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Do they give you a 55 gallon drum of Crisco with that service manual?

emmett518

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
I have a Deere 2016 310 L backhoe.

Thought that a service manual would be useful, so I called my dealer. They referred me to

www.johndeeretechinfo.com

I keyed in the part number - TM13294x19, and a listing came up.

$746 for a printed copy!!!!

That's worse than college course books.

Talk about financial sodomy.

They do call it John Deere service.
 

emmett518

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
I get it, but I've not seen book sticker shock like that since college.

Funny how everyone talks about how expensive it is to keep a Lambo or Ferrari. They really should talk about the cost of keeping heavy equipment. We need boys hanging posters on their bedroom walls of supermodels, draping themselves over backhoes, loaders and dozers.
 

Nige

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Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
28,973
Location
G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
They really should talk about the cost of keeping heavy equipment.
I hope you thought about that before you bought it.

Wait until you want a paper version of a Cat manual. They start at North of $1000..........
Of course nobody generally buys paper versions these days. It's either pdf on a CD or a direct download. Still about half the price of a paper one though. Even better is a login to the online system that is available 24/7.

Look at it this way. If a dealer tech costs $150/hr and is on the clock from the time he leaves the shop to the time he gets back $750 might get you between 2-3 hours of actual work out of him provided you live relatively close. So the first time you use that manual it's paid for itself right then & there.

Also look at the manual as an investment that you could sell separately at some future date if you ever sold the machine and, based on eBay prices for used paper manuals, you could probably ask the same or even more than you originally paid for it.
 

excavator

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Joined
Oct 16, 2006
Messages
1,445
Location
Pacific North West
That machine was close to $100,000.00 when new and today is still valued at over $50,000.00. It seems to me that anyone who can afford that should be able to afford $750.00 to keep it maintained. I do heavy equipment repair and I buy myself a manual for every machine that my customers buy so that I have as much information possible when I get called to work on them. I've paid as much as $1500.00 for a paper manual, and that was close to 20 years ago.
 

emmett518

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Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
I’ve been told the same thing about 310 Ls. That aside from the exhaust cleanup system, all of the bugs have been worked out.
 

CM1995

Administrator
Joined
Jan 21, 2007
Messages
13,246
Location
Alabama
Occupation
Running what I brung and taking what I win
I get it, but I've not seen book sticker shock like that since college.

Funny how everyone talks about how expensive it is to keep a Lambo or Ferrari. They really should talk about the cost of keeping heavy equipment. We need boys hanging posters on their bedroom walls of supermodels, draping themselves over backhoes, loaders and dozers.

That's why I don't let my competition set my bid pricing and get a chuckle out of GC's and Owners that ask "Why does this cost so much!". :rolleyes:

More time than I can remember our knowledgable Members here on HEF have cautioned newbies about the costs associated with owning and operating heavy equipment when the generic "I want to buy a dozer for my property but I don't have any experience" thread comes up. Some take the advice and some do not, the results are varied to say the least.

This is my take on hiring out mechanical work that is in the same lane as hiring someone to do land improvement or other excavating services on their property. Our company makes money on tearing down buildings, moving earth and putting pipe in the ground - not fixing heavy equipment. A good dependable mechanic is worth gold just like a good dependable site work contractor. If I wanted to make money repairing equipment I would open a HE repair shop.

Just an example but I would be foolish to take a crew that could earn $300-400 an hour doing what they do in the field and put them wrenching on a machine to save $150 per hour the mechanic charges. The $$ just doesn't make sense.

In my opinion I think a lot of the do it yourself types could save a lot of money, frustration and time hiring out the work instead of buying a piece of yellow scrap iron and do it themselves. However every man has the right to go to hell in their own fashion.:D
 

excavator

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Joined
Oct 16, 2006
Messages
1,445
Location
Pacific North West
Well, compared to the manual cost for my $90,000 Lexus, it’s a lot.
Well, if you can afford to spend $90,000.00 on a car then $675.00 on a manual seems cheap. If you look on the Deere site again there are several options. The "best" manual has color fold out schematics ect., the POD is the same manual with each schematic printed on individual pages, no color, then there's the CD version or the download. The last few years I've been buying the download version, I have it within the hour, I put it on a CD and bring it to my local printer and within a day have a printed version. Now I have it on my computer, on CD and in print.
 

partsandservice

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2011
Messages
846
Location
Georgia
Probably the same thing , but I use the John Deere Bookstore. You can purchase just the electrical schematics for your machine and get it on the spot.
 

emmett518

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
Well, if you can afford to spend $90,000.00 on a car then $675.00 on a manual seems cheap. If you look on the Deere site again there are several options. The "best" manual has color fold out schematics ect., the POD is the same manual with each schematic printed on individual pages, no color, then there's the CD version or the download. The last few years I've been buying the download version, I have it within the hour, I put it on a CD and bring it to my local printer and within a day have a printed version. Now I have it on my computer, on CD and in print.

I didn't spend $90,000 on a car. I bought it used.

And you don't get the ability to spend $90,000 on a car by wasting money unnecessarily.
That's why I don't let my competition set my bid pricing and get a chuckle out of GC's and Owners that ask "Why does this cost so much!". :rolleyes:

More time than I can remember our knowledgable Members here on HEF have cautioned newbies about the costs associated with owning and operating heavy equipment when the generic "I want to buy a dozer for my property but I don't have any experience" thread comes up. Some take the advice and some do not, the results are varied to say the least.

This is my take on hiring out mechanical work that is in the same lane as hiring someone to do land improvement or other excavating services on their property. Our company makes money on tearing down buildings, moving earth and putting pipe in the ground - not fixing heavy equipment. A good dependable mechanic is worth gold just like a good dependable site work contractor. If I wanted to make money repairing equipment I would open a HE repair shop.

Just an example but I would be foolish to take a crew that could earn $300-400 an hour doing what they do in the field and put them wrenching on a machine to save $150 per hour the mechanic charges. The $$ just doesn't make sense.

In my opinion I think a lot of the do it yourself types could save a lot of money, frustration and time hiring out the work instead of buying a piece of yellow scrap iron and do it themselves. However every man has the right to go to hell in their own fashion.:D

Well, some people enjoy working on things. I know that I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about this machine, doing as much of the maintenance by myself (I did hire out the seal replacement), and setting it up the way that I want. In fact, despite the challenges, I've enjoyed this project more than any other so far, and I actually love heading out to feed animals in the morning and gazing at Annabelle Grace.

And American farmers are so upset over the monopoly these heavy equipment companies have over the maintenance monopoly and price power on their machines that they are turning to Ukrainian software to crack the Deere prohibitions on do it yourself maintenance. I'm not saying that this is a good idea, but I'm not the only one questioning costs associated with this stuff.

And it's not nickel and dime stuff. I bought all of my fluids and filters from the local dealer. Getting quality stuff for a few dollars more made more sense than risking buying junk off the web. It's the $1000 for wheel spacers, and $5000 to change a seal that seems excessive.
 

63 caveman

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Nov 11, 2017
Messages
340
Location
western Pa.
The big problem with factory service is the small guy that has one or two pieces of equipment rarely gets one of the top service techs. So very often that small guy ends up paying a high hourly rate to train a new tech or gets one that isn't good enough to send out to big customers. Hell I've gotten into thing way over my head because service department is backed up weeks or months and have bin asked to do the best I can and give it a shot and so far it's worked out good for me and my costumers. In the end a good factory service tech just can not be beat but a poor one has to be the most frustrating thing to deal with.

Back to the subject....
If you thing about it in terms of nobody thinks twice about putting a grand in the fuel tank or paying an operator to run the machine for a few days, the service manual is a bargain!
 

John C.

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Jun 11, 2007
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Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
You don't get a service manual with your Lexus. You get a little bit of an operation manual that tells you to contact your dealer when something goes wrong.

As far as the Deere repair stuff and the farmers go, it is my impression that the farmers want the ability to short circuit all the emissions stuff at their discretion. From what little I've seen in the Deere side of construction equipment, they have followed Komatsu on including all the diagnostics in the machine now. What they don't give you is the source code and actually no one gives you that on anything. They certainly are not going to give out information that government regulators will use as a club to beat up the manufacturer.

My take on the complaints about service manual prices is pretty straight forward. People complained about those prices when I entered the business some fifty years ago. It's no different now. A $50 book back then equates to something around $300 to $500 or more today. It's just the price of having big iron. If you can't afford the manual, then you can't afford the iron.
 

kshansen

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Mar 11, 2012
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11,127
Location
Central New York, USA
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Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
Back to the subject....
If you thing about it in terms of nobody thinks twice about putting a grand in the fuel tank or paying an operator to run the machine for a few days, the service manual is a bargain!

As I don't have anything that runs on diesel I have no idea what off-road diesel costs but just going by the on-highway price around here which I believe is about $3.30 a gallon and the capacity of the tank of a 310 L being around 125 gallons one tank is around $412.00
 

emmett518

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2021
Messages
810
Location
USA
As I don't have anything that runs on diesel I have no idea what off-road diesel costs but just going by the on-highway price around here which I believe is about $3.30 a gallon and the capacity of the tank of a 310 L being around 125 gallons one tank is around $412.00

34 gallons. I pay $2.80 a gallon.

Just looked up the manual for an F150. Close to $300.

Guess they got expensive.
 
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