THE BROKEN TRACTOR BRAKE

About five or six months ago I received a recall notice from John Deere (JD) that a piece in the brake linkage, called the brake bell crank on my JD tractor was suspectable to braking and advising me to no longer operate it.   The recall involved three tractor models going back to 2018.   After inquiring with the local JD dealership where I purchased the tractor, they informed me there are an estimated 500 tractors they had sold since 2018 that needed to come into their shop for replacement of the defective part starting with those models sold in 2018.   I purchased my tractor in 2019.  Being mindful of the potential brake problem I continued to operate my tractor as needed.  I shared this information with my neighbor as he has borrowed the tractor at times and lives just down the road from my place.   A month ago I went to the JD dealership for an oil filter and oil, and asked what the status was with replacement of the defective part.  They told me they were taking in 4 or 5 tractors a week and the hang up was not receiving enough of the replacement parts from the manufacturer.  This last week my neighbor was using the tractor and the brake bell crank broke while he was operating it.   Luckily he was able to reverse the tractor using the hydrostatic transmission reverse pedal avoiding a disaster.   I called the JD dealership and informed them of the breakage.   They told me they would call other JD dealerships in hopes of finding a new part and get back to me on scheduling the repair.    I did receive a message from the dealer and called back without connecting to that individual, who I believe was the manager.   The person that did answer the phone said he would put a note on the callers desk to call me back and informed me they were short of people to do all the work in the shop.   I never received a call back. The next day I decided to look under the tractor and saw the broken piece and proceeded to remove it myself with little difficulty.   The broken part was made out of a cheap alloy, called pot metal by us common folks.  Then I drove into the dealership and approached the parts counter where four employees were busy talking.   I put the broken part on the counter saying, "have you see this before?"   Immediately I got everybody's attention, including the manger, who was among the four.    Without any introductions they knew I was the guy who called the day before.  The manger told me he had a new replacement part that they received from the JD dealer in Tangent and handed it to me.  He offered to send somebody out to my place to help put it on the tractor, but I told him I could do it.   He then told me I was the first customer to report a breakage out of all the tractors under the recall in their dealership.   The new part was made out of real steel and much heavier.