[Rf928]

Combining barley I noticed a small banging sound, like metal on metal. My first though was it was a belt hitting somewhere but after some more use I concluded that it was too abrupt, thus I decided it was metal on metal!

It would get worse in laid down crop, and through the day progressively got even worse. Its not constant, every little while there is a bang.

At the end of the day it was getting really bad, so I figured I'd make one straight run down the middle of the field where it was standing very nicely. The sound got even worse, and now it makes it when its running empty.

So took the header off, and this morning I've rotated the beater and the feeder chain and found nothing that was bent/broken/loose. It sounds like its coming from directly under the cab but its really hard to tell, maybe a bit to the left.

Anyone have any ideas what this might be? I am now going to inspect the rotor and make sure everything is cool there. All the chains and belts are in spec so its not a bad adjustment.

 

[be28936]

How close are you running your concave? If it's fairly close, it's possible the concave is not zeroed properly, causing the rub bars on the rotor to actually hit the concaves. We've had that problem in the past when we replaced the rub bars on one our sts's. When we would set the concave to about "2", we actually started hitting the concave with the rotor. We re-calibrated or "zeroed" the concave and when we would put the concave to the "0" setting it would no longer hit.

 

[jdstsman]

If it's not feeding evenly it could be the front feeder house drum coming down onto the stops after a wad goes under it.

 

[rcmc]

My combine is doing the same thing in standing durum, we put the feed accelerator in the low speed which helped a lot but it didn't eliminate it.

 

[CombineCam]

check the gears under the cab that run the conveyor auger bed, we had 2 of ours break the middle supports out, and eventually the shafts will be wore enough that the gears quit turning. makes a metal on metal sound that will come and go depending on if the augers are loaded or not, hear it more through the back window than anywhere.

 

[Fergy]

We had this same issue a couple years ago. We tried everything and finally removed one sections of the concave to inspect the rotor. Each element on the rotor is secured with four bolts. One of the elements on our rotor had cracked and was only hanging on with 2 bolts. This made the element peel away from the rotor while running and would hit the concave. The noise would come and go depending on how heavy the swath was.
Not sure if this is your issue but thought I would share.

 

[Dirtdiver23]

Could be your feederhouse chain has jumped a tooth and is now running crooked.
Look at your slats & see if there straight.

 

[SpudFarmer]

I had a noise show up last week that ended up being the front rotor bearing. It was not too hard to remove the black plastic cover on the front to see the seal broken on the bearing. It had been greased regularly but just failed on our machine.

 

[whtbaron]

I'm not sure if the inspection doors are the same on the STS, but on a conventional we had the stripper lip on the back of the top door get bent and it banged under our feet every time the header went up and down.

 

[jwb]

It's actually great that it's doing it when you're empty - much easier to troubleshoot. My first question is whether it makes the noise with the feederhouse off or not. Helps isolate feed accelerator on back or feederhouse on forward. You can disengage the feed accelerater to isolate it. Also can put rotor in neutral to isolate it. You can also unhook the head driveline(s) to isolate feederhouse or head. We had a stripper bar weld coming loose on the backside of the auger in the head that was making a sound like you're describing. It was definitely worse when empty than when loaded. Good luck.

 

[deeretech99]

check your shaker arms on the shoe. we have 4 broken shoe frame jobs in the shop as of today

 

[chalk]

Front rotor bearing

 

[Rf928]

Ok - late response, busy with other things.

Took everything apart the day I posted this, checked the following:

Feeder house; chains, sprockets, slats
Feed accelerator
Rotor; elements, turned it in neutral and everything felt tight and in spec. Didn't check the bearing, but wouldn't I hear or feel something if the bearing was gone?

There was one thing, Deere messed up and gave me the wrong belt for the feeder house drive. The one they gave me was too short so it was hitting a bracket. I can't see how it would have been that, but I haven't tried it yet to see.

It's with the feeder house on. Ran it with just the thrasher and didn't hear anything. When it dries up ill test it again

 

[Haystack]

I can't tell for certain from what you have posted if you test ran the feeder house with the header off of the combine.

If you did not, a finger can break in a certain way on the finger drum in the header and randomly extend making contact with metal on the header, because the finger can't get out of the bushing and is too jammed in it to fall inside the drum.