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Kooiker

Posted 2/3/2011 22:00 (#1591579)
Subject: IH 20" cornhead project (pics may not be dialup friendly)

Pictures are of the 9 row 20" corn head that we put together this fall. Soon as it was finished we went straight to the field seeing as we were already more than a week behind everybody else.

Head started out life as a 854 IH, additional rows came off of a donor 843.

Original intentions were to build an 8 x 20" head with an 863 frame, I found this head after posting a wanted ad and thought that the frame would likely be the same width as an 863. Turned out this frame was too wide to go with 8 rows, no problem now were building a 9 row :-) 9 will work better with the corn that was planted with a 15 row anyway.

1st pic is one that Mr. Bobby Greif took while he was up here for the Clay Co fair the 2nd week of Sept, needed a lot of work yet, more than we thought.

2nd pic shows the JD gathering chain tightener aparatus. Better/cleaner design than the IH cast blocks, much lighter than the cast blocks (saved 35 lbs/row) and the black flat iron with the point on it is how the Calmer poly mounts. Also much cheaper to replace than the IH part. Shoup, V&H Machine and Clarke Machine were the sources for these parts.

3rd pic is just a close up of the above, some of the parts were new some were used. The used parts came off of our previous head that had been rebuilt not too long ago.

4th pic, bottom side of the head. Welding on the supports for the ploy hoods. Also if you look hard you can see the drive shafts, the original 800 series shafts are stub shafts hooked together with couplers. If you take apart the slip clutch and replace that stub shaft with a hex hub you can slide long drive shafts in. 4 rows and the auger drive from the left side and the other 5 rows drive from the right.

5th pic, the gathering chain drive shafts were updated to the 900/1000 series shafts with the woodruff key and nut on top. The sprockets are 9 tooth from Calmer. The gathering chain guides are 900/1000 series guides from Clarke Machine with a little piece of angle iron (red) added on to get the proper length. Saved more weight :-), didn't check the difference on these though.

The 2 straps with the points on them that go across the two rows are the mounting brackets for the poly. The poly slides on those pins and a lynch pin goes through the hole to hold the snout on. Very slick design. The snout rests on the piece that is sticking out in front of the gathering chains.

If it seems like we were a little obsessed with weight its because we were. That is a heavy head for a 1640 and we were trying to cut weight where ever possible. 1640 only had 2 lift cyl, prior to putting the poly on it would lift the head about a foot off the ground. Figuring it wouldn't get better with more weight we got another lift cyl and took the combine to the machine shop to have another braket put on under the feederhouse. Should have added the 3rd cylinder years ago, picked up this head better than it picked up the 4 row with 2 cylinders.

If we were to ever do such a thing again I'm thinking I would use a JD head and put the new "Chopper" stalk rolls from Calmer on it. It would save a lot of work and after seeing what those rolls do to a stalk I think that would work well.

All in all we were very happy with how it turned out. Very happy with the corn also but have no idea how much if any of the yield was attributed to the narrow rows.

Feel free to ask questions.

Edited by Kooiker 2/3/2011 22:49