Case IH 9150 with 40,000 hours

Dan Burton, a farmer and sawmill operator from Sundre, Alta., wrote a letter in response to my November page 2 column called “10,000 hours? No problem.” He shares his own experience in keeping simple older engines going for years and years and hours and hours. He puts about 5,000 hours a year on his tractors, doing double duty with the farm and the mill, and he says a tractor with 6,000 hours “is like new for us.”

Here is his letter:

I would like to comment on the subject of high hours on tractors and other machines. We run a large sawmill in Alberta and run a fleet of Volvo wheel loaders (with Deutz engines) and Cat track log loaders (with old Cat 3306 engines). We usually get around 20,000 hours out of our engines before replacing them with a factory-rebuilt engine. This is on machines that are not computerized and have an ordinary-type injection system.

New machines have unit injectors and up to three computers all tied together with a complex wiring system that have the potential to empty your bank account in a hurry when they start giving trouble. The o-ring seals on the injectors can start leaking, causing huge amounts of oil to be burnt or diesel fuel in the cooling system or diesel fuel in the oil. These are all hard to diagnose, usually requiring a dealer’s expertise and special tooling. We have found that you can run into these kinds of problems around 6,000 or 7,000 hours, and total engine wear out or failure at around 15,000 to 18,000 hours. The dealers for construction equipment now charge $160 per hour from the time they leave home until they are back again, plus hotel rooms and meals. This can really add up. The only advantage to these new machines is that they burn a lot less fuel and run cleaner. They also have 500-hour oil change intervals versus 250 hours on the old ones, which can save a lot of dollars over the years.

On the subject of farm tractors, we bought our first Case IH 9150 4WD a number of years ago to move logs. At 20,000 hours, the powershift transmission failed so we pulled it in for an overhaul. At the same time we rolled in a set of bearings and replaced the head gasket. This machine had 40,000 hours and was still running good when we traded it off. I think we got $12,000 for it on a trade for a Case IH 9250.

The 9250 had 6,000 hours on it and was still like new. We now have 22,000 hours on it, and it runs as good as when we got it. Those Cummins engines just won’t quit. That’s cheap power. When something major happens to it, it’s cheaper to buy another low-hour machine and just keep running it as long as you can.

Our construction machines will get rebuilt three or four times until the frames and loaders get too tired — usually around 70,000 hours. As long as you keep a good air ride seat in the machine and the radio works, the operator will stay happy.