(no subject)

Пытался отправить обзор на снегомет John Deere на сайт Home Depot. Забанили, конечно. Кто б сомневался, им же их продавать еще...

Ну, пусть пока тут полежит. Будет время, выложу еще себе на сайт и на фейсбучек, как раз надо высказаться по теме ценности всех этих ревью в интернетах.

The quality of engineering and manufacturing of this attachment is unbelievably low, and reliability is very poor. Bought it brand new from a John Deere dealer. Had no problem in the first winter only because there was very little snow. On a year two regular snowfalls and cold weather and I literally have to repair it daily! Shear bolts are consumables - I bought a pack of them and keep a stash in a tractor's cupholder. Attachment bracket for the controls constantly gets loose - no wonder because they designed it to be secured with a single bolt to the soft plastic on tractor's dashboard and you cant get it tightened without cracking the dash. Drive belt gets twisted at 90 degrees on a very short run between pulleys, a spare belt is very low in quality and dealer charges C$114 for it. The whole кinematics of the belt drive seems twisted and designed to wear down the belt as quickly as possible. First belt lasted about 20 hours of operation. Second belt lasted only 5 hours before it broke again. No problems with seized pulleys, sharp edges, etc, looks like it is just a poor quality belt and likely not designed to operate in cold climate. Manual suggest using a special grease when it is below -20 but its pulleys have sealed bearings with no grease fittings. Do they actually realize that snow tends to occur when it is generally cold out there? Checked oil in the gearbox and found it full with metal powder indicating excessive wear on gears. Also total amount of oil there is very small. Paint is chipping off even where it is not being hit by rocks and there is no base coat under it, just bare metal. Welding joint on a lifting handle bracket failed and I had to weld it back. Luckily I own an automotive repair shop and can deal with all this myself, if I would bring it back to a dealer for warranty repairs every time, it would have spent all the winter in their shop and I would be paying for the snow removal to someone else in a meantime. All this is hard to tolerate on $500 product, but the price (with a discount!) was C$2400! Gearbox on this thing wears "Made in India" badge and I suspect this whole thing was designed there too. Surely they know how to do snow removal out there in India and this attachment got extensive testing program completed in the Himalayas!

This product might work for you if you have a small driveway and occasional light snowfalls with temperatures never falling below -20C, if you won't exceed 5 hours of operation per season, and store this attachment in a heated garage or shed. Otherwise, it is waste of money. Actually paying this amount of money for the product that is clearly not fit for the intended purpose of medium-duty snow removal is waste of money anyway. Going to be selling mine and will try to stay away from John Deere products in the future.

Добаблю еще совсем неполиткорректного: конечно же ожидать что пендосско-индусское изделие будет годно для снегоуборки было наивно. Но я повелся на то что John Deere вроде же не последнее имя в этой технике, продукт оригинальный и стоит недешево. Видимо все же для снегоуборки надо искать что-то канадское. Или скандинавское.