Historical question, NOT a flame...

[Bob]

From the start of "the big power era" until their demise why was AC never able to make an engine or a powertrain that would stand up to the rigors of HEAVY tillage use, for example up here in prairie wheat country?

Management?

"Corporate bean counters"?

Engineering?

 

[Mr.Ferguson]

A-C did have some huge machines! I?m not sure where you got that information from, but in the 70?s they some pretty big stuff. The 8550 had a 844 cubic inch twin-turbo straight-six diesel coupled to a power shift transmission. If that?s not big for the time it came out, what surpasses it in size? Although just before kicking the bucket, they did outsource komatsu motors for prototypes. So they did have means of production for big tractors.

 

[Aaron SEIA]

The 426 has a reputation for tossing rods. I think they just wound the 426 too tight. I've heard that if they had serrated the rod caps and used a different rod bolt they could have fixed the problems. As for trannys, once they got to the 7000 series they has good of a tranny as anyone.
AaronSEIA

 

[JOCCO]

This has somewhat come up before I think. It was probably a combination of engineering, money and time. Wasn't only Allis but ford was slow to get into big power.

 

[Bob]

(quoted from post at 13:38:54 07/13/19) A-C did have some huge machines! I?m not sure where you got that information from, but in the 70?s they some pretty big stuff. The 8550 had a 844 cubic inch twin-turbo straight-six diesel coupled to a power shift transmission. If that?s not big for the time it came out, what surpasses it in size? Although just before kicking the bucket, they did outsource komatsu motors for prototypes. So they did have means of production for big tractors.

While the 8550 was sure a TOUGH looking beast (two exhaust stacks and all) it wouldn't be a good candidate to enter in a "tough/reliable/long-lived tractor contest".

Many years ago, I actually dealt on a low-houred one with a "ventilated" engine with intentions of repowering it.

It was tied up in a bankruptcy, and I never did get it, nor do I know what ultimately happened to it.

 

[Indiana Ken]

(quoted from post at 21:09:01 07/12/19) From the start of "the big power era" until their demise why was AC never able to make an engine or a power train that would stand up to the rigors of HEAVY tillage use, for example up here in prairie wheat country?

Management?

"Corporate bean counters"?

Engineering?

The answer to your question is, Management. Sure there are many details involved, but in my opinion the details are more about finger pointing. Management must put the systems in place to deliver quality products, support root cause investigation, implementation of corrective action when problems occur....without blaming the people involved. Management creates the environment were people can do their job.

There are many examples: Consider the power shift transmission (SOS) introduced in the Ford 6000 tractor. The entire production of those tractors were later recalled to up-grade the transmission. It is my understanding the engineer, Harold Brock was fired. Harold had taken the position that the transmission needed more development work before being released for production. John Deere hired Harold to develop their power shift transmission. Same man, different company, different results.

 

[301]

Allis Chalmers had good equipment, its the age of big powere etc, and turning the injector pumps up what killed the machines early , , and idiots like the one who started this post that made Allis look bad in certain catagories

 

[GreenEnvy]

The 8550 had a 731 cubic inch engine. Kind of a ways off from the 855 cummins and Cat 3406. Still probably adequate for 300 hp. The 844 was used in some of their crawlers. Anyways seems like AC always tried to get by with a smaller engine then everybody else. The fact that they downrated the 426 by 10 hp going from the 7080 to the 8070 tells me they were having issues with the engine holding up.

 

[Bob]

(quoted from post at 19:00:40 07/14/19) Allis Chalmers had good equipment, its the age of big powere etc, and turning the injector pumps up what killed the machines early , , and idiots like the one who started this post that made Allis look bad in certain catagories

"idiots like the one who started this post that made Allis look bad"

Allis didn't need and help, or any "idiots" to make them look bad in the era of their demise, at least in the big power for heavy tillage era.

Their engines and transmissions simply were not up to surviving the task of heavy wheatland tillage, day in and day out.

 

[VicS]

My D17 above has a hole in the side of the
block where it knocked a piece of the cam
through the block. But it did run 7000
plus hrs. And a rod bolt did break. But
have new ARP bolts in it now. Maybe they
will hold. 100 hrs. LOL

 

[MSM]

Ran into the same problem years ago with the HD21 and HD41 dozers. would almost annually shell out a final drive when used for
heavy ripping or pushing up stockpiles. Seemed like the heat treating of the gears was sub standard.

 

[JD Seller]

I think Allis- Chalmers always had cash flow issues between it's different divisions. They would take an engine that was good one at X horsepower and then push it to higher horsepower until it was not as reliable anymore. The 301 was good in the 180/185s but put it in the 7020 and it would not hold up under heavy loads for more than 2-3K hours. Even on the XT190s they did not last that well. The D-21 was not a well thought of tractor at the time it was new. They had a reputation of having motor troubles.

For the fellows that want to say I an stirring the pot. I rebuilt a lot of AC tractor motors that where worn out at 3-4 thousand hours. The most common one for me was the XT 190s. Guys liked them as they were JD 4020 size and handled pretty good. They could buy the XT190 for about $1000 less money. So the livestock guys around here bought a fair number of them. They would easily get 1000-1500 hours a year put on them choring and such. I had customers that would get them rebuilt every 3-4 years. They would have the pistons and sleeves worn out to where they used a lot of oil an started hard.

The IH and JD motors just lasted longer. Heck the MF Perkins lasted better.

 

[Dustyah]

(quoted from post at 21:09:01 07/12/19) From the start of "the big power era" until their demise why was AC never able to make an engine or a powertrain that would stand up to the rigors of HEAVY tillage use, for example up here in prairie wheat country?

Management?

"Corporate bean counters"?

Engineering?

I would say the above is true, yet at the same time allis was big into industrial eclectical equiptment, like GE and Westinghouse, just the third player or so, same goes with mining equipment, construction equipment, I'd say they were spread a lil thin, not completely focusing on farm equiptment, Mabey a fault who's to say, Dusty