A POLL to determine the best rear seal retainer fix

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

Thanks for doing this, Rick.

I used the Loctite 660. Didn't take long to start leaking again.

Did you have bare metal on the outer edges of the seal? I do not think either the 660 or the Bearing mount I use will work good unless they have bare metal to stick to.

[Landreo]

I don't want to fill this thread with extraneous information but ZAMAK is a specific alloy not just a "potmetal". Regular or common potmetal tends to oxidize and crack over time. I have pulleys from an old Edison Dictaphone that are split and cracked from expansion of the potmetal. Same issues with radios from the 1920 with broken dial pulleys. Sorry to say but everyone's childhood toy cap gun is going to split and crack. ZAMAK would not typically develop aging cracks but still has the problems of metal creep. So it could have been worse, at least IHC chose to use a reasonably stable type of potmetal.

It is your poll but knowing the denominator will give a much better idea of the success or failure rate. It will also let you know if the poll results are even valid, in other words, did you reach a reasonable number of reworked retainer users to have any validity. If only those that have had a failure respond then you will get skewed results.

[radioguy41]

I understand the reasoning for identifying the ones that failed and their source, but don’t you also need to know the ones that were machined but have not failed?

I would agree. I think it's important to know, or at least have a reference number, of the percentage of failures per method. This is how numbers can be misleading. If Mr A has 2 failures and Mr B has 3 failures on the surface their methods seem to favor Mr A (based on poll results) but if Mr A did 50 and Mr B did 100 the methods are no longer equal. A failure rate of 3 out of 100 (3%) is more successful than 2 out of 50 (4%). As set up the poll only provides partial data with no base reference. These numbers are hypothetical and are only used as an example of how partial data can skew the conclusions.

[Rick Prentice]

I'm sure I did close to 400, My guess is Phil did upwards of 300 and Tim stated he's done 2000 plus.

I guess I just don't understand what some of you want. I would think the denominator would be 400 for Rick, 300 for Phil, and 2000 for Tim, if that's what you're after, so I must not be seeing something correctly. Again, It wasn't my intent to bash anyone comparing track records or ratios , but to prove to everyone that no matter who does the fix, it could possibly fail now or in the future. We know IH made an improvement several years after the first retainers and seals started leaking, we don't have any idea, that I know of, when the first R2 retainers and rubber seals started leaking. Our only record is because Dennis started this site and we have the search function. Again, sorry for all this confusion,
Rick

[radioguy41]

Again, It wasn't my intent to bash anyone comparing track records or ratios , but to prove to everyone that no matter who does the fix, it could possibly fail now or in the future.

I think future failures of any sort of repairs are a possibility if not a probability so I'm not sure, then, what the purpose is. The heading says "to determine the best rear seal retainer fix" which implies a comparison, does it not? How can you determine the best of a group without comparing them?

[Stanton]

Thanks for doing this, Rick.

I used the Loctite 660. Didn't take long to start leaking again.

Did you have bare metal on the outer edges of the seal? I do not think either the 660 or the Bearing mount I use will work good unless they have bare metal to stick to.

John, it was a metal seal in original (pot-metal) retainer, if I recall.

[Landreo]

All seals will eventually fail, the rubber or leather or rope will not last forever but there may be a big difference between the mean time to failure for the original seal retainers and the reworked retainers.The original seal and retainer may last 20, 30, or 40 years. How long do the reworked seal retainers last and what is the time to failure?

A total of 2700 reworked seal retainers may be out there but how many of those folks will see this poll? Is the failure numbers for all 3 groups only 4 out of 2700 or is the failure 4 out of the 100 people that read the poll? That is where the "success" numbers would help sort out the response rate. If you have 4 fails but 2000 people responded that their seals were a success then that is a good rate. If you have 4 fails but only 10 folks responded with a success then that tells you that you are missing a lot of folks that did not respond or did not see the survey. I expect most folks that have had the retainers reworked are not currently involved in Farmallcub.com and do not know about the survey. The success numbers would give an idea of the validity of your poll results.

Good data is useful for folks to determine what options suit them best. Bad data is not useful to anyone.

[Matt Kirsch]

Forget I said anything.

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

Rick started this wanting to know about success and problems. I have 3 that were done by him and 1 by TSt. Of all of them I have had one fail, and I suspect that one may be from the metal fatiguing, not from any fault in the modification. That is the type information I believe he is looking for.

[Landreo]

Including the number of successes in this poll is a waste of time because you are not going to get 100% participation. At best the poll results would make it look as if there is a 50% failure rate, and at worst a 90%+ failure rate.

Remember, happy customers have little reason to complain.

Besides we already have a rough number of retainers modified by the various modifiers. We can get a failure rate from that if necessary.

How can you get the failure rate from the rough numbers of reworked retainers? I would be interested to know. Your method of determining the failure rate only works with 100% participation. I would be surprised if the actual participation rate in this poll even reaches 1%.

You can get an estimate of the failure rate from the number of failures and the number of successes. You can estimate the failure rate from the number of fails and the participation rate. The poll, as is, will not give the participation rate nor the number of successes so it is impossible to know or estimate the failure rate from this poll. The failure rate or the success rate are the two important takeaways we should get but are impossible to determine as the poll is currently designed.

[ajhbike]

Why not let him run the poll as he wishes and either participate or not? It seems the goal is to determine what doesn't work so that processes can be adjusted if needed. And there is some collaboration between the 3 "suppliers" with the goal to improve the process to reduce the failures and exchange information. IMHO, it seems like win-win whether the poll is statistically sound or not to me.

[Barnyard]

Why not let him run the poll as he wishes and either participate or not? It seems the goal is to determine what doesn't work so that processes can be adjusted if needed. And there is some collaboration between the 3 "suppliers" with the goal to improve the process to reduce the failures and exchange information. IMHO, it seems like win-win whether the poll is statistically sound or not to me.

Exactly!

[Bill Hudson]

Why not let him run the poll as he wishes and either participate or not? It seems the goal is to determine what doesn't work so that processes can be adjusted if needed. And there is some collaboration between the 3 "suppliers" with the goal to improve the process to reduce the failures and exchange information. IMHO, it seems like win-win whether the poll is statistically sound or not to me.

Exactly!

You betcha!!! This is not PhD research requiring statistical analysis that is ten feet tall and bulletproof.

Bill

[Rick Spivey]

ANd I'll just note, that the failures I am interested in, and have experienced, are a failure of the seal to stay lodged in the retainer. Had it been just a typical failure of the sealing lip, I'd not think about it one second, and would just replace the seal. So I think this is directed more at failures where the seal was NOT retained correctly, rather than service failures of the sealing lip.

[pickerandsinger]

On the success side, I've put in 5 from Tim and never had an issue...( 5 different tractors, btw) ....Dave