Bill, This all started back in the day, along time ago...the glaciers just melted, dinosaurs roamed the earth, a 12 row planter was still considered big, there was no such a thing as Roundup Ready, Country Music sounded like it was supposed to, and 9000 series combines were new. 1989. It wasn't funny then, almost everybody who had one complained that they spit grain out the back. (Most of the time the word "spit" wasn't used. More often than not a flood-tip style spray of obscenities was used. I am still convinced that it melted more than one cell phone when used to complain to the dealer.) It was discovered that the grain coming off the walkers was unthreshed-at least until it got to the chopper. Meaning that the term "walker loss" was a misnomer.The walkers had been a victim of a conspiracy to ruin their reputation.They had been doing their job all along, the real guilt belonged to the concave. Now here's the real story, told for the first time. As the crop goes through the cylinder_concave, part of it is threshed. That means that the crop mat gets smaller as it goes through, so by the time it got to the back of the concave, the as yet unthreshed grain was not experiencing the pinching action neccesary to knock the grain out of the head and_or off the ear. (BTW, it's thresh, not thrash. Thrash is what you hear in an old movie, where an Englishman says,"Say old chap, if you don't cease that now, I shall be forced to give you a jolly good thrashing.") So we started to measure and found out that the concave drooped in the back. Our next step was to tighten up the back of the concave, make sure that it was level side to side, and voila, no more loss. In short, we gave it a wedgie. The manufacturer sent out a kit to install a curtain on the beater grate. The problem with that was that it didn't work. It cut the capacity because the operator had to run the beater grate in the up posistion, causing backfeeding, and in some cases,an ugly hole in the side of the combine where the beater grate adjusting bolt used to be. So check your grate to make sure it's down. But not until you get the curtain out. As for the cast piece on the right hand side concave adjuster, it is formed to keep the adjuster from moving. That means you could do anything you want with it, as long as you weren't planing on using that adjuster eyebolt for adjusting the concave or any silly notion like that. Once you get it apart you'll see what I mean. And no, I don't know what it's purpose is. It's sort of like an appendix. Two people working on ths project does make it easier, but it's not a neccesity. Getting the beater grate down is a different deal. The two speed cylinder (dual range drive) was designed to give you, the proud owner of a 9500, a wider range of speeds so that the variable speed belt did not run at one extreme or the other. It makes the belt last longer and the torque sensing feature of the drine more effective. It's a pretty good set-up, but it won't affect what we're talking about. It's just as important to adjust the concave if you have a small grain combine or a corn_soybean. All in all, you got a pretty good machine. I like to poke a little fun at it, but in reality it was designed by men that are a whole lot smarter than me. And you're right, it's a pain in the arse, but as Atticus Finch said: "There's a lot of ugliness in the world,son. I'd like to keep you from it, but that's just not possible." Joeman
optional) Go to house and relax in front of fan and_or air conditioner. Joeman