Massey Discussion Forums > Massey Talk > tractor design faults
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RE:tractor design faults

Huw has duly come up with another complaint against the MF 100 series tractors.

He notes that the differential lock pedals were very prone to sticking and siezing up.  He comments that the internal mechanism was always fine but that the pedal location was a trap for dust which led to corrosion.

I can confirm this from my experience with a fleet of 165s in Saudi Arabia where it is very dusty and the soils often saline.  We constantly had to be freeing up the diff locks where they enter the transmission casing with copious washings with diesel

John

RE:tractor design faults

Huw has just phoned in with another MF designe fault on the earlier MFs.  He says that no isolator valve was fitted as standard for the hydraulics whilst it was on most other makes.  Fair comment I thought

John

RE:tractor design faults

Tonight it's my turn to gripe on the basis of my own recent experience.

As those of you who have visited here will recall we are in hilly/mountainous country with little on the level.  Last week the two grandsons were coming up and the eldest who can now talk was demanding a ride on the autoculteur (see the other thread)

MF sold these in France with little MF badged two wheel trailers and you sit on them to drive and supposedly control them.  In French films you will see many examples of small French farmers taking their onions and what have you to sell them in local markets.  I bought mine with a home made trailer.

Well in readiness for the visit I hitched the trailer on and proceeded to plod up hill to get to a flat area where I could give them a ride.  On the way up it jumped out of gear so we shot backwards at ever increasing speed down towards a graveyard which adjoins my land.  There was nothing else to do but steer it rather swiftly into my shed in a crash stop!!  It was either that or burst through the fence into the graveyard in advance of my time!

So the question is - why is there no braking facilty at all on these machines - especially as in Continental Europe they take them on roads???

John

RE:tractor design faults

Back for a moan about M-H tonight.

What a nuisance it is on a Pacer to have to take a side panel off with all those fiddly screws just to get a battery in and out (tho' I am told you can now get small high power batteries which will drop in through the tool box hole).

Why didn't MH retain the side panel with latches arrangment like on my 101 senior??  So quick and so simple

John

RE:tractor design faults

I've been away for a few days but on return Huw has e mailed me with another groan - this time about the early Ferguson finger bar mower.  Here this is designated the 5A-EE-B20.  You had similar mowers on your side of the pond for both the Ford Fergusons and the TO20s etc. To put it mildly it was a pig to fix to the tractor.

As Huw says by the end of haymaking you were getting the hang of how to put it on only to forget everything before the next year!,

I always liken it to having to wrawl with a piece of spaghetti.  But for all that, once on they were very good mowers.

John 

RE:tractor design faults

Huw has come back to me for what he says is one last time for the time being as he is starting to scratch his head a bit now for design faults.

His last offering relates to the start of compulsory fitting of guards to tractors in the UK back in the late 1950s -1960s thanks to the advent of health and safety regulations and their attendant gestapo enforcers.

Huw recalls the fitting of fan belt guards to MF 35 tractors and also the earlier Fergusons.  This made fan belt adjustment difficult unless one removed the offending guard which was usually a small screws fiddly job.  Adjusting without removal led to many grazed knuckles, with many a new guard taken off and never re-fitted so the object of the safety excercise was defeated!   If only they had made the guards of a "quick fit" nature there would have been fewer bruised knuckles - safety!!!!!

I remember at the same time we had to fit guards to our MH 726 combine (derivative of the N American 26).  I don't think MH or by then MF offered any so we had to make them ourselves.  They were not a pretty sight!!!!  Bend some strips of half inch flat mild steel for supports and cover them in roughly cut pieces of light steel mesh which of course meant lots of jaged ends to catch your head, hands and arms on when negotiating your way to grease up the 100 or so grease nipples each morning.  One also had to get behind them to make necessary adjustments to belts etc.  Needless to say we used to bend the mesh out of the way where we could to get greased up then bend it back.  Woe betide you if a safety officer came round and found things not quite in order!!!!

Oh to be a modern combine operator with the convenience of automatic greasing and massive fold back safety panels for easy maintenance access.!

John

RE:tractor design faults

Whilst loading the photos of the 21 combine on the 21 combine thread I noticed the sack covering the top of the air filter/carburettor air inlet pipe.  Thinking back to home farm days we too had this cheap modification on our MH 726 and 780 Special combines and I saw it on many other MH machines.  Why did MH not fit a sufficiently robust and large primary screen device????????????

John

RE:tractor design faults

I have been watching this great thread with interest, it has brought up thoughts for improvement from all ages of Massey Harris through Ferguson and Massey Ferguson, both from an operator and engineers point of view. I am sure this applies to all manufacturers, not just Massey. 
A lot of this is down to the practical way the operator works with his machine, and the design engineer never really thinks the entire process through as to how the operator or mechanic in the field will be able to work on or maintain the machine after it is all assembled together.

Whilst writing this I am thinking of my younger days of driving the M-F 500 series tractors with Multi Power, models 575, 590 and 595, that Multi Power was marvellous just flick the lever from low to high and away you go at speed without changing gear or using the clutch, as some of you know we have some hills around here and I clearly remember coming down hill with a 595 and trailer loaded behind, being young a daft not listening to what I was told about starting at the top of the hill in the correct gear etc as I knew best, half way down I flicked the Multi Power from High to Low to reduce the speed and gues what happened, the tractor went even faster and faster with me hanging on until I got to the bottom of the hill, I have never done that since and what a "design fault" for Massey Ferguson that was, we had Fords at that time as well and I am sorry to say this but the Dual Power on them was far better not disengaging the drive when changing down from high to low.

Malcolm
 

RE:tractor design faults

My MF 165 tractor is coming to need e new water pump - leaking quite a bit.  Looking at it this afternoon I just started thinking why did MF not fit a tip up hood as Ferguson did on the Ferguson tractors.  It would really have enhanced accessibility of the radiator which has to be removed to fit a pump.  Of course to get at the radiator you have the fiddle of removing the hood and front grill which could all have conveniently been one unit to the same design almost

John

RE:tractor design faults

Again with reference to my MF 165 tractor it dawned on me yesterday when I had it out that a footstep was only fitted to the clutch side of the tractor.

Why one was not fitted to the brake side I do not understand, but possibly MF considered that you should not mount or dismount the tractor on the brake side for fear of tripping the brake or getting your foot stuck under the wider pedal???  It is definitely an inconvenience not to have that second footstep.

John
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