Hi - I recently purchased a late model series III N7 and am very happy with the condition at only 1531 separator hours. However, the cage sweep was removed and have been told this is common. I was starting to be dirty behind the machine and couldn't get it clean. The next day when I was servicing I opened up the doors ahead of the engine and the cage was packed extremely full of chaff and straw. What do I do to keep this from happening with no cage sweep?
Cage Sweep Removed on N7 Problems
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Hi, this is our experiences with the cage sweep in a series III N7 in Australian conditions. In wheat and other tough straw we often ran the cage overs on the far left hand side to stop jamming but sometimes we disconected the cage sweep in green beans or such. In this case the back of the cage did fill up quickly with trash but this did not seem to affect the machine's performance. Every few days we would clean the area out.
Western Victoria ; SE Australia.
Mostly wheat, barley and etc during the N7's reign.
We always ran the cage sweep in our 1983 N7 but the prongs or what ever you call them were set up completely different to the standard cage sweep arrangement but how I no longer can remember so not much help but am sure we only used a couple of prongs, one short and one long I think.
The cage cover positions and numbers were also very important if you mess around with and without the sweep.
Incorrect cage cover positions made a difference to grain going out and / or cage buildup and blockages and again our cage cover arrangements were non standard.
Plus the peg retarders in the separation side reduced grain loss to near zero.
They took HP according to the then experts but we never could see this in real life.
No internet in those days to swap ideas and trouble solving solutions. We were entirely on our own.
That N7 went like a cut cat in dry cereals with very low losses and big capacity and an excellent sample.
It completely whopped anything around in the capacity stakes maybe because a savvy tech had been into the pump for a F/D demo and we were possibly pulling 350 Hp or a good deal more.
We regularly clocked around the 38 to 40 tonnes / hour running capacity in good 60 bus wheat and this in the mid 1980's.
But show it some green stuff and you cringed and nearly cried at the protests coming from the thresher.
Reliability was quite good as well but maybe because we knew our machine and did a thorough DI [ Daily Inspection ] before starting each day plus an idle down walk around at knock off looking and listening for anything unusual.
Good years those years and haven't seen those yields for some 15 years now due to this long bloody ongoing dry / drought here in the SE.
Might finally be through the big dry cycle this season at last with some good rains over the last few weeks.
The old N7 is still going well according to the guy who bought it off us and is still driving it.
Mostly wheat, barley and etc during the N7's reign.
We always ran the cage sweep in our 1983 N7 but the prongs or what ever you call them were set up completely different to the standard cage sweep arrangement but how I no longer can remember so not much help but am sure we only used a couple of prongs, one short and one long I think.
The cage cover positions and numbers were also very important if you mess around with and without the sweep.
Incorrect cage cover positions made a difference to grain going out and / or cage buildup and blockages and again our cage cover arrangements were non standard.
Plus the peg retarders in the separation side reduced grain loss to near zero.
They took HP according to the then experts but we never could see this in real life.
No internet in those days to swap ideas and trouble solving solutions. We were entirely on our own.
That N7 went like a cut cat in dry cereals with very low losses and big capacity and an excellent sample.
It completely whopped anything around in the capacity stakes maybe because a savvy tech had been into the pump for a F/D demo and we were possibly pulling 350 Hp or a good deal more.
We regularly clocked around the 38 to 40 tonnes / hour running capacity in good 60 bus wheat and this in the mid 1980's.
But show it some green stuff and you cringed and nearly cried at the protests coming from the thresher.
Reliability was quite good as well but maybe because we knew our machine and did a thorough DI [ Daily Inspection ] before starting each day plus an idle down walk around at knock off looking and listening for anything unusual.
Good years those years and haven't seen those yields for some 15 years now due to this long bloody ongoing dry / drought here in the SE.
Might finally be through the big dry cycle this season at last with some good rains over the last few weeks.
The old N7 is still going well according to the guy who bought it off us and is still driving it.
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10 Posts
Hello, I had the same thing happen to me after removing the cage sweep on R70 w/P1 processor. From my experience the straw was bridging across the narrow sections on top of cage packing rather tightly across this area. I run an enclosed St. John rotor which is really smooth until the straw builds up in this area. Then rotor was not quite as smooth after harvesting around 1500 acres straw would be packed up there. I was tired of cleaning this area out so I fabricated some rotor cage covers for this narrow area. I ended up making 4 rotor cover plates in order for straw not to build up. This years wheat harvest was first trial run with this setup and it was definitely a success. Rotor ran smooth as straw build up was no longer a problem. The covers worked very well in eliminating build up in this area. Wheat yielded anywhere from 35-70 bushels with lots of straw. So it was a good year to have these covers. I will just leave them on for all crops, for very little cage area is lost and no capacity was lost.
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219 Posts
I removed my cage sweep on our N-6 last harvest. In cereals i found I needed to run the covers on the sections of just above the concave and the next section over on the separator side. This is the area that the cage is closest to the back wall and straw will hag up there. For Canola and lentils I remove all covers and works fine. Also helicals have to be in good shape, we installed the channel helicals from NDDan. This keeps the straw moving and not getting broken up and pushed through the cage. If your cage area is getting plugged up I think you have to be losing separating area.
We never removed any cage sweeps prior to shimming helicals by 1/4" along with green stem kit. Lately we have only been providing channel helical package. We have fine tuned the last couple helical packages with a couple steeper pitch channel helical. Just like Krawler suggested it is first important to prevent busting up crop prior chopper. We got by with all cage covers removed except one on each side of left concave arm and far right one next to right concave arm. We cut the ones imediately behind concave in a triangle shape (longer side next to concave arms). One step beyond this was to build a tin wall upward from left concave arm to area just beyond crown of cage. This helps prevent material from hanging over left concave arm area and eventially plugging a large area. We fastened the tin wall to the bolts holding thresher and seperator cage together. Hope this helps
nddan how much for your channel kit. I have R70 P1. I have .25" spaced flat helicals.Steeped pitch. Just fitted rasp bar 7 o'clock in separator and took out 2 bottom rows of bars in Separator.Have now no reverse bars. Only strip cereals with some rotor loss in Barley.I'm in NSW Australia and I think we have easy harvesting conditions. I feel loss monitor pad is fitted in the wrong place? As it doesn't show up much.Yes it does work. Thanks
Looks to be right about $2000 for channel helicals the way I fixed up the last guy. I believe he got the parts to make a four paddle discharge as well. I agree with position of loss monitor. If material bridges like it will on crown of cage this could block material from monitor pad (wouldn't be hard to move it). R60-70s with P3 had monitor pad moved over to area just ahead of discharge paddles. I think you could extend the cable type wires with normal wire if you want to move the pad.
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