tbran
Guest
No. The last F3 from Ind. Mo. was it. The Gleaners made in MEX wereonly sold in Mex and S America except for a last production run. Those last machines were less than desirable as delivered. Most components were the same as most shafts and sheaves and belts etc were shipped down to the mostly dirt floor plant and put on the frame that was welded up down there. They had no way to bend metal except for 90 deg bends thus the front cab was straight and not curved and the fuel tank was square and so on. They had no way to cast curved safety glass. The units were put together with aluminum rivets and if subjected to harsh use the panels tended to come off. Most dealers who sold them drilled out about every third rivet and popped in a steel one. NO floating or flex heads came from there. The Gleaner lM rigid head was not anything to take to a soybean field unless you trained your plants to not set pods to about 6 " above ground. A note of interest - while working with some preproduction machines in S la we took the rigid heads, equipped them with a ten degree throat wedge to tip the guards down, put on skid plates which were available on the F head from the factory, and equipped the combines with two hyd accumulators. They were small back then. When used in this FlAT ground the heads would float rather well with a good operator. We had to really pump everything just to run with a 915IH and to be honest we could not run with 760MF with spike cylinders. However the ls were so much more manuverable and unloaded so much faster we usually cut about as much in a day as they did. We kind of prayed for a wet fall, we could outcut anything in the mud back then. 23.1-34 R2 Firestones were the trick. When the floating feeder beaters came along we had to speed up the pitman driven sickle to all it could stand to get a clean cut. We found the speed limit in a bang up way. Just a ramblin story on a rainy new years day.