Harvesting spring wheat in Montana

I've gotten a pretty good start on the harvest for 2010. Yields and quality both look to be good for those who have escaped the hailstorms.
Upgraded the combine with a different header (front for the Aussies)

A few pics and some videos of the machinery in action. R72 Gleaner and 35' MacDon draper. Click the webpage link below to get to my site.

Webpage

The higher quality videos may take a while to load as they are about 4 megs. The dial-up ones are the same thing, only lower quality and less than 1 meg, so they will load faster.

Might be a bit early to ask, but what yealds are there this year?
Andy

Hi Andy, Still early but it looks like the yields will be decent.
Markets for the grain have been on an upward track recently, also. May make for a decently profitable year.

Nice looking Gleaner. You don't see any of them around me, green or red, thats it.

Ed

Bumpsteer said:

Nice looking Gleaner. You don't see any of them around me, green or red, thats it.

Ed

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No one around here likes the galvanized pheasant feeders for a reason

There were quite a few Gleaners in this area, going back a few years, bit it is all red and green now, with the odd Cat and New Holland. I think the dealer had a lot to do with the number of Gleaners around but I am not quite sure what problems they had with them.

RnR.

RocksnRoses said:

There were quite a few Gleaners in this area, going back a few years, bit it is all red and green now, with the odd Cat and New Holland. I think the dealer had a lot to do with the number of Gleaners around but I am not quite sure what problems they had with them.

RnR.

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They are a high maintenance machine once they get a few hours on them and have to be rebuild on a regular basis in order to be reliable.
Running them at their maximum capacity puts a lot of strain on the bearings and belts.
As an example I helped rebuild a N7 and it was very reliable for a couple of seasons, then the boss bought a Deutz-Allis R62 (complete with self burning V8) and I got the job as full time pilot of the N7 but spend a fair bit of time repairing it, virtually rebuilding during the harvest. It even blew the main drive belt to the rotor, that made a mess, including bending the main shaft. However I was not operating it at the time, it was towards the end of harvest and I gave one of the other workers some seat time. Of course I still coped the blame, along the lines of "if you where driving that machine, you would have picked up on the fault before it got real bad", perhaps who knows? Which reminds me of another time, I just got finished harvesting 1000 acres of peas (which was a horrible job) and switched over to wheat (including increasing the rotor speed from about 450rpm to 700 rpm), anyway can't remember why but the boss jumps in the and fires it up, of course there is a real bad vibration going through the machine and the boss asks me how long that's been there, I tell him that's new. So we check everything and I keep telling him that is definatley a new vibration, finally we put the rotor gear box back in low gear and the vibration is gone. Turns out the pea dust had build up on the rotor bars and increasing the rpm made the machine shake, after cleaning the dust off the bars the vibration was gone and the N7 was as smooth as it usually was.
Anyway the rotary Gleaners have a reputation for being whizz-bang machines, they'll whizz up the crop and then go bang because people don't maintain them as well as they should.

Hi Hendrick, The early N6 & N7 had a poor reputation for reliability as they were rushed to market before they had all the kinks out of the new design.
The current models are essentially the same machine but AGCO has had 30 years to beef up the weak points that showed up. Shafts & bearings are larger in some cases, other areas have been simplified and a lot of heavy abrasion resistant stainless steel has been installed at high wear points. The current crop of Gleaners is much more robust than what you've been exposed to.
The air-cooled Deutz was a mixed bag as far as a combine power plant. The air-cooled fared much better than liquid cooled in very hot conditions like you folks deal with in Australia. They were fussy about cleanliness and keeping the cooling fan in tip-top shape. If that wasn't done, they were a nightmare and extremely expensive to repair and mechanics that could do a good job of working on them were also scarce. I owned one in a smaller machine. I have no desire to own another.
As for wear on a per hour basis, they all wear out a lot faster than the older machines because they run over many more acres per hour and handle a lot more material per hour.
I had occasion to visit with a custom cutter that was running NH machines for my neighbor this fall. He seemed satisfied with the machines but said they were really only one season machines and he would roll them before starting on the harvest run next year. So much for longevity.

Yeah the motors in the N5 & 6 where rubbish but the bigger motor in the N7 was pretty good. The N7 did like to snap the king pins on the back axle because we operated in some soft soils, it was fitted with super singles but the king pins where never strong enough to carry the load.
In a dry standing and even crop the Gleaners where pretty much unbeatable, I think the best I ever did was about 25 tonnes an hour in a good wheat crop but we don't get the yields that you would and thus the machines have to take in a lot more material to fill the bin.
We did make up some custom sieves from mesh because the original ones where getting shaken to pieces and the boss didn't want to spend up big. We did find that putting sillicon on the shafts of the original sieves helped extend their lives, as the wear on the shafts was the problem and then we'd start losing sections of the sieve and have big holes in them.
Then there was the clutch on the clean grain auger

Wow! Great pics. Not many grain farmers near my, the land just doesn't lend itself to grain farming. Love to see the pics and videos of the fields and equipment. Always wanted to go out West and see the process.

My neighbor has a Gleaner R62, which he traded off his New holland for and it seems like he has nothing but trouble with it ever since he's bought it, which I don't necesarily blame the machine it's self but I do think he paid a pretty high price for a worn out machine. the machine is a 2000 model I believe, but I could be wrong on that, but one thing I do know is that the guy was bragging to me such and such and so and so and this guy used to own it, and I kind of thought to myself, well if so and so owned it before you then ..........yup it's shot...........you bought yourself a paint job buddy. He's been nothing but fixing it ever since he owned it. Now from what I hear I believe gleaner is now using the Massey designs (formerly White Farm Equipment's design) for their new rotor combine and I guess gleaner is once again making gains on market share in some parts of the country. I would look for the new A series combines to outlast the older gleaner designs and not be so prone to fall down on the job. Keeping in mind of course a machine is only as good as it's maintanence.

The transverse rotor

Monte1255 said:

Now from what I hear I believe gleaner is now using the Massey designs (formerly White Farm Equipment's design) for their new rotor combine and I guess gleaner is once again making gains on market share in some parts of the country. I would look for the new A series combines to outlast the older gleaner designs and not be so prone to fall down on the job. Keeping in mind of course a machine is only as good as it's maintanence.

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Hi Monte, Yes, you are correct that AGCO has taken what used to be the old White Axial rotor and designed a combine with an axial rotor (rotor lengthwise with machine). They market the machine as a Massey, or a CAT Challenger, or a Gleaner Ax5. Very hi capacity design for some crops. However, the transverse rotor (rotor crossways to machine) offers some very real advantages that are only possible with a rotor mounted like that. So AGCO has been further polishing and increasing the machines made like the old R series. I don't look for the transverse machines to die any time soon. Here is a U-tube link to the latest video of the Super7. Parts I & II are also available there too. YouTube - New Gleaner Super Series (Episode Three)

good post and you tube link on the super 7 series, and all the power to those who design equipment, (knowing of course what it takes to trouble shoot designs) my thoughts on the supr series is this, the advantages that you decribed is mostly in the form of treshing small grains, from the field tests I've seen, crops like corn, especially high mositure for cattle feed (I live in a predominantly corn area) the axial rotor still wins the day.
please don't think I'm trying to bash gleaner or the people who own them, I realize in many cases it is a brand loyalty thing and what people are used to.
But at this point I have to stop and ask you a question.......what is gleaner's plan for the future? are they going to continue the traverse rotor? or are they going to keep the axial rotor? it would seem to me to be foolish to tool up for two types of combines. I can see it happening under a larger umberella of a parent co. like agco but not in the same indiviual branches of say gleaner, Massey, etc.

Monte1255 said:

good post and you tube link on the super 7 series, and all the power to those who design equipment, (knowing of course what it takes to trouble shoot designs) my thoughts on the supr series is this, the advantages that you decribed is mostly in the form of treshing small grains, from the field tests I've seen, crops like corn, especially high mositure for cattle feed (I live in a predominantly corn area) the axial rotor still wins the day.
please don't think I'm trying to bash gleaner or the people who own them, I realize in many cases it is a brand loyalty thing and what people are used to.

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The Gleaner design has always been best in 'dry' crops, once you get a few weeds in the crop it really slows them down.
The secret of the design is the accelerator rollers and high wind, this enables it to handle a large volume of grain because the sieves are not loaded up with chaff (which is mostly blown straight out the back without even touching the sieves and thus you could have the sieves very open, allowing more grain through and not loading up the secondary sieves (return grain)), this design was also a drawback in that farmers moving from other machines did not understand how the rollers are supposed to work. In some conditions we pretty much had the sieves all the way open and really got the machines to eat up.

Which is why our neighbors are having such trouble with theirs. they are using their unit for high moisture corn which in our area is harvested at around 25 to 30 % moisture. and also the fan is set so high to get rid of the trash that a goodly portion is sent flying out the back. when using the general rule of thumb or 3 to 3.5 kernels per sq foot equals a Bu of loss per acre they on average loose about 7 to 8 bushels.

I would like to see Gleaner do more comparison between the White/Massey combine design and their new super 7 series. That would make for some interesting field trials I think.

The R-series Gleaners are good machines. When I was on harvest, I found the R72 we were running at the time to be very reliable and usually easy to fix and work on. In crops like wheat, the R-series Gleaners are probably as good a machine as there is. In milo, the Gleaner was about even with axial-flow machines.

Don't go on harvest any more, but have an M2 that we cut hrw wheat with. Not a bad machine, but it will probably be replaced by next harvest. Need something a little bigger.

The downfall of Gleaner has little to do with the design of the combines themselves. Gleaner's combines can compete well on their own. The problem is they are competing with brands like Case IH and John Deere, that have well-established dealerships and are full-line implement dealers. AGCO has never matched Gleaner with a successful tractor and implement brand, so Gleaner has never enjoyed the level of dealer support that some the red and green combines have.

North Texan said:

The downfall of Gleaner has little to do with the design of the combines themselves. Gleaner's combines can compete well on their own. The problem is they are competing with brands like Case IH and John Deere, that have well-established dealerships and are full-line implement dealers. AGCO has never matched Gleaner with a successful tractor and implement brand, so Gleaner has never enjoyed the level of dealer support that some the red and green combines have.

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Dealer support is everything, A friend offed a 2 year old Lexion, went back to green. The unit was warranteed by the dealer, the engine by cat. The cat dealer wouldn't fix problems in a timely manner. He had enough, figured 20 days of harvest time lost in 2008. He leased a greenie for 2009, has his 2010 now.
He has an aftermarket 12 row corn head, only had to buy a new adapter, the grain table went with the machine.

Ed

Bumpsteer said:

Dealer support is everything, A friend offed a 2 year old Lexion, went back to green. The unit was warranteed by the dealer, the engine by cat. The cat dealer wouldn't fix problems in a timely manner. He had enough, figured 20 days of harvest time lost in 2008. He leased a greenie for 2009, has his 2010 now.
He has an aftermarket 12 row corn head, only had to buy a new adapter, the grain table went with the machine.

Ed

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correct me if I'm wrong......Agco owned by Fiat, fiat owned by foreign investors for the most part, and have yet to give a hoot about what happens in the US. gleaner and all agco brands suffer here as a result.
does that about sum it all up?:beatsme

Monte1255 said:

correct me if I'm wrong......Agco owned by Fiat, fiat owned by foreign investors for the most part, and have yet to give a hoot about what happens in the US. gleaner and all agco brands suffer here as a result.
does that about sum it all up?:beatsme

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Investors want to see a return on their money and as such want to see success, FIAT or whoever are not going to sell a lot of Gleaners in Europe.

Hendrik said:

Investors want to see a return on their money and as such want to see success, FIAT or whoever are not going to sell a lot of Gleaners in Europe.

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mostly speaking for the US Market here, for Gleaner, Agco in general:

sure investors want to see a return on their investments, that is why I cannot fathom the idea why agco is not trying to actively develope a larger dealer network in this country. I think they have several good product lines with an opprotunity to capture more market share, just would like to see more representation of the agco lines.