Is all this technology really good???

I just am amazed by all the new computer controlled technology of the new tractors and combines but what about long term durability? Computers have issues and mice seem to love wires. God help use in the event of a EMP weapon was used against us or severe solar flare!! We all would be farming with horses and 50 year old tractors again.

Unless we get people willing to fix the new ones when they quit the dealers / manufacturers want the stuff to die so we have to buy new. The idea that this stuff will be running in 50 years no longer exists.

IMHO the days of installing engines/transmissions different from the OEM will be a thing of the past due to the difficulty of matching up the various modules to different controllers. And having the diagnostic technology to trouble shoot problems will be cost prohibitive for the infrequent user.

Good design and engineering will always last.

Interesting that I can find almost any part I need for my WD but my friends who own Case/IH and JD tractors made in the 1990's are beginning to have a lot of difficulty finding parts for them.

Unfortunately we live in a throw away world now. Tractors, cars, trucks have a life expectancy designed into them and they are to be discarded as parts are no longer available for a reason. They want you to buy another one. As said above, the tractors we grew up with and still use were designed to last and to be repaired. Thankfully, parts are widely available for the most part. Especially for a company that went out of business in the 1985. A fella I know has a 1997 New Holland 100 hp tractor FWA with a bad wiring harness. It’s been to 3 different dealers for repair. No harness is available. The tractor has been useless to him for the past 3 years as it has spent much of its time in the various shops. Unable to find a good used harness as there was a issue in the gauge of wiring used from the factory that is causing them to melt. He was told by the last dealer not to bring it back as they have no way of fixing it. So he has a 4600 hr tractor that’s worth very little on trade.

We have a 1950 WD on our farm that was purchased new. It is pretty amazing that you can still get just about every part still to keep this old gal running!! Ryan

DaveKamp wrote: I can take ANY printed circuit board, and find a degraded solder connection that, in contrary to what John noted above, will be perfectly fine for the first six months, yet exhibit degradation after five years.  Capacitors in the power supplies, and RF bypass capacitors will degrade with time and elemental variation. Suggesting that a 50-year-old piece of electronics that still runs, is certainly not proof that they won't, or aren't degraded-  I've got a radio room FULL of old electronics, and while my 1956 Central Electronics CE100V, Hammarlund HQ140X, and Collins R390 are still nicely on the air, and perform BETTER in many ways than my 2 year old digital units, NONE of them are perfect, and they ALL have maintenance requirements. The newer ones,  however, are unmaintainable.  The R390 is a very complicated machine, and there's plenty of tubes, sockets, and connectors, plenty of old capacitors and drifty resistors in the CE100V, plenty of spider-space in the HQ140X... but I can actually WORK ON THEM. You cannot disassemble a multilayer printed circuit board and repair a corroded trace.  Soldering is a bimetallic bond, and the result is electron-swapping that eventually eats away something very necessary.  On a tube-radio chassis, there's LOTS of metal that will not go away fast, and when it does, desolder, clean, and replace the wire.  Install a new resistor or capacitor... test each stage with tools. Can't do that with a microprocessor board. Planned obsolescence?  Clearly some of that.  Some is fate... and some of it is just poor engineering.  There's lots more poor engineering now, than back when production was much-more-expensive.  As was noted above... 'disposable society'. Want something to be reliable?  Want something to be durable, robust, and long-lived?  Reduce the number of dependant factors-  keep it simple, and build it strong. An emergency generator with computerized fuel injection, electric start, battery ignition, and no hand-crank, is not an 'emergency' generator... one dead battery, and you're hozed.

The organist at my home church asked me to look at their organ. She was unable to find anyone locally to look at why the upper keyboard was not working. The organ was made in the late 70's or early 80's and I was not expecting it to be very complicated but when I removed the rear panel I was socked to see 4 power supplies, a dozen circuit boards with miles and miles if wiring harnesses and multiple connectors on every board. All the processors were in sockets so I started there and reseated them all and then checked every connector to make sure they were seated good. Powered it up and the keyboard worked. That was a couple of months ago so we shall see.

I'm sure the new organs have just one or two boards and one power supply in them along with less connectors to cause issues. The stuff gets better and better as time goes along but gone are the days of swapping components or redundant boards around to find an issue. It's shotgun the whole assembly today because time is money.

Y'know, the Colonial Viper Mk II was purposely designed with much less computerized automation than the Mk I to prevent the Cylons from being able to control them via an implanted virus.

I began as mechanic with cars that had JUST started with Electronic Ignitions, watched as all manner electronic Crap started showing up on Cars, Trucks, Heavy equipment, farm tractors even Motorcycles then the advent of Make it TOO cheap to pass up. I really have no use of GPS, set down with a map, figure my route and set it to memory, no witch in a box gonna tell me how to drive like the wife tries. SOME of the stuff had value, much is just obnoxious bells and whistles waste of money expensive to fix.