Combines Embarassing Moment on the Farm

Used to work for Gleaner. Back in the early 1980's a safety regulation required testing stopping distance from full speed at max load. Okay, we did have a decal on the ends of big corn heads saying not to drive faster than 10 mph, but that won't stop somebody from doing it (like me for instance). Our test engineer decided to try it with an old test N7 that had seen its better days, and a proto 12 row corn head. Full grain bin, of course. Full speed, hydro to neutral and hit both wheel brakes at the same time. Front end into the asphalt hard enough to rip out the lower header hooks and detached the uppers. That let the rear end slam down from a height up somewhere near the sun. Most of the grain was still in the bin adding momemtum to the impact. It ripped the rear crossmember out of the frame and the axle ended up a few feet away attached only by the steering hoses. So if you ever wondered--- By the way, when we measured everything up it easily passed the braking requirement.

I was still in school we had a new 200 A_C. And was bring it in to the house.Well coming down the highway behind was a little tractor gaining on me.Being in 8th gear full thottle didn't look good when they pass me. It was a M_F 135 (i think) with a wagon and hay crew, as they when out sight they were still rolling and hollering on that wagon.

This story is one you can laugh at now, but at the time it was scary and could have been down right disastrous. In the early seventies we were custom harvesting by Presho South Dakota. At the time my dad and I were running three CII Gleaners. We had finished the job one afternoon and had the combines all loaded and ready to move on north in the morning. At that time most custom harvesters loaded the combines on the trucks, the headers on a header trailer hooked behind the trucks. We had the loaded trucks parked on a hillside about fifty yards up hill from the R.V. camp grounds we were staying in. We just had the trucks locked up for the night and were ready to go to the camper for supper, when my dad noticed that on one of the combines someone had forgotten to take the water cooler off the top of the combine cab. With that on it made the combine to tall to go under over passes on the Interstate. He told me to climb up there and take it off. I just got to the top when I felt the truck start to roll backward headed right for our campers, not to mention several other custom harvesters campers in the camp ground. I yelled to the boys down below, This truck is rolling! Some were digging in their jean pockets for truck keys to unlock the door so they could get in and others were trying to hang unto the truck to stop it. luckily the truck only rolled about 20 yards backward when the header trailer behind jack knifed and stopped it. The only damage was a slightly bent header trailer tongue and a crew that was very scared thinking what could have happened if that truck and combine would have gone crashing into the R.V. camp ground. You can bet my dad gave us a good lecture on the importance of setting the brake when we park the trucks.

Oh the stories of unloading augers on Gleaners that has happened to me. local Allis dealer tells of 2 brothers that ran 2 F's without folding augers. Seems that were racing while cutting beans, forgot about the augers sticking out and tore both off. Dealer got to put both back on. Had a hired man sowing wheat one time with wheat drill and roller behind drill. It was night and the roller came unhooked, he drove all the way around the field and ran over the roller. Came to the shop and said somebody left a roller in the middle of the field. Uncle plowed one night by the "light of the moon" which means there were no lights on the tractor that worked. It clouded up and he couldn't see so he decided to go home except he couldn't find the gate to get out of the field. He got off and walked to see if he could find it and couldn't. He followed the trees to the railroad track and walked home. Next morning he went back and the tractor was sitting at the gate!

I worked on a corporate farm going to college. We got new pea combines in 1983 (FMC) that were all hydrostatic. Brakes were not adequate to stop a machine rolling down much of a grade. Anyway, I was coming down a fairly steep grade with a stop sign at the bottom. My main line burst and I went free-wheeling down the hill. A lady in a toyota was at the stop sign watching me come in her rear view mirror. She swore afterwards some machine from hell was comin to swallow her. With both feet driving the brake pedal through the floor, I don't think I hit her at more than 3-4 mph. The leveling sytem on the combine dropped the rear of the machine so I guess it did look like it was opening up to swallow her.

In the early 90s I was running two 1660s with 25 1010 headers. We were cutting by Hunter, Oklahoma. We always unload and load our combines in the middle of town in a vacant lot across from the elevator. That year we finished the job about sundown and we had to be in Moundridge, Kansas the next day. So like custom harvesters do we were busy loading the combines in the middle of the night. I haul my headers in the back of the trucks and the combines on a combine trailers pulled by the trucks. The headers are loaded into the truck with a header boom attached to the front of the feeder house of the combine and the cargo gates of the truck opened and fastened to the sides of the grain box. The header is lifted up by the combine about five feet in the air and then the truck is backed under the header and the header is loaded. I am always the one holding on to the header and guiding it into the truck box. That night my oldest son Marty was backing one of the trucks under the headed and I was guiding it in when a strong gust of wind blew the header side ways just enough that it hit the back of the truck and knocked it off the sling holding it up. You have know idea how much racket a 25 CIH 1010 header dropped from five feet in the air will make in the middle of the night in the middle of a small Oklahoma town. Bed room lights all over town came on. Marty bailed out of the truck sure that he would find his dad dead under the header. When I felt the header hit the back of the truck I knew what was about to happen and I was long gone by the time the header hit the ground. Just for the record a 25 CIH 1010 header can be dropped from five feet up in the middle of the night in the middle of a small Oklahoma town and it will sustain absolutely no damage at all. I dont recommend though cause it will make a helluv racket.

About 30yrs ago I was harvesting wheat later in the evenning with a 535 Cockshutt when it was starting to really get tough. A good friend of mine showed up and offered to ride the catwalk infront of the grainbin and keep an eye on the straw coming out of the strawchopper. The minute he didn't see anything coming out of chopper he was to notify me. Well to make a long story short, a falling star in the sky grabbed his attention and I kept putting the wood to her knowing I didn't have anything to worry about because I had a human foolproof strawchopper monitor on board. Needless to say it took almost all night to unplug that combine from the chopper to the cylinder.

Quite a few years ago,well before the modern ligting packages were offered , I was cutting beans on a neighbors farm and the day ran into a dewless dark cloudy night.We were racing rain that was comming and finished up about 2:00 in the morning on about 8 or 10 contour strip fields.Took the machine home and put her in the shed and rested real well when the rain pattered on the roof in the early morning hours.About two days later the neighbor called on the phone and with a noticable chuckle in his voice asked when I was coming to finish up the beans.Turns out that I had mistaken a wide sod waterway for the headland in one strip and turned at that point in the field leaving the far end still standing.Well you know news travels fast and the coffee shop crowd came up with all kinds of ideas for better lights,and you couldn't even see that far end from the road.

It was probably around 1980, when a custom harvester was moving down the road. He was driving a truck with the combine on, while his wife was steering the pickup_service truck with a single axle camper behind. No business radios yet, she was complaining over the CB that the pickup wasn't pulling good. Her husband, in a rush as we usually are on moving day, kept on going. It was a narrow highway with sandy shoulders, not a place to pull over anyway. She kept complaining about the pickup not pulling right until they finally came to a wide spot to stop. As the husband walked back to the pickup he could see from far already the reason, why this old pickup wasn't pulling the camper as it should have. The tire went flat ... a long time ago. Well, the tire was gone. We all know that there is a rim for the tire to run on. Well, the rim was gone. Under the rim is a brake drum. The brake drum was gone. All this is bolted to a hub. Well, the hub was gone, too. After the hub there is the axle. The axle was half ground off. After the husband came to realization that he had to leave the trailerhouse behind for a while, two old cabover bull haulers stopped. Two old guys came out with a big belly each and completely out of breath. Finally one of them said: "lady, we're sure glad you stopped. We've been putting out fires for the last 30 miles."

Probably MORE embarrassing for Deere!