10/4 Over and Out, 2022 S770
RIP to a one-and-done lemon
This website is an infant. I don't even know what my intentions are with the blog. Just for myself? Probably! Build an audience? I ... don't care? Maybe that'd be cool? I've only posted one other entry, and it was more of a stub than anything, an attempt to motivate myself to write something: Soybean Harvest Nearly Complete. For fun, I thought I'd do a selfie each day.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
What I thought was merely a minor setback (hydraulic hose leak) turned out to be a giant system failure (hydraulic leak - HOSED). Something failed within the 2022 John Deere S770's hydrostatic pump. It blew a seal and then sent metal shards throughout the entire system. The machine refused to drop the head, and wouldn't move. Stranded in the field.
This selfie is from the day I learned the simple hydraulic hose issue I thought I had was something entirely more catastrophic.
Day 7, I'm not having fun anymore
So there our expensive equipment sat, alone in the middle of the field. For a few days it sat while we waited for the local service guys to come take a look at it. They needed to get it to the shop.
I went to visit it.
And because I'm not a monster, I gave it an emotional support tractor to keep it company.
Kind of. Actually it was necessary to utilize the tractor to drop the head because the S770's hydraulics wouldn't drop the head by itself. Ugh.
I missed all the commotion of C&B spending a day getting this thing shipped into their shop from the field. Seems like it was a whole thing. And because I don't want to see what the repair bill is going to look like, I put together a deal with my sales guy to trade out of this and into a 2023 model with fewer hours on it.
If this was it -- if this was the only thing I've had trouble with concerning John Deere equipment, it'd be just an "oh man that sucks" sort of tale. And it does. But here's why it really sucks. This is the 2nd consecutive year of a John Deere S770 combine having catastrophic engine problems during or just-before harvest. The previous one lasted me 3 seasons. When I brought it in for pre-harvest inspection last year, the service team found that it was sending shards of metal through the main engine gear case after engaging the separator. At the time I had almost no choice to upgrade to a newer model, which unfortunatley only did its job for a year and a half. Paid over 400k for it. For one and a half harvests, and whoops! the warranty ran out in June. Oh, and I had a major malfunction occur with my 4-wheel drive tractor last fall as well. Again, just out of warranty. That repair bill I ate, and John Deere kicked in a modest amount to make it slightly less painful, but it seemed to me like the very least they could do. In a situation where two combines in a row failed spectacularly, don't you think a reputable company would stand by their product?