Dan
Guest
Your right about the 7" drums in place of the 8" for the rear tention drum. That is one thing I was doing on a limited basis to see if we couldn't eliminate feed chain problems all together. I did that at same time that I started with the shocks. Ends up the shocks are all we really needed to dramatically reduce feeding problems. The machines are working fine with small or large drum as long as shocks are installed. The idea for the smaller drum was to get more room under drum for more crop. Some wonder why we were installing the shocks on the rear drum when it was the front chain stoping. Simply because the rear chain was causing the problem with the front chain. With the shocks we can leave the lower drum stop in the lowest position and upper stop in the most upper position. The shocks just stabilize the movement of tention drum so there is not any radical movement of drum causing slugging and blockage. We had found that locking drum up would cause one problem and letting it down would cause another so we come up with a plan to stabilize drum movement. For the guys in corn and soybeans only they may get by with locking drum up and leaving it there but we couldn't do that with our crops. Problem wasn't as bad with the N's, R6 and 7, or R60 and R70 but is there in some conditions. Our more major problems started with the R50's and continued into the 2 series in to many conditions. I blame the problem on a steeper approach to cylinder and transition area between the chains. At any rate the shocks basically eliminated the troublesome pluging problems and we've just expanded from there. Remember the first thing to do is feed the cylinder nice and smooth. The smoother you feed her the better she'll go. I would suggest installing the shock kit. I have a shock kit that loewen is making for me. I think the instructions need some work so we'll be working on that this winter. I think I have some good digital snap shot of them somewhere and a good picture is worth a thousand words. Right. Peace be with you too man.