[pj9510]

I've got the opportunity to drive a claas 750 terra Trac over next few weeks/months in some sorghum and mung beans.my normal drive is a jd machine so I'm very keen to learn about this one. I'm not interested in colour war sh#t, I just want to understand what I'm driving better. I've done a few hours in it both yesterday and today, in dryland sorghum, about 2.5-3t/ha, head down in flag a fair bit, crop has had a pretty rough summer. I have drum about 550, concave 15, rotor 800, fan 1350.bomb? doors open. Top sieve 16, bottom 10.
To get about 10km hr out of it, it displays I'm using 90-100% engine power, and it runs hot(but I believe this is a dirty radiator issue that I can solve over the weekend with some time and patience), and I've changed fields this arv and had some trouble with overloading the repeats,very clean sample but if I go about another mm open it gets rough very quickly. can some one throw some ideas at me, in laymans terms please while I learn my way through it.

 

[seedcleaner]

Your "repeats", we call tailings or returns. What is in your repeats and we can help you reduce them. If it is nothing but fluffy trash, more air or closing top sieve would help.

 

[Auscocky]

I've heard they run hot. I think one of my neighbours got ag tune or one of those guys to tweet the computer and that fixed it. I guess they are built for European climate, not 42c in the shade.

 

[aussie.ltd.]

Sorghum settings for me are 600-700 drum depending on how dry things are, 20-25 concave, rotors 100rpm faster than the drum speed and bomb doors opened or closed depending on sieve or rotor loss (ie. If you have rotor loss and no sieve loss open a bomb door if it's the other way around close them) fan 1250-1300, top sieve 15-17, bottom 10-13,
With you returns try closing the top sieve down a bit and opening the bottom one and play with your fan speed whether it's higher or lower speeds you will soon work out which is better. With the engine temp check that the fan belt isn't slipping ( a can of belt grip can help detect this for sure) check and clean the radiator, check the condition of the fan belt, make sure the fan belt is routed the right way, there should be 2/3 wrap on the engine drive pulley and the fan drive pulley (you can actually route the belt a couple of different ways the other ways don't get as much wrap on the engine drive pulley) my 750 has done 2100 eng hours now and I have just put on the second engine pulley to stop the belt slip the belt ends up bottoming out in the groves and starts to slip. On a hot day with the radiator blown out she shouldn't get much above 95, and should hang around the 90 mark doing about 60t/hr easy enough even with all the flag. I am running key stock APS wheat grates as well which helps a lot as well, happy harvesting they're an awesome combine in sorghum in the mung beans a set of HHS round bar APS grates will help a lot as far as cracks go ��

 

[pj9510]

Cheers for the replies guys, Aussie could you msg me your phone number? A lot of my queries could probably be knocked over in a phone call if you had the time? A lot of the things that have been suggested make good sense, and I think I've got to where I'm content its going ok today,with very similar settings to Aussie has suggested, but always good to kick some ideas about with others

 

[Dak]

so pj can you give us an update on how its been going so far? what's your thoughts?

 

[pj9510]

Hi Dak, heres my thoughts, remember they are mine and WILL be different to other peoples......im not here to start a colour war, its just what ive found.


ive done a few hundred hours in it, and or running/supervising it for my client. I cant say im overly impressed with it in the conditions weve been in, it continues to run hot, after removing and cleaning radiator, replacing fan pulleys, belt, cleaning screen brushes etc, and dealers involvement. weve found it very hard to keep sample acceptable(clean) without overloading and choking returns/repeats, it is easy to adjust, once I got head around the monitor in cab it was good,simple enough to use.i don't go much on the "ping" noise for everything though, that gets annoying very quickly. I haven't seen anything remarkable in tons/hr like plenty of people promised me it would be capable of, just runs out if power above 11km, and when in dryland, dessicated sorghum of about 2t/ha (12m front) this doesn't seem a huge capacity. I know the crop has limited us here, but really in good dessicated sorghum any header can perform above and beyond, so its good to have a play with it in other conditions.


I find in dry conditions the cab vibrates a lot, cab is very quiet, the top of grain bin extensions and bubble up auger move around a huge amount, must be some wear there in time, folding lids are a nice touch, easy and quick to do,it only has a jd atu for auto steer, this was sub par for gps these days, ive heard very good reports from owners with intergrated steering or machines with jd valve block(or how ever they do it to adapt jd and claas together-I certainly don't blame this machines steering on claas. turning circle is terrible, working in row crop, have to reverse up most ends to get to turn before a ditch/bank.


I find the two fuel tank fills is a pain, as you move from one fill spout to the next any fuel that drips onto engine bay area makes it incredibly slippery to stand on. ladder to cab is an awkward enough beast, steep, handrails don't flow from one to the next, step really reminds me of a 1970s vintage claas my father had when I was younger. to get to radiator to blow it out its pretty narrow and high up( as opposed to the jd where you stand 'inside' the panel work.


the straw chopper wont throw more than 1m past out side of tracks, and due to "speading" mechanism behind chopper it doesn't leave straw evenly spread, instead a pattern is seen where about every 10-15ft (depending on travel speed) lumps of straw are dumped at edge of chopper range. id hate to see how many moving parts there need to be replaced with a few hours on it on this constantly moving what ever its called....


its got a honey bee front on it, nice simple front, for 1200sep hrs seems to have quite a bit of wear in bits and pieces, but I don't know how much maintainence its seem in the past, I do like a front that isn't overly complicated with sensors etc like my 640 is, we run on virtually flat ground and don't need a lot of the crap the deere front is standard with.


for our conditions, given resale values, the dealer service versus the service from our jd dealer I wont be changing anytime soon, but that's just me.


and now due to the slow progress of the crop as we go into winter they are getting me to bring in my s680, so ill get another head full of ideas I guess.


so now let the bagging me out begin........

 

[phantom970]

PJ, Whats the secret to keeping the 1/2-1" long pieces of sorghum stalk out of the sample with the S? Or will this be a first? Iam thinking its just the green crop. Had same problem last year with the 70series, was green crop again. Being forced to do 25% flaggy sorghum next week. Yuk. Wishing for a 9610.



And everything you said about the Lexion is an echo of what i tell people who ask............
HHS components will help with the sample but One shouldn't have to do this to "the super Claas" to make it better. Aussie ltd and his mechanic will dispute this.......smirky face!!!!

 

[aussie.ltd.]

Your so funny phantom, the secret to keeping short bits of stem and pith out of the sample while harvesting sorghum with the S680 is to use 2 l/ha of glyphosate at spray out and wait at least 2 weeks before harvesting, otherwise use the Lexion ��. Pj Quite a few of the things you mentioned do annoy me about my 750 to, my old 750 was a ***** for getting hot until I Agri tuned it that did help, but the big improvement always was the main engine drive pulley, if the belt is touching down between the ribs it will slip or if it doesn't have 75% wrap on the main pulley and the fan hub the belt it is on the wrong way, there are at least two ways I have discovered to run the belt and still have good tension on that belt ��. I wouldn't say that the Lexion hasn't got things that aren't painful but it is a great header in sorghum especially green stemmed sorghum, in perfect conditions it certainly wouldn't be any better than a JD or a NH or Case, but when your talking stay green sorghum down in the flag the other makes don't stand a chance ��. The radial spreader you were using has a good throw getting close to 12m in sorghum and all the way out there in other crops did you have it adjusted to full spread in cebis? The spreader setup is way to complicated in the mechanism and the position sensors are only any good for 600 hrs of harvesting, on our new 760 we went for the Mav chopper and added a heap more wind blades hoping that should work well. 6mm key steel on your APS grates will make a big difference to threshing and will allow you to run your concave wider also having your stationary knives in the chopper out will help with power consumption. After getting the Agritune done on the old machine And comparing it to other machines before it was tuned I always wonder whether all ECU are built the same or whether they run one motor differently to another, you see it all the time were one machine will run better than others of the same build?? I am surprised about you not getting a good sample In sorghum without overloading your returns, that is the one thing our clients love about our Lexion best sample ever ��, sorry to hear about your bad experience with the 750. I have been happy with the minimal break downs I have had and the build of the Claas, with the changes I have made to my machine ( HHS interchangable concave, flow kit and wear strips and now having it steer and map using Greenstar) it has been a great machine that suits me well for the work I do, will I change to a different manufacturer in the future? if I can see a benefit , yes. But for now the Lexion has my vote ��

 

[pj9510]

phantom ive only done a couple of boxes on Friday with the s in sorghum, it was new for last yrs winter crop so this is its first run in sorghum.
crop was a little wet still, so weve pulled out of it for a few days and running in mungbeans instead. cant say sample looked to bad, claas was running beside me and the bit we did with both machines looked quite acceptable.
I to have had trouble with 60s and 70s with green stalk in sample, in two different ways, firstly snotty poor sorghum where your taking a fair wedge of flag (which can be fairly often in dryland crops in our area), and secondly a crop of about 5t/ha irrigated sorghum,head well up above any leaf with very very wet ground that had us limited to 1st gear where we couldn't get enough pace up to load the machine, not dessicated as they wanted to windrow and bale behind header. Weve had success over time by running two large wire concaves and a round bar for the 3rd, also have run feed accelerator in low range instead of high, have a friend on Liverpool plains who swears by running 3 large wires, and 'unlevelling' concaves, running front one as per normal, and setting rear adjustment about 15mm wider. he does a lot of sorghum year in year out, seems to have little trouble, haven't tried this one my self yet.
im not with you on the 9610 phantom......ill have my s any day
aussie I don't see what ive been able to do with the claas as a bad experience, I think the opposite, I think its been great to have a look at another option and see whats out there, I was very close to buying one of these in 2012, now with what ive experienced im glad I didn't, im not saying its a bad machine, its just not something I would own myself for my operation. ive been dark green for a long time, came from a green up bringing and i get very good support from my dealer, gps equipment is easily interchangeable with our other equipment, some of the other brands in our area the back up service has been nothing but terrible. Red crowd sold 8 headers a few yrs ago, had 2 mechanics, both quit a week into harvest and left alot of owners up sh*t street. unfortunately these thing stick in your mind and I guess you become wary. one very important consideration for us as small operators is resale, and in our area were not seeing the claas hold that up, nor are we seeing any of the other non claas dealers trading them in so if we got into one were either in one or in the claas brand for a long time, or will take a big hit to our equity to get out of it.
I had the cemis set to 100% for chopper spread, couldn't do any better with fan drive, new parts, checked belt routing like you had previously mentioned, just doesn't like hot days we found.