Earthquake front or rear tine tiller?

SprigOfTheLivingDead

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That's like my JD snowblower. However, at this point I've spent more on fixing it than it's worth, so I'm kind of in that hole of an old crap car: "at what point does nickel and dime warrant a GTFO of my life?"
 

seedcorn

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Tough call in life. Friend taught me the rule on cars, if Car not worth $500/year for maintenance, junk it. I’m sure that value should be considerably higher today but you get the idea. You never truly own a piece of machinery or house. Maintenance or taxes or both just around bend.
 

seedcorn

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Ad at top is Cub Cadet show casing a garden tractor, zero turn mower and a UTV. No tiller, snow blower, chipper. Why would you buy a Cub UTV? They are as expensive as Polaris with about 1/2 the resale and abilities in usage.
 

SprigOfTheLivingDead

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Tough call in life. Friend taught me the rule on cars, if Car not worth $500/year for maintenance, junk it. I’m sure that value should be considerably higher today but you get the idea. You never truly own a piece of machinery or house. Maintenance or taxes or both just around bend.

Yeah, good advice. I know people on a snowblower forum say to keep that JD because it will always run. But I bought a new Polaris ATV (Sportsman 850) with a plow specifically to plow the driveway and it has been a dream. Haven't busted out the snowblower once this winter. I can see myself buying a replacement one in the next year or so though, just to make sure I have one that I KNOW will work and will give this JD to someone in town who needs something that'll run, but doesn't care about looks or long-term. Once they have to repair it it's just investment at that point ("got this for free, so how much am I willing to invest before I should give it to someone else?")

Plus, I bought it for $225. Replaced belts & friction disc ($120) and tuned up the carb and fixed other crap (about $150) and now need to replace the scraper bar ($100!!!! for a genuine JD part - I bought one but never checked if it fit and past the return date I realized it won't fit :( so now I need to find another or see if my neighbor has an extra chunk ) and skid plates (~$25 for generic ones). So I'd say I now bought it twice.

Ad at top is Cub Cadet show casing a garden tractor, zero turn mower and a UTV. No tiller, snow blower, chipper. Why would you buy a Cub UTV? They are as expensive as Polaris with about 1/2 the resale and abilities in usage.

Agreed. I wouldn't look to CC for a UTV.
 
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seedcorn

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So what problems have you run into with JD snow blower?
 

SprigOfTheLivingDead

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So what problems have you run into with JD snow blower?
JD 826, so it is already nearly 40 years old (manufactured in 82 I believe (I think that was it when I checked the serial number a while back). I bought it out of necessity when the guy that was plowing my driveway had a medical issue and could no longer plow. So it was a $225 blower. It ran, which is what I needed, but it ended up bogging down anytime it ran into thick snow, so it would take over 3 hours to plow my driveway.

friction disc was **** - $50
belts were crap - $50
carb rebuild & odds - $150
drive/gear engaging rod (3 pieces that I had to buy from two different dealers HAHA) - $50+
scraper bar - $? (bought the wrong one, need to find a new one)
skid plates - $20s (haven't found ones that will fit right yet and not sure I want to if I'm going to give it away)

So at this point it's like the car where you've already replaced everything that will die, so will it actually last long enough at this point that you'd regret getting rid of it? At this point the rear-diff may break and if that happens it's trash as I've read from some others you just can't find those for this model anymore
 

Dirtmechanic

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Heh. It's from the opening sequence of Animal House. It's the quote from the founder of Faber College


Maybe that classic quote is becoming less commonly known :). I'm old :(
More like not old enough.....

Screenshot_20210218-203807.png
 

Zeedman

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So before we move on from the topic of tillers... has anyone ever seen or heard of a 3-point PTO-driven tiller that had reversible tine rotation? Scarcer than the self-propelled reversible tillers, if they even exist. I'd love to find a tractor-mounted tiller that could till forward-rotating for turning under large amounts of organic matter and/or tilling deeply, then switch to counter-rotating for final bed prep. That would solve or simplify a lot of my garden problems & help me to start planting earlier.
 

Dirtmechanic

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So before we move on from the topic of tillers... has anyone ever seen or heard of a 3-point PTO-driven tiller that had reversible tine rotation? Scarcer than the self-propelled reversible tillers, if they even exist. I'd love to find a tractor-mounted tiller that could till forward-rotating for turning under large amounts of organic matter and/or tilling deeply, then switch to counter-rotating for final bed prep. That would solve or simplify a lot of my garden problems & help me to start planting earlier.
You could probably mount a reversing valve to many of them and make one reverse. Lots of torque though and I imagine a good snag would make a bad day.
 

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