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Difference between CTS, Lexion designs

18K views 19 replies 10 participants last post by  mbfarmer 
#1 ·
Just curious, mechanically speaking, what are the differences/similarities in the John Deere CTS design and the Lexion twin rotor design? Also, threshing dimensions, cleaning dimensions overall machine width and length comparisons.
 
#2 ·
Bin,

To get the most accurate and complete information on the two designs, I suggest going to Deere's European website and look up the brochure and specs on the model that is the CTS, and likewise, the Cat Lexion or Claas website for their brochures and specs. Both have cylinder separation up front with the two rotors behind it. After that, it is engineering preference. Deere only has the small size, Cat has two boxes, Deere size (9500 width)and bigger (approximately 9600 width). have fun
 
#4 ·
I have run many conventional combines over the years and I can tell you that the APS cylinder in front of the main threshing cylinder makes all the difference in the world. We will never buy a combine that the crop flows directly into the main cylinder right out of the feederhouse. I'd go rotory before I did that agian.
 
#5 ·
I have run many conventional combines over the years and I can tell you that the APS cylinder in front of the main threshing cylinder makes all the difference in the world. We will never buy a combine that the crop flows directly into the main cylinder right out of the feederhouse. I'd go rotory before I did that agian.
 
#7 ·
I meant on a conventional combine. And mostly because of canola with a draper head in cereals they seed smooth enough it wouldn't make as much of a difference. The axial flow does have a beeter in front of the rotor but I don't know if it does much smoothing of the crop flowing in or is strictly for rocks.
 
#8 ·
No beater, the feeder opens directly into a transition cone to funnel the crop into the rotor. You're thinking of something to do with a rock trap, but not every machine is equipped with one. Ours isn't.


Not the best picture, but you can see the rear feeder drum.


There's the transition cone, minus the vanes. The rotor impeller fills this space.


And there's the rotor. Again, not the best pic; kinda cut off the front part, but you can see the elephant ears (impeller blades).
 
#9 ·
So your combine has no stone trap or just no beater on topof the feederhouse. We domod a 9120 and it definetly had the beater. The rotories don't seem to notice the uneven feeding as bad as some conventional atleast not until night is what I was getting at. Especially in canola.
 
#10 ·
the cts has a spike tooth separator while the lexion has a saw tooth separator causing the lexion to be far more aggressive. in hot conditions the cts does not overload the sieves as much. had to put john deere cover plates cut down off a sts in the lexion in order to reduce sieve loss. having said that you still have to put covers on the cts but they are made for it. mostly a problem for canola or hot (40oC) days in wheat. i have a 470R and have just bought a cts11 to replace it. i understand the deere it has a larger sieving area in relation to its separating area. when the deere breaks down i can get parts and they are cheap. the lexion has expensive parts that have to be flown in. the 470 is a bigger combine 20% but i don't care. for four seasons i have spent at least a week waiting for parts in good harvesting conditions. my cts11 at 3100 sep hours is in better condition than my lexion at 1400 hours. everything in a deere was made to be there and fits like it would from the factory not just brought off the shelf and put in later. my new motto is always buy desirable saleable assets. don't just buy something because it does an extra 25%. i have been burned.
 
#12 ·
Overloading the sieves isn't a problem for lexions. If you know how to adjust the combine to the conditions. Thats the reason why you have variable speed for rotors and treshing drum. In hot days it isnt necessary to tresh that agressive...so you have to change the settings. There is no need to change cover plates or anything in my opinion. Instead of rebuilding half of the combine you should have "played" with the settings a bit. It would have been fine than. Moreover a lot cheeper...
 
#13 ·
Especially with the electronic rotor covers and new rotors not to mention the jetstream cleaning system. There are no fields here greener than the jd fields. Anyone who runs deeres in our area spend twice as much as any other color on the winter inspections. To be honest Deere is losing market share to all the competition with now only the most loyal green guys still running them. The parts here is a lot better than what you are describing although it could still be better. Lexion is still struggling a bit to get a solid dealer network in certain areas but I've never heard of anybody trading in a lexion to buy a deere cause they are throwing over.
 
#14 ·
my lexion is an older machine with the three speed rotors these have never got out of the lowest speed. there is no jetstream as in the 5xx series machines so no electronic rotor covers which the addition of which would suggest that claas recognizes that they have an issue. my conditions in australia are a lot different from north america. although i am a coastal farmer that experiences moist sea air durring most days in the afternoon(20km from coast) most harvest days are above 30 degrees C (86F) sometimes even as high as 40C or 104F so the material breaks up really easily and everything needs to be slowed down to lessen the load on the sieves. the cts is less aggresive up front. and you guys are right a better operator would get it tuned up to run well, but i am not the best operator and experienced ones are hard to come by. i am recognizing my limitations of skill as the 470R lexions with their smaller sieve area compared to the 480 are more touchy on setup. all a good reason to talk to you guys about running this gear to gain some understanding. i stand by what i say about design the germans are great engineers but lousy designers they can make a machine to do anything but try to fix it and it is a nightmare. my lexion mechanic says new holland tx or cx machines and lexions were made by the same bloke (joke) just hard to work on compared to US designs. had to change a belt on the lexion the first job was to remove the lexion from the belt and then i had to put the lexion back on the new one. you can harvest untill midnight every night of the week and then break down for a week I would rather see my family at night and work durring daylight hours all the time. in terms of servicing they talk an average cost of a cts at $3 per acre, my lexion would be twice that, the little operator presence switch under the seat failed, just a two pole switch 50mm by 15mm i could make it up from an electronics supplier for $5 would have consididered it extortion at $50 it was $690. i feel safer and more confident driving my deere. the Cat front (g30) has yet to finnish a harvest. i always have to borrow a front to finnish or swath crop that otherwise would not need swathing.
 
#15 ·
To mbfarmer, Deere loosing market share? I don't know where you are from but here in the states, Deere sold out of new 70 series combines for next fall in 15 hours. And for tractors, if you ordered an 8030 or 9030 now, you wouldn't get it till next Aug. or Sept. Now the other brands, their lots are full of new tractors and combines. That tells me something.
 
#17 ·
-> Here in Europe(Germany) Deere is 2nd at the tractors with a marketshare of 16,9%. If I remember right...

For the combines the lose marketshare as far I as can say. Seems the new "T"-eries was accepted pretty well among the farmers. but I havnt seen any new STS (S series), WTS (W series), or CTS (C series) last year...

Only new NewHolland and Claas combines.
 
#18 ·
I don't have anything against deere but the truth is almost all the other companies are apparently sold out too. None of them are. I can order a new deere here tommorow or case or NH but yet they are all sold out. there are pockets all over the place where one make kind of runs the show. All I'm saying is in my are and in our conditions deere is losing market share with case picking up most of the slack but lexion and NH are as well. Dealers bought a lot of combines and put peoples names on them because they seen where grain prices were and did not want to come up short if customers wanted machines. This created a shortage and now that prices have dropped there are combines available (atleast there are here). It doesn't matter what color you buy you run a chance of getting a lemon and you are right some belts are not that easy to change, the worst one took us 3 hours, but most are. You should have checked on here before you bought that seat switch cause all you had to do was disconnect it and put a piece of wire in both ends of the connector. I had to do it and it only cost me three inches of wire and it's way better not having it hooked up anyway. If the cts is running good for your that's great and better parts and service are always important hope you get some good yields down there.
 
#19 ·
already connected the wires together and a aftermarket solution will be in after harvest. Worksafe our government orginization go nuts if you remove a guard or bypass a safety switch so selling the machine without all the safety gear is a no no. it can come back to bite you years later. The big question about that is what did yor dealer want for that part ? to see if there is much disparity between dealers and countries.
there are good ones and bad ones out there. my dad has a 9750sts that is a wednesday machine, my neighboor met me on the road and we were chatting about the sts and i said these machines wern't as bad on fuel as i thought they were going to be. he looked at me wide eyed and said how much is yours using. about 45L per hour, takes us 20 hours to empty the tank. he told me he couldn't get it under 70 for swathing. there is something wrong with that. dad will be keeping his machine for a long time. operator makes the biggest difference in capacity. i am only a hack. when i drove my dads sts i thought it was 10% better than the cts but my dads new operator has it going twice the pace in canola, we had them in the same paddock (field) a couple of weeks ago.
the season started out with a drought for the first half, the worst i have ever seen. but the end was the best finnish we have seen for a while, so the yields are nearly average and in some places above average. my first barley paddock went 4.5 t/ha around 80 bu in your language canola was a little below our 10 year average at 1.45 t/ha at 25 bu half the barley is still out there and all the wheat. it is the day after christmas and i am going to harvest barley today. it has been a wet harvest this year. last year we were finnished by the second week of december the earliest ever. ten to twelve good days should get this crop in.
 
#20 ·
Glad to hear your crops are yielding so good. I'm not sure how much the part is I never asked but I must say that is crazy for a sensor. Over here no one will even mention that it's not fixed properly. We kinda had similar years, we started off really dry too but when it started to rain it didn't stop we had approx. 140% of normal wich is a lot considering we went nearly two months of the growing season with nothing. Overall one of the best years ever if not the very best in Canada. Unfortunatly it's really drove our canola price down. It was a cool year and we struggled to get off the long season crops, corn and flowers. Snow was on the ground for the last three weeks of harvest and we got done near the end of Nov. I've also heard some people rave about the fuel economy theyare getting with their deere and also like you I've heard the neighbor down the road complain about it. Not sure what's going on there. Good luck getting done atleast your wet harvest will ensure good moisture mor the next crop.
 
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