I was just taking about cheaper parts yesterday. Then today a customer that has been talking about overhauling his JD 4440 called me over to get it to start. He stated that it had been getting harder to start for the last few months. The tractor has 12,500 hour on it but the owner is 84 years old and only uses it 30-50 hr a year now. Mostly just mowing pastures and helping haul corn in. His complaint was that it uses oil. If he runs it all day it will use a quart or two of oil. I told him that unless he was going to use it more or other problems came about, that it would not ever pay for him to spend the money to overhaul it.
So I go over and he had the battery charger on the tractor. It was spinning over fine. There was plenty of white smoke at crank speed. So we had fuel and crank speed. So I pulled the air filters out. They where!!!!! FRAM!!! they only had 50 hours on them and they did not look very bad either. Told the owner to hit the key with no filters in it. The tractor started right up. I went home and got new JD air filters. Installed them and the tractor started fine.
Ask the old fellow how long he had been using Fram filters in it??? He told me about two years because they where way cheaper than JD filters. I asked him if he remembered what he had given for the Fram filters. He said he did because he had written the prices on the boxes(He had another set there). The Fram filters where $46.30 for the pair. The JD filters where $54.07 for the pair. So his "big" saving was $7.77. He told me he had not even priced the JD filters because everyone told him JD parts where too high any more so he bought the Frams at TSC.
I then asked him how long ago the tractor started to be hard to start. You guessed it. About the time he put the Fram air filters in it.
Even better he called me just after dark. He had used the tractor all day. It had not used hardly any oil today either. That I am not sure will hold up because I can't think of why the filters would have caused oil usage on a turboed engine.
So his saving was less than ZERO after he paid me for my service call. Plus he may have overhauled a tractor that he did not really have to because of the filters.
So explain to me the saving gained by using cheap/inferior parts??????
So I go over and he had the battery charger on the tractor. It was spinning over fine. There was plenty of white smoke at crank speed. So we had fuel and crank speed. So I pulled the air filters out. They where!!!!! FRAM!!! they only had 50 hours on them and they did not look very bad either. Told the owner to hit the key with no filters in it. The tractor started right up. I went home and got new JD air filters. Installed them and the tractor started fine.
Ask the old fellow how long he had been using Fram filters in it??? He told me about two years because they where way cheaper than JD filters. I asked him if he remembered what he had given for the Fram filters. He said he did because he had written the prices on the boxes(He had another set there). The Fram filters where $46.30 for the pair. The JD filters where $54.07 for the pair. So his "big" saving was $7.77. He told me he had not even priced the JD filters because everyone told him JD parts where too high any more so he bought the Frams at TSC.
I then asked him how long ago the tractor started to be hard to start. You guessed it. About the time he put the Fram air filters in it.
Even better he called me just after dark. He had used the tractor all day. It had not used hardly any oil today either. That I am not sure will hold up because I can't think of why the filters would have caused oil usage on a turboed engine.
So his saving was less than ZERO after he paid me for my service call. Plus he may have overhauled a tractor that he did not really have to because of the filters.
So explain to me the saving gained by using cheap/inferior parts??????