Combines rotor loss

Thanks hyper! Yes I have taken out every other wire from the seperation side. Hadn't noticed that you had recomended every other wire from the concave side. The gleaner rep. that had a meeting here last week about had a heart attack when I said that I had took out the seperator wires. Was worried it would weaken the cage to much. I'm in a different varity of corn today and the loss was acceptable. I almost wish I could find one varity of corn that would work great across the whole farm so I wouldn't have to fiddle with the combine any between varities. Thanks again for your help.

who was the Gleaner repIJ bgtbran@yahoo.com

We haven't had a chance to run our R62 in corn yet and unfortunately we probably won't be seeing any 200 bu. corn this year. It is very hot and dry and harvest is getting started here...2-3 weeks ahead of normal.

I haven't been keeping track how many bu per hour I am going thru but it doesn't take long to get 300 bu in the tank. I am running a 6-30 from 3.5 to 4.1 mph and the corn is an average of 16%. I guess we were lucky the hot dry weather came after the corn was already made but it may have hurt the beans a little. I am still having problems with cobs sticking in the grate, little or no loss after I clean it out but after 6-7 hours I start to see loss thru the chopper because its partially plugged again. I will try to keep track of the bu per hour tomorrow unless we switch to beans, also have to replace a bearing 1st. Thanks.

Ed, Used to fight the same thing in the P1's.Have you removed every other rod from the seperator grateIJ(we leave the rods and remove every other cross bar)Have you removed any of the rods from the concaveIJHave you considered replacing the reverse bars with low cylinder barsIJ(hi-low staggered height).Our base princple is positive flow then open her up for additional seperation.Get as much through the concave as possible.Bottom line: remove every other rod from the upper concave and seperating grate, install 4-8 low bars in the seperating end .Check your concave for adjustment and damage.Good luck! Hyper

No. No. No. Same answer to Each question. (I'm not just being obstinate.) I have the newer wide wire concave and I am very reluctant to remove wires from it or to change the reverse bars for half height because I expect these changes will reduce the threshing ability of the combine in wheat, particularly hard red spring. This is a second class wheat machine as it is and I hesitate to do what I'd expect will down grade it to 3rd class. Removing some separator grate wires will give the grain more escape space. How much more trash will then go onto the shoeIJ Can the shoe handle the extra, especially in wheat. Does the cage which goes with the wide wire concave also have a wide wire grateIJ (sure was nice to get away from having to beat all the cob chunks out of the old concave). If so, I'd be more inclined to go back to the original concave to improve threshing ability and replace the concave grate to aid separation. Is there an inverse relation between rotor loss and corn yieldIJ Yields were embarrassingly low this year. last year crop was good. Maybe there was just too little crop going through the machineIJIJIJ Just today's thought.

G'Day Ed

After reading this site for about 2 1_2 years and posted a few queries I must say I have learnt a great deal about how our 1987 R50 should operate. Down here in New Zealand (below Australia) there is the grand total of two Ns and two Rs, so the knowledge is to say the least limited. We harvest hard wheat, barley, field peas, grass, oats and white clover. This year we have decided that things can be improved as we were losing grain both over the shoe and through the rotor. We made some of the suggested modifications and got very dirty in the process. We removed 6 of the 24 separate wires mainly at the discharge end. Then we removed all the rotor reverse bars (which were suggested in the parts manual) from the last row and replaced them with forward ones and put 2 reverse bars over the concave and left the 2 in the middle row. We had already installed the F raps bar in separate grate just after the concave. Doing wheat and barley yesterday was a total different experience the rotor was making a totally different sound. We even managed to get the engine load indicate for our Deutz air-cooled to move with the rotor around 1050rpm and getting along at 3.4-4mph, the neighbors wonder how we can go so fast! We are collecting 5.5 tonnes to the hectare in wheat. Where as in previous years we would have been cutting wheat just below the head. This year we were taking half the straw making a better job and losing less gain. There is still a small amount of loss, which is coming out with the straw, but this is bearable. Another thing, which has really worked well, is removing the plastic fingers that are at the top of the air duct to take the air of the shoe. Previously we were running the blast as open as it would go and still needing to clean the shoe by hand after a couple of hours. Now, the shoe is always clean and we are losing no grain. We would have given the half height cylinder bars a go and extending some into the discharge, but we have no spares and with the NZ dollar at around 45 cents to the US dollar it is some how not a priority at this time. Same scenario goes for the helical bars. Thanks to all that have extended our knowledge and given us a better machine.

There are 2 common errors that can cause rotor losses in corn: 1. Running the cylinder too slow. Some years I have to speed up to 300rpms. 2. Driving too slowly. I drive as fast as the head will pick or about 5.5mph in 150 bu corn. Tom in MN

Do you remove concave filler bars for cornIJ Did your losses start after the stonesIJ Did you adjust the concave as concentric to cylinder as possible per HyperIJ I would believe your concave is open enough beings you have the hi wide spaced wire design. I don't believe you will find your shoe overloaded with every other wire removed from seperator grate for we have had no problems with that setup. We did run a large P3 this year with eight half height bars in seperator side in wheat with no problem. Definitly less cob breakup in corn with the half height. Now for your hard threshing wheat. You should have the tailings return to cylinder option but beings you don't you will have to thresh grain completly before it gets to the opening in concave. More filler bars and or tighter concave clearance. It is possible that you need to be at 1_8" all the way threw. Narrow rasp bars could help here but we have nothing but wide rasp and do a class act job. No second class job acceptable. Reverse bars over concave could help get a little more threshing done before open part of concave but we are able to get by with all forward. The hi wide wire concaves were out years before the hi wide wire seperator grate was available. Remember that threshing has to be done before the crop gets beyond filler bars when you have no tailings return to cylinder package. The cage and seperator grate would have very little to nothing to do with threshing hard to thresh wheat. Hopefully that will get you on the right track. Good day.