Q:I have had a Massey 860 combine for two years and have issues when combining canola. The re-thresher tends to grind up the seed into a paste that becomes sticky and eventually plugs the return or re-thresher.
It’s as though we are overloading the return sieve, but if we close it any more, we lose too much out the back of the combine.
We’ve played with wind speed and location in an effort to rectify this, but then we begin to lose our clean sample and seeds out the rear end again.
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Is there something I’m missing? Have you ever experienced this? What would be a good starting point on wind location? Should the wind be more to the front or to the back? We’ve tried front, middle and back and everywhere in between and still haven’t found the sweet spot. Please advise. – Redvers, Sask.
A:As you have guessed by now, it would be ideal if you had no returned grain to deal with. It would be ideal if we were threshing everything the first time around.
The secret of putting your canola in the bin, on any brand of combine, is to use wind, not a sieve setting.
Remember, you do not blow canola out the back of combine, you carry it out in the trash.
Open your sieves no less than a quarter inch and try using only the wind adjustment to get your seed in the tank. You are trying to catch the material before it can land on the shoe.
To do this, you have to break up those wads of chaff and canola. To do that, you set the opening at a quarter inch on the bottom sieve so the wind can get to the upper sieve and lift all that material.
Q:One of our 750 combines started breaking drive belts. We tried everything we could think of to fix it in the middle of harvest before parking it and using a different combine. How do we fix this? – Lucky Lake, Sask.
A:I assume you are talking about the traction drive belts and not the cylinder drive belt or the chopper drive belt. If there is a problem, it usually affects the upper one the most.
The most common problem is that the whole frame on the left side under the cab sags with age.
This sets the frame so that the variator pulleys sit in at an angle.
If you set the variator speed so the belts are equal distance into the pulley, the measurement from the top of the lower belt and the bottom of the upper belt to the edge of the pulley should be the same.
Then stop the combine and look all the way up and down both belts. You can see if the belts fail to run straight into the pulleys.
The variator frame can be squared to the combine by shimming the frame to the main frame of the combine in two places.
While you are shimming, take out the bolts that hold the engine output tube to the frame.
With belts off, the variator frame will sit above the frame. Add shims to take up this slack and add an additional .05 of an inch. Now everything is square.
The second problem is also common. As you turn the combine over without starting, have someone check from the front to see if the belt is walking in and out of the pulley.
The hub that the variator pulley sits on might be wearing oblong. You might have to replace a lot of parts to get this right.
Even if the hub is not wearing oblong, just plain wear or even a mismatched part set can cause problems.
If they are too loose, the angle of the pulleys will not be the same as the angle of the belts.
With a tight belt, measure the distance of the shives on both sides. That distance should be almost the same.
Vibrations sometimes cause belt problems, but not usually.
Henry Guenter is a former service manager for Massey Ferguson. Contact: insidemachines@producer.com.
