Combines Rear Feed Conveyor Blocks

Our dealer has lots of machines running with those blocks modified a bit. local Gleaner rep really pushes for this as well. Agco says to take rear blocks and cut 5_8" off of top of block (in corn pos.) and weld to the bottom of it thus rasing the drum off of the floor really high. They tell us to never change block settings then between corn and soybeans. Claim only time you need the chain lowered is in a very light and thin crop. Our dealer encourages owners to do this so much they have made up their own blocks and just hand them out to all of us. Gleaner rep says this improves feeding and reduces back feeding because with standard setting most of crop leaving front feed chain hits the center of rear drum and acutally disrupts feeding versus aiding it.

We have to have drum start out just clearing floor by an inch or so. That would mainly be for the very hard to knock out wheat we can have. The tailing can drop a bunch of crop back down in feeder after leaving the crop and you can not get the feed going again without the close chain clearance. Then we have to have the drum up when we get going again so for the reason Brian pointed out. Thus we came up with the shocks. Only downfall that I can see with the drum down from the get go is the moment the drum has to float up from a sudden start of feeding. Can't say I have seen any problem with that. The drums simply run smoothly at that capacity you are using. With stops in grain rear position you start out close to floor and can float up to the max height without ticking grain tank floor. As Brian explans their dealer likely cuts top of block so you get same max height as in grain rear position and if they add to the bottom they simply have chain off floor quite aways before feed starts. locking chain off floor that far can help prevent a jam up when shuving the first material in hard and fast (maybe OK in corn and beans). Don't know how milo acts. I would run in grain rear position for all crops first and see how she goes. Nothing to moding blocks later if you find trouble with first feed. I have heard of shocks wearing floor too but I think that is a bunch of crap. The shocks don't put pressure on floor. They just prevent the drum from bouncing and beating the heck out of alot of things. If floors are wearing faster it is just because they starting using some milder steel. I think it is more like they have more material flowing over area from the added capacity. Now if they would look at areas wearing threw and fine tuned the transition area like we have did on many machines they could make use of the new found capacity in rotors. Take care.