[Chipmaker]

You could look at it a couple of ways.

JD Engineers and R & D folks are not up to par

JD tried to take a cheaper way out to make something and it failed

JD should really spend its venture in AG / Industrial equipment and not try and play catchup to the already existing field of ATV makers.

They just made a coule of mistakes plain and simple.

I like the voluntary recall thing, but recalls in conjuction and cooperation with recalls seem to be they were reluctant to do anything about it unless forced or pushed to........like Ford and their Pinto or Maverick fuel tanks and the Bronco roll overs........and of course GM and their gas converted diesels.

 

[memmurphy]

I'd guess the engineers were pushed to make it cheaper then they wanted to by the number crunchers. Maybe less steps in the assembly process, fewer parts needed, something along those lines. The bad part is recalls of any type are mostly done in cases only where personal injury could occur. Other defects are just passed on to the consumer in added maintainence costs. That is one negative of intense product pricing competition that I see a lot of in consumer electronics. I have no doubt all manufactures fall into that trap if they have enough competition in a particular product line.

Mark

 

[bontai Joe]

When you think of the gazillions of machines Deere produces/sells, there are gonna be a couple of klinkers once in a while. I design industiral equipment and as quality and safety oriented as we are, occassionally something gets made that should have been done differently.

 

[KevinJD325]

You guys are right. Hey, at least they are making the recalls. How may companies try to avoid the cost of recalls till they are threatened by a major consumer organization, or goverment, law suit.

Lets face it though, like the air filters they recently sent out to many owners, it's cheaper to send out hundreds of filters than to have hundreds of mechanics in the field wasting thousands of hours troubleshooting a simple problem under warranty coverage paid for by Deere. More power to them for getting the job done.

Kevin

 

[Michael]

I am glad that John Deere company cares about the consumer and that they are doing right by them. There is also a unpublished quiet recall on the L-118LE lawn tractors on the front axle spindles, there seems to be a metal fatique issue with these. Sometimes I guess the bean counters or someone makes a mistake. A few years ago at the company I work for we had a batch of defective fasteners and we were taking stuff apart and replacing a bunch of fasteners (Vender supplied). It was never published and we caught all of the defective fasteners and they were replaced (I'm a aircraft machinist) The safety of the flying public is most important and the fact we did it and reported everything to the FAA is what matters and we also proved all the fasteners were replaced (Failure rate of the defective fasteners was 5%)