many times, thank you! I have nothing personal against you. I guess I just get frustrated watching the constant progression of stuff getting more complicated, expensive and over engineered. It just feels like all the companies are competing to see who can make equipment less and less farmer mechanic friendly. I guess I should have realized that since 2016 when Gleaner got the Fendt cab that they didn’t have the good old shift lever any more, what do you mean by no hydro cable? Is it just a sensor that senses where the hydro lever is and that controls an actuator on the hydro pump instead of a physical cable running the swash plate in the pump? We have to run well maintained older equipment, and like to do all our own work in our shop if possible, I guess that’s why I like the simpler stuff. As you know I like the Agco axial combines, I’ve always thought that if they could have just kept refining those and somehow could have marketed them better with a better dealer network for them, Agco could have saved the billions or whatever it was that they put into developing the Ideal, which from what I’ve heard and seen, isn’t maybe so “ideal”! But, what happened happened, and we’ll just have to see where this all goes!
I'm not trying to argue either, but I just can't agree with your logic from my experience with the combines...If you think a new transmission and final drive makes the Gleaner less farmer friendly because of one extra hydraulic motor, then you clearly have never looked at any other machine offered by anyone else.
Hydro cable was replaced by wires in 2016, and gives us a much more refined control lever, and an automatic shift 2 speed hydro to make the combine act MUCH nicer at lower speeds in the higher gears.
Massey Axial combines got $100 million dollars in "refinements" that made them so much better that there were 40 hour updates to them every year for about 4 years...they got them right eventually, but it still didn't really have the brute force capacity of some of the other designs, so they went with the "clean sheet of paper" IDEAL and so far, it is proving to be a good performer....yes, it's taken some changes since 2019, but so did the MF Axial, so has the Gleaner, so has the X9, the CLAAS, whichever color you like, they have all made big changed when introducing a MOSTLY new design. That's the other thing, other than the X9, IDEAL, and CNH AF machines, all the rest of the machines are YEARS old designs that have morphed into what they are today. Go back to the original IH and Gleaner rotors, and look at the T Series Gleaners or Legacy series CIH rotors, yes, you can see the similarities, but there is much less of the original left than there is new. It's just how things go.
Do I think all the electronics are wonderful, yes, when they work. Do I think they will be running in 50 years....don't know, but honestly the way the world has changed, I have as much faith in keeping electronics running OR being able to change the to something new as I do keeping 50 year old mechanical parts repaired. Go try to find engine parts for some 50 year old engines...they aren't available. If there wasn't a quarter million of them sold, they are gone. We are losing the importance of being able to UNDERSTAND mechanical machines, and losing the ability to understand how to repair them. Not enough people understand that it can't be throwaway, at least today.
In 50 years, we may not even be using machines like we are now, so it may not matter.
Chris
Edited by c_mayer 1/23/2026 07:48
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Gleaner Combines
