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| Its a whole lot like looking at the teeth of a horse. Wear is a better indicator of age than farm machinery's hour meter.
I don't think any law says anything about hour meters on farm and construction equipment, not like the specific laws about vehicular odometers. But its clearly fraudulent to set back an hour meter on purpose. In Iowa there's a law requiring the seller certify the odometer reading or admit its wrong. I don't know of anything like that for hour meters. I looked once and didn't find it. There's also no registered title for farm equipment so the state doesn't get involved in such transactions.
Certainly I take hourmeter indications with more than a grain of salt, more like a bucket of salt. I presume them to be wrong. Fundamentally the hour meter on a mechanical tachometer is only precisely accurate IF the engine was run at PTO speed all the time. Idling doesn't accumulate hours as fast, plowing at full throttle accumulates hours faster than the clock. Fortunately for maintenance purposes, engine and lubricant wear are similarly effected by the working rate of the equipment. In the new generation Deere tractors the tachometer hour meter rolls over at 9999.9 hours and we now know that's may just be enough hours for one bottom end touch up. That the hours may have rolled over once or twice in 40 years. That is IF the tachometer and tachometer cable lasted that long. There is plenty of history to hint that either or both will have failed by 10K hours. So the hour reading is useless, not necessarily by seller malace, but just ordinary part failures and neglect of the owner to fix them instantly or it being possible to fix rather than replace the hour meter.
Thing to do is to look at the wear. Start with the seat, then the steering wheel, the pedals, then dig in a bit deeper. Look at the fan belt pulleys, especially the generator or alternator. Those turn faster than the water pump or crankshaft and so wear faster. On my gas 4020, the generator pulley sides were worn parallel, which did affect the available charging rate even with a new belt. But at new pulley available from JD didn't really fix the charging. It now has an alternator and reliable charging if run. With that much wear, I suspect the tachometer has rolled over once or twice, probably twice. Look at the pain and tin where the operator grabs on to climb on or off. Look at bearings and sheetmetal on a combine. Moving stover and grain wears metal away everywhere it touches. Check the most abused bearings on things like shakers and idlers and feederhouse chains. I remember a neighbor picking up a used '88 series combine with supposedly low hours, and the first day out finding the shaker bearings had the wear of a combine with several times the hours. I saw him on the cell phone and wandered out to visit. He said he'd "just chewed for a half and hour and was still hungry." The selling dealer did come out and put in new shaker bearings. The next week I heard a loud brap and looked out. The combine was half a mile from the house, and when he brought it to the bins by the house, a feeder house slat had come loose on one and reached back to the rotor. He chewed some more and the dealer sent out a mechanic with a new feeder house chain assembly.
Unfortunately the easy to inspect wear parts are often easily replaced to obscure the wear of high hours, but the truly dishonest seller often isn't that smart. The recenty replaced parts may be obvious for little wear.
Or to be quick about it, I trust an hour meter on vintage farm equipment just as far as I can toss that equipment one handed. And that needs to apply to any farm machinery that ages from wear.
Gerald J.
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Is it illegal to turn the hours back on combines and tractors?
