spray coupes

[dfarms11]

Anyone here know how much it costs to lease the new 7650 or even a 4650 spray coupe? As far as that goes, any high clearance sprayer to compare with.

[poorboy]

I have owned a 3640 coupe and currently own a 4650 coupe. They are great little machines, but if I had to do it again I would look seriously at a miller rear boom sprayer. The guys who built the original apache sprayer split off and built an improved clone to the apache and it got bought out by miller. It is an improved version of the coupe in every respect. A bigger tank, way stronger booms, much more power, etc., yet all the good things about a coupe are still there. The millers or apaches are mechanical rear wheel drive, so maintence costs are lower, fuel consumption is less.

My neighbor has owned an apache plus and he sprays 50-80% more in an hour than I do. A bigger spray tank makes a huge difference.

If you are buying the sprayer based on more preharvest spraying, just remember it takes more manpower to harvest and spray at the same time.

Overall I like my spraycoupe. I wish that I had bought the 7650 instead of the 4650. The cab is very noisy and the front end does not have enough weight on the 4650. Make sure that you don't buy an automatic transmission in a coupe, as they just don't have enough power to run the auto.

[dfarms11]

our 3630 with 60' booms,14mph,4th gear Ispray 80 acres/hour not including fill time, What do you do with your 4650?

[poorboy]

I find that the acres per hour covered has a lot to do with the length of run in my field and number of hills. The 80 foot boom and bigger tank helps some, but I probably only average 65-70 acres/hour counting filling and moving time.

The 3640 coupe has a faster 4th gear than the 4650 does, and because of the increased weight of the 4650 I find that it will often not be able to run in 5th gear in soft fields or hills. I find that I have to use more water volume because 4th gear is about 12 mph, versus 14 mph in my 3640 coupe. The 3640 we used to use 3 us gpa with roundup and 3.8-4 us gpa with incrop herbicides, but now use 4.2 us gpa for roundup and 5.1 gpa for incrop herbicides. I could not get enough nozzle pressure to consistently use lower water volumes. I also notice that I must have the booms way higher off the ground or the tips are always striking the ground. A very big difference in ground following ability with a 80' boom as compared to a 60' in rolly terrain. Running the booms higher made the drift unacceptable with 3 us gpa, the control was too erratic. The real nice part of 80' booms was less wheel tracks when doing preharvest or bug spraying in canola.

Because of the 80' booms and larger tank there is much more weight on the rear end of the sprayer and it is less stable in hills.

If you have long runs and nice square flat fields you will notice a huge improvement in the amount you spray between a 3630 and 4650 coupe. If you have lots of shorter runs and cut up fields with hills and sharp valleys there will not be much more than 20% increase in acres covered per hour.

The 4650 has a much larger fuel tank so you are not filling up with diesel steady. The cab is still extremely noisy from all the tin and the steering noise is annoying. Put a hydraulic autosteer system on it and then you will not have to listen to the steering noise. Do not buy an ez steer for it if you don't have one, because the steering wheel moving back and forth makes the cab very very noisy.

Overall I like my 4650 more than the 3640 that it replaced. For the cost it a good introductory sp sprayer. I couldn't convince myself to spend the extra for a 7650 coupe at the time I bought it, but after one year I wish that I had a slightly larger payment to make and a much larger sprayer and bigger spray tank.