ski_whiz
Guest
I was impressed with the 860 that we ran several years ago. It's capacity was amazing in some respects especially here in Eastern Ontario. This thing had the perfect amount of power to run the 6 row corn head, and still unload on the go. Covered alot more ground in a year doing custom work than our 1981 MF 850. Did have several problems though; -Repeat piston burn(erosion of the crown).Finally determined that it wasn't our fuel quality or any freak occurence - injection timing proved to be critical. Too much advance burnt pistons. -Clean grain system capacity low in high yeilding corn. Conveyor chain must be kept in good condition, possibly adding extra paddles. This system is the same size as the MF 850 and sometimes has a hard time to keep up. -The mechanical weaknesses of this machine showed up for us given the extra power over the 850 that we had to work with. Twisted off several shafts, Tore out the flex plate and main drive shaft, took out both final drives (due to the large tires and not repairing the play in the pinion shaft) and the usual stuff. -Chain and slat elevator was agravating, when it picked up a stone it would beat the chain to pieces(lacking a slip clutch). -Grain pan broke(typical) cracked from heavy load from wet corn or bean dust_frost buildup. Probably was cracked when we got it. This machine was amazing to work with when it was up to snuff. Think we just got shafted by the pretty paint and 1800 hrs on the meter that didn't work for how longIJ Some combine jockeys have boxes of hourmeters - beware. look for paint on belts or chains, this is true indication of the age. Any machine like this is probably below 2500 hrs as long as the rest of the condition matches. We finally traded for an MF 8570. Very wise decision. Good luck!