Yeah tarp is the worst thing for paint. I went with a breathable car cover after mine got wrecked and no more cracks. Cost like 80 bucks but way cheaper than a respray.

Watched my monstera slowly die for two years before I figured out I was basically drowning it every Sunday. Turns out my "love" was just wet feet and root rot. Now I poke every pot with a chopstick like I'm checking a cake, and my plants finally stopped giving me that sad droopy look. My neighbor thinks I'm weird but her pothos looks like a brick too, so who's really winning here?

The ground drive part is the key here, not the age. A ground driven tedder has no PTO shaft, no gearbox and no hydraulics, so there is just less stuff to break. Your uncle's unit probably has a few grease fittings and that is about it for upkeep. One thing though, calling it outworking your new one is not quite fair. Your machine quit because of a bearing, not because the design is bad. On a good day your hydraulic fold is faster to move between fields and easier to adjust for different crops. The old one won because it was still running, and running beats fancy every time. That said, 40 years behind a barn and no rusted up beaters tells you he took care of it. Plenty of those old units get dragged out and the wood is rotted and the teeth are bent all to hell. If it were me I would price the bearing first. If it is under a hundred bucks you fix the new one and keep the old one around as backup. Two tedders is not a bad spot to be in during first cutting.