Combines New conventional

As far as I know, they are bringing the WTS over from Europe. I haven't seen the specs, but it looks like the same cylinder and walkers (66" wide body) as the 9660 walker, except for having that rotating drum with retracting fingers over the straw walkers. It shouldn't add too much complexity and hopefully it increases the straw walker capacity in barley. Whether it will keep up to the newer NH conventionals or not should be interesting. As far as all that "self levelling shoe" goes, I think that is 5% advantage, 95% hype.

The self leveling shoe is more like a complete advantage. If its not patented in the US then JD engineers are being morons for not copying it. Even on field with small hills it makes a world of difference. Since it selflevels they do not have to use dividers to prevent all of the material from running to one side and overloading the shoe. Even with dividers in a machine when it is on a slight hillside there will be heavy loaded areas and light loaded areas on the prechaffer and the front of the chaffer. Both of these are really the most important areas to begin lifting the chaff from the grain. With the selfleveling system the crop mat can be stratified on the grain pan long before reaching the prechaffer. Such a design eliminates the need to create an upward angled short pan to slow the crop flow as JD did to improve the statification in the 60 series STS over the 50 series STS machines.

I have run JD combines since 1989 and have work for JD for over 4 years, and I am sure JD will come with auto leveling shoe, even though I am not sure it is a good idea. I got the pleasure of seeing an afx 8010 up close, and it has had about every bearing torched off and replaced, the auto ejecting stone trap is disabled. Also my uncle bought one and he never even got to use it on his 3000 acres of soybeans, because it was broke. Now if deere comes with this option i will be happy to work on it, although the customer will be complaining about losing down time to save a few bushels_acre, when it doesn't work. I'm not sure on this one but does cnh or any other big name make a sidehill other than JDIJ

I have also got to see several 8010's up close and in my opinion they are a nightmare waiting to happen. I can't say that the NH machine is perfectly designed either but the CR and 8010 are from 2 very different idea groups. The self leveling mechanism itself is really simple and should be trouble free. The European NH TX-series machines have had this same separator for years, although the CaseIH engineers did their own modifications to some parts of it. I was not aware that the CaseIH machine had any type of auto stone trap on them. The ones I saw all had manual dump stone traps. I don't think any other companies make any sidehill machines anymore. Maybe Massey still does. I think the sidehill machine has its place but on small rolling hills like in the majority of the midwest its not needed. In small hills the selfleveling shoe is much more usable. The Claas lexion 3D system also seems to work well on small hills but to me the idea of making the shoe shake sideways uphill seems like it will shorten the machines life.