Diesel, you have made a very strong statement here. More true than you may know. First, the 36" rotor did work, it was tried in a few test bed machines and those things would eat grain. Not only was the rotor larger, but also longer. It could not however, be stuffed into a near current frame. Case had it in process and about 50% complete when JP Rosso (spIJ) made the deal of a life time for himself and the stock holders by selling out to NH. No, it was not a merger except in the Wall Street Journal. The first thing done in the harvesting section was to can what Case had done and give them the dimensions to fit a single rotor into a NH platform. 36" would not fit! Do not think the engineers at Case were happy about it, but what choice did they have. That was their only opportunity to have a new combine on the market. Second, there are so many limitations on the frame of the 2388, that modifying it to take on a larger rotor would have meant a large investment in both capital and manpower. Case was not that happy with the profit margin on the machine and simply adding a few bells and whistles did not make the machine any more profitable as the features were not in proportion to the potential to increase the price. last, if only Case had completed the development of the AFX rotor and taken it to market in '95, when it could have been ready, do you think the landscape of market share and productivity would have been changedIJ I think that then the "merger" would have been the other way around with Case "merging" NH into their platforms and product lines.
