Craftsman 9 Torque Rating Front Tine Tiller Reviews
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Rating Summary
“Craftsman 900 series front tine tiller”
Craftsman 9 Torque Rating Front Tine Tiller —
I bought this tiller on 4-3-08, tilled a 20'x24' established garden that spring. Used it the second time in the fall. It is now 5-3-09 and used it for the third time. After cleaning it, I noticed a 4-5" crack in the bottom of the gear box. I called the local store to discuss the issue, the manager said bring it down and we'll take care of it. Once at the store, he looked it up on his computer to see when I purchased it. He informed me that it was out of warranty and sears would not honor a repair outside of the warranty period. It was only 30 days over, that did not matter. A new gear box is $170 or half the price of a new tiller, this does not include labor. If I wanted to have their service guy look at it, it would be transported to Michigan from Warsaw, Indiana for $29. To me $29 dollars wasn't bad if I could only talk to the service guy. The manager of the store, arguing on the side of sears had said, and I quote, "you must have hit a ROCK". Now think about it tillers are used seasonally, in this case 3 times. The earth contains rocks, dirt and bunches of other stuff. Thinking to myself, if your tiller isn't tough enough to till an established garden it would never handle a new garden. OK done venting, why it failed.
Being a manufacturing engineer it was obvious that the crack initiated at the tangency of the radii in the formed sheet metal gear box, due to a lack of clearance in the stamping dies in this area. At both ends of the crack, this pinching of the metal was obvious. Yes, these gear boxes are subjected to a lot of stress during tilling as they churn through hard clay and rocks. If the metal was thinned due to pinching during the forming process any stresses will cause failure in this area. AND IT DID!
As for future purchases, due to the reluctance on the part of the manager for not helping a loyal customer of sears guaranteeing my satisfaction I will weigh this heavily for future purchases at Sears.
Craftsman 9 Torque Rating Front Tine Tiller
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