Michigan farmer Louis Sacco couldn't justify the cost of a new self-propelled sprayer. So he and his friend Dave did what a lot of other farmers have done in recent years. He converted a 1960's Deere 45 combine into a self-propelled sprayer, adding the cab off an International Harvester combine.

Sacco equipped the combine with a 500-gal. tank and 50-ft. boom from an old Deere 550 pull-type sprayer that he already had.

"I use it mostly to spray pre and post emergence herbicides on soybeans," says Sacco. "What I really like is that the boom is located in front of me so I can see what's going on instead of having to look back all the time. I use the controls for the corn header to raise the boom up or down.

"My neighbor gave me the combine and I modified it. A new self-propelled sprayer of this type would have cost much more. Even a small used one would have cost too much."

He scrapped most of the combine's components, keeping only the engine, final drive, front wheels and part of the frame. The combine's original rear wheels were too small to provide adequate crop clearance so he replaced them with the 20-in. wheels off a Deere 8300 grain drill. The combine didn't have power steering so he installed the power steering system off a Deere 6600 combine. Part of the drivetrain is off a Deere 6600 combine, and the air conditioning system is out of a 1988 Dodge pickup. The throttle and choke came off an outboard motorboat.

The boom is built in two sections that hydraulically fold back against the combine. He used the stairs off a Deere 4400 combine to build a walkway that leads back from the cab to the 500-gal. tank. There's also a 60-gal. rinse tank and a 15-gal. foam marker tank.

"We had a lot of fun building it and saved a lot of money," says Sacco. "I paid for the combine cab. I had been using a pull-type sprayer, but I didn't like having to remove the sprayer's computer controls from my tractor every time I wanted to use the tractor for another job. Now when it's time to spray I just jump in the cab and go without having to disconnect anything.

"The combine's 4-cyl. engine has just enough power. Even though it's a relatively small engine there's enough weight on the rear wheels to provide good traction."