Fix It, Even If It Ain’t Broke: 6 Wear

The old adage, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke,” isn’t always the most efficient or economical option. Worn components on harvest equipment reduce groundspeeds, increase grain loss and encourage engines to gulp extra fuel. Here are six wear points that might not halt harvest, but they will slow it and degrade performance.

Kelly Kravig, platform marketing manager at CNH, once noted, depending on the moisture of crop residue and condition of flail knives, straw choppers can use up to 25% of a combine engine’s capacity. Dull chopper flail knives not only use excess engine horsepower, but do a poor job of shredding residue, which can lead to tillage and planting problems next spring.

Sickle sections on platforms need to slide through knife guards with “crisp” edges. If guards show rounding of the edges of the slot through which the sickle slides, they gnaw rather than slice, produce a ragged cut and increase shatter loss.

Sickle sections should lightly slide across the lower surface of the slot in knife guards to efficiently shear stems as the sickle oscillates. A rule of thumb is to have no more than 1/8" vertical free-play. Tight spots should never be more than warm to the touch of a bare finger due to friction after the cutterbar has run for several minutes.

Rotate a cutterbar’s drive sheave until the tips of all sickle sections are inside/behind a rock guard. Then rotate the drive until the sickle moves full-stroke to the side. The sickle section tips should end a full stroke inside/behind another set of rock guards. Cutterbars that are out-of-register leave ragged cuts and shake stems to create shatter loss.

High-acreage corn heads and grain platforms often develop holes in the trough below their cross auger. The most permanent fix is to replace the sheet metal of the trough, which is costly and time-consuming. Here are other options:

Harvest comes to a screeching halt if the grain cart breaks down. Check these wear-points on carts in the preseason: