Combines rotor loss

Steve, I'm a little unclear as to which rotor you have. Is it a Specialty Rotor with the helical bars placed over the gratesIJ Or is it a Standard RotorIJ Any details you can give on the rotor bar configuration will help us. How did you determine you were getting rotor loss as opposed to seive loss or reel shatterIJ What size of header, what ground speed, and approximated what yeild are the beansIJ Do you have green pods in the sampleIJ Mike

I have a conventional rotor with the front 1.5 concaves covered with Gordon plates and helical bars in the rear cleaning section which has slotted grates with the cross bars removed. The rotor was reworked in the cleaning section by a machine shop to add the helical bars to move the material out better for navy beans whiare difficult to handle. It is called a Hart conversion out of Grafton, N.D. and they did many of them. Sounds like the Baxter Bros. conversion out of Michigan is similar. I determined that it is rotor loss by putting a shovel into the straw stream off the rotor and catching the loss. The seive is not loosing beans.I haves a 22.5 foot 820 header going 3.5 mph in 35 bushel beans. There are some green pods, but the beans lost over the rotor are not the green ones, they are yellow, round and hard. Does anyone think keystock grates would be better.

Suggest you begin by removing all concave filler plates except the one covering the front 1_2 of the front concave section. You probably still want that one to suspend pods. If that doesn't help quite enough, add keystocks one at a time starting with the front section. I'd try this before adjusting vanes, since you need to also carry trash thru without too much shoe load. If your vines are somewhat damp, you may end up with all 3 keystocks installed since the MOG needs to be agitated for separation. HOpe this helps -- email if you'd like.

Steve, I don't have experience with your setup, but I'm pretty confident that the helical bars are the primary problem. They can move the material out the end of the rotor quicker than it can fall through the grates. Fully retarding the vanes over the separating grates would be the first step and the cheapest. In fact, you might as well fully retard all the vanes while your at it. If that does not reduce the loss to an acceptable level, see if you can bolt a rotor bar between the helical bars to keep them from being as effective at augering the material out. I'm not sure if you will have pedestals to mount to or not. Anything you can do to block the area between the helical bars will help, but keep in mind you need to keep the rotor balanced. Another thing to consider is that you may not need all three cover plates installed. We usually run two in beans. The fewer cover plates you have installed, the more separation you get in the concaves. Other things to try would be increased rotor speed to provide more centrifugal force, but this will likely cause more grain damage. You could also try decreasing the concave clearance to grind the material up more, but again this will likely cause grain damage. Both of these will eat up your horsepower, so I would avoid them if possible. Finally, I would start adding the keystock grates. The working surface of a keystock gate is rough, helping to roll the material and therefore separate better. With the bars removed from your slotted grates, I think you actually have more open area, but the smooth surface does not provide much agitation to the crop. Hopefully someone with this style rotor will chime in pretty soon. Mike

Steve, I run my rotor opposit of some people, After several years of learning the hard way, The reason i run so tight is to keep a tight uniform mat going thru the rotor, And I belive we do a better job on grain quality the first time thru the rotor shelling pods open 1st time thru rather than run a tight seive setting an retruning more grain This is how we seen more cracking of grain, Hope this makes since,- Also if your experencing rotor rumble, Tighten them concaves up an this will dissappear

Heard a lot of good things to help you. Think I read that the Hart conversion is set up to go back to straight bars quite easily. Should check with them if these other things don't work. Did previous owner use this set up for corn and soybeansIJ I'd take cover plates off, retard vanes, maybe try slotted grates with bars on inside not across the middle of slots, or try keystock grates.Maybe Disrupters would also help.let us know what helps, also if it works in corn.

I also have a Hart conversion on a 1480 with a standard rotor. We couldn't keep it from throwing shelled corn out the back through the rotor. It is easy to put the rotor back to its original design because there is a 2"x 3_8" strap welded on the rotor shell where the oem bars were welded at the factory. This strap is tapped with a 1_2" hole enabling you to fasten a 2x2"x3_8" angle which you can drill and mount the oem bar (we used the notched bar).Those helical bars are two piece, we removed the front half and then added approx 30" of the notched bar so we now have 30" of straight bar and about 12" of helical bar over the seperating area. The notched bar overlaps the helical bar about 6". We haven't had it in beans yet but it is working real well in 18% corn. We took the rotor out not knowing about the straight straps that were welded on as part of the modification, I really think you could do it all by removing the 3 seperating grates and work thru that open area. We added the keystocks also. It is sure working better than last yr. Good luck.

Red -- good posting -- it's also good of the Hart folks to add that retrofit refinement. I believe they knew what they were doing.

Say, Forever Red. I know you can put in the straight bars, but Hart said you need to get the rotor rebalanced (takes time) if you do that. Did you switch the bar set-up and it stayed in balanceIJ Did you run in wheat with that straight set-upIJ By the way, I don't do corn, we're into beans and wheat. Thank everyone for all the ideas. This is great!

Oops, forgot to ask you lee, how tight is tight where you set your concaves tight. Thanks