Combine Modification Triples Hillside Speed

Combine modification triples hillside speed COMBINES Accessories 12-1-6 Last summer Steve Brooks, of New Windsor, Ill., cut out fins above the chaffer inside an old White combine and installed them in his Deere 6620 combine, allowing him to harvest three times faster on hillsides - without losing grain. Brooks had traded a White combine for the Deere model. Both combines have similar capacities, says Brooks. "However, I was disappointed with the Deere 6620. On bottom ground it worked fine. But as soon as I got in the hills, I had to slow down because it was losing grain over the sides of the sieve, even at a half mile per hour. I had this big combine running practically empty all the time, trying to keep grain from running onto the ground. "On the hillsides, grain piled up to 40 in. high along the sides of the sieve," says Brooks. "There was nothing to stop grain from going over the sides." With the help of a neighbor, Brooks cut out the fins from a 25-year-old White combine with the same length sieve as the Deere combine. "The fins stick out like wing dams to keep grain away from the sides of the sieve," says Brooks. To install the fms in the Deere combine, they marked the location where they wanted the fins, then removed the sieves to add working room. Brooks' neighbor then fashioned a long, adjust-able double threaded rod which he pushed against each side of the separator to hold the fins in place while he brazed them onto the inside of the separator where the sieve sits. "For $30 worth of labor, the modification made a lot more machine for us. It was hard to see how much grain we were losing, but it could very easily have been 10 bu. per acre. The modification also results in cleaner grain," says Brooks. "When a machine isn't running at capacity, debris gets in the grain. The separator is made to run at an ideal speed and we're now approaching that." Contact FARM SHOW Followup, Steve Brooks, Box 76D, New Windsor, Ill. 61465 (ph 309 667-2529).

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