swather advice

[chevyrules]

Need more advice on swather purchace. On a 36 ft would one go with a split reel or a one piece? Do the split reels have issues such as visability, wrapping, and I hear of maintainance issues? Any thoughts and experiances would be helpful.

[cchurch]

I don't like anything over 30' You just get too much material in the swath and you have a hard time threshing it later, especially if it ever rained on it.

[seabass]

Chevy not sure what part of the country you farm in but we only go as big as 30 feet. Too much material in bigger swaths. Priced a Macdon M150, JD A400 and a NH325. All had 30 foots no split reels they seem to be more trouble than good. Double knife drives, rotoshears, gauge wheels,fore/aft with big tires and the biggest holes you could get on them. That might not be the best thing if you are cutting alot of cereals. Some guys say it lays a poorer swath because it is just to wide. For us it will only be used for Canola. Basically identical options on all machines. Macdon has the D60 header and the JD and NH have the Honeybee. The JD d****r is now unavailable. All machines came in at very nearly the same prices. The guys must be talking to each other. In the end I think I'll stick with the Deere for reasale reasons.

[Hopperbin]

I have a split real mcdon 99 and a one piece U2 96. Not sure if that applies to you as I think you are buying new not this used. But both of my reels have same hours now and the split is working and the u2 one piece most other farmers would have scrapped it. I believe they are built better these days but the split has much less stress on it in my opinion and be worth more on trade in. Actually the mcdon 99 reel seems to handle the crop much better.

[bucket]

I have a split reel on the combine, works great, but I don't like the split in the middle because I can't see the feeding as well as the one piece.

[ry0972]

We have 3- 36' and 1-30'headers, all with UII p/u reels. Oldest one is a 97 HB with split reel, it has done a lot of hard cutting ( down canary, flax, 15-55 bpa canola, cereals and KOCHIA patches and sloughs. Had quite a bit of trouble over the years with drive end and centre couplers/roll-shear pins, sometimes 2 or 3 pins a day! Converted it to dual rive last year and haven't done anything but grease it since.
09 Agco 5200 one piece, under 20 hours on first pin, fairly easy cutting. Other guys have had to drill the hole out and use heavier pins before finishing one season. 08 Agco 30', no isues with anything in two seasons.
04 HB one piece, Only used on 2388, only cuts barley, some light Canary and Fall Rye in three years i have had it, No problems so far except bounce/sag will cut the plastic teeth off in the middle so i leave the centre ones short.
I will only buy split reel with dual drive in the future and may convert the 36' one piece Agco to dual drive for next year.

[TOM4CWB]

Chevy rules,

The new D 60 SINGLE macdon 35' reels are designed well... we have 2 5 bat (with pickup fingers) and are happy with performance. IMHO Much better than U2/HartCarter in design. Go with 6 bat for reel tough going.

Have an older 972 macdon 30' split... works well too... the split doesn't bother too much on a swather as always watching ends anyway!

[Jay-mo]

The Westward 35' single reel on the M150's is the way to go. Its really simple and built solid.
I also went with the single end driven knife and it doesn't break a sweat even through foxtail barley.

[Jay-mo]

We use 3, 36 foot swathers with Honeybee headers. 2 have split reels and the other a solid one. I would prefer the solid one for vision mostly, mechanically, they all work ok. With a split reel, sometimes you will push a bit of crop in the center where the fingers don't quite cross over the center gap but most of the time, not an issue.