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Peabody: On the cavitation of sleeves on 1066. Cavitation is a fact of life with wet sleeved engines. This can be reduced by regular changing of coolant and also by use of water filters. IH put these tractors out without water filters. They knew the consequences before they built the first one. Five years later they started adding water filters. Even then they didn't bother to inform previous buyers who bought earlier tractors without a water filter. On the 886 issue, the 766 model and the early 886 models came equiped with 360 American diesels The later 886 had the 358 German diesel. The German diesel while having great durability could not touch the 360 American engine on torque under heavy load. In our areea the guys that were buying these were 60 to 80 cow dairy farmers operating forage harvesters. Those early ones sold a lot of the later models. I didn't have one of these tractors, I have operated one 766 and one 886 both with 360 engines. I have never operated an 886 with the 358 engine. I do know there were a lot of unhappy customers. I do know the Deere dealer took most of them on trade within 5 years. I do know every one of them were shipped out of the area. Most I understand were shipped to upstate NY. Deere have also been doing the same with their green tradeins. Another factor in all of this is actions of Deere themselves. For a good number of years now you could do a 3 year lease on a new Deere for an unbelievably low price, here in Canada. When the lease was up, the tractor is picked up by a US truck. I'm told these lease payments little more than covered interest. All those years our dollar was worth 65 cents US made this feasable I guess. I'm told now that our dollar has come up 10 cents now they are hauling them back. So for every 10 tractors in the field there are two on the road between Canada and the United States. Gee aint modern day economics grand. Back in my home province we had one pocket of quite concentrated dairy farming. Every farmer in that area had a cattle hauling truck of some description. These guy also had exceptional milk production. An elderly gentleman that quite regularly drove through the area once made the following observation," I don't know how these guys produce so much milk, everytime you drive through there you meet at least 5 or 6 truck loads of cattle, on the road." His feeling was that cows don't produce much milk while being carted around on the back of a truck.
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