A couple of basic combine questions

[DaveK(IN)]

I picked up a used farm equipment advertising magazine for my grandson (5 yrs) who loves tractors and farm equipment. I am familar with a lot of farm machinery, but know little about combines. So, a couple of questions if anyone has time to post a reply since most of your are probably out in your combines this time of year.

I know that different heads are used to pick different crops but they all seem to go in the same opening on the combine. Does this lead to the seperator? What is a seperator and why do the hours seem to make as much difference as engine hours on price. I presume it is a major overhaul expense.

Also, I was looking at an ad for two very low hours JD 9870"s and they were also advertising the "build codes" that went with these machines. What kind of options to those represent?

Thanks in advance for any information. Always glad to learn on this board.

 

[JMS/.MN]

Separator refers to the parts that shake, separating the straw and chaff away from the grain, after the cylinder or rotor threshes the grain from the heads. Separator hour meter refers to hours that the machine has run, engine meter has more hours because of transport, etc.

 

[paul]

Most of the breadbasket of this country has had _terrible_ wet conditions and a crop that did not get enough heat all summer to mature, so we are all nerviously sitting around waiting for both the ground & crop to dry out. It is getting terrible late for that to happen.....

Anyhow, I farm with 1970's and 80s equipment for the most part, so I'm not real up on it, but the build code should tell you what options, improvements, and the like the machine has had on it. Which electronics (GPS) will work with the machine, etc.

Most new combines are rotories. The grian goes into the throat, goes into a spinning drum. The first part of the drum has rasp bars - think _very_ course file - that make the crop roll between a spinning drum & bars. This rolls & hammers out the grain from the rest of the plant.

From there the rest of the drum pushes & rolls the grain away from the rest of the plant material, the grain falls through screen holes.

It gets blown on with a fan to blow out the light stuff, run through 2 screen type things to keep big peices out; and allow small bits to fall away.

This leaves you with the grain you want, and not much else.

Some combines have 2 spinning drums, older style had a smaller drum called a cylinder, with straw walkers behind that that shook the grain away from the rest of the plant material instead of spinning it. But,t he same basic idea really, if done in 2 very different ways.

--->Paul

 

[Bob]

There's an hourmeter that reads ENGINE hours, the total hours the ENGINE has run, as well as a meter for "separator hours", meaning ALL the parts that are engaged/running/working when the combine is actually working, as opposed to, say being driven down the road or the engine simply idling.

The engine hours will ALWAYS be more 'cause of the time the engine spends running with out the threshing mechanism engaged.