Combines How often do you plug your rotorsIJ

It's not as bad as it seem's.At first not knowing anything about a rotor lots of learning on my and dealers part.Dealer sent out combine with only 9 knives on it sure wasn't enough.After plugging rotor and tearing up the top housing they now leave the shop with a minimal of 18 knives in them now.Now if I plug the rotor once a harvest season it's rare.If the rotor plugs I open the concave as far open as I can.Then I get in at an idle put the seperator clutch in an put the rotor into neutral or as close to it as I can.Then watch as I reverse the rotor if the readout flashes it means the rotor moved and I push it forward quick and give it some thottle only if the readout start's adding fast.Good to go usually after retighting concave.Sometimes need to rock it back and forth before the rotor budges.As for plugging front beater 2 person job 10min. max.Open rock trap one person pulls material out here and the other goes on the pulley that drives the straw chopper and turns the whole combine backwards except for the rotor.It actually has alway's turned easy sometimes the belt might slip a little on the pully's but a little rocking keeps it rotating backwards.

I run an 8570 and the only time I have had problems with plugging the rotor is in edible beans or green stemed soybeans. The main reason for plugging in these conditions is the uneven feed that sometimes results and the low speed I have to run the rotor at for edible beans. When the rotor plugs it just stops, does not kill the motor so I always run the monitor on the rotor speed. THe slug that plugs the rotor is usually about half way down the rotor so getting it to reverse does not drive the slug back to the beater. I have never plugged the beater, although I could see it happening if you reversed the rotor too far when unplugging it. I have run the 8570 for three years and am extremely pleased with the preformance and capacity of the machine. A very low maintance machine if you take care of the daily servicing. The new machines do have some imporvements that I would like to have on mine. I am going to look at a used 8780XP this winter to see if I can justify upgrading that far. Any questions e-mail me at jmcs@nbinternet.com

I slug my '91 8570 often in green stem soybeans (low rotor speed for seed harvesting). The rotor reverser makes it an easy job to unplug, though. Just rock it back and forth a few times and it is through. The bad part, and which you mentioned, is that if you hold the reverse a fraction of a second too long, the slug will backfeed on top of the beater and then you have trouble. My 8570 does not have a provision for a wrench, so it's through the rock trap, laying on you back on top of the header cylinders - two hours later you are good to go . This season we have been running a new 8780xp, and there simply is no comparisons with the 8570. More rotor torque, more HP, different beater design, and I swear this machine will out run ANY conventional machine in tough conditions. We were running green stem soybeans through at 6 MPH with hardly a tug. We slugged the rotor only one time, and that was because the chopper belt flew off and the monitor didn't tell us. After digging out the trash between the rotor and chopper, we had to rock the rotor a couple of times to get the material out. We did backfeed on top of the beater, and it did it's purpose and plugged. I pulled out the handy wrench and gave it a couple of rocks, and it was free! Made plugging the front beater a non issue. We have never just plugged the beater by itself. And now we don't worry about it since it is so easy to unplug. I have run all kind of machines, and this 8780xp is the berries.

We have an 8560 and it has a rotor light that comes on when rotor is slowed If it flashes it's no big deal it's when it stay's on for a second or more I'd better have shut the feederhouse and head off already.It doesn't kill the motor just bypasses hydralic oil in motor.

Does your motor kill when plugged or does the hydro bypassIJ Thank you. Also what model combineIJ

Does the 8780 XP kill the motor when sluggedIJ Also does the rotor keep consistant RPM. If the rotor does not kill motor when slugged how do you know when to back out of it if your running against rotor torqueIJ

There are a couple of things to let you know when you are getting close to slugging it. First, there is a rotor overload light that comes on when the rotor is getting close to stalling out. Second, there is an alarm that goes off when engine rpms drop too low. Third, you can hear or feel rotor rumble before it slugs. Kelly