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Gleaner harvesting wheat in Montana

EdB

Active Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
34
Location
Northeast Montana
Occupation
Whatever it takes
Hi all,
We started harvesting wheat with the new Gleaner last week. A couple pics of cutting. Head is a 35' MacDon. Wheat is running from 50 to 30 Bu. / acre.

2011-02.JPG

Another shot:
2011-04.JPG


Also made up a short video of the combine at work.
[video]http://youtu.be/zhph0XphEjI[/video]
 

TRO

Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2010
Messages
6
Location
Central Mass
Great video. One of these days I will get to your part of the country and see the harvest first hand.
 

North Texan

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
92
Location
North Texas
Nice combine and nice setup. I used to work for a harvester that ran Gleaner R72. Best machine I've seen running for wheat. Could hold its own in corn, and wasn't my favorite for milo, but it was a pretty good machine. What has changed from the R series to the S?

After spending some time in that, it was a humbling experience to return to the farm and run a M2.:eek:
 

EdB

Active Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
34
Location
Northeast Montana
Occupation
Whatever it takes
They made the processor bigger -- 30" diameter rotor as opposed to a 24" in the R. Larger accelerator rolls, bigger cage to fit the bigger rotor, bigger fan, bigger drives in many locations, More HP from the engine, larger elevators, and of course, wouldn't you know it; more dollars to buy one. It seems to perform significantly better then my old hypered R72.

I can relate to running an older machine after an R72. I started on an old pull type gleaner with 12' head, then a 12' A self-propelled, 16' C2, 24' L2, 27' and then a 35' draper head R72, and now this S77. Every one was a major step up and would sure hate to go back to to the old L2 even though it was a decent machine.
 

North Texan

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
92
Location
North Texas
That's a big rotor. I thought the 24" in the R was huge. And I'm sure the $ticker $hock hasn't gone down any when attempting to take one home.

On a good day, about how much can you cut with that? I think the most I got with the R72 in a day was about 270 acres. If I had been cutting larger fields with a grain cart, I feel like it would have probably done 300 if everything ran right.
 

EdB

Active Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
34
Location
Northeast Montana
Occupation
Whatever it takes
Acres in a day

That's a big rotor. I thought the 24" in the R was huge. And I'm sure the $ticker $hock hasn't gone down any when attempting to take one home.

On a good day, about how much can you cut with that? I think the most I got with the R72 in a day was about 270 acres. If I had been cutting larger fields with a grain cart, I feel like it would have probably done 300 if everything ran right.

We seldom get days where we can go too late after sundown and the dew in this riverbottom usually keeps the machine out of the field until 9:00 AM, so unless it was really light wheat, I doubt I'd ever get close to 270 in a day.
Running 6 MPH with a 34.5' header comes out to 25 acres / hour. Of course we all know that it takes a bit of time to turn around on the ends and a guy has to stop once in a while for other things, so 24 might be more realistic. We'll see next year if I can get 240 in a day. If the wheat is making 50 BPA, that comes out to 1,200 bushels / hour. Watching the monitor, I saw it exceed that at some times this fall.
If wheat price is $10 a guy is making decent money on a per hour basis, as long as the machine keeps whacking and the truck driver can keep the grain away.
 

North Texan

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
92
Location
North Texas
We had to move around usually a couple times a day, but the humidity in this part of the state never got high enough when we were cutting most of the time to ever force us to stop. The grain elevator would close at midnight, and we'd keep cutting until about 2am, filling up both bobtails. The elevator would open again at 7am, so we would unload and start cutting again.
 

funkinalive

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
95
Location
Europe
Occupation
Student
THAT is a monster, it would be a nightmare where we harvest though, since its very hilly in our area. nice land and good looking machine, havent seen them in europe
 

Randy88

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
2,149
Location
iowa
Things have come a long way since the 80's where we ran 1480 IH's with 24 foot heads doing 1.5 mph combing 110 bushel per acre wheat in arizona, but the 240 acres per day per machine was done on dry land stuff in high gear and about 10 plus miles per hour on poor wheat in texas, colorado and montana where it yielded less than 10 bushels per acre, sure brought back some memories, today there are a few headers running at or over 40 foot, times change and so do the machines I guess.

We ran an experimental deere back then that if put into production would have been the largest in the world, back then it had a 50 foot head and a 600 bushel grain tank on it and was doing over 5 mph in the same wheat we were doing 1.5 with the IH's. Today that might be a normal sized machine, but back then it was considered too large to put into production, nobody would buy one was the thinking, deere also ran some experimental rotaries, not bad machines for the time, too bad all those pattens were taken and they couldn't put it into production, but instead they came out with 9000 series machine, we also ran those and at the time were not impressed at all, haven't been since they went into production either, but they did improve them some over the experimental machines we ran, those were a total disaster in our opinion.
 

KSSS

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2005
Messages
4,319
Location
Idaho
Occupation
excavation
The nickname for Gleaners at least in my part of North Dakota was "Silver Seeders". That was back in the days of the N series.
 

EdB

Active Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
34
Location
Northeast Montana
Occupation
Whatever it takes
The nickname for Gleaners at least in my part of North Dakota was "Silver Seeders". That was back in the days of the N series.
Yeah, lots of cutesy saying about all colors. The real test around here has always been what kind of job any machine; whether tractor, combine, seeder, etc will do in my conditions. One of the big considerations with a combine is how much goes in the tank and how much gets left on the ground.
Perhaps there are a few who will use a machine that performs less than optimally because they like the color, or how cool it looks, or they need a dealer nearby to fix it, or it has a cool nickname, or it doesn't have a snarky nickname.
None of those has ever figured into the calculus of what to buy 'Here'.
 

KSSS

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2005
Messages
4,319
Location
Idaho
Occupation
excavation
The N's were fast. We had neighbors that had a couple and I dont ever recall seeing anyone able to combine that fast. Didn't seem to matter whether it was small grains or sunflowers. We certainly couldn't come close with 8820s and the others with the 1480s couldnt run that fast either. Dew slowed them down some. Maybe thats were the nickname came from.
 

Fieldman12

Active Member
Joined
May 4, 2007
Messages
36
Location
New Vienna, Ohio
The N7 Gleaner and the John Deere 8820 Turbo was the only machines offered at that time in the late seventies that would handle a 12-row corn head. A Gleaner would run circles around a 8820 in corn although the 8820 was a very good and reliable machine. In my neck of the woods at one time there was allot of Gleaners running around. I always though the conventional Gleaners seemed to be a little more reliable than the Natural Flow Rotors. The Gleaner just seemed to be faster in allot of crops and also offered the largest grain bin for many years. The Air Cooled Deutz engine in the R Series machines sounded awesome. They later switched to Cummins motors. Back in the day they was the flag ship machine. Later Cat came out with a 16-row machine and that put a new machine at the top. Now they all are pretty much neck and neck as far as capacity and size although the Cat Lexion 770 is a class 10 machine.
 

Fieldman12

Active Member
Joined
May 4, 2007
Messages
36
Location
New Vienna, Ohio
I should mention too at this time the Massey Ferguson combine and Gleaner Super Series does not yet offer a 16 row machine but Im sure they are working on it.
 
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