[zowbag]

Having a fricking time with harvest this year .First it was getting stuck swathing canola now stuck trying to harvest wheat. Anyway just how much pull can these machines take pulling off hook at rear? First tried with 4wd than an old d7 cat now thinking of hooking both together. thank in advance

 

[puddles]

put some boards under the front wheels I.e. three quarter plywood. It makes a huge difference. As you start to pull the combine wants to walk up instead of pull in the dirt. We have had to do this in the past.

 

[opeeman1]

my experience in pulling out is to use dozer as a dead man and use 4wd tractor to pull. sink blade in ground, and go through snatch block chained to front of dozer blade. this has worked much better than just a dead pull

 

[Duchek]

Doesn't look to bad actually....I would drop the header off though and the front end would pop out way quicker instead of plowing in. Just have to be able to swing the header out of there somehow after.

 

[Northern Farmer]

duchek has a very valid point, that header is a boat anchor up there and yet I don't quite know how one would get it moved once it was dropped, that could be a little interesting. I wonder if the same theme could be used for the header, lay out one if not two layers of plywood in line with the gauge wheels and set the header down on that to reduce the weight on those drive tires. Also I was wondering if the grain tank has anything in it because if it does, a grain cart or a body job could be brought in behind the combine and pulled into place if need be and unload any grain as it would all help.

 

[fjlip]

During the WET harvest from **** in 2010 in our area, many farmers with Deere s attached a permanent cable too front axle extended to rear frame and hooked to that when pulling rear ward. We had singles and will never have them again. Duals are the only way to go. They never sink out of sight. Your rear tires are great, front are not nearly enough foot print for all that weight. You get compaction even in dry fields.

 

[phantom970]

They are strong in the rear. That's why the hook is there. Pull at 45 degrees not dead straight and one wheel will pop out then the other. Unless you have boggy wheel tracks to come out on you will struggle to do a dead pull straight back. Unless you have a 400hp + size tractor. And or if this is going to keep happening invest in a snatch strap so you can get a run up with the tractor and snatch the harvester out.

 

[kenmb]

Pulled our honey bee header off in a situation like that. FEL to lift header off mount, before that ran slings under header at front, up around back, over top and brought the sling eye back to cutter bar. Put the free end of sling through the eye at the cutter bar and then to tractor. As you pull the header away the slings will lift the cutter bar and header will rock back on castor wheels. Could have pulled it a mile as it worked perfect on the hb. We use two tractors, 4wd with slings to front axle pulling at about 10 degrees and mfwd on back frame pulling at about 30 degrees to get the combine to pivot so you are not dragging both front wheels at the same time. We could never get the combines out on a straight back pull but havent failed yet with two tractors pulling at an angle. Case 2388 stuck a lot worse than what you have there a number of times.

 

[skgrain]

You dont have time to fart around. Simply put a tow rope on the rear hook and go. We raise chopper just in case. We do this about 3 times a day except we are often a bit worse than yours. From the time the operator first keys the mic that he is stuck it should be well under 10 minutes until he his thrashing again. We have changed to picking up swath which helps a little. The last field we could not get the first 2 rounds in places even with pickup head. My advice to to take a hammer and hit your fingers, then go pull it out.

 

[Bart 66]

If you pull with 2 tractors,pull side by side not infront of each other.Also beter for your towrope/towstrap/chain.We pulled our 7120 out that way,they have 2 nice tow hooks on each side of the frame.

 

[Transaxial]

Doesn't look to bad actually....I would drop the header off though and the front end would pop out way quicker instead of plowing in. Just have to be able to swing the header out of there somehow after.

Some good ideas here like pulling on an angle to pop one drive wheel out at a time. Downtime is always an issue but how much dead pull can the rear end of a combine take? I remember back in the 80s when someone actually pulled the rear axel and frame right out from under a TR70. Not pretty! I agree that this picture does not look too bad (looks can be deceiving though!!) As you have already tried to pull with some pretty serious power, next thought would be is grain tank empty? and can you lift the header high enough to put the transport/wheels down? If you can drop that 7-8000 lbs of header plus the weight transfer that comes off the rear wheels of maybe 6000 lbs = 14,000 lbs , the drive wheels will likey just pop right out. Then dragging the header out should be no problem. A bit of fooling around but the question still remains , is the back axel and frame strong enough to start pulling with cats and taking a run at a tow rope with your biggest tractor until something gives???

 

[Transaxial]

Doesn't look to bad actually....I would drop the header off though and the front end would pop out way quicker instead of plowing in. Just have to be able to swing the header out of there somehow after.

Some good ideas here like pulling on an angle to pop out one wheel at a time. Time is always valuable and we do the quickest thing first but at what point do you do damage to the frame of these machines?? Back in the 80s I saw a TR70 that had the frame and rear axel pulled right off and have heard of bending the frame which causes problems with component alignment later ( drives, sieves, sheet metal stress, etc). If the first attempts to pull fail, it would seem worthwhile to make sure grain tank is empty and can the header be lifted high enough to get the transport/wheels down and get that 7- 8,000 lbs of header plus the weight transfer of 6,000 lbs off the rear wheels = 14,000 lbs off the drivers? The header can easily be pulled out separately .When you start pulling with cats and taking a run on a tow rope with your biggest tractor it opens the door for bigger problems. I think you want to think twice before you do some serious damage to the combine. When you get a truck stuck off road, you usually are better off to unload it rather than try to pull it out loaded.

 

[Haystack]

I think I would just put the transmission in first gear and then hold the down button for the header the whole time that its being pulled backwards on a slight angle while setting the hydro lever back a very slight amount.

A 9870 with 650 duals would likely pull it out of there.

 

[Don Boles]

put some boards under the front wheels I.e. three quarter plywood. It makes a huge difference. As you start to pull the combine wants to walk up instead of pull in the dirt. We have had to do this in the past.

You're handle suggests you may be an expert in this area.

 

[Andrew_D]

I see you lifted the chopper but you forgot to lift the door ahead of the chopper. When that combine comes out, you are going to bend that door!

Andrew

 

[zowbag]

thanks for all the ideas ended up dropping header ,header was all the way up and touching ground same time had to dig mud out from under cylinders so feeder house would drop ,grain tank was empty end up hooking both 4wd and cat up pulled out easy .

 

[wafarmer75]

Well done getting it out in the end but i would be carefull pulling continously on the back end with high horsepower. We had a very wet havest over here in 2011 with plenty of bad situations with bogged combines. We had a sling around both front axles and mad sure the grain tank was empty and most of the time came out pretty easy. But in term of hooking on to the back had a guy not far from here pulling his 9870 out with 250t snatch strap hooked to a 9630T and did some major damage to the back end. The JD tech could not even fit the new seives in as they measured the frame and had a slight twist and was streched. I know that this is extreme stupidity but it can happen.