Re: experience with crary air reel on CIH 1020 fle
Posted by floydr on Today at 8:51am
We ran pair of crary reels on 25 ft 1020's. Found they had a sharp driveline angle past the fan. This caused the auger drive sprocket shaft to shift crooked resulting in the auger chain coming off a lot when reversing. Possibly not an issue on 30 ft heads but was a nuisance to us. Another thing I didn't like was that there was no way to run ours without the fan running. Just a waste of horsepower and really noisey in wheat or any other crop where it wasn't necessary and it would blow straw and chaff and dust all over the front. They worked good enough in beans though for what they were designed and straight cutting canola too. We had problems with water getting in the electric cylinders that tilt the air manifolds, causing them to seize up and quit working. Also dirt getting sucked in and plugging some of the air pipes. They did the job but we have flex drapers now and I would never go back to a flex head again.
Ya, we went through auger chain issue but resolve it by keeping the slip clutch adjusted to spec. this farm hasn't made the jump to an expensive draper yet, so if it has to be a 1020 then definitely has to have an air reel on it, have had an air reel on our heads for 17 years.