Central Butte, Sask. – Combine plugs are common. Some are easier to clear than others, but when a slug of green weeds or tough crop gets past the cylinder and plugs the beater in a John Deere conventional combine, farmers could find themselves with a three to four hour job on their hands.
“When your beater gets plugged on the John Deere 9000 series combines, they can be a real problem. When you turn the cylinder backward, the belt tightener loosens off and there’s no way of turning your beater,” said Dallas Bryan, who farms near Central Butte.
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With lots of time sitting in the combine cab during harvest to think about the problem, Bryan came up with a tool to make the problem less onerous.
“I call it the beater claw. This is a little tool you fit onto your beater pulley that allows you to turn it with a wrench or socket. You can turn it backwards to get your slug out, then use your cylinder to clean it up,” said Bryan.
It’s a metal disc made from steel 3/8 inch thick. It has three slots with angle-cut pieces that grip the pulley. Then a 17/8 inch nut is welded on the outside to turn it.
Bryan gets the steel laser cut, with the claw pieces on an angle so they grip the pulley.
“When you turn it, it tightens onto the pulley. There’s a header drive belt in the way, but it fits over top of that. Sometimes you have to pull pretty hard on your wrench. You want it to grip that pulley so it doesn’t slip off.”
Bryan said while the combine cylinder plugs more often, the beater doesn’t always cause problems. But when it does plug, it’s a real hassle.
“In certain situations, material gets through and plugs your beater. Since you can’t turn it, when it’s plugged, it’s plugged. (At that point) you can drop your beater grate, the little concave under the beater. But that involves getting into the back end of your combine, on top of the straw walkers, taking out two bolts and dropping it down,” he said.
“Sometimes that didn’t even clear it. Another thing you could do is climb in on the straw walkers and start pulling the weeds, straw and whatever is plugging it, out from the back. But it’s not a very fun job.”
Bryan said he’s not aware of any tool available that will do this.
“Because (the beater) has a belt drive with a spring tightener, it’s going to loosen off when it goes the opposite way. I guess they’re not expected to plug there, but I know around here, green weeds or green low spots in peas can be a problem.”
He said in one instance last year, he drove home about 60 kilometres to get the beater claw after plugging the beater in a field of peas.”We cleaned the crop material out of the cylinder first, but it was still stuck in the beater and our belt started smoking, so I hooked the beater claw in, gave it a pull with my wrench and it popped right loose. Then we were able to clear the rest out.”
A few years ago, Bryan started working on the first prototype. He said it was a rough model but it worked. Getting it laser cut and making it grip the pulley is the key to his production model.
He said the beater claw will work on 9600, 9500 and 9400 conventional John Deere combines because they all come with the same beater pulley.
“For $250, it’s pretty cheap insurance against losing four hours in the field,” he said.
Bryan has been shipping the beater claw to customers by mail.
For more information, call 306-796-4427 or 306-796-7515 or visit www.
fesmarketing.ca.
