Price shock, vehicle and tractor repair

[Kingcreek]

I help an older lady with some cognitive issues with her affairs and bills etc. she recently backed into a parked car causing some rear plastic damage. She also had some previous minor front damage from driving it into packed snow and ice causing plastic cracking. 2012 Ford Fiesta cheap little car but she only has 6000 miles on it. $2600 to repair minor damage, all plastic and maybe paint?
Blew a hydraulic return line on my loader tractor while using the grapple to clear some downed trees and brush. Close enough to service interval to change hydro fluid and filters and will do front axle fluid change same time (same oil). If I do engine oil and air filters and spring maintenance at same time I'm over $500 in parts and supplies with me doing all labor except crimping the new 3' hose and fittings.
It was leaking so bad I couldn't tell where the failure was at first, just glad it wasn't the $850 3rd function valve or the $2100 joystick spooler.
Maybe a sign of getting old. I'm just shocked sometimes at the cost of some of these things.
Hydro oil used to be $26 for 5 gal. Now it's $44 per gallon.

[dogmush]

Parts are getting more expensive, and the people that know how to install them are getting rarer.  So stuff is more expensive.

Auto paint is one of the things that is way more expensive then a lot of people think.  Expensive paint, and expensive labor to put it on.

[Brad Johnson]

I help an older lady with some cognitive issues with her affairs and bills etc. she recently backed into a parked car causing some rear plastic damage. She also had some previous minor front damage from driving it into packed snow and ice causing plastic cracking. 2012 Ford Fiesta cheap little car but she only has 6000 miles on it. $2600 to repair minor damage, all plastic and maybe paint?

Figure a day's labor @ $80-$100 per hour per end. Also, that minor visible damage was likely accompanied by broken brackets and a crush pad/bar or absorbers that must be replaced. Figure $400-$600 in parts per end. At only $2600 total, I think she got out lucky.

Hydro oil used to be $26 for 5 gal. Now it's $44 per gallon.

Buy it by the drum. Yes, you need a place to store the drum, but it costs 2/3 to 3/4 less per gallon. Also, you might look for bulk oil suppliers in your area.

Brad

[Nick1911]

Agreed, service work is very expensive.  I do all my own on the tractor and vehicles, which helps a lot.  But yea, even fluids and parts are expensive.

I get many parts from rockauto.  They always charge shipping, but it's still cheaper than shopping at the local auto parts stores.  For some non-consumable, non-regular wear items I go to the junkyard, which is very economical.  I purchased the engine for my truck at a junkyard.  I found a well kept SUV with low miles that had been rear-ended.  The engine was less than $200.

I am not yet cheap enough to purchase used antifreeze from the junkyard.  Although man... when did that get so expensive?

[Parker Dean]

Same here. I hit a deer on the LF of my 2002 Mountaineer a few months ago and the repair estimate was $3700 for the bumper mask, LF fender, miscellaneous small parts, and paint.

Needless to say I'm not fixing that.

[Brad Johnson]

I am not yet cheap enough to purchase used antifreeze from the junkyard.

Nope, nope, and nope. For the few bucks extra on something that ends up costing literal pennies per month, I'll stick with stuff that I know has a full and active additive/corrosion inhibitor package. Not to mention no possibility of a yard monkey "accidently" mixing something else in with it (or maybe just pouring all the coolants together, DexCool included).

Brad

[Larry Ashcraft]

About two years ago, the hydraulics on my 1973 John Deere 1020 diesel quit working.  Loader control valve was leaking, and I've been told they aren't rebuildable, and I couldn't find a replacement that would work, so I removed it took it to a local hydraulics shop.  They determined it wasn't worn out, so just replaced seals and O-rings and it worked fine (tractor has about 2000 hours on it).  Then, the hydraulics would fail completely and intermittently, so we called the local JD dealer.  Pickup and delivery were $90 per hour from the time they left the shop until they got back.

Well, the fuel tank was leaking and the radiator was worn out, and the seat was completely gone, so we were into repairs almost $5000 before they even started working on the hydraulics.  After splltting the tractor, they found out that  three bypass valves had been replaced, and apparently, the cages and ball bearings had broken and worked their way through both the feeder pump and hydraulic pump, ruining both.  (BTW, I had had the tractor for 25 years, and I didn't replace the bypass valves, so it took a long time for the parts to work their way through the system.)

More than two months later, they brought the tractor back, and the total bill was just under $15k.  Thank goodness we had just sold my business and building so we didn't have to borrow money.  In the middle of this process, we talked to the salesman about trading the 1020 and buying a new tractor.  They didn't want to do that because they would have a $5000 tractor to sell (I could probably get $10k for the tractor because it's a diesel (fairly rare) and has low hours.  Still we have $15k in and $10k tractor.  AND, the new tractors we could find were about $25k, and had half the power and lift capacity the 1020 has.  (The head mechanic whispered to me - "They don't make them like this any more".)  And it's true, the new ones have plastic hoods, emissions controls, and all sorts of electronic crap that they weren't using in 1973.  The head mechanic is a friend of my son's and discounted the labor and removed a  bunch of miscellaneous charges, as much as his boss would let him.

Anyway, now we have a 45 year old tractor that works as new.  We were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, so  the best way out was to hang the cost and fix the old tractor.  A comparable new tractor would have been around $40k.

[Kingcreek]

I had a 1964 John Deere 2020 before I bought the 1999 Grand L3010 in 2009 from my neighbor.
Green and yellow parts are expensive but at least still available. Thankfully I have had only a couple minor issues and routine maintenance with the kubota. It’s been great. And it’s before all the new enviro diesel tech garbage.
When I was picking up the filters yesterday at the dealer they had a new fendt ideal combine in the gymnasium sized showroom. That thing was as big as a 2 story building and twice as expensive. I bet it uses more than the 12 gal of hydro fluid i needed.

[kgbsquirrel]

What is keeping old school mechanical control engines off the new market?  EPA?  I kind of prefer mechanical linkages and nonelectronic systems for certain things.

[Nick1911]

What is keeping old school mechanical control engines off the new market?  EPA?  I kind of prefer mechanical linkages and nonelectronic systems for certain things.

Federal law.  40 CFR 89, specifically for non road diesels.

I don't think it specifically requires electronic controls,  but the emission requirements are such that you need the precision electronic controls offer to have any hope of meeting them.

[kgbsquirrel]

Federal law.  40 CFR 89, specifically for non road diesels.

I don't think it specifically requires electronic controls,  but the emission requirements are such that you need the precision electronic controls offer to have any hope of meeting them.

More and more I think we should just delete the entire federal code and start over.

[Boomhauer]

The Tier 4 requirements are nuts. Oh, and if the system goes out of parameters it is required to derate and be as much of a hassle as possible to ensure it gets fixed.

The lower HP stuff can still be fairly mechanical and basic on the engine end but above 75HP you are talking about electronic engines. In the engine respect electronic controls are not really any big deal (Detroit Diesel series 60s, ‘90s and newer Cat engines introduced electronics into the bigger engine world) the Tier 4 stuff is what’s problematic. Probably the worst offender in my book is EGR, sending hot dirty gas back into the engine. The DPF isn’t a big deal, the DEF systems are a little touchy. I deal extensively with all of this at work.