[al]

I have a 2166 standard rotor and will be combining winter wheat. Do I need small wire concaves? I only have about 100 acres to do and I'm guessing it will run in the 60 to 70 bushel range. any help would be appreciated.

 

[placeholder]

What other concaves do you have?

 

[deltafarmer]

You're gonna think I'm crazy for saying this, but if you don't want to buy the concaves for just 100 acres, go to your local hardware store and buy every one of those black rubber bungey cords they have and start closing up the concave. We did this once with a 1680 and it worked like a charm. Just keep some spare cords and check it every now and then.

 

[al]

I have no other concaves for this combine. I just bought it on a sale this winter and am in the process of rebuilding it. Delta farmers idea is interesting. On our 1640 we combined a lot of oats and a little barley with Keystock grates so instead of getting slotted grates we covered our ks with poly peices cut out of a plastic 55 gallon barrel and bolted to the grates .
We took a drill and put a bunch of 1 inch holes in it . We have probably 500 acres on those inserts and they work great and it looks like they will wear another 500

 

[okpanhandle]

Last year we were having a lot of rotor loss with our small wire concaves. We're thinking that with the 36' header and lots of really tough straw one or two large wire concaves might help that. Yesterday I put in a new Lowen helical concave* in the first position and left the other two as large wire. However this year our wheat is thin and is going to be very dry, the exact opposite of last year. We'll probably end up with too much trash going over the sieves and have to put the small wires back in. We're planning on taking a sample today, and I think it'll go. It'll be interesting to see how everything works. I'm used to Kuchar concaves that we left in for all crops, so now I feel like a newb with all the experimenting we're doing trying to get things to work.

*That SOB is heavy!

edit: Yeah, we had to put the small wire concaves in (we left the Lowen in). The straw is so dry that it just pulverizes when it goes through the rotor. There were pieces of straw and lots of whitecaps getting into the grain tank with the large wires. The sample looks a lot better now.

 

[caseihmech]

I have alot of guys use the large wire concaves & keystock grates when their just combining that few of acres just have to adjust the seives alittle more or use cover cover plates over the front half of the concaves. deltafarmer had a thing to try in my thinking. good harvesting.