<story><title>Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer</title><url>https://www.agweb.com/article/misfit-tractors-money-saver-arkansas-farmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JamisonM</author><text>&amp;quot;The Steigers will be repainted over the winter...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.</text></item><item><author>JamisonM</author><text>&amp;quot;I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines valued at $5-8,000 each. (and about 15 headers to match, equally worthless). We keep them well maintained but if we do have a failure that is not an instant fix we literally just pull another one out of the shed and carry on.&lt;p&gt;Where we farm late-90&amp;#x27;s and early 2000&amp;#x27;s seeding equipment is now cheap as dirt too, we run two air seeders worth a combined $50,000, maybe?&lt;p&gt;I have a Steiger, branded as a Case 9170, they have weak spots (wiring, rear diffs &amp;amp; planetaries) but they are cheap horsepower. Around my parts the &amp;quot;Rome&amp;quot; tractors would be older Versatile 4WDs that are easy to repower and have nice big cabs.&lt;p&gt;All that said, I find the large savings claims here to be a bit suspect. Dropping new electronic engines in these frames, even if you do a lot of the work yourself, costs real money. Once you are 80-90k into a 1980 tractor.. they made a lot of good equipment in the 90&amp;#x27;s that you can walk up and buy for those kinds of dollars. And he isn&amp;#x27;t doing the work all himself, those hours cost real cash out of pocket (a small farmer like myself that fixes himself.. well you can just keep whittling down your personal hourly rate by putting in more hours).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eitland</author><text>Downthread there&amp;#x27;s a lot of talk about rust.&lt;p&gt;I grew up on an extremely small scale farm on the west coast of Norway, lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean (you see the Atlantic if you drive a boat 500m out to the middle of the fjord.)&lt;p&gt;Rust didn&amp;#x27;t stop any of our tractors, not a single stroke of paint even for the 40-50 years old machines.&lt;p&gt;But here&amp;#x27;s another thing, picked up from a friend of me after I asked him why he bought a brand new Valtra at some point instead of buying a slightly used one that was available on the market.&lt;p&gt;His answer has stuck with me since: if you enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning that count for something too.&lt;p&gt;I still happily use old equipment - if it works - but I factor in the value of not wasting my (or my customers, when I work as sysadmin) patience on slow computers.&lt;p&gt;Edits: spelling, redundancies</text></comment>
<story><title>Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer</title><url>https://www.agweb.com/article/misfit-tractors-money-saver-arkansas-farmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JamisonM</author><text>&amp;quot;The Steigers will be repainted over the winter...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.</text></item><item><author>JamisonM</author><text>&amp;quot;I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines valued at $5-8,000 each. (and about 15 headers to match, equally worthless). We keep them well maintained but if we do have a failure that is not an instant fix we literally just pull another one out of the shed and carry on.&lt;p&gt;Where we farm late-90&amp;#x27;s and early 2000&amp;#x27;s seeding equipment is now cheap as dirt too, we run two air seeders worth a combined $50,000, maybe?&lt;p&gt;I have a Steiger, branded as a Case 9170, they have weak spots (wiring, rear diffs &amp;amp; planetaries) but they are cheap horsepower. Around my parts the &amp;quot;Rome&amp;quot; tractors would be older Versatile 4WDs that are easy to repower and have nice big cabs.&lt;p&gt;All that said, I find the large savings claims here to be a bit suspect. Dropping new electronic engines in these frames, even if you do a lot of the work yourself, costs real money. Once you are 80-90k into a 1980 tractor.. they made a lot of good equipment in the 90&amp;#x27;s that you can walk up and buy for those kinds of dollars. And he isn&amp;#x27;t doing the work all himself, those hours cost real cash out of pocket (a small farmer like myself that fixes himself.. well you can just keep whittling down your personal hourly rate by putting in more hours).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colechristensen</author><text>Nothing wrong with finding something to do over the winter even if there isn’t a whole lot of practical value.  Some people are happier when things are neat and tidy.</text></comment>