"Made-It-Myself" 12-Row Corn Head

"Made-It-Myself" 12-Row Corn Head COMBINES Headers 26-6-9 Gary Fesmire, Dyer, Tenn., bought a used Case-IH 4-row header and merged it with an 8-row model that he already owned to build a low-cost, 12-row model. "I've used it to harvest more than 2,600 acres of corn with no problems," says Fesmire, who uses the header on his 1994 Case-IH 1688 combine. He paid $5,000 for the Case-IH 1043 4-row header. He added two row units to each side of the 8-row header. He stripped both headers down and used steel tubing to build a new frame. He bought a new 30-ft. long, 16-in. dia. cross auger and cut the flighting down to 14-in. diameter to fit the header. He also had to extend the driveshafts on both headers and add a new row divider at one end of the header. The drives and rollers are all original. "The combine actually does a better job of threshing with the 12-row header than it did with the 8-row, even in 200-bu. corn," says Fesmire. "I do have to drive a little slower but that's not a problem. "I paid $1,600 for the cross auger, $400 for the row divider, and $300 for new steel so my total cost was less than $10,000. A new 12-row header would have cost about $53,000." Fesmire says that at first he was concerned about the weight of the 12-row header, but it hasn't been a problem. "In fact, my header weighs about 700 lbs. less than a Case-IH 12-row header. I did add fluid in the rear tires for extra ballast." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Gary Fesmire, 233 Yorkville Hwy., Dyer, Tenn. 38330 (ph 731 692-3341).

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