Combines Harvesting beans with rigid platform

that's all we use dowm here in south la, we have flat ground with small ridges where rice levees were very few here have flexes we an the JD guys use ridged drapers the machines as ours has field tracker or JD has contour masters work good we have to loop a hose from one side of valve to the other with ball valve so ram can move freely, it osclates like a 4wd over an bump, don't worry it works, if it's just flat you can hall an$n!!!!

PicturesIJ How do you keep it on the ground, do you have the hyd. lift fixed for floatIJ I would like to see how that looks over field ridges. I have never seen a true flat field yet. Good idea on the contour master to let it run free, I have a sidehill machine and do the same thing with it by loosening up the cables. It will follow completely independently of the machine. gs

Ah, no pics maybe this season, yes I use float mode set how much ground presure you want, on the draper had to weld better skids the ones on it where to small an wrong angle knife was too close to ground once we put larger front tires, turncrank on top of header would not ajust far back enough, smaller tires would work better but we enjoy the mud down here need the big onesIJ

I have never seen a field that was truly flat either. The Virginia Coastal Plain is pretty darn flat land but I don't know of anyone around here who still uses a rigid head to combine beans. We used a rigid head up until about 1980 when we put a Hart Carter floating cutterbar attachment on the old JD Quick Tatch head. The Hart Carter was good, but not quite as good as a JD flex head. The old rigid head with float springs worked ok, but I don't care how careful you are, you are still going to either leave some beans or run some dirt through your combine...and probably both!

You guys have to understand a lot of that delta land is laser leveled, it IS truly flat. We are custom cutters and have cut down there for several years and a lot of those fields are flat enough to use a rigid platform. HOWEVER, it is not nearly all that flat and we AlWAYS use flex heads down there. I have seen guys use the rigid heads down there and did a great job, providing they were adjusted to the nth degree.

Your beans sounds like our lentils - right down on the deck. Found down here that it depends on the operator, guys using flex fronts can either do an excellent job, or make a big mess, leaving lots of grain behind, and eating dirt in the process. I use a rigid 30' with small lifters [like about 2" lift, and a lifter on every third knife gaurd] for lentils. Paying good attention to levelling the paddock is also good for improved performance at harvest. Rolling harrows [prickle chains to us] or rollers made from solid forklift tyres [40' cover in two sections] push clods flat and any small stones into the soil.

You got any pics of those rollers made from solid fork lift tiresIJ I want to build a roller to flatten out clods behind a homemade V-ripper we built in the shop. Those forklift tires sound like a good idea.

Haven't got, but can get! Drop me an e-mail to send to and I will see what I can get organised. My e-mail has changed to hajflett@bigpond.com