North Dakota | Versatile Farmer - 4/25/2009 18:41
Hey, nice to see another V8 Versatile fan! I do have to disagree about the cab comfort. I owned a Steiger ST 310 Panther III and have many Versatiles on the farm now and I wouldn't get back in that cramped Steiger cab for anything. The Versatile cab you can stretch out in, I always felt the Steiger cab lacked room.
I once replaced a clutch in my Steiger and it was over $3000. I replaced a clutch in one of my Versatiles and it was $1000. They are so much easier to work on, I wouldn't own anything but a Versatile. JMHO.
Hey, what do you pull with your 950's? How have they treated you?
I agree about the spaciousness of the Versatile cab being nice compared to the Steigers, but from what I can remember (been about 11-12 years since we had a Steiger), the cabs on the Tiger II and the Cougar were quieter and a bit more modern-ish.
2 of our 950's are our workhorses. One pulls a 4010 CaseIH Concord all spring, the other jumps around from pulling the heavy harrow, applying NH3, chisel plowing, disking, rolling, whatever we need. The third one is kind of just a yard tractor. It was purchased brand new by my grandfather, and despite having over 20,000 hours on it and being a tad thirsty for oil, we can't bring ourselves to part with it. That one pulled the air-seeder up until about 4 years ago.
How have they treated us? Really well. The one that pulls the Concord is set at 375 HP and has a shade over 10,000 hours on it and I would say is the most critical tractor to our operation. Despite the high hours, I haven't had any reason to be concerned about it. The other one has about 6,000 hours on it, and we just overhauled it about 400 hours ago. It's had a rougher life than the other one, but is a good outfit.
I don't know what model Versy the original poster in this thread was looking at, but one big drawback that I will mention about a 900 Versatile, both Series I & II, is that the differentials were not heavy enough for the horsepower. We converted a Series I 900 to Turbo VT, and ended up going through alot of differentials. The engine ended up putting out 360 HP on the dyno, so we just figured it had too much power for the drive-train. A couple years later we bought a Series II 900 and went through a couple differentials on that one as well. That one was all stock, rated at 320 HP. The 950 and 935 Versatiles came out with much heavier differentials than the 900's, and we haven't had much trouble with those. I'm not familar with what the drivetrain looks like on the 895/875/835's, so I don't know if that was a problem with those tractors although I would guess not since they didn't put out near as much horsepower as the ones with V-8's.
Also, to ramble on for a bit longer, the one 950 we have that pulls the air drill has British differentials. The differentials, axles, and axle housings are about half again as big as those on our other Versy's. that one is a 1982, the last year they made the 950 so I don't know if that was standard that year or not. We've had two '81 models that didn't have those heavy duty differentials and axles.
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Versatile vs. Steiger
