Combines elephant ears

It's not too much of a problem to replace the wear bars on the front ,and that would give you a sharp edge there again. As someone else said,a sharp edge is important. If you are going to pull the impellers out anyway,try grinding off the rounded edge to make it square again.It won't cost anything to try,and it seems a sharp ,square edge is more important than the clearance between the ears and the cone. We don't throw away mower blades when they become rounded;touch them up and go again. Most guys never look at the wear bars and ears often enough,and then they are too far gone to be saved.

hey, 1666 man, are you a 1666 runner..IJIJ I am looking for one, and if you are an owner can I email you with some questionsIJ Thanks.. GS

Yes I do have a 94' 1666 if you have questions post them. I will answer them if I can if not I'm sure some one else can also help.

I had a local welder rebuild my wear bars on my 1680 with SS wire with his wirefeed. I also put rebuilt bars on from St. John's. The rumbling was almost non-existant last fall. I do think my rocktrap restricts me though

HI, sorry this is kind of a slow return, I haven't been to the computer for a while. I am looking for a decent 1666. I looked at a one owner machine and the rotor appeared to be out of balance, since it wanted to stop in the same spot. It also was dimpled in on two or three of the spots where the small rub bars are bolted down. This looked like more of a red flag than the balance problem but I am new the the axial flow so this is unknown to me. I want to harvest soybeans and corn with the thing and do a good job of both. Thanks for the reply.. GS

Did you run the machine, there may be a dust buildup inside the rotor that settled on one side a small pin hole can cause this. The rotor may need to be cut open and cleaned out.

Hi again!! No, after I saw all the dents in the rotor, I figured it probably needed some out-of-machine service. One tech guy I talked to who had many years of experience, said that the dents might not make much difference in the threshing ability of the machine which sounded pretty foriegn to me, coming from a cylinder machine, but I respected his words. It didn't have a chopper, nor a tracker. I think I might be able to live without the chopper but probably not the trackerIJIJ I realize I may not be able to find a real cherry ten year old machine, but it might be worth looking for. The guy wanted 45K for 2500 hrs. Paint faded out pretty good, too. Thanks for the reply, I sure think this is the way to go.. GS

i replace mine when the top leading edge of the ear becomes sharp. i replaced mine this winter with a set that had been rebuilt and hardfaced by Estes manufacturing Co. They worked great in wheat. There was a big difference in how the combine fed material to the rotor.

As the top edge becomes rounded off,it loses it's effectivness at moving the crop.Ears are agitators that spin the crop while the vanes screw it in.A square edge moves the crop instead of pinching it in between it and the cone wall.You can take your old ones out,grind the top edge off square again,and put them back in at virtually no cost.You should replace the impeller wear bars as needed to reduce the wear on the ears.

If you are replacing, consider the Marlin elephant ears, as they will do very much the same thing for improving your feeding problems as the new AFX does.