Combines Almost lost our 2388 today

first sign of bearing failure of rotor variable drive is above normal rotor speed lose had it happen twice on 2188 I have found I grease it almost every day both bearings 7 shots and check for paint discoloring on housing. greasing more often has really helped. duh!!!!!!! PS also check slip spline on seperrator drive shaft mine was frozen had to heat to loosen

I keep a leaf blower in the pickup that services the combine. I use it at least every other day! It saved our combine last fall when a bad battery explodedIJ and started a fire in the engine compartment. I didn't know anything was wrong untill the combine died in the field! luckily there wasn't much fuel back there to burn. A 3 lb fire extinguisher put it out. There is now a 20 lber hooked on! Chads

We usually grease those bearings every day. We didn't notice any loss of rotor speed. In fact, we had just slowed the speed down some because we were cracking some 11% moisture beans. I guess it was just time for one to go. We disassembled the whole shaft and cleaned it up, then put it back together. We have a diesel powered high volume air compressor that we use for blowing our combine off and other air needs. We just hadn't done it in several days. The guys don't like to have to blow the combine off in the morning becasue the soybean fuzz will itch all day, and I don't blame them. It's a nasty job. And we've been cutting until well after dark everyday. But we blew it off today, and it will get done more frequently now. I know two farmers who lost 2388's to fire already this year. Haven't heard what caused either one. One of them had less than 300 hours on it!

I carry a good leaf blower. I use it every day no matter what. Keeps rust from building where rain collects in the chaff too. Just makes everything easy to work on. GS