Combines Possibility to Buy

If the machine is in acceptable shape it should be an easy go unless it has had problems. The n1 one thing I would do is start the machine up and carry the rotor speed up as high as possible. If there is any noticable vibration it could be trouble if the rotors where run out of balance for any length of time. A rotor out of balance will shake a lot of things loose or to the point of breakage and it does not take long for this to happen. I know from experince. We ran a root through one of our '85's and it bent the rotor which put it out of balance. We didn't want to stop and pull it at the time but we paid for it dearly the next few years. It messed up a bunch of stuff that you just can't imagine. Our '70 was a great machine and it is still running not to far from us. You'll be wanting more than 15ft on the platform and it can handle 6 rows of corn too. We had a 22ft platform on our '70. Oh, the AC can give a bit of trouble on the '70 also. It was a light system no intended to be used on a filthy combine.

I had 3 TR-70's. One Cat engine, two fords.The later fords(1979-80) were far more efficient than the cat. Much less noise too!Even if you have to pull the rotors for balancing and_or repair this is a good machine for small acreages. If the price is right go for it. lots of these around for possible repairs too.

I dont have much experience with NH equipment, but what I have seen is that the TR 70's arent the best ib=n the world around here. 2 machines in reasonable shape caught fire and burned in my county this year and one was my neighbors. I think you'd be better off buying a good old 6600(diesel) or 7700 Deere, they can be had for a good price and will run forever if taken care of and have good capacity.

Don't even think about a an older JD 7700. The cost of upkeep is horrendous and remember the TR has over 100 less moving parts, nowalkers to go bad, and most of all the best rock trap in the industry. The quality of the grain sample with the TR is far superior to a conventional for example soybean cracked beans of 1-2% compared to 9-10%. Believe me, I know I had both even at the same time. Over all screenings in corn arealmost no existant with the TR compared to5-6% for the JD

The TR-70 seemed to have treated some people well, but not me. We owned one that was completely shot after 2000 hours. I think we replaced every single thing on it at least once, and yes, we did take excellent care of it. Everything is built too light. There are a couple of belts on the combine that take a half day and lots of cussing to replace (beater belt and header drive belt). Just when we thought we had the machine in excellent shape, something else would go wrong. There were not many days when we didn't have to work on it to get going each morning. Ours was a 79 model too; one of the latest ones (supposed to have all the "good" updates). I will agree that they can't be beat for a clean sample. Even our 2366 Case-IH won't clean beans like the TR did, but at least now we can go to the field and get something done. I like the Ford engine better. As light of a machine as a TR-70 is, I think the big Cat is too much for it. The grain head is a very poor design. If you do buy it, don't give any more than $2500 for the whole outfit. Who knows, you may get along fine if you run it easy and have small acreage, but our experience was less than the best.

I really don't know why you had such a time changing the belts. On the beater belt, we could swap one out in less than an hour. Never had the header drive belt go bad on a'70. Not even on a couple of '85s either and they all had varible throats. Of the belts on her, the beater is the hardest to swap and the one that gave us the most trouble. We swapped 2 in one day once. Dad thightened the grate up under the beater to much and didn't tell us he had till after the first one!!! We've had TR's since '77. Out of all of them, that first '70 was the pickingest machine we've owned! She had the 3208 and it was REAl strong. She would walk circles around 7700's, 7720's, 1440's...etc. Many of out neighbors borrowed it cause it was the first in our area. If she had of had the S-Cube's in her it would have been hell! Had '85's, '86's and now a '97. Never had the trouble you speak of, worse one was the '85 that the rotor got bent on and after we replaced it she smoothed out nicely. Try changing that belt on the JD's that you have to remove the seat to get toIJ

Hey JD- How can you tell if you have the S cube rotorsIJ We have an '82 TR-85 we bought a couple years ago, and just wanted to finally understand what they are. Thanks, Pat

The old style rotors had 2 sets of rasp bars mounted opposite each other that ran with the rotor. The S-Cube Rotors are 6 spiraled sets of rasp bars much shorter in length than the old ones that mount around the rotor, hence...the 'S'. When picking with the old rotors you would hear a boom, boom, boom noise from the rotors when the crop was tough. The S-Cubes took that noise out and increased capacity somewhat!

Hey Doubleclutch_Pat, I'm curious....where did you buy your '85 and have you been pleased with itIJ THX.....JD

JD- Thanks for the information, looks like we have the older rotors in ours, but quite a machine in any case. I found the TR-85 on equipment-locator.com 2 years ago, bought it from Yost Farm Equipment in Nebraska. It was cheaper by half to buy this machine and have it shipped in than to pay one of the local guys for a combine that was less than half the size. Yost's were really super, represented the combine completely accurately, and were great about getting a conversion kit to us when the corn header we bought with it turned out to be a hi drive unit (machine has low drive feederhouse, they paid for the adapter kit and FedEx'd it to us. This was a whole new world for us, only seen Gleaner F's and JD 6600's around here, (we live in NW PA) then this machine shows up on a semi one night and we couldn't believe our eyes! It sure looked smaller on the web picture. The TR-85 has been great, just eats corn and soybeans like there's nothing there, the most impressive thing I've seen is it hogging down half downed rye at 4.5mph with a 16ft header and wasn't even straining. This is positively the easiest machine to set and get a great sample and complete threshing I have ever seen. For the life of me, I don't know why there are not more of them around here, we love it. I sure hope witht the "globalization" of combine platforms CNH uses the New Holland chassis, I'm a believer in them now. Pat