JD 850/haymaking

[Niji]

I tried to post this to the thread but it didn't seem to come up, so here it is as a new post:

Follow up....

I got the JD 1217 haybine going well, and cut 10 acres pulling it with a JD 5410. It cut great.

I had another 40 acres to cut where the JD 850 was more convenient, and that little rascal did very well. Hydraulics worked fine. The only trouble really is that it will run hot if pushed too hard. I double checked the radiator, which was clean. I changed out the air filter thinking it might be running rich and overheating before it should, and that showed remarkable improvement, though I occassionally ran hot on hills. I cut 3/4 of that hay with the 850, and used it to tedder, rake, and baled over 1200 square bales with a JD 336. It's a gutsy little diesel.

As a side note, the haybine had a catastrophic failure. The reel stopped turning...I was thinking belt, but actually I had been unable to see into the area where the shaft comes through a bushing to the drive pulley, and it had long ago worn through the bushing and into the sheet metal--like a lathe it cut a groove into the shaft and cut the last six inches off in the middle of the hayfield. Luckily, there was a parts machine I knew about just up the road, and I switched out the entire reel, and 24 hours later was back in action. I hope everyone elses 1st cutting was a little less spectacular than mine.

[Bill Barrett]

You ran the baler with the 850?

[Niji]

Yep. it's a rusty, ugly old JD square baler that ran like a champ. I had very few misfires, and all those from one of the knotters. Maybe 20 knot mishaps in 1200 + bales. I can sure live with that.

To tell you the truth, the 850 ran the square baler better than the haybine. I suppose the flywheel inertia helped carry things along. It was a pretty well suited combination. The haybine certainly did better with more horses (I used a 5410 some of the time to pull it), but if you don't mind going a little slow, and the hills aren't too steep, the 850 does a fair job with that as well. The tedder (a small DaRos) and the NH rake were perfect for the 850.

[zzvyb6]

I used to run my baler with a Yanmar 220D. No big deal. The balers used to run with a auxiliary 16hp Wisconsin engine. Anybody that thinks you need 80 hp to run these machines has some serious blinders on their operation. You run the tractor at rpm to put out 540 at the pto. So many amateurs try to run a baler at 1/2 max rpm and it fails miserably.