cookie jar, Your comment has caught my attention, which brings me to a crossroad. It would make sense for Massey to place the rows of blades at different angles to one another when there are two rows of 12 and one row of 11; in theory, if the chopper were operating (rotating),it actually comes out to be 117.28 between a row of 11 and a row of 12 and 125.44 between the two rows of 12. It was a couple of years since we have done our chopper blades on our 860 and I cannot recall if the row of blades were at these angles or were spaced evenly at 120. Therefore, I leave you with two suggestions. 1. We have had good luck with the procedure I wrote you. We simply placed our level across the assembly brackets and went from there (I cannot remember if we noticed there being a difference between the mounting of the rows of blades). Also, here are some footnotes that describe our experiences: The chopper has worn out one set of blades (one set turned over) and we have not experienced any bearing failure or cracking of the sheet metal. The chopper was purchased NEW when we purchased the combine (the previous owner had backed the old chopper into something and bent it to hell). Prior to replacing the blades, when we were giving the combine a test run before harvest, we noticed the chopper vibrating excessively. During the inspection of the problem we decided to replace the blades. We removed all the old blades and checked the balance; with all the blades removed, the shaft assembly (by itself) was out of balance. We balanced the shaft assembly by tacking strips of metal to the shaft. After discovering that we had 2 rows of 12 blades and one row of 11 blades, we installed the blades and came to the conclusion that we should remove the strips of metal we just added. After we removed all the strips of metal (the ones that we added and NOT the ones installed by the manufacturer),the chopper seemed to balance itself to the same orientation with the level placed across the mounting brackets in the three different positions. Thus far it is running smoothly without any vibration. 2. The other procedure that would seem logical would be to balance the shaft by itself (without any blades installed),install the blades, and try running it. It would seem that in theory the entire assembly should be balance while it is operating. However, in addition it would seem that when the chopper is stopped or sitting at rest, it would not be balanced. If it is possible I would be interested to know what you attempt and the outcome of it. Now, Im curious if what we do is the proper method or not. Good luck!
