Combines air chaffers

Check that the pitch of the flight on the augers is the same. Some years after getting our N7 we discovered from the parts book that there was an Australian option of 24" pitch for the auger flighting as compared to the standard 30" pitch flighting. The agents had never been told of this option. Apparently there was one N7 combine in the area that, unbeknown to the owners, had this 24" option. They could never figure out why everybody complained of difficulties with feeding with the N series. Theirs fed beautifully and they never had a problem in any crops. All of the other N series in some crops used to regurgitate the lot over the top of the auger. Interesting that the 800 series headers have a 27" pitch even with the much larger diameter flighting. This may not help but it is a chance that a few N series with this 24" pitch flighting found their way onto the agent's lots in North America. Cheers.

We have never installed air chaffer but have traded some machines with them. I don't know how many different designs of them are out there but I'm sure some help in some conditions and likely hurt in others. We get by just fine with the standard adjustable as long as rolls are in good shape and cylinder is working proper and preventing something the shoe just can't deal with well. As we grew the capacity of these machines we found the old augers with only four inch tall flighting and 30 inch pitch would not convey material to feeder area with out poping out the back beyond the strippers. This would be especially bad with non-shined up header and or with tough wheat or barley straw that was resistant to slide. To cure this we install 1_2"X1.5" channel iron to the first row of rivets ahead of the front existing stripper. I believe Gleaner started installing this channel iron sometime during the 400 and 500 heads. When we got this masive amount of straw to the center we found that fingers, even if short flighting in finger area was mounted, would not such straw down and present it to feeder. That is when we started playing with that area to handle all the straw. The answer was the 4" flighting all the way to and over laping a center line of finger area. Now if you have a problem inbetween header and feeder you need to make sure filler is adjusted to make a smooth floor for the straw to flow on. Check your feed chain to see that slats aren't worn rounded to bad which will make them much less aggresive for pulling material away from the auger. You need to address why or where the straw is stalling. I would lean toward transition area between header and feeder or your feed chain if you have both headers set up identically withone bothering and the other not. Channel iron in front of present strippers will not help if problem in center is not taken care of. If you need even more capacity in finger area check back in for I have one out of dozens of heads that I went a little further and welded on keystock at several location ahead of feeder to help knock down material so it could get suched in. I don't know what I would prefer for pitch of flighting on them old heads. I imagine the 30" would have more tendency of bringing the material around the back without more strippers but it would likely help knock down the straw to lay it under auger instead of a large portion standing all the way to center. The steeper pitch may even help the guys that think they need full fingers on the 7" flighting headers. Anyway I haven't had to do any modifing with the 7" systems to get them to handle the straw. Have a good one.