Combines IJ for Dan on sep grate

Ohhh,,,, I like that double stacked rod idea!!! please tell us moreIJIJIJIJ Im in the same boat on the rods in the sep grate, I would like to know if the Hyper's idea of moving or removing every second check bar and reinstalling every rod back in to the sep grate would be ok for dry wheat or at least small grainsIJ Hyper can you approximately tell us how much more open area is on the sep grate with you modIJ Please,,, Rolf

Ever since the P3's came out I've been disapointed with shoe load in many crops and conditions in our area. I presumed all the concave and grate area was for the large acres of corn out there. We have much less trouble with old N6's and 7's as long as they have stacked, shimmed, or channel helicals and they just have a short 7 bar concave. After getting the bars extended and forward bars ect. we still wanted to grind material less in many conditions. We than found out about cover kit for seperator grate and installed many. Cover kit is cage material that is layed on top of seperator grate after rods are removed and then bolted down. The first cover kit we installed was to control barley loss out rotor and we had eight reverse bars installed. Ends up the grate was rolling straw with seeds traped and taking out rotor. Didn't matter if is was a jobber seperator grate with six inches between cross bars in a P1 system or a standard grate in P3 system. Also heard grate would roll green milo preventing seperation and cover kit would help material to continue sliding and seperating. I could go on and on for reasons I don't like grate but I am not in the high yeilding wet corn areas that I thought it was for. Anyway to try save a few bucks I started to just weld short pieces of wire on top of existing wires to prevent seperator grate from grinding or rolling crop. If custumer has corn we would have every other wire removed to prevent any plugging and build up the ones still in there. If no corn we would leave all wires in but just build up ever other one. Only reason for leaving all wires in without corn is that it saves us the trouble of removing ever other wire and pluging all them exposed holes. There is a seperator grate just like yours available that is made of cage material and also a bolt in cage material section for the older machines and know of them in high yeilding corn working just fine. Gleaner has the high wide wire grate available for field or factory install but I still prefer cage material or wires built up flush in our area. Grates may reduce cylinder loss in some corn but may also break cop in some condition also making it hard to seperate. I know a todays factory machine can be made to work very well with little change but if I had my way I would have a short thresher concave like P1s allowing helicals to start earlier and then an adjustable seperator grate with half as many crossbars like Hyper suggests for the corn soybean guys. Then for the wheat belt guys and so many special crops have cage material in place of seperator grate. I think a guy could have it set up the best way for there major crop and still jump into there minor crop and do a fine job without switching out grates or concaves or anything like that. There I go again tring to redesign a very good combine. Good luck and happy harvesting.

I don't know if this is helpful, or if you already do this, but I use three filler strips in front of concave which effectively reduces the "length" of the concave. Maybe this will helpIJIJ We saw grain quality improve with the strips too.

How did your smooth seperator grate workIJ Did you have rotor loss with the grate in cornIJ We are thinking about doing that if it works in corn.

When you put the cover on the grate do you install helicals over it like on the P1. Have a friend that has an 87 R60 and I keep telling him that he should double stack his helicals. His comment is he would do that if he wanted all the grain to go out through the rotor. I don't believe that I think that you would get less rotor loss just like you said about the baling up and the grain not being seperated properly.

As far as I can tell, the loewen grate worked great. We did add the Sunnybrook Gen II rotor at same time, so do not have assurance as to what helped in what ways. Do know that rotor loss was almost non existent. I had down corn, so did not have chance to see what losses would be like to really "fill her up" but would not expect any problems. I ran all corn at rotor speeds of 240 to 260 rpm. In soybeans, we went all night in a pretty tough damp night, and I would doubt any other make machine would have stayed there and run the night with it, getting all beans threshed out, and doing a nice job in the tank! Makes a whole new_better machine out of it. I would make a comment about quality as relates to how full the machine is running. This setup can be run at any percent capacity and still do an excellent job. Sometimes crop conditions (drought, whatever) makes it impossible to run full, but is no problem with this machine, as you can slow rotor speed for quality (without rotor rumble) and still get all grain in the tank! One sweet machine!

Doug: Does your loewen separator grate basically look like the rest of your cage materialIJ Do you ever adjust itIJ We didn't put the separator grate in our P1 cage in our R5 when we redid things, and are wondering if the addition would be worth the effort. Thanks for any info you can provide. John

Yes John, the grate is exactly same material as rest of cage. Have only left it set same height as the cage. I don't think I see a need to tighten it up in corn_beans, but in other crops there may be a need to do that. Next summer, I plan to put the steep pitch helicals on the thrashing side (right) and take some of the removed helicals and put them across the seperator grate to see if I can get more through-put with less HP, and see if losses are still insignificant. I guess this dinging with the R72 is my idea of having fun! I really enjoy it and payoff is getting a better_bigger machine for very little cost. Keeps me from getting wide eyed and overly excited about the new costly competitive machines recently introduced to the market. I didn't think the R5 had these seperator grates in themIJ Haven't been around one. If I can answer anything else, let me know. Doug

We sold in the range of 150 shim kits for P1s and don't know of a single one being pulled back out. Thats not to bad for our little dealership. We sold shim kits that shimmed helicals by 1_4" along with the green stem kit from Gleaner at the same time. Wouldn't think about running a P1 with anything less in our area. Wish we would of been smart enough to install channel helical bean kit and leave it in in the early '80's and then the country would be solid silver. Oh to answer your question on helicals over seperator grate on P3's. Yes and no. We had installed helicals over grate before raising wires and after raising wire or cage material installed in place of grate. Didn't see any earth shaking difference one way or the other so we don't make any effort to add helicals there. Do your friend a favor and lead him here to the Gleaner gospel.

My friend lives in western North Dakota. They do their share of wheat and other various crops. I know that they do lentil beans also. He owns and l-2 and his folks own an R60. He does his lentils with the l-2 because he feels the R60 would not perform in them. He just recently purchased a 2188 with about 3000 hours on it. OUCH. Yes he did end up sticking a pile of parts into it, but he is red now and my chances of getting him to do anything with the R60 is next to nothing. He is always telling me that it is guttless and how the l2 will walk around it and the l2 has a 24' head and the R60 has a 27'. I am always asking him what his high idle is at and if it stays there or taperes off as soon as you let go of the throttle. This was a pretty common thing on the big V-8. I know that there is something wrong with the machine I just wished that he lived closer so I could take a quick peek at it. I went and bought a new lincoln welder today so I can weld those wires in. I am pretty excited to try it out. Thanks for the info Dan and hope to talk to you again. It's not been too cold up in the northen part has itIJ It's been cold in the south here and little snow. The ground has been cracking pretty good here for the last month and a half.