Combines Stupid Question About Filler Plates

According to the parts book, they are not sold in matched pairs like the bars. That being said, if you are keeping the old plates, I would put them back the way that you found them. Why add a an unknown variable to the equationIJ

According to the parts book, they are not sold in matched pairs like the bars. That being said, if you are keeping the old plates, I would put them back the way that you found them. Why add an unknown variable to the equationIJ

My question is..........what does having rocks have to do with wanting the filler plates inIJ Maybe a stupid question but I've never heard about such a thing. Thanks

They are not in a matched set in any way. We just always put ours in however. We only used them for corn so the speed is slower and if it was a little out of balance no big deal. I could argue with you about the feasibility of a rock going into a spinning cylinder without the fillers, but I'll save that for another day. BTW if you're happy with your cylinder balance now, why not mark them as you take them out. Figuring out how to mark the cylinder is the tricky part anyway.

Theory is I guess that plates will "Deflect" rock down into rock trap instead of possibly getting into cylinder and causing damage-or further in machine. I don't really know if that is true or not-but I have found many rocks in my trap. Machine runs fine with them in so I guess my theory is if it aint broke don't fix it. Paul

I agree on the "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Someone else made the point once and it makes sense to me. Could you really put a rock between the bars of a spinning cylinderIJ We have found tons of crap in our rock trap and we never ran filler bars except in corn. Chunks of wood are an everyday thing along with metal, turtles, concrete chunks, etc. Our ground is hilly and everything in the world washes down from the roadside. Even at 300rpms those bars are coming around pretty quickly. Kinda like trying to throw a marble through a spinning fan. Too quickly in my opinion to get something inside of them. That's just my thoughts and I certainly think that if what you're doing works for you then you should keep on. I thought I needed the filler bars for corn, but I tried it without them and so now I have no need for them at all, but that's just me.

take them out, cut them in half so you won't be tempted to use them ever again. gs

You are probably right, that makes sense. We have same problem-I never see anything go in there but almost every night pull out 1_2 brick, wood, etc. What I don't understand is how it gets in there. 50ft into the field the rocktrap is filled with junk-you would thint the stuff would sit there on top and try to get into the cylinder-but thank goodness it never has. Paul

When I first got a deere combine (9500),I couldn't see how that rock trap thing worked. I had a gleaner before and let me tell you if you don't know the trap door on the F3 worked a little differently. If you put a good slug through it and popped the door open you got a nice dirt bath laying on your back in soybean stubble closing it. I certainly didn't miss that and was amazed that this thing would work and I didn't have to mess with it except once a day. The stuff in the rock door is actually sort of loose and something hard will pack right into it no problem. Sometimes it sort of gets beat down into it as you may notice from the sounds coming from the cylinder. Usually something like a rock or brick goes straight down into the loose stuff without the cylinder beating on it. A lighter piece of wood or a biggger chunk sometimes the cylinder has to hit it a few times. I had a weird rumbling sound one night cutting in overflow ground. The next morning I found a big ole piece of driftwood partly in the trap and partly rubbing against the cylinder. That really made a weird noise. As I'm sure you know it's important to dump the rock trap daily especially when cutting soybeans so that loose stuff in the trap doesn't get too hard and might actually keep something from going down in there. We don't dump ours in corn because we just don't pick up anything with the corn head.