Southern Pa. | WTF2014 - 1/10/2021 23:40
I inspect it annually. I wouldn't trust the local dealers to. Anything bought locally through them needs a fine tooth comb. We don't rack up a ton of hours, just 200 engine hours a year. Got about 12 hundred engine hours on it. Biggest expense so far is the moisture sensor at 1k. A couple bearings and had to send the touch screen off to ag express. Ran a 9410 before that to 4000 hours. We might have put close to 15K in parts on her over the years because she ate two cylinder shafts. I'm just talking parts, not labor since we do all our own work.
4000 separator hours, or 4000 engine hours on the 9410??
Have to agree on dealer inspections. We do all our own work as well, and have always ran walker machines because we are in straw country. Do our own inspections and work ourselves. We did decide last fall to buy a rotary machine for corn and beans. They don't build a smaller walker machine anymore, and we would like to keep our 9400 around awhile yet if possible. It is still very dependable, hope the 9660 does as well in that department.
Anyway, we weren't familiar with STS machines when we went looking last August. We found a machine we liked in Northern Illinois at a jockey. Because we weren't familiar with an STS machine, we had it inspected by a tech from the local Deere dealer. They "supposedly" did an inspection, and made a list of all repairs needed. All needed repairs were then supposed to be completed by the jockey before delivery. The jockey failed to fix everything that was noted on the report, even though we prepaid for all repairs. Nothing huge, just 3 belts that were noted to be replaced, and a light that was missing that was supposed to have been replaced as well. When you have a combine delivered to you from 700 miles away, you don't send it back right away if repairs aren't complete!! We didn't even bother to call them, just did the necessary repairs ourselves. Around $600 for those parts. The thing that kinda griped me most was it needed a rear engine crankshaft seal, and the harvest loss monitor needed a new harness, and two new sensor pads. (Among other things) You would think those things would have been noted in the inspection report. (I didn't check this machine as closely as I normally would because we were paying to have an "expert" check it for us because we weren't familiar with STS machines)
We ended up working on it (off and on) for a couple weeks before we ran it. About $2k in parts, and we were ready to go. You would think the experts would have noticed some of this easy stuff!
Long story short, when a machine is advertised as having been inspected yearly, (or whatever) it doesn't mean as much to me as it used to!!
It's in our shop now, getting a fine tooth comb inspection. We really like the machine so far, I was just disappointed in the "experts" inspection.
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What to do with a combine
