Ritchie Brothers Saskatoon

[hobbyfrmr]

I will take a turned up Case IH 1688 and a John Deere 9600 any day. Strong, low maintenance not too many electrical over hydraulic. No Christmas tree action with these machines.
Nowadays they are waaaay too small for most farms.

[Hopperbin]

Hobby I had two. The jd dealer pick told me to sell them to the wrecked. What a drink.

[blackpowder]

There is an end game with older combines.
Combine cost studies for me have shown a big change to cost of repairs over last few years.
Running old machines means you need lots of them. Lots of manpower. And the resources required to fix. A lot.

[tizhot]

Blackpowder The trick with the older combines is maintainence. We run a 97 9600 that gets greenlighted every year. You can usually bank on $10k/year but that combine is in great condition. 2 minor break downs in 8 years. Also run 9760 and the same happens with it. Greenlighted every year. I understand where guys think you need new to perform but sometimes its a bit over the top.

[blackpowder]

No arguments here. I ran 3 older case rotarys which may be more expensive to take to 4000 hrs than the 9600.
Other factors affect your resulting cost per acre as well.
$30/hr operator. $200/hr shop.
Increasing parts cost/unavailability. Timeliness.
Cant argue whats easier to cash flow when there is no flow as in drought.
Just feel the days of running an older design combine forever may be gone for a lot of reasons. Right or wrong.

[Richard5]

I think repairs a lot of the time is the result of the operator

Some because of maintenance or lack there off. Some people have the talent of fixing and recognizing the issues, others just drive it until it says "no".

We expect a lot from our machines today and the more acres we farm the harder we push.

We then blame the unit for being a poor one. I can make a 5-10 year old combines work just fine without huge downtime or repairs. Maybe someday I won't be as lucky.

I think too many spend big bucks upgrading because of the fear of breakdowns and costly repairs/downtime. You either spend it up front or an unknown exact amount on repairs. Your choice.

Sooner or later you do need to upgrade or invest in equipment. I just don't get the every year thing that some do.

Just my opinion

[bgmb]

I swear to you guys 50, 60 and 70 series deere rotors are hard to beat. depreciate slow, cheap to operate, good capacity