[jdstsman]

We run an 03 9750 and we took in a wad of green lentil straw and busted out some of the separator grates. When this happened it bent and tore the left hand separator rail so we had to replace it (not a fun job during harvest). Has anyone else encountered this problem? I see Deere offers a kit for the 70 series that reinforces these rails. Has anyone installed this kit or reinforced the rails themselves? We were thinking about reinforcing our rails because we broke a few more grates later in harvest and bent the bottom lip of the rails where the grates bolt to.

 

[jdstsman]

So no one else has seen this problem if the bolts break on the separator grates?

 

[greentech]

Seen grates break a few times on various machines over the years. IMO they're a little under built. Usually the rail can be bent back with a cresent wrench. When I do inspections I usually check all the grate bolts. The grates flex under heavy load and the bolts have a tendancy to loosen off. Actually had one customer doing tough rye grass and he would periodically break a rotor tine. Turned out the grates were flexing so much they would actually touch the tines. I put spacers between the grates and rails and it fixed the problem. I've now seen some machines from the south with tube spacers in this location. Can anyone tell me why that is? I've never seen a machine in Manitoba with them. Is it for more clearance with corn cobs? It shows them in the parts catalog too.

 

[jdstsman]

The worst part of it was we got the rail changed and all the new grates in and went back to the field for two hours and broke the feeder chain. We thrashed one feeder chain slat and broke out the separator grates that we had just replaced as well as broke a tooth off of the center feeder chain sprocket. So we had to take the feeder house off to replace the sprockets and cut the remaining chain out from under the feed accelerator. I did notice that the nuts on the grate bolts were not lock nuts from factory but they call for lock nuts in the parts catalog now. So the grate bolts now have lock nuts as well as Loctite.