Combines header stripper plates

G'day bucko! How's it going up there. Dry and into the early 40 degrees down here again for the fourth day in a row. If the extra strippers are working OK as in preventing material boiling up from behind the auger just each side of the feeder house, in other words if you are getting a smooth feed in all crops and conditions then the strippers are doing the job. We had endless problems with our N7 trying to get a smooth even feed across the whole of the header. From memory, we only left one stripper under the back of the auger and obviously left the rear and main stripper at the back. There were two auger pitches available for the N series headers. A standard 30" pitch and an "Australian" auger of 27" pitch which we found when looking through the parts book one day but which we were never told about. We think there was one of these 27" pitch augers in the district amongst a lot of Gleaners as the owners never ever had problems with feeding and could not understand why everybody else did have problems. Only after they sold the machine did they realise that they might have had a 27" pitch.main auger. The new large diameter header augers with their 7" deep flights have the same angles on the spiral as the old N series 27" pitch augers and reputedly feed very well. On the N7, I eventually figured out that if the heads of grain were pointing in towards the centre when they were picked up by the auger then the feed on that side went very smoothly but if the heads were mixed up or pointing out from the centre then there were going to be feeding problems with boil ups and etc. Solution was to make some long ear lifters out of 3_8 good quality rod, about 2 feet long and mounted about every 8 inches [ I think! ] along the front out in front of the guards by a few inches. [ They are still around in the scrap heap I think ] The tail of the ear lifters went back over the front of the platform for about 8" and to the rear of the knife and some 6" or so above the platform. This tail or rear section of each lifter was then bent towards the centre of the platform so that as the straw and heads were cut off, the tail of the ear lifters pushed the heads so they fell towards the centre of the platform. We never had trouble with the feeding again in any cereal crop so as long as we had the those ear lifters on. It also lifted the capacity of the N7 as it then got a smooth feed right through the processor. Ear lifters are just very light rod type crop lifters and not meant to be used as full scale crop lifters although we often did but made sure we watched the header height like hawks!

Hi R.O.M., About time summer came! Thanks for the reply, I will watch my feed with interest, and measure the pitch of the auger and let you know. The question arose because I went to adjust auger down to the platform because it was about 30mm above it. I could not do it because of the extra stripper plates which are more under the auger than the others and will not let the auger down to the platform without moving the auger forward a long way. While I'm here, I have just finished harvesting (hic) my small leaf lupins crop. It was a bad crop because of the super dry spring, but had not quite browned off before the rain came which greened up the plants again. So I have been cutting green lupins plants with mature seed pods in a sea of weeds. And this my first time driving unsupervised. I had the cutters about 75mm off the deck in a very rocky paddock doing 3.5mph (sorry the speedo is in mph) with the batt reel going like a bat out of hell (pun intended) to hold it all on the platform so it would not fall off the front. The impeller chute down to the spreader was constantly chocked with the green material and I had to stop frequently to climb up inside to clear the mass of material. It was only a very small crop, and the small green material got into the sample on a large scale. I now have the seed spread out about 100mm thick on silage plastic to let it dry out in this lovely heat and cover it up each night. Think of me when it comes time to shovel it into the auger hopper via a wheel barrow -- Oh farming is so much fun You and yours have a great new year.

Sounds like you could have desiccated the lupins a few days before harvesting. Desiccation of the lentils a week or so before harvesting is becoming the standard technique down here nowadays. A few guys are also starting to play around with desiccation on other crops. I had a very bad weedy crop of Fenugreek which was full of milk thistles, to harvest for my brother on a block he had just bought. It actually coated up and blocked the R62's thresher concave with hard green gunk which needed a hammer and cold chisel to remove. Desiccation made it possible to eventually harvest the Fenugreek. Anyway, if you want any further info on those lifters, we can arrange for some drawings and dimensions to come your way if you think they may help. Catch you soon, Cheers! Max.

We've did that to lots of them headers prior to the 7" flighting. We fastened about 4 to 6" ahead of front factory stripper. Don't remember any trouble with auger rubbing them but we kept a fairly large clearance. The extra stipper kept straw from overloading the back so we didn't need such a close clearance. Next thing we did to get these heads to handle mega flow was to extend four inch flighting all the way to a centerline of finger area. Make sure floor is smooth between header and feeder. I've never had to undo any of these mods. Good luck