Hi Matt.. I have pushed a row head since 1977. Maintenence is something that is required to keep them in the field, that means you must keep chains tight and lubed every day. All rotary knife bearings must be greased every ten hours, not just every day. The gathering belts also must be kept tight and lubed every day too. Now the good part: The belts will last longer than anyone thinks, just get a set of torsion tighteners and quit adjusting them. If you can't get them tight anymore with them, take a link out. Put spring tighteners on the rotary knife drive chains and cut a small hole in the fender just above the knife itself and you can put chainsaw bar oil on them in the morning. Now they will hardly wear at all. Don't forget to grease the row pivots every morning too, so they will flex easily. If you don't, they get dirty and won't take grease then the row unit won't flex. Kind of a bad thing. Fabricate a spring tightener for the n60 chain drives on each side and now these can stay tight too, don't forget to oil them in the moring too. I bought a 454A last winter for 600 bucks total. It has new belts, knives, bearings, and bevel drive gears. I have never spent anything near what Unit 2 says it does to repair. Just look around, all these guys have gone nuts over drilled beans and gotten rid of their row heads. it won't cost much of anything to keep these things moving if you use your head. Once you have all the spring tighteners on all the chains, this morning routine takes about an hour for the whole combine_head. No big deal. I have pictures of all these mods if you want... Also, a larger drive gear can be bought over the counter from deere to speed up the belts so you can run just as fast as you want, original gearing is about 4.5 mph on a deere. Good luck..
