Combines Walker machine capacitiesIJIJIJ

At the husker harvest show, I was told, that the combines are not to exceed a speedlimit of 4mph. So there is no capacity comparison there. When I attended the show last year, I also noticed, that the grain samples shown to the public were tinkered with, because they looked much different from what I saw in the grain carts. When I walked behind the combines, I noticed, that all the rotors broke up the cobs. Only the old walker running along with them kept the cobs whole. Therefor it hat the cleanest grain sample, while all the rotors had cob pieces in the sample. There was hardly a difference in grainloss. I was able to compare the capacity of a 9650 walker, a 9650 STS and a 470R lexion in 200 plus bushel corn last year. All three were very close in capacity, running about 4mph pushing a twelve row head. The difference is in fuel. While the "old" walker emptied its 170 gallon fuel tank, the STS with its TIER II engine emptied its 260 gallon fuel tank and the lexion had to refuel, thanks to a 170 gallon tank to get through a long day. This experience helped us to make the decision for a set of walkers for this year. I know in high yielding wheat and heavy straw the STS outruns the walker. But we do not encounter a big wheat crop very often.

I don't know the other brands intimately, but in my opinion the lexion 460 will outperform the John Deere's that you mentioned. And guys, this is just my experience, I'm not cutting down any brand or anything.

There is no way to make a blanket comparison of combines it depends a lot on conditions and crops. In wheat, if you are cutting off just below the heads you will not see much difference between any of the combines as you are putting in mostly wheat. In fragile crops such as peas and beans, the more times you hit the beans and the more components that you can't slow down, the more cracks. It is likely that the aps in the cat combines will cause slightly more cracks in very dry pulses. The powered beaters some machines will also crack pulses. If you are taking in lots of straw, then the variants of the age old straw walker machine will process more grain per hour. Acceptable loss is also a major factor. If you want to have 1_2% total loss almost all the machines will be the same. If you can stand 3% loss then you will probably find major diffences between machines. In my experience, if you are harvesting 6 or 7 different types of crops and about the same acreage of each there is probably not a lot of difference in combine hours required for harvest as usually each combine has crops that are better and crop that are worse than other brands. If you have most of your acres in one crop, then bias your desicion towards a machine that in good in that crop.

I have friends that run five STS's and demoed aCX 840 in 40+ bus wheat on 60' swaths and they were very impressed as it kept right up with the Deeres.One would have thought a CX860 would have been a closer comparison.