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JD Draper Head Feeding??

17K views 21 replies 16 participants last post by  ptr77 
#1 ·
I have a 640D head and we are having problems with it feeding crop under the belts and then pluggin the belts. Not sure if it is pulling it under or if its shooting it across. Seems to be more like it is pulling it under. Anyone else have this problem on a 640 or 635D. I have tried speeding up the belts and slowing them down and i have also tilted the head forward more and it doesnt help. Any suggestion or answers? We are combining chest high winter wheat. Straw is from dry to green stem in the down spots.
 
#2 ·
the head is a 2011 model brand new last year. It will do it on full cut and half cut. I may have to try and slow the belts down some more i think i was down to 280 or so. I will try more tilt and less belt speed and see what happens. Yes crop is extremely thick and a mixture of down and tangled to standing up perfect.
 
#6 ·
I have 2 640D with the PIP's installed and had problems this past harvest. Our wheat was 80 bushel straw and it was sickening to see the amount of material passing under the belt. It mainly happens on the right side of the header but both sides with underfeed. The Deere dealer in Alva, OK told me the engineers where down there this year to better understand the problem so hopefully another PIP is coming. Fingers crossed
 
#8 ·
Is there much work to put on that anti wrap kit. Got a 2011 635D this fall and started cutting spring wheat tonight and it would either keep throwing wheat around and under the header or jam the header. Mostly on the left side. Seems to me part of the problem is the feed drum on a deere is so short it only has a small area to jam that much material through. We have had honeybee headers for years and never had a problem with this. But honeybees feed drum is at least 2 feet longer than deeres. Seems the feeder house will take the material just not the feed drum.
 
#9 ·
The John deere Underfeed PIP and Dual Zone float PIP are both Deere Product Iimprovements done by the Dealer for FREE.
PIP 11HX372 - Dual Zone Float - Fix as Fail
SITUATION :


Some customers are not satisfied with the responsiveness of the auto header height of the 600D in the side to side movement.

CORRECTION :


Installation of this kit will improve the side to side response of the 600D.


PIP 11HX371 - 600D Underfeeding - Fix as Fail
SITUATION :


In certain small grain conditions straw feeds underneath the side draper frames and creates windrows on either side of the combine.

CORRECTION :


Install MPH kit that will raise back sheets and side draper belts which will help reduce under feeding.
 
#10 ·
I had a 635D and had both of those pips done. They did nothing to help the underfeeding and wrapping around the drum. It helps if you can slide your outside draper belts as close as you can to the center drum. We put rubber belting to fill in the gap underneath the draper belts and fingers on the coned part of the center drum to try to keep it from happening. None of that made a difference. We ended up traded the head for a 936d again. We just couldnt make it cut wheat all it wanted to do was be a swather
 
#11 · (Edited)
I still think to do wheat with heavy straw, that the feeder chain has to be in high speed. The 640D's are working perfect here. When we had a guy join us using a 936D he couldn't keep up once it got dry enough to put a lot of material through he had feeding problems.For years this fellow insisted his chain was on high speed, I couldn't convince him it wasn't. When he finally looked at the other combines he realized there was still paint on those spockets on his. The large sprocket on the jack shaft on the front and the small one on the feeder shaft on the back is high speed. It's unfortunate that the first models of some of the 60 series have a rediculously fast high speed sprocket ratio. I think it would be worth upgrading to the new ratios to save the chain.

The long and the short of it is I think the feederchain has to be pulling material away from the finger roller or the drapers will under- feed. I also agree that it becomes a problem far more often on the new series headers.
 
#12 ·
The 600d series header is one of john deere's engineering failures. We've had a 2009 635d since new and have every known pip and r&d part installed, except for the experimental smaller feed drum. It's a decent header in dry wheat and barley in ideal conditions. The problem is we only get ideal conditions for 2-3hrs in a day. the first year we had it they put 25 engine hours on our combine, just trying to make it work. I've come to the conclusion that it should go the way of the late ford pinto and admit that it was a mistake and quit putting more people through the pain of owning one.
 
#13 ·
We have two 635d one with the experimental drum and one without. No better. I hope now that they are selling green macdon swathers they will do the same with their headers. Have been over and over with service and engineers for improvements with none coming so makes me wonder if thy may moth ball and start over. Hope so.
 
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#16 ·
Someone running 4 635D's with the faster drum speed last year said to his knowledge the factory didn't make a change in the drum speed as they felt it made little difference and instead caused faster wear and the gear box and higher temperatures.

Seems like conditions play a part to lots of it, and we have underfeeding problems sometimes with our FD70 as well, so I don't feel one is really that much better than the other in that department. I will tell you no mater what you do to a 2009 or 2010 600D head it will NEVER be like a 2011....the frame is changed and no PIP can make it the same...it simulates what the newer years are like, but they are NOT the same. I think that's why a lot of the complaints come from guys with the 2009/2010 heads and are much less from later years.

I certainly wouldn't want Deere to quite making these heads....they are flipping awesome in my book! All that spring contraption on MD...I have much better control of what the head is doing out there with the hydraulic set up, enough to put up with a little underfeeding on the rare occasion. Feederhouse speed, belt speed, tilt angle, real position....there are A LOT of settings that can lessen the underfeeding, but they can be different in every field. I find pulling the real back helps to "flip" it and interrupt the flow a bit, making it much harder to just pull it under. These heads aren't perfect, but none are. My suggestion was keep playing with adjustments (which are all done from the cab anyway) till you find the best setting, and if you have an older head, get a 2011- year.
Buy a new MacDon head and you won't think much of a Deere head ever again. Everything is built better and those springs are awesome, once you get those springs set you never touch them again. But it is a pain to set them.
I can put my green operators on them and they cut all day long with no screwups.
 
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#20 ·
We most certainly would purchase another FD70....it's a good head. However we'll see how Case's new drapers work out. Still a big fan of the Deere design.
I think you just need to forget about everything that is not green. FD70's are not long life heads for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. I would agree the FD70 head height sensing off the groune leaves a little to be desired. And the track record on Case's heads in the last 7 years is not good.
 
#21 ·
I work for a John Deere Dealership in Australia and we have also had this feeding issue. I would suggest fitting the anti wrap kit as previously suggested plus i would also fit the narrow body kit (BH84589). This will fill in the areas under the taper of the feed drum and allow crop material to not get caught in this dead spot. THis has assisted a lot here with this issue.
 
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