The grass is greener....

[The Grand Nudger]

I got a nicer mower for less. Can’t break the thing, I’ve tried.

You got hosed. Happens to us all at some point. Sucks.

[arewethereyet]

Yes Brian.  Your Troy Built mower is just like the Max Jet 737.  Of course it is.  

Now that it's working, you can fly it out of harm's way when the next hurricane passes through.

Not the point.

The point is no matter what you pay for ANYTHING, even with more expensive things, the more complex that object is, the makers will STILL try to make parts as cheap as they can.

There is no reason when you pay $1,400 for ANYTHING that a sliver of metal should cause such a failure. I din't buy it at a dollar store.

The 737 Max Jet crashes were caused for the same fucking reason. CEOs rushing for a buck. 

I don't care if you are manufacturing a lawn mower, a cell phone or toilet. If you make it, it should be durable and last. Our planet is fucked up with it's bullshit attitude that "you get what you pay for".

Next time you go to a Walmart, just take notice of all the items, in the 100s of thousands. And know after days, weeks, months and years, those products will end up in a landfill, or worse, in our oceans. Then multiply that one corporate entity, by all other giant corporations worldwide that sell shit.

Do not tell me in your entire life, you have never been upset with the quality of a product.

I don't shop at Walmart.  Haven't in years.

Lots of large machinery contains small pieces of metal - nuts, bolts, pins, washers, etc.  I would be surprised if you had any mechanical aptitude.  If you did, you would know that.

It's not fun to have something break down but you have had the mower two years.  It's not like the first time you started it up it blew the fuck up.  After time and with use things wear out and you live near the ocean so there is also the moisture and salt air.  That's going to play hell on small pieces of metal.  It's hot there too.  That can gum up rubber parts or cause them to dry rot depending on how you store them.  I will assume you don't keep it in the living room but probably in a shed that isn't climate controlled.

[Brian37]

Not the point.

The point is no matter what you pay for ANYTHING, even with more expensive things, the more complex that object is, the makers will STILL try to make parts as cheap as they can.

There is no reason when you pay $1,400 for ANYTHING that a sliver of metal should cause such a failure. I din't buy it at a dollar store.

The 737 Max Jet crashes were caused for the same fucking reason. CEOs rushing for a buck. 

I don't care if you are manufacturing a lawn mower, a cell phone or toilet. If you make it, it should be durable and last. Our planet is fucked up with it's bullshit attitude that "you get what you pay for".

Next time you go to a Walmart, just take notice of all the items, in the 100s of thousands. And know after days, weeks, months and years, those products will end up in a landfill, or worse, in our oceans. Then multiply that one corporate entity, by all other giant corporations worldwide that sell shit.

Do not tell me in your entire life, you have never been upset with the quality of a product.

I don't shop at Walmart.  Haven't in years.

Lots of large machinery contains small pieces of metal - nuts, bolts, pins, washers, etc.  I would be surprised if you had any mechanical aptitude.  If you did, you would know that.

It's not fun to have something break down but you have had the mower two years.  It's not like the first time you started it up it blew the fuck up.  After time and with use things wear out and you live near the ocean so there is also the moisture and salt air.  That's going to play hell on small pieces of metal.  It's hot there too.  That can gum up rubber parts or cause them to dry rot depending on how you store them.  I will assume you don't keep it in the living room but probably in a shed that isn't climate controlled.

I also don't know how to program a computer, so I also cant crash a passenger jet with software.

But no sorry, this failure was not my fault. It was bad design.

I have abused plenty of computers and plenty of tools in my life, this was not my fault.

[Anomalocaris]

I bet there were more expensive mowers that were better built, but you didn't chose to pay the extra.

I bet like most consumers, you bought the cheapest one you deemed acceptable by feel, and then bemoaned the price to quality ratio is what you deemed ought to be.

$1,400 dollars isn't fucking cheap. And I bought it brand new. And used it very little. 

I don't give a fuck if someone thinks that is "cheap" for a mower. That is not cheap.

$1,400 should get you 5 to 10 years of use, with tons of abuse.

One tiny pin, not a baseball bat, not a crowbar, but a fucking sliver of metal. 

An earring stud that sits in your ear and does nothing makes sense. But that pin on my mower was responsible for keeping the tension between the gear shift handle and the cable to the gear box. That that should not wear out over 4 uses in a 2 year period.

Cheap is relative.   You have no particular right to a certain $/useful life ratio.  But you did have of the choice to do research, shop around, and adjust budget to improve the odds of getting $/Useful life ratio.

---

I don't shop at Walmart.  Haven't in years.

Lots of large machinery contains small pieces of metal - nuts, bolts, pins, washers, etc.  I would be surprised if you had any mechanical aptitude.  If you did, you would know that.

It's not fun to have something break down but you have had the mower two years.  It's not like the first time you started it up it blew the fuck up.  After time and with use things wear out and you live near the ocean so there is also the moisture and salt air.  That's going to play hell on small pieces of metal.  It's hot there too.  That can gum up rubber parts or cause them to dry rot depending on how you store them.  I will assume you don't keep it in the living room but probably in a shed that isn't climate controlled.

I also don't know how to program a computer, so I also cant crash a passenger jet with software.

But no sorry, this failure was not my fault. It was bad design.

I have abused plenty of computers and plenty of tools in my life, this was not my fault.

So long as the design isn’t unsafe, they have no imperative to make it better unless you did your research and denied them revenue by not buying their wares.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don’t think that anyone is saying that your mower problem was you fault, just that issues with small parts are common to machines.

I get where you’re coming from, though, and I’ll raise your bet. If people realized how low quality their stuff was, even their “expensive” stuff....it might suddenly dawn on them that they’re even poorer than they thought they were, pacified by an endless stream of cheap shit to choose from.

We’d be reaching for pitchforks and torches, busting out the guillotines. Maybe that’s why they keep churning out cheap shit? It’s an imperative not just for the system we live under, but for the continued existence of the people who benefit the most from it.

Still, do more research next time. Troy is the shitty tier of shit.

[Fireball]

Dredging back to my memory of a time time working on John Deere tractors back in the '70s, I recall one time when the Power Take-Off (PTO) failed on a tractor. The farmer brought it in to be repaired. We broke the tractor in half at the engine/transmission interface and replaced the roll pin that went through the two parts that needed to be connected for the PTO to work. 8 hours labor at $14 an hour, for an 80-cent part. Farmer was pissed, needless to say, and bitched about the labor, but that was the time it took to get it apart, fix it, and get it back together. Consider that it took a crane and a jack to support the two halves of the tractor as we pulled it apart. Consider yourself lucky that your precious illegal neighbors made an effective, inexpensive repair. Shit is what it is.

---

I don’t think that anyone is saying that your mower problem was you fault, just that issues with small parts are common to machines.

I get where you’re coming from, though, and I’ll raise your bet.  If people realized how low quality their stuff was, even their “expensive” stuff....it might suddenly dawn on them that they’re even poorer than they thought they were, pacified by an endless stream of cheap shit to choose from.

We’d be reaching for pitchforks and torches, busting out the guillotines.  Maybe that’s why they keep churning out cheap shit?  It’s an imperative not just for the system we live under, but for the continued existence of the people who benefit the most from it.

Still, do more research next time.  Troy is the shitty tier of shit.

Fact is, if he wanted a machine that didn't suffer from this failure or was easily repairable if it did, it would cost more than his home.

[onlinebiker]

If you can't fix it yourself - your opinion of the engineering involved in it's manufacture is less than commanding.


Now if you' ll excuse me - I've got to design and build a rider mower mounted, steep hill cutting attatchment - comprised of a minature generator and electric weed whip mounted on a pivoting counterbalanced arm.


Really.

No... Really.

[Brian37]

This is not a matter of price being relative. Corporate America uses cheap manufacturing overseas to make most of what we buy here. I can remember growing up things were made far more durable, and when they did break, you didn't have to fight with company over using your warranty. These companies will use third party sub contractors to "fix" things. In reality that creates a legal loophole to get you to fight between company and the sub contractor and a separate warranty company. I had the same fucking problem with the mobility van I used for my mom. The ramp was installed after factory but we bought it from a dealership and when we had computer chip problems with it, the dealer and the ramp maker would point to the other. The same can be said for health insurance. Deregulation allows giant corporations to maximize profits and minimize costs. So in the case of this tiny broken pin, neither the sub contractor or the company I bought the lawn mower at wont spend the money on parts or labor because they wont make a dime fixing it.

[The Grand Nudger]

You’re probably misremembering.

[Succubus]

...I do one lap around my lawn, have to back up, switch gears and all the sudden the damned thing wont move, the gear switch crapped out. My neighbors fiddled under it and got the pin to stick. YES, a FUCKING PIN. That is the only fucking thing that keeps my mower in gear...

The fact that the wee man next door had no trouble locating this 'pin', suggests it was built for easy access. Was it possibly a 'shear pin' designed to, you know, shear under abnormal load to prevent catastrophic failure of the gearbox. As in an inexperienced operator changing direction before the machine has come to a complete stop.

Could you post the make and model numbers.