Excuse My Tractor Repair Rant (2024)

but I am tired of trying to get it repaired.

Twelve weeks ago I took my MF 135 to a mechanic to rebuild the steering box, replace the three point lift shaft bushings and any other part badly worn, and adjust the hydraulic linkage. The lift arms were sloppy, thus the new bushings (shaft ended up being replaced too) and were not moving through their full range. The position control lever had no effect until the last couple inches at the top of the quadrant. The three point arms were only coming up about 2/3rds as far as they should so I am thinking a simple linkage adjusment will fix it.

The mechanic rebuilt the steering box. Steering shaft and bearings were shot. He then started on the three point and hydraulic adjustments. He rebuilt the pump saying "while I was in there I figured I should rebuild it." which was fine by me since it could save me headaches down the road. After seven weeks he begins telling me he can't figure out the hydraulic linkage issue. This goes on for a week and when I see it is hopeless I tell him to put it together the best he can and I'll pick it up, as is. Exactly 8 weeks had gone by. I paid him for the steering repair and he did not charge me for the hydraulic work other than parts. Fair enough. The guy has close to 30 years experience (former JD repairman at a local dealer) and said he had repaired numerous 135 hydraulics over the years but didn't know what to do with mine. He never was able to put into words the issue. Nice guy but his communication skills were lacking.

So I go straight from his place to the local Agco dealer. Tractor sits there for over three weeks before they put a wrench on it. No biggie, bushhogging can wait. Today I get a call saying they are having trouble with the hydraulics.

I leave work and drive over there to see what is going on and talk to them about the repair. I'm tired of being in the dark about what is wrong. The service rep says some parts are missing and it will take some effort to get it working. He goes on to say he's located three salvaged lift covers and he can put one of them on. When I ask him what parts are missing he can't answer other than "some parts are missing."

I'm real confused at this point because I don't see the lift cover having anything to do with the problem, it's internal linkages. Further I don't like the sound of it because I just put new bushings in the old lift cover. I asked him why can't he pull the missing parts off the salvaged unit and stick with my original cover and associated parts. He goes on to say if the salvaged unit works it is better to replace the until as a whole because they are dificult to adjust and the original might not work anyway with a few different parts. I dislike his suggested fix but didn't want to argue or press (he's supposed to be the expert) so I told him to do what he thought was best because I wanted it working and am tired of waiting. But I am wondering if it's so difficult to adjust what is he going to do if the salvaged unit needs adjusting.

At this point I wish I had just tackled the job myself three months ago. Time is in very short supply but I know I could fix the thing without chucking perfectly good parts and making the tractor look like it is cobbled together with mismatched castings.

What really gripes me is after the shadetree mechanic threw in the towel I took it to the dealer. Now they are taking a shadetree approach, i.e., just buy a unit off a junked tractor and bolt it on. What ever happened to close inspection, troubleshooting, and replacing missing/worn with new parts. Why is it they are hesitant to use the original and fix it and keep hinting that there is some sort of elusive black magic to getting older MF hydraulics to work properly?

To anyone that made it this far thanks for listening to me vent. I really like to old tractor and am willing to see the repair made, but I am perplexed that the dealer service center is taking such an approach. Did they lose their parts diagrams and factory service manuals? Do they not like using their own parts and prefer salvaged ones? Seems really weird to me. I hate to say it but maybe they want to simply bolt on a salvaged unit because they don't have the expertise to repair what is there.