12 Ft Wind Reel Widened To 24 Ft

12 ft wind reel widened to 24 Ft COMBINES Headers 13-4-11 Faced with a drought and hail-ravaged wheat and barley crop, David Jorgensen, Valier, Mont., built his own 24-ft. air reel by widening an old 12-ft. Phillips "wind reel". "The only way we could harvest our short crop was with an air reel," says Jorgensen. `But the two companies that build them were back ordered for a year or more. We managed to find an old Phillips wind reel that was built in the 1950's for a 12 or 14-ft. wide combine. The fan was in good shape, but the drive wouldn't turn the fan fast enough to de-liver the air needed for a 24-ft. reel. We built a new drive taking power from the right side of the Deere header. We used jack shafts to boost fan speed to about 3,800 rpm. "We tried to extend the original air manifold and add more spouts, but the extra joints only weakened the manifold so we finally mounted a 7-in. auger tube across the entire length of the 24-ft. header and reinforced it with truss rods. We built new air spouts, 22 in. long and 2 in. in dia., from aluminized exhaust pipe. We made spout nozzles from 14 ga. iron and welded them to the manifold. We also mounted a large sprocket on the drive shaft to speed up the fan, increasing the original shaft speed from 500 rpm to 3,800 rpm. This added a lot of extra strain on the header drive and shortened belt and chain life. The drive components to the header don't stand up to the extra strain very well. If we're unfortunate enough to have to use the air reel again this year, we'll use a separate engine to run the fan." Jorgensen says the used "wind reel" cost $250 and he spent another $350 for materials. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, David Jorgensen, RR 3, Box 1004, Valier, Mt. 59486 (ph 406 279-3508).

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