[nig71]

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.

 

[nig71]

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.

 

[nig71]

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.