GT245 lemon?

After 3 hours of mowing...it happened again. This time it had to wait until today for my husband was out of town. Sure enough, the plugs were fouled. Their shop notes say now that they changed the plugs, cleaned the carboureter, had found dirt in the gas, and it runs just fine. They suggest we are not "running it at full throttle with pto engaged, causing the gas to incompletely burn."

How do we get our money back or get them to fix the problem? We're not going to play this game of we're not babying the thing enough. We played that game with a craftsman chainsaw until we took it back for a quality Stihl.

Carol

We are running at full throttle...

My husband went down in person and they are getting a new carbeurator. The mechanic thinks this will just be a recurring problem otherwise. The gas was fresh as well.

Will keep you posted. Keep us posted as well.

We got our mower back Saturday and ran it for 2 hours...but had to stop because of rain.

now here's the kicker (SCREAM hardly contained).

I just got a call from the dealer's business office a few minutes ago....wanting to know when we were going to PAY $500 for the service and carb replacement. (SHRIEK!) I have a message into my husband AND our lawyer!!!!

THEY ARE SO TOAST!!!

PK Riverside in Norman Oklahoma...STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!!

Carol

Well, the service mgr called and said they were ready to send back our mower to us....then I informed him they already had. Laugh laugh, he said he must've slipped it through and he will get the paperwork corrected right away to reflect warranty. I then told him about the other guy on the list that had a similar problem, only the carb replacement didn't help him. Mr. service mgr. wants me to find out the serial no. of that one's engine...so when he gets his back from the shop...he'll be able to pass that along...

What we're fed up with is the joe smooth salesman pitch that suggests it's our fault (but in oh such a nice way), but when they sense our frustration they back off. Turns out he was familiar to my husband....and that's because my husband had dealt with him when the guy worked for city chevrolet. Hopefully we have shown enough knowledge and attitude that we won't be questioned/soft soaped again. None of this should be happening with only 22 hours on the tractor...but when the implication is that it's the customer's fault...that's just too hard to take.

Hopefully joe smooth salesman realizes just how close we were into making them take it back and ending our business relationship. It was just too much this second time for them to expect us to let them just change plugs and clean the carboretor and say...see all better...until next time. The only reason they changed the carboretor is because my husband appeared in person and was there when the mechanic told the service mgr that it was just going to keep recurring. The fact that they were going to leave it at changing the plugs (they were only black and not really fouled...so cleanable) had we not protested, still frosts my flakes.

Unfortunately, if and when this gets fixed for good, as this gets more hours on it and if other things do occur in the warranty period, we get the feeling it will be battle after battle with this shop.

Carol

We ran ours for 2 hours after the new carboretor. My husband ran it for 2 1/2 hours more yesterday (after a week of rain), and checked the plugs and they are black. He cleaned them up and is interested in seeing what they will look like after a bit more mowing. It is sounding like these carboretors are factory set to run too rich. We hope yours runs better with the new jets. I am curious...have you looked at your plugs after 9 hours or so?

Unfortunately, the dealer says they do not have a loaner, so we are once again mowerless. We have yet to have the thing mow all 3 3/4 mowable acres without a hitch. When it does work...it works very well and leaves the lawn carpet-like. We hope this last fix will take care of it and hope they refund us the pickup/delivery fee on the first warranty service.

The delivery guy is outside...said they did NOT rejet the carburetor. The invoice said they "checked the filter and it's full of oil." Cleaned it, replaced plugs, works fine...

In other words, once again, they are claiming OPERATOR FAULT.

You know what? That is garbage as my husband babied the thing every two hours cleaning the plugs. WHAT ABOUT "RUNNING TO RICH" CAN'T THEY UNDERSTAND????!!!!

I told them I want my money back, that the equipment is only as good as the service department!!! While the mower is fixable and could probably be a great machine once they fix the DEFECT, I don't want to deal with these crooks/incompetents, whichever applies, in the service department.

TOO MUCH MONEY TO PUT UP WITH THIS!!

He also told me his dealer had another GT245 with the exact issues as ours. It had 16 hours when it quit.

Now the deal is that I mentioned to our service dept. the vent tube thing last week (before a service bulletin came out)and our dealer didn't understand why it would be an issue and said they would try to find out. Well, apparently, without calling Deere, they visually inspected the vent tube and didn't see a restriction. I am not sure what they are to look for, and they can't tell me exactly *why* it would be a problem, so it looks like they need to research it and get the service bulletin....lets hope they do...

I did also contact the general manager so hopefully he is on it.

CArol

They won't rejet it. I keep getting this story that you are up in Iowa and our summers here in Oklahoma are just too hot in comparison and that factory set fuel mix is required to cool the engine and blah blah...and his philosophy is that he'd rather have it burn too rich than too lean and "burn up the engine."

He is adamant that our issue was a bad coil pack on the right causing uneven firing that eventually caused the left to foul to compensate and that only until now we've been checking the plugs at the "right time" after full load instead of before...

I am not convinced a "bad" coil pack is going to manifest itself in "uneven plug load," maybe someone can enlighten me and tell me what they think of the diagnosis of our symptoms in relation to a bad coil pack (I mean don't they just commonly cut out and not just "weaken" the spark??)...Anyway...there was no mention of ohmmeter readings and my husband will be SURE to ask what those were tomorrow....

All I know is that after 4-5 hours the thing starts running rough and so far they've tested it only 2. They want to send it home tomorrow although we don't have tall grass really to mow for that many hours since we've been without rain. We're leaving town for a month so it just feels like yet another delay in getting this problem taken care of...and no....when pressed, he admitted they did not feel the need to ask John Deere to help troubleshoot our problem.

We've been gone a month now to NJ for my husband's work. I am driving back (still en route) but my husband flew back and attempted to mow the lawn this weekend...

Yes.....the thing almost finished, but then died. Fouled right plug..the side they replaced the coil pack. So essentially the lawn has been mowed 1 1/2 times since the last fix before this breakdown.

As we told the general manager at the dealer....one more strike...they're out.

It's going back folks. Now if they don't take it back and give us our money back....we are making a hobby out of that dealer.... Suing the hell out of them and making sure John Deere has a very black eye..

Why aren't they recalling these mowers???!!!!!

The dealer is NOT picking up this mower and if they've been reading this forum it's probably because they're afraid.

Anyhow...the "next thing they want to try" is that "John Deere has come up with a different air filter" that will "accomplish the same thing as rejetting the carburetor" by "mixing more air in with the fuel." That filter they're running out to the house. I guess as far as carbon buildup they are thinking that will "burn off."

The "next thing after that is changing the engine." Of course, he suggested because we were gone a month that the grass was "tall." Yup...gotta throw in that hint of customer negligence just to maintain their customer "service" M.O. Oh, that and that he "forgot" to call my husband back to tell him they weren't picking it up. (they "forgot" to call and update us on each of the 5 service calls...just showing up with the mower and a bill...and yes...they've tried to bill us).

How many want to wager that they're just buying time this mowing season to get us out of their face?

The dealer, P & K equipment in Norman, OK, said that Deere will not buy back any tractor past the 30 day period, and that the owner will not give us our money back except for what they would pay for a tractor with 55 hours on it. The owner claimed too much time had passed (4 months). Note that it has been in 5 times and twice during that period my husband had to travel for work and be gone for a month, so we didn't get to run the thing intensively between repairs.

They "offered" to get us into a different tractor with different motor at their cost (less commission and markup), but unless we took a downgrade, they would NOT let us trade for zero cash. In other words, if we went to a gx series (they don't change engines until the 345), they would give it to us at their cost, but NOT credit the full amount that we paid on the GT245 but a depreciated amount. In other words, our 245 was only good for $4300 although we paid close to 5500 for everything. I was livid because I was not going to write out another check. I told him our patience and giving them an opportunity to make things right was the ONLY reason why there were 55 hours on it and 4 months after we bought it. Had I known this was not going to get resoved, they'd have had the tractor back after 17.5 hours and 32 days. I told him we were ripped off. He finally agreed to give us another brand new GT245 with zero hours on it, but only if we keep the same mower deck. This is the minimum we would accept because we were not willing to get a new engine in our other one, run it for 55 more hours only to be told there were too many hours on it and it would be depreciated again. We insisted on zero hours so as to set the depreciation clock back. We don't have faith in these engines, not knowing if the problems were to do a design flaw or a TGIF product. They claim we're the only ones having the problem at that dealer, and yet can't explain why Deere has technical bulletins out. The deal is that deere admits the tube to the right cylinder is farther than the left, so that might explain the rich mixture going to the right cylinder (it's the right side that keeps fouling).

Anyhow, according to the general manager, he wants us to run the heck out of the mower this month and put the hours on it (if it's a design flaw, it will fail after 15-20) and if it messes up supposedly, we will be within a new 30 day john deere money-back period and we should get all our money back (how much you want to bet they'll depreciate the mower deck?). They're more interested in not losing money than not losing customers.

We're not completely happy at all, but at least it's working toward the end of this nightmare. If it works, fine, chalk it up to TGIF manufacturing. If not, hopefully there won't be new obstacles to getting our money back. I just was not willing to accept them throwing in an engine and putting more hours on the old one, since I know they were going to burn us for every hour put on it if the new engine had the same problems.

The other disturbing thing is that their mechanic finds an extraordinary number of cases of "debris in the gas." The manager would have me believe that his typical customer uses rusty gas cans. I told him we were questioned ourselves and told them we used plastic gas cans, and that they accused us having particles in the gas in the past. How many of these GT245s are having the same problems and the customers are being led into believing it's their fault (dirty gas?).

Thanks Joe. They did bring us out the other GT245 so we're going to be putting the hours on it in order to put it to the test. If it acts up like the other one, I'll just start a new thread so people having problems can find it.

The person there found a number on Deere's website and got some help on their repair bill.

I'll let you know how I make out.