One of my biggest combine fears happened today

[Haley]

I have always been worried when we are on the major roads with one of my combines that we will have a breakdown. We started a 20 mile move to another field today with the combine my father runs for me and wound up on the side of a major two lane road 15 miles from home with injector pump problems.The combine was running good and all of a sudden it lost governor control,lost power and started skipping and vibrating bad enough it slung another fan blade off while my father was trying to get to a fairly good place to get off the road.I drained the injector pump oil and found lots of metal and aluminum in it.He was able to get it off the edge of the road just far enough to be out of the lane before she quit all together.Spending a beautiful Friday afternoon on the side of the road with semi trucks and lots of traffic zooming past while I hurredily change the injector pump was not what I had planned.I look back now and thank God that it didnt happen about two miles further down the road which would have put him right under the main red light in town.I am also so glad that I had another good pump ready to go and that I am blessed with the ability to fix my machines myself.I have always thought about what I would do in this situation---Now I know!
 

[Erik Ks farmer]

Glad to hear you got her back and going Shawn. 2 years ago I was cutting beans with the 540 Mf and forgot to put the fuel cap on after fueling up. Bunch of bean dust and trash got in the tank, I headed home on a major 2 lane and she quit, bleed the system got her started and got home. That pump is right under the exhaust manifold (OUCH). Then I drained the tank and cleaned the screen, hard lesson learned.
 

[paul Em]

Lucky you had another pump ready to go and quickly diagnosed the problem!
 

[dboll]

I did that with my 510 once and got a bunch of bean fuzz in the tank, took ahile to get it out.
 

[yessam]

Had the same thing happen with my 410 years ago bean dust got in the tank luckly i was on a side road but everybody was coming home from work blocked traffic for a while til I got it started .
 

[Fordfarmer]

Glad you got it fixed. When I started reading, I saw "...20 mile move..." and thought you'd been hit by someone not paying attention. That's always my biggest fear when I'm on heavier-traveled roads that what I'm used to. Even though this is farm country, we still have a lot of people who just don't seem to realize how big/heavy/slow farm machinery is.
 

[4020guy]

What ever happens, it always could have been worse. That's what I always tell myself afterwards anyways. Just after moving away from the wagon the other day, I felt something not right. The right hand tire[28L26] pretty well flat. Another hour I would have been on the road moving to another field. Glad everything worked out as well as it did for you....Ron
 

[fixerupper]

Haley I'll bet your heart was a thumpin there for awhile. When I was on the harvest we put on hundreds of road miles with the combines, but the difference was we were in the midwest-western part of the US where drivers are still courteous and friendly. We had an incident in Colorado, west of Sterling where we were moving five combines up a blacktop. One of the machines (2388 CIH) had the fuel cap left off the day before and was plugging not only the filter but the filter body too, to the point where air wouldn't blow it out. Both the in and the out lines had to be removed and a wire poked through the body. It plugged the filter again just as they were rounding a curve and going up a hill with a high bank on each side. The 30' head was on the machine so there was no room to get around it. I flew up there with the service truck,unscrewed the filter, which is below the tank, by the way, and there is no shutoff under the tank, took off the two lines, let the fuel fly out of the tank line, ran the wire through the body, blew it out, dumped the fuel out of the filter, refilled the filter from the stream coming out of the tank line, put the filter back on, primed it and had him going in no more than ten minutes max. I had fuel all over me and there was fuel running down the road, but we got going. It was hotter than haities and the blacktop was brand new fresh, so the combines left tire tread imprints in hot new asphalt that could be seen years later. There was very little traffic and what traffic that did come either offered help or politely turned around and gave a friendly wave as they left. You can't beat those plains people for being friendly. Oh yeah, five miles later another of the combines blew a big tire. Not one of the best days we had. Fixed it close to an oil well with a big old hit-and- miss engine thumping away running the pump. Jim
 

[Dave Sherburne NY]

Your right about the midwest people When I was combining in Wisconsin going down roads ALMOST as wide as the combine, when I met a vehicle they would wave and turn around to find another route. When hauling fertilizer we would stop at an intersection where there was enough room to back the truck up to the buggy and transfer the fertilizer and people would stop and watch or turn around.
 

[Haley]

My father had gotten on the road about 45 minutes ahead of me so I pulled in the local burger joint to grab a sackful for lunch.I pulled up to the drive through window at about the same time I got the call on my cell phone from him saying he was broke down on the side of the road.My heart rate went from dead calm thinking of eating a burger to all of a sudden frantic and the burgers dont matter real quick.After the physical work involved in going up and down the combine to change the pump and the extremely high stress level of being on the side of the road by the time I finally got him to the field I was dead dog worn out.I came straight home, took a shower and fell asleep in my old chair.The sackful of burgers that seemed so important before the call got fed to the cats and dog later that night.
 

[Paul from MI]

When I was about 16 dad had me plow a gsrden for a friend of his. Just started for home when the rear rim of the Allis fell off. Tire guy hadn't put it on right after a repair. Not a fun expedrience and a loaded tire/rim in a ditch is heavy!
 

[BANDITFARMER]

About 1987 we were doing a 10 mile move to another farm when I had my scare. About 1/2 way there the road is flat except for one 25 ft dip kinda on a curve. My C11 Gleaner got to the bottom and died! No trafic till I broke down, Dad was behind me on top of the hill and my buddy was on the other side tring to stop or slow people down with no luck. Having a 13 ft head on the combine and over as far as I could without going down a 4 ft ditch I was still on the center line. I was working fast to find the problem! Sitting on the gas tank taking the last fuel filter off to change it I herd an air horn and brakes locking up I hung on for dear life! He missed the combine but did hit the pitman arm on the head on the side of the trailer and spun me and the combine sideways in the road! Thank God I had left it in gear. The trucker never stoped and now not only did it not run I had 2 flat steering tires sitting acrossed the road. Dad and my buddy blocked the road with there trucks and came down to see if I was ok. Someone had called fire and EMS and they were there in no time as well as the State patrol. I had some cuts to my hands and alot of bruses but was ok, Just scared silly! I got realy lucky when the tow truck showed up as he was a friend of dads and he towed the combine to his brothers place about a mile up the road for free! We came back the next day to get it and it turned out to be the last piece of fuel hose had colapced just before the carb. That was a close call and dont want to do it agin! Me and the big man upstairs had a long talk that day. Bandit
 

[oj]

glad it all turned out ok Haley!

i remeember back in england when i was younger, we had a self propelled sprayer, hydrostatic drive, anyway one of the wheel motors decded to die right in the middle of a traffic light control junction on a divided highway... to cut a long story short, it took an hour to get the special tool from the nearest dealer to allow the motors to free wheel so we could at least tow it out of the way...
 

[Haley]

That is my biggest fear---Getting hit by someone speeding along playing with a cellphone not paying attention.I be you thought you were in the pro rodeo riding a bucking bull!
 

[MeanGene1]

Learned my lesson very early about carrying the head high while going downhill on the road- especially with the windrow pickup on the Bean Special. Couldn't have been on a better rig in that situation though, planetary drive 91- IIRC, top speed about 11 mph, and the planetary drive kept it going straight with the head sliding on the ground and me dangling by the waist from the steering levers. Of course, the old 91 and 93 just had a saucer seat like an M, no seat belt, windshield or cab, just a pipe railing around the front. Was able to reach the head control lever and power the head down, then it teeter-totered back onto the back wheels, still going straight, and I fell back into the seat. Pretty good learning experience, age 11, 1967. Gramps thought I was telling a big story until we drove through the next day and he saw the 10' wide skid marks in the gravel