Combines R62 feed chain replacement help needed

First and foremost! What shape are your sprockets inIJ If a notch has been worn into the front of each tooth where the rollers contact the tooth then take a small angle grinder and remove the lip at the top of the notch on the front of each tooth to give a smooth face on the tooth to enable the chain to slide smoothly off the tooth as the sprocket rolls over. Doing this can probably double the life of your sprockets and chains. I suspect that a lot of claims for poor chain life are due to worn sprockets and the chain catching and jerking as it tries to come off even a lightly worn sprocket with lips on the front of the teeth. Worn chains will rapidly wear sprockets and worn sprockets will rapidly wear new chains. Always replace chain too early rather than trying to get the last few hours out of them. Chains are a lot cheaper and easier to replace than sprockets. This applies to all the elevator chains on the combine. You may be surprised at how many extra hours sprockets and new chains give you if you follow this policy. Cheers!

Consider grinding the edge of the slat square and then hard surfacing it with a powder torch. This makes the Gleaner very hungery.

The sprockets are also being replaced, as are the drum bearings and the feed shaft bearings.

Grade 5 will be fine. I'm finding the 557 chain to outlive sprockets by maybe 2 to 1 in most conditions. I will often roll new sprocket onto old chain while it is on the floor. If it fits the chain I will often times reuse. I only put new chain on without sprockets in an emergency. I find the diameter at which the chain needs to run on erodes down which causes the roller links on chain to start riding against the wrong side of sprocket teeth. This wears the tooth but worse yet the chain only pulls on one or two sprocket teeth. New sprockets greatly reduce wear and tear on chain. When installing new sprockets be sure to space them properly, time them properly, and fill setscrew threads half full of loctite before secureing. The loctite will push out around hex and prevent sprockets from working loose on hex. Hope that helps.

Interesting comment re chain _ sprocket life, Dan. It's accepted as very roughly the opposite way around in Australia, two chains to one sprocket wear rate. This wear rate is possibly due to our cereals getting contaminated with our abrasive wind born dust during ripening which then gets in and wears the chain rollers and pins during harvesting. Our cereals have a period of about 6 weeks from head emergence through the flowering, grain filling and ripening phase to harvesting so they have a lot of time to get contaminated with dust. Toss in a thousand acres a year of flex front work, grinding along in clouds of dust and dirt for lentils, peas or Faba beans [ similar to broad beans ] and the wear rate gets pretty high. Just for general info; in our area in western Victoria, Australia, we plant cereals from mid May on and start harvesting in very late November or early December which is just before our mid-summer and the hottest and driest time of the year. It is well known in Australia that in some areas of our grain belt, combines wear out a lot faster than other areas. Abrasive dust on the ripened plants is accepted as the reason. Just goes to show how we cannot take for granted that what occurs in one area is going to be repeated else where. Cheers!

Some areas in the Pacific NW of the US are blessed with soil that has volcanic ash in it and that is abrasive stuff. I remember a CIH rep bragging about the life of Axial flow concaves and rub bars and then he looked around and said but in the PNW they won't last one season if they are not hard surfaced or chromed. Of course the PNW is also a dry pea and lentil growning area.

You guys are so right and what a good point. For instance I see machines come into our area that have cages wearing from the outside in. This must be the dust or crop in area it had been. Our cages in our area even with the great amount of dirt that comes with edible beans wear from inside out. Even at that they last a great long time. I've never replace R62-72 cage because it was wore out. Anyway that is a good point that some areas of a combine will be wore right out in some areas and perfectly good in another area even with exact same hours.