I am running a 22.5' header at 3.5 to 4 mph. It seems if I go faster, the cutter bar shells out too many beans. I think about all I am leaving behind now is header loss. Would a faster knife speed cut fasterIJ I have Crary guards with the short tooth between the main guards for a 1.5" spacing with 3 " sections. I have the old style fan and I removed the side louvers or air intake guides with the idea they could be causing some air restriction.I thought of this because on a John Deere 7700 with side air intake pods in place, I could not get enough air flow into the ends of the fan, even though it looked like there should be sufficient space for the air to flow. I am in northwest Minnesota and raise no corn, primarily wheat and beans. I get some splits, but not enough to be a problem since there is no penalty at the elevator for a small amount of splits. Food grade would be more fussy. I think the faster rotor speed results in more centrifugal force on the material in the rotor cage resulting in the beans being forced more to the outside of the cage and being able to better work through the concaves and grates. Marvin feels that most rotor loss is caused by too much return from not being sufficiently threshed on the first trip through the rotor. Incidently, my fan is at about 1050 and I have large wire concaves which, with the cover plates, I leave in for wheat also, so I am no longer changing concaves from crop to crop. Installing the air jet is as easy as pulling out the old chaffer and sliding in the frame for the new one. Once the frame is in, the 1480 uses 5 interchangeable elements with sets for different crops, kind of like you would change seives on a fanning mill. They each slide into a very nicely engineered yet simple retaining system which uses two locking wing nuts for the final fastening. It takes about 5-10 minutes to switch the 5 elements. Guess you could even say it's elementary. Sorry, but I couldn't resist the pun! The seive really is an engineering marvel to look at for people who appreciate nicely made gadgets. I also have a Redekop chopper that I consider a long term investment that can be put on my next combine when I trade, and the results on the residue are nothing short of amazing, as it also spreads the chaff. I had to set the fins back from their maximum spread to keep the material out of the uncut crop.
