It ain't fall unless their is one major break down!

[SASKFARMER3]

One of the combines swallowed an old lug off a steam tractor today. We were harvesting an old yard and boom. The piece went up the throat, hit the accelerator and made it past into the elephant ears and then started taking off cups before it was shut down. What can you say! Bad luck, Sh---y day, or just part of farming, It looks like a $12,000.00 bill and two days down, Will have a rental their hopefully by tomorrow afternoon. Hey that's life no one was hurt, lets hope its the last major one. Thats farming. Have a safe harvest every one!

[bucket]

I have never figured out that practice of levelling old yards. Just one flat tire can never pay the expense of cleaning it up. I watch people do it all the time and some have asked why I don't. Well thanks for story Sf3 and the reminder of why I don't.

[silverback]

At least you have had the combines moving this year!

[SASKFARMER3]

I guess well see how well our insurance is. This old yard was leveled 15 years ago.

[Jay-mo]

I hear ya Bucket. We have cleaned up a few old yard sites but every year theres new scrap metal. Ya pick all the rocks and every last piece of metal but next year theres more.

[Hopperbin]

We have many yard sites cleaned up. Picked up many things with the CaseIH even put a brick in and cleaned off a rub bar mount. And back at err 2 hours later. Interesting hearing about the New Hollands and the 30,000 dollar bills. Hmm now John Deere? Then again with the 1680s I have so many repairs in the morning not all the greasing gets done. That's harvest I guess.

[Wheatking]

We put a crowbar through the 9750 a few
years ago, had John Deere fix it for 7-
8 grand. Had to replace everything on
the rotor from front to back. Last
year an elephant ear broke off the
rotor(I know it had something to do
with the first repair), and pretty much
took everything off the rotor again.
This time though we fixed it ourselves
and it was much easier to do than I
could have imagined. We had to borrow
a few tools to straighten out the
dents, but was fairly easy to repair.
Although that isn't something you want
to be messing with at this time of
year.

[railway]

Here's my story from yesterday..
Hauling in flax straight off the combine and found a few sections of sieve as well as a large piece of 1/8" metal that had to have broke off somewhere.
This is scary, but we're going to dig into it this morning and remove the lower sieve and see what we can see.
We've also had numerous computer/electronic problems this year. All adding up to about 1.5 days of down-time.

And what makes me boil is that the dealer is saying warranty on the combine (bought in dec of '06) is over. We have about 575 hours on it now. I guess all the warranty was used up while it sat in the shed.

If the equipment manufacturers want to charge us almost half a million for a combine and can't stand behind their product, I don't know where this industry is headed.

[SASKFARMER3]

Heard yesterday that their was three others in the area that picked up something and it got into the Rotors.
But our was the worst so far. Go figure.

[furrowtickler]

If you have room to spare on the front of the header, in front of the center drapper, mount a magnet(6" wide by 3 feet long. These things will virtualy eliminate any metal going into the combine. If find out exactly where to get them. I think they come out of Winnipeg? A neibour has one and they swear by it. After hearing these stories i will be putting one one each machine.

[agstar77]

The magnet idea is good but we have had fingers from the header drum go through the combine and fire throgh the engine compartment.

[Fransisco]

Knock on wood, we've been pretty lucky so far(other than the weather). Have to replace an alternator on the old 9600 this morning but that's pretty minor and something that seems to need doing every couple of years anyways.

Had to do a major re-wiring job on the swather which cost us half a day, but I did it myself so we were only out the time.

Got dinged pretty good on an electrical one this spring on my 4wd when the air conditioner fan conked out. JD mechanic came out 3 times replaced all sorts of stuff(that I couldn't return after) and in the end it was just a broken wire. Final bill was $800. I complained and they knocked a couple of hundred off the bill but geez those are the kind of repairs that get a guy ticked off. Call out the so called expert because you're in a hurray, it takes him forever to figure a simple thing out, and then you get charged through the nose for doing it. Its almost like dealing with the Wheat Board, except that in this case I can always do it myself or actually find myself a decent mechanic.

[rook]

As someone already mentioned - a breakdown means the combine was moving this fall.

sigh

forecast for rain tomorrow

sigh

[SASKFARMER3]

The piece weighed close to 25 lbs would need to be a good magnet to get it. Again it was a lug off a steam tractor tire. Got a 9760 coming from the US tonight.

[Jay-mo]

What kind of pickup are you running SF3? Thats serious bad luck to pick up something that big.