Combines stalks breaking off in cornhead

west illini; Stalk roll knives with too much clearance will cause the kind of trouble you mentioned. The stalks spend too much time between the stripper plates and it allows them to break when they should have been ejected out the bottom of row unit. Stalk rot could be a problem this way too, as could too narrow a stripper plate space. As for knife spacing, I use two putty knives for gauges, one at upper end, other at lower and have no problem sucking stalks down with that method.

That's a slick idea. I'll use that this winter when respacing the knives. I think I have my solution

yep, you found your problem...This will happen to you all of a sudden, it just quits feeding properly with stalks breaking and accumulating on top of the head...adjust the knives so they just barely don't touch, if that doesn't work very well for you, let them touch, they will wear off PD quick...IH cornhead will not perform with more than 1_64 inch gap in corn stalk roll knives...worn stalk roll drive ends will also contribute to excess knive spacing as the rolls will get slightly out of time.

i knoow some say you can rotate knives. but putting the wore end at the top creates the problem you are talking about. and making sure it has a good v point at the top. stripper blades that are wore will help build up trash in this area. a good knife setjust to miss and a wore one can make 2 to3 mph. differne.ce