Combines R50 and canola

Canola is out west of me but I think a main idem is present to combine the best you can. I think most canola is swathed at just the right time to prevent over rippening of seeds. Some will roll it over and then staight cut when dried down. Don't know if you can spray to kill. The more hyperized the better. You don't want to break up straw to much. Sweeps or smoothening over seperator grate will further reduce busted up straw. Accelerator rolls need to be very good. I've heard it works very well to have front few louvers of chaffer cut loose and run wider. Some guys have installed what they call canola board. That is a panel fastened to back of chaffer and tilted back a bit. I believe these have been in range of 3" to 4" tall. Maybe not needed at all if you prevent busting up straw to much. Maybe someone can help with just when to kill and how straight cutting goes!!!!

Thanks Dan. Was considering the tailbord mod to help keep the seed in the machine. Canola is a relatively new crop for this area (SOUTH of Detroit),most is direct cut as there are few swathers and pick-ups here. Too hot for spring canola here. looking for something to take disease and insect pressure off soys,and fit the rotation with corn, wheat and veggies. Still experimental. We'll see how it goes. Price has tanked along with everything else. Rumour is that duct tape WIll be a neccesity.

Direct cutting rape and canola can be a nasty job. The stalks will still be green when the seed is shattering. The plants get all tangled up and are very difficult to feed without coming in clumps and gobs. And while you battle the crop getting to the feeder house the reel is threshing the crop. Once in the rotor you have a bunch of green crap you want to get in and out quickly. Overloading the shoe can be a problem too so you need to use a lot of air. CIH guys sometimes use some blank grates to cut down on shoe loading. In Europe Claas and I am sure others make a special header for this stuff which has the sickle moved forward about 18 inches so you catch the shattered seed while stuffing the crop into the feeder auger. They also use a vertical sickle on the right end of the header to slice through the standing crop and separate from the cut crop. Fun stuff. Swathing is a much better idea but then shoe loading is a problem too, but at least the stuff is dry.

Not sure about winter canola, but have done a lot a swathed summer canola with R50. Biggest problem with the R50 and swathed canola is a small feeder housing. If you have any swathing problems is causes feeding problems. In general if the crop is very dry or aged, we have a problem overload the shoe. We have stopped on hot days and waited until night. Combine set Cylinder about 600-650 (less chance of plugging) Cylinder at about 3_4" Fan about same as wheat. (so chaff is clear and not ride on chaffer) Chaffer full open or close a little if being spiked with stocks. Cleaning open, same a wheat Speed all engine can do. As Dan said good Accelerator rolls make a big difference In general we use only air to do all the cleaning. WE have tried small seed kit and found is useless and general made more problems. In a good swath and cool conditions we can get a very clean sample, but it you are breaking the tips off the pods it is hard to keep them out of the sample. WE now have a R72 that seems to do a better job. I think the bigger feed housing and sunnybrook rotor are the biggest advance. I don't see the backstop helping. If you load the chaffer it will carry canola over in the pods. If you turn the wind up to carry pods over the top, you will need a lot more wind. Gerald

Hi Gerald. Have you ever had problems with the ouside of the cage plugging with stemsIJ On my R70 (P1 w_ Sunnybrook rotor) canola stems (which can be like small willow trees) will stick out through the openings in the cage and build up to the point where the cage access doors in the hopper will get pushed open. I converted to a fore_aft cage sweep, which is a huge improvement but it will stall at the torque limiter in canola. One idea I had was to put the overfeed flighting in on the returns but with no trough as there also seems to be bridging of pods and chaff at the front of the cage above where the crop enters the processor. Any idesIJ Thanks

Your right the 50 feeder is narrow but it can handle great amounts of straw. If header has been narrowed properly and cleanly it will help. The flighting and filler panels used to narrow up the header for the small throat should not have any gaps that will snag the straw. Floor between header and feeder also needs to be adjusted for no gap and knocked down flat with feeder floor if needed. It's also important to remove any excess fingers in auger so they are not tring to push crop into feeder before feeder is open to feed chain. Some guys have removed a few extra fingers accross feeder to help break up the canola bunches that can come with that crop. I have found the best thing to do with these feeders is fix the transition area between the chains. Same holds true for the wide feeders. I can only imagine how much straw the little feeder can handle for its size especially when you keep in mind they have the same slip clutches as large machines. They can sure be a hungry compact machine. I remember talk about the FAT 50 (R62-72) before they came out. Once the FAT 50 came out it took some doing to match the 50 more closely. Once we extended the cylinder bars to discharge and a couple helical mods we got the extra capacity of the wider machine and more HP.

What do you have for helicals and how is their conditionIJ If you have flat iron helicals do you have them shimmed and or green stem kit installedIJ Green stem kit adds a row of helicals on thresher side and transitions steep pitch thresher helicals to milder pitch separator helicals at three locations. Are you running all forward cylinder barsIJ I agree fore_aft sweep is much better and I think we have only totally removed one of them when all left_right sweeps have been removed. There would be nothing wrong with running overfeed auger w_o the trough and that should prevent any buildup. I believe that is how the factory equiped machines with tailings return kit came in. Some guys install the auger w_o the trough to spread tailings accross feeder more evenly.

Thanks all for the discussion. looks like the crop has come through the winter, so, here we go. I did see some being cut last summer in Chatham Ontario area. Was standing well and was no trouble direct cutting. lAST YEAR! Of course, this is THIS YEAR. Watched a Massey rotary and 7700 Deere working. Slow and steady, reel high and slow, just enough to move the crop, sharp knife, and the handyman's secret weapon, lots of it. Will let you know what happens. Expect harvest late June_early July. Hey Wayne in Chatham, any commentsIJRob.

It's got stacked flat helicals - not the green stem kit, Sunnybrook Gen 1 rotor (all forward) and Sunnybrook concave. I was really impressed with how easy the sweep conversion was done. The factory templates made drilling a snap. The kit was pricey but it was a change worth doing.

Green stem kit is a very good deal. The material coming from thresher side has to make the transition to seperator side right where helicals are not lined up. This transition area gets stressed in sorting things out even with channel helicals that keep same pitch into separator area. It will smoothen the flow threw transition area nicely with the steeper pitch thresher helicals lined up to shallow pitch seperator helicals at three locations. If you are running the extended Sunnybrook concave have you tried to make it less aggresive. Can the back of concave be droped away from cylinder bars a decent amountIJ Maybe build up or stack wires on top of wires between last couple crossbars of concave to make it less aggresive!! I have did this to lots of seperator grates on newer machines and played some with it in rear half of thresher concaves. I often think 13 bar concaves are to much. Talk to you later.