Combines Increasing tailings capacity

The return elevator is the same size 1420 to 2388 but it may run faster on the bigger ones.

One of the other members here made a modification that could maybe give you some ideas. It's a smart job he did. See the link.

Yeah, I've seen that. That's a cool setup, but's a little more extreme than I wanted to do. However, there would certainly be a ton of advantages to running the return back into the feederhouse like that. Chads

Do you have the latest style of seive shoe pan and railsIJ I personally have never plugged a return since installing that North guys Air deflector, run seive alot more open than in the old days. But there seems to be some that can not make it work either. I personally think it is the design of the paddle fan housing blasting too much in the front area and going dead in the back and a closely set lower seive that makes it walk so much round and round. You need an even pressure on both lower and top, plus the whole length not just up front.

We fought the overloaded return for many years. I bought a Browning sprocket that had a few more teeth so that the whole return system ran faster. I can't remember the exact details, but I think I sped it up about 10-15%. I couldn't tell a lot of difference, but it's always hard to judge these things since every year is different. We eventually installed the return monitor sensor from the 2388's to keep from plugging it. Finally, we bought the fan deflector and an adjustable airfoil chaffer. Now we don't run any return volume to speak of. I don't think we ever plugged it again in any crop (except one time when I switched bean varieties and they were too big to fall through the lower sieve!). In my opinion, the overloaded return is an air problem. I would rather just fix that.

I put in a Hillco fan kit, and that helped a lot. You can definately tell the airflow to the shoe is better and more even. I've heard of a couple deflector kits, and our combine had some kind of something in it that I took out. It was better after it was removed, and better after the Hillco kit. I'm gonna put new concaves in before next falls harvest, as well, and I might find out that the concaves are worse than what I though. I pretty quickly found out you've gotta do the best possible job threshing the first time through, cause the second chances aren't that great. Cover plates helped this alot, as well. Most of what's returned needs to be returned, but I just can't handle that much at speed, and accept a little poorer sample to go faster. If the tailins went in further forward, I can see where this would help a lot, as well. Chads

O.K. Is there a link to the air deflector kitIJ Chads

Try this. The crop photo's on that site actually came from our 1680. What it doesn't say is that the milo was actually completely down on the ground and we were picking it up with a JD row head. We took every ounce of stalk we could get and ran the header on auto height. Even taking the whole plant, I don't recall ever plugging the return, and we were quite please with how it cleaned. I can send you pictures of the machine in the field if you would like.

Pardon me for changine the course on this discussion, but I have always had the theory that tailings were the result of something else not being exactly in tune...Always tryed to keep tailings at nothing if at all possible...recirculating tailings can cut capacity tremendously...I think I can see your problem with milo being different too, the stalks are wet and heavy aren't theyIJ..How can we keep the stalks 'above the chaffer'IJ..Does more air blow out the miloIJ..Are you set on max airIJ..We have a 1688, haven't run milo 'yet' but will have to deal with it sooner or later...longer sieves and squirrel cage fan has helped cleaning capacity a lot...If your shorter sieves can stand more air than you are getting with the OEM fan, maybe the squirrel cage would help...Bad to install it and it not help tho...We are running Marvin's Air Jet Chaffer with excellent results...I don't know if he has them for shorter chaffers tho...I will say his chaffer does a lot of good in wet stem beans.