Heavy Clay No Problem For Krause No Till Drill

Heavy Clay No Problem For Krause No Till Drill DRILLS Drills (42C) 29-3-36 David Kent, Bedford, Iowa: "I have heavy, wet clay soil on my farm that sticks to the rubber gauge and press wheels on my Krause no till drill. It also plugs up the wheels in front of the drill's double disc openers. "To solve the problem, I removed both sets of wheels. Then I bought an old Deere 400 rotary hoe, removed the hoe wheels, and bent the tines to a 90 degree angle. The original wheel bearings were frozen up so I replaced them with new ones. Then I bolted the wheels to the mounting arms on the drill. The bent spokes on the rotary hoe wheels penetrate the ground without picking up wet soil. Now my drill pulls easier, and beans emerge just as well as if I used rubber wheels, if not better. The rotary hoe wheels also do a better job of closing the trench and covering the seed. They crush the seed trench and æcave in' enough soil to adequately cover the seed. "These Deere 400 rotary hoes can be bought cheap at auctions or junk yards. The bearings on the rotary hoe wheels happen to be the same size as the bearings on the Krause drill's wheels so they're a perfect fit. "On a New Holland TR 85 combine, the way the cylinder bars are attached to the rotors creates a slap (backward and forward) in the rotors whenever they're under load. This wears out the connecting drive sprockets and the double chain that's used to connect the rotors to the gearboxes. It's actually a rather crude system. St. John's Welding in Kansas suggested the first bar be set at at 90 degrees and the second bar split the distance between the first bars. But the factory rock trap doesn't always work so you can have trouble with those settings. Instead, I positioned both bars at 90 degrees to the rotor. It seems to even out the load and allows rocks to flow through. I used the mounting bar brackets off a junked New Holland TR 70. I use the cheaper second bar only. Now it seems to have more capacity."

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