For farmers, landscapers and those in construction, the tractor can be a vital piece of equipment. Like most vehicles, tractors sometimes need maintenance or repairs – including the replacement of parts.
When these issues occur, it’s important to be sure that you make the right choice. Choosing the wrong part or a bad quality part can leave your tractor out of order and can cost you serious cash. Remember, there are plenty of people who literally can NOT earn an income without their tractor being functional!
Let’s take a look at the 6 factors you should consider before buying a part.
This is an important consideration. If your tractor suffers a breakdown or needs a part replacing for some other reason, get it properly checked and make sure the part you’re looking to buy is the part you actually need. There’s already a lot of horror stories out there about owners or mechanics who replace the wrong parts and the hassle this causes. Get it right first time and you won’t waste any cash on unneeded parts or labor. Sometimes the fault is only in one area of a ‘part’, meaning you can replace just the one thing instead of the whole part. For example, spending on a replacement reflector is much cheaper than buying an entire new light unit.
This applies to upgrades as well, if you’re looking to add an extra piece of machinery or upgrade a part, make sure you’re making the correct choice AND that you choose the right part. Do your research and talk to some mechanics if needed. Remember it isn’t only cash you could save, but time too.
Think carefully about how long you will need the part for and how any wear or tear might affect it. There are times when a part in worse condition will still be usable for your needs, so you can save some money by going for a used part with a little more wear. There are other times when you’d get much better value for money from a new part though, in these cases it’s better to spend a little more and get a new part in great condition.
Like a lot of other mechanical parts, the brand matters when it comes to tractors. Some brands are known for reliability or quality above others. Using the same manufacturer as your tractor brand can help with compatibility too,
Cost is important to most people. It can work against the other factors you should consider though. There are people who’ve bought cheaper parts just because of their budget and have had to either go with an older/more worn part, or a lower quality one. You have to consider all the factors and see which are most important to your situation before making a choice.
The transmission type of your tractor will affect which parts are compatible, so make sure you know what transmission yours uses and which parts are compatible.
Most tractors use a PTO (power take-off) shaft. This is what provides power to attached machinery. Remember that different tractors have the shaft in different locations. There are also different types of power required by different attachments, such as hydraulic or electronic. Check where your PTO shaft is and what it can do before spending on any additional parts.
At Tractor Spare Parts Ltd, supplying tractor parts in the UK and worldwide is not just a hobby, it is our metaphorical bread and butter. Afterall, it is in our name, Tractor Spare Parts Ltd.
Our customers are important to us and serving them quality and reliable tractor parts is even more important.
Being a quality purveyor of tractor parts in the UK and worldwide, a question we always get asked is, why will we need tractor spare parts? So, we thought why not detail a few of the main reasons people choose to invest in vintage tractors and their spare parts.
For many in the tractor industry, the classical, or vintage tractors, are just the better tractor. A lot of the tractors from the 70s and 80s are simply considered stylish and timeless. This is one of the many reasons people prefer to invest in classical tractors and their spare parts instead of opting for a decidedly more modern purchase.
The older tractors are much simpler with less electronics and gadgets to go wrong and this appeals to many a farmer – after all a farmer has to be a vet, carer, cleaner, driver, book-keeper, record keeper and all the other jobs expected of keeping a farm running smoothly and efficiently. Afterall, not every farmer can be an auto-electrician or mechanic too!!
Many people find the classic tractors are much easier, and cheaper to find spare parts for. The simple design of classic tractors makes these tractor spare parts easier to fit without specialist equipment such as plug-in laptops. For many, the parts on tractors such as Nuffield, Leyland and Marshall brands are easy to fit, familiar and much easier to locate.
One advantage of refitting tractor parts is resale value. Note we do not say one of the reasons why people fit their tractor parts. As this would suggest they have always intended to resale the tractor once fully refurbished.
Most of our customers do not intend to resell their tractors as they usually love them too much. However, when the time eventually does come to part ways with your beloved refurbished tractor, a very big perk is that the tractor will probably have increased in value.
This is usually because when a tractor has had new parts fitted, it re-establishes confidence in the overall integrity of the tractor as well as showcasing how the tractor has been cared for and nurtured.
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Afterall, a tractor needs to be working in order to be safe enough to drive it away.
We all know that cars will need money spent on them every year to keep them road-worthy, unsurprisingly, the same can be said about tractors!
Tractors, although there is no legal requirement for an MOT, still need to be serviced and maintained to keep them in a safe working condition. As a road user, and also a user on a farm, there is a moral and legal obligation to keep your tractor in a safe working condition. Agriculture is one of the most dangerous working sectors, and this can be helped with just a few tractor spare parts.
It is quite easy to change the brake discs and actuators on a Leyland tractor, so why is there so much resistance to do so? You would put spare parts on the brakes of your car, so it should be expected that spare parts will need to be fitted to your tractor as part of regular maintenance. Not just brakes, although this is a bug-bear of mine – all consumable parts will need to be replaced and/or repaired over time.
Some of these Nuffield tractor are 70 years old and I can tell you that a lot of 70 year olds that I know have had one or two parts replaced over the years!
Let’s be honest, farming is not a lucrative business to be in, and farming equipment is expensive, especially if you purchase new equipment. So, it can be more cost-effective to purchase used equipment and then to buy the spare parts to make it safe and work properly.
Even just a few tractor spare parts could be enough to get a tractor that has been sat in the shed for 10 years back up and running.
Whether you are purchasing tractor spare parts for a complete rebuild and restoration of your tractor, or a few spare parts just to fix a problem and get you back and running, you will find that spare parts are much cheaper on vintage and classic tractors than on more modern farming machinery.
For many tractor enthusiasts, a reason they opt for spare tractor parts instead of a mass-produced manufacturer alternatives is to protect the authenticity of the tractor.
When you use tractor spare parts, it feels and looks more at home on your tractor. This rings especially true for classical and vintage tractors. If an older tractor needs a new part as the current one has failed, replacement tractor parts manufactured to the original specifications just feel better and fit straight on without any modification.
Overall, if you want your tractor to still have an authentic feel and look, you should opt for authentic parts. Here at Tractor Spare Parts Ltd, we try to manufacture to the original specifications where possible. There is always a cost balance, but for the majority of spare parts that we supply they are to the specifications of the original tractor parts.
Depending on the part, you might have to fork out a certain amount of money upfront when it comes to the spare part in question. However, just because you have to part with money to begin with, does not mean the transaction will not be financially beneficial in the long term.
Replacing a faulty part with a spare one will save you money in the long run. This is by virtue of the fact that spare parts are usually significantly cheaper than an entirely new tractor. It is also cheaper to replace a spare part when it starts to go wrong, rather than when it is very worn out and has worn other components out too.
One of the benefits of tractor spare parts which is not spoken about much as it can be quite a taboo subject in the vintage tractor world is the fact that it opens the door to customisation. You can use spare parts for purely customisable purposes instead of a need to replace a faulty part.
We get a lot of customers doing 6 cylinder conversions of Nuffield or Leyland Tractors and this is a great example of customisation.
Of course, the greatest example of customisation is one that we at Tractor Spare Parts Ltd come across every day, and that is the history of the tractor. We get calls every week with customers who swear that their tractor is original and nothing has been changed, yet it turns out that a previous owner or family member had to make do with whatever spare parts they could find at the time to keep their tractor running.
Tractor spare parts have not always been as readily available as they are now, and also not everybody wanted to pay for spare parts, so quite often tractors have been repaired with whatever was around on the farm.
The question is when these parts go wrong and need replacing again, do you want to put them back to original with the authentic spare parts? Or is it ok as it is? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, it just depends on what you need to achieve with your tractor.
Want more information on Aftermarket Tractor Parts? Feel free to contact us.