Combines Red Clover Settings

Plants should be mature with dark seed pods. Seed should rub out easily in your hand. The main thing I've found is to reduce the wind blast however that's done on your machine (too new for me to know). You might have to further reduce wind by covering part of the opening remaining with the shutter closed. Seed will tend to be carried over chaffer and out the back with the chaff. Chaffer should about 1_3 open. Bottom sieve needs to be set barely open. Front concave clearance needs to be quite small. My book says 5_32", rear 1_16". You'll have to decide your ground speed by how heavy the crop is. I'm guessing to will have to be slower that say wheat. Once you start, check for seed over in the chaff, the return and the sample - usual stuff. Set right , it should thrash quite clean. Hope this helps. I've had yields of 500+ pounds_acre. Have fun!

If you have an 1 1_8" cloz slat shoe sieve and a standard tooth cloz slat chaffer, they will work fine. I dont know enough about the gleaner fan to give you a speed adjustment, but the cylinder speed should usually be ran about 900 rpm, give or take depending on conditions. That also depends on whether or not you use rubber on your concaves. If you run clover with your R62, could you please try to post how it wentIJ I'd really like to hear about it. I just finished red clover today. We run red machines around here but thats only because there are no gleaner dealers. The nearest one is almost 200 miles up the creek. Thats too far to paddle in the middle of harvest for a part.

You will need concave filler strip kit installed, small seeds kit, about 900 RPM at just over "0" concave, about 2 or 3 with small seeds flaps up, and yes the clover finish screen. It is imperitave that the concave be level. Results with a little practice on settings will result in just about seed quality results. Caution - if you are picking up from a windrow don't push it. With all those filler strips and close clearances you can load it up in a hurry. Keep it full but not overloaded.

Hey tbran, have you ever ran with the rubber seed plate installedIJ I dont want to be a pest with these questions, but I'm really curious how the gleaner works in clovers and other small fragile seeds. Around here, in the willamette valley oregon we run quite a bit of crimson clover and red clover. Pretty much everyone uses the rubber seed plate. The advantages are great. It reduces crackage to almost none. And it retards the material better so you can rub more of the seed out the first time and through, thus reducing the tailings volume. The disadvantages though, are you have to purchase them. Thats not fun. They quite spendy. And if you destroy a bar or two with a foriegn object, you'll have to send them away for rebuild. You cant field service them. I am currently working on a setup that will be field servicable. If it works, I'll need to make them available for most all makes of machines. The more input I can get about a gleaner would be much appreciated. Have you ever ran in the same field against one of the other brands of simular sizeIJ If so, what were the strong points and weak points of either oneIJ

Thanks for the information, it definitely gives us a starting point. We will keep you posted on how it goes.

no, we have never used the rubber items. And almost no other competitive units run small grains here. We do very little but have a couple of customer who used to do quite a bit but have slacked off the last few years. Weather is a real problem here in small seed harvest. We would be interested in the rubber bars you mention. How durable are they absent of rocksIJ

I will now show my ignorance! What is a rubber seed plateIJ Allis Chalmers used to run rubber covered threshing and concave bars [ strips of 3_4 or 1" angle iron covered on the front face with rubber ] in their 60 and 66 series All Crop harvesters when I helped work one while trying to thresh medic clover pasture seed in about 1954-55. Cheers!

I dont think you are ignorant at all. Not that many people know about it because you only need it for stuff like small seed legumes. Its just a more modern version of what you have used in the past. It is a piece of 1_4" plate rolled to diameter of your concaves and then a polyeurethane bar about an 1 1_4" wide by an 1" or so tall is bonded to the plate. Several bars are bonded to the plate with about an inch between each bar. This way you dont have to zero the concave so close, you can simply rub the bars into the cylinder when the machine is at idle speed. Now you have a perfectly matched theshing unit. The softness of the eurethane will cushion the seed and the extra drag from the width of the bars will retard the material better than metal to metal. The only problem is if you run a foreign object through, it may tare out a bunch of bars. Then you have to send it back for rebuild. The other advantage to useing rubber is that after rub in the plate will form a perfect diameter match to the cylinder. I'll try to get the phone number for you as soon as I can in case you're interested. The setup I hope to make will be servicable by you. If a bar tares out you simply replace that bar with simple hand tools.(I hope) We'll see when I get the prototype done whether it works or not.

They are quite durable if you dont have rocks. Depending on several variables like abrasiveness of your dust and stuff like that, you may see 1500 acres minimum to maybe 3000 acres or more if you take good care of them. It depends on alot of things as to how long they will last. I'll try to get the phone number soon for the people that sell them.

Thanks for the explanation Old Pokey. I seem to be always learning something new about combines on this site. A long time ago, in the early 70's we had an Australian built combine where the concave filler bars were slipped into the concave through a curved slot that followed the concave curve, in the side of the machine. No bolts, spanners or any thing needed. A few seconds to slide the fillers in or out and change the filler bar configuration. Could the polyurethene bars be mounted on metal bars to slide into slots from the RH side in a specially designed concave. Some mods ie.holes would be needed in the RH side frame sheet of the machine to get the bars in or out. Bars when damaged or worn could be quickly changed and the harvesting kept rolling. Thought about doing this with the standard filler bars for our R62 but haven't gone any further. Probably is not possible but may give somebody an idea on a different way of going about things. Cheers!