Cyclops plastic damage

[Mike McKown]

Just a short comment on the plastic.

I bought three of these Cyclops back when two of them were 2-4 years old. The third one was about 6. None of them had broken plastic. Everything was in good condition.

EVERY ONE I have bought since then that had at least 10 years with the previous owner had damage done to the plastic front ends. Some minor, some major to the point that ALL the panels had at least some broken parts.

I initially attributed this to poor design and the plastic just self destructing. As time went on, I noticed my original three Cyclops plastic was still in top shape. It finally occurred to me, the reason for the broken plastic was just careless driving/handling of the panels.

Running/ramming the front end into immovable objects breaks the top pins out of the side panels at a minumum. Leaning with your body weight against the side panels will crack them on the top. Over tightening of the grill mount will crack it. Putting the tractor on a trailer backwards and towing it will cause the hood to fly up under wind pressure. This bends the hood hinge, breaks the top of the grill out, breaks the pins out of the side panels and will also break the grill off at the frame mounting point.

So here it is about 20 years after I bought my first Cyclops and the factory installed plastic is still solid on these machines

There are other causes to that I've seen but the point here is, if you take care of your plastic, it will give you good service for years and years.