[jacobb]

Have an amazing crop of soybeans here in central kansas, have cut some a little green and have burnt up 2 header drive belts already. I believe I have the updated idler tightening design with the spring, not the rubber. Anybody had this problem before. The head has not gone through very many acres and all pulleys look good. Any fixes?

thanks

jb

 

[nddan]

Make sure you have the spring tentioner for belt. We installed them on basically all of ours by now. I hope you have the heavy wobble box skid plate (rib running from anchor for tie rod end all the way out toward area just behind wobble box). Likely SCH sickle and if so install roller guides in place of wear plates (this should dramatically reduce load on drive system).

 

[jacobb]

yep its a sch, do i get those roller guides from agco?

 

[jbirnsch]

http://www.shoupparts.com/ carries the SCH line of parts. They have the roller guides.

 

[jacobb]

great thanks a bunch, we will see what happens

 

[stonypharmer]

Still slippin a belt that was brand new before bean harvest. Have broke two knife heads already. Broke it once and rewelded it. Ordered a new one for a cheap 120 bucks and they have updated it with another brace. Hopefully that will help it. Our head is three years old with the SCH cutter bar but still have the wobble box on it. No rollers. Are rollers really that vital to it?

 

[jacobb]

sounds like we are in the same boat, oh by the way put new sch sickles on a bar today, took me over 4 hours, knocking that little bolt out and then back in again, what a waste of time, im about ready to go find something different to run

 

[riceman]

Sch is a great bar to run. We've got 2 of em right now. The 8000 series 30 footer broke quite a few knife heads til I started to fix them. I took some keystock and welded it to the front side, top and some on the bottom where it was out in the open. The one I beefed up was a broken one. Its ran 2 years and hasn't broke yet. $120 a peice got old to us too. A handful of keystock is pretty cheap and its thick enough to do a good job of welding on. Just rewelding the broke parts doesn't work but the keystock adds just enough beef to it to keep it working.

About your belt breaking, check and make sure that you haven't broken the plate under the wobble box. Both of our old heads had broken and we had them welded up and an extra plate welded across the back. It was causing the belt to slip and burn but if you didn't notice it, it was hard to see where it was broken. Also check and make sure your belt is running on the right side of the idler pulley. Both of ours ran on the bottom of the pulley.

Roller guides aren't an absolute must but they do help quite a bit. We run them on both the 30 foot 8000 and the 35 foot 8200. Agco was backordered so I bought some through Shoup. SI Distributing in Ohio is a SCH dealer also. www.sidist.com I think.

 

[jonnd]

I replaced the wobble box with the SCH pro drive this year. Has eliminated the drive head breakage. The SCH seem to be a great imporvement over the other type of cutting system. I did update to the spring tensioner which I also beleive helped.

Next update is the roller guides as my wear plates had to be turned after one year with wobble box drive. Mine is 2006 8000 series 30'. I really like the header now that I have a combine with lateral tilt.

I also have the 10% speed up drive pulley for the cutting system. It is listed in the parts manual but Agco does not recommend it.

My only problem is the tie rod end that is in the stablizer, have broken one on this head for no apparent reason. Checked the entire stabilizer set up when replacing and could not find any loose bolts or cracks that would have caused this.

 

[stonypharmer]

Just curious as to how fast you all drive while harvesting soybeans. We usually can only go about 3 or so. It starts to strip after that. Most of beans are in no-till and all are in 15 inch rows.

 

[buzz]

We run from 4.5 to 5.7. Inverted SCH. You really should be able to go a bunch faster than that.

 

[mailman13]

Buzz, do you have pictures of the inverted SCH sickle? Is it hard to do and do you feel it will cut as low as other brands such as Deere? We had a 800 series with SCH and were embarassed at how it would not cut low enough, especially compared to other colors in the area. This was with a 3 position header control, maybe that didn't help the situation. We are looking for a header for next year for the R62, most likely with an air reel. Rode with the neighbor and the Crary is impressive to say the least.

 

[buzz]

I'll see if I can take a few pic's before she gets backed in the shed. When we first started combining this fall, we we actually cutting a little too low, and picked up too much dirt, so we rolled the cutter bar back a scoosh. SCH's like to grab brace roots, etc., but we roll all our beans, so it really isn't too much of an issue. We also have the air reel, and wouldn't be without

Running next to (same field) a 9760 with a 35' yesterday. Couldn't quite keep up with him, but darn close. Both of us were doing an excellent job cutting.

 

[nddan]

Good job Buzz,

Let's see. 70ish less HP, 5' less header, 10ish years older, fraction the investment. I see why you are happy. I hate to compare machines because of all the varibles but number one is you are happy with the performance you have unleashed in that Natural Flow.

 

[buzz]

Here's my attempt at posting some pic's....we'll see how it goes.

 

[buzz]

Hey it worked! I tried to show what it looks like once it's tipped. Had to cut a little off of each end guard. Also cut the threaded piece off of the head of the SCH and welded it on the other side. There would be other ways to do this, maybe just adjusting the bold downward, but we would have needed a spacer, so we cut and welded it on the other side. We went with the roller guides and it works well, but I'm not sure how that will affect the life of the rollers, being they are upside down now.

Found a post on the Harvesting.com site about how to invert the sickle, but it's pretty straight forward. Take the end sections off of the sickle, flip the middle, take all of the sections off of the end pieces and install on the other side. Once you start doing it, it will be fairly easy to see what you are doing.

 

[mailman13]

How much lower do you think you can cut with the sickel upside down? Nice pics and information. Thank you. How did the cutting height compare with the JD hyraflex? There are several of those in our neighborhood and they really seem to shave the ground. Would you happen to have some pics of the stubble where you were running with the Deere so we can see the cutting height?

 

[buzz]

I think that the difference between the standard SCH versus inverted was 7/8 of and inch. Cutting height was the same as the JD. When we started with this head, we were cutting too low, so we rolled the cutter bar back a bit.

I might get over to take some pic's of the stubble, we'll see.

 

[mailman13]

What year combine are you running this on? Do you think this setup would work ok on the old 3 spring header control or is infinite header control a must? Our R62 is still the 3 position switch so that might have to change.

 

[buzz]

We had the 3 position switch until this fall. We added tilt to the machine, so we had to go to the infinite. It's a '94 model, but the head is a new 8000. The tilt is so nice to have!!!