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| In one of the HCOP posts below, there are pics of a IH rotary combine pull type. Why were these units used and where were they common to see?
Other than not having another engine to maintain, I cant see the point of having one.
Just not a "here" thing as I have never seen a pull type used in my lifetime.
Not picking on anyone, just curious.
INDY |
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WI | Good question .
My neighbor had one. Never thought much about it. |
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Wi | They were before my time kinda of but it seems out in the Plains and up in canadia they were more common. |
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north-central Indiana west of Fulton | I was thinking it was an out west thing where the wheat was wind rowed then combined with a pickup head. Someone else probably knows more. |
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| Indy, I would say it's more of a cost savings thing than anythiny. Why invest inanother engine, tranny & such when if you already had an extra tractor. Capacith wise I think most operations have outgrown thier capacity. Back in the '50s we had two IH #62 pt combinds. Thinking back, I woner how they got anything harvested as they had 6' platforms &28 bu grain tanks. Pltforms had canvases instead of an auger to feed tge crop in, a forerunner of twos draper heads. |
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| ...when most small grain was windrowed and most corn was put up for silage in the upper Midwest(soybeans were not even thought of then). Think of the Dakotas, Montana, Canadian Prairie provinces. Those areas had a lot of pull-type combines up until the 1980s. Pull-type combines had a lot of capacity(they usually were built on the largest SP combine chassis of the time period). Most "prairie farmers" had a big tractor(think of those BIG wheatland tractors that all the Corn belt collectors of today have such a fascination with) that was not doing any work at harvest time anyway; so a PT combine made economical sense for them. Once row-crops gained in popularity(and the later PT combines were not any cheaper than a 3-4 year old SP combine), the PT combines lost their appeal. Used to be many 914IHs, 6601 John Deeres around here in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Still several of them sitting around in this area-most haven't been used in 20-25 years. |
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ND | Those combines were popular in eastern ND, & western MN, also in Canada. JD had a model 65, a 96, a 106 to compare to the 105, a 6601 to compare to a 6600, a 7701 like a 7700, a 7721 & finally a 9501. 9501 were mainly northern ND, MN & southern Canadian provinces. A popular IH in eastern ND in the mid 70's was the 914 & later they had a 1482 axial pull type like the 1480 for capacity & you'd need at least 160 hp to be efficient. MF had the 751 pull type like the 750 self propelled, & White had one like the 8600 combine. Versatile had a unique pull type in that the unloading turret could swing right or left sides of combine. Earlier than the 1960's there was a host of other manufacturers like Oliver, MM, Woods, JD, IH, & MH & later MF. |
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Rivers, MB | Would echo most of sdman's reply.
JD's later PT combines were not built on the largest platform. 7721 and 9501 were built on the 7720/9500 platform.
I never used one but have been around them a bit. Operator use was not as good/nice as a SP combine due to always looking over your shoulder to pickup a swath. Also, most tractors in those days didn't have PS transmission so matching speed to crop density was difficult. Neighbor who had a 7721 on a 4440 for years said he went through a clutch per season due to the starting and stopping. Especially in canola swaths with piles.
Straight combine headers were very rare so were limited to picking up swaths for the most part. Seeing the 2+2 with a 1482 with what looked to be a flex header is something I've never seen before.
Using a PT combine was also easier picking up swaths that were done with PT swather as the tractor is always driving where the swath had already been picked up. Swaths done with a SP swather needed a lot of headland swaths done as you could not turn super sharp with the long driveline. Or you could pickup swaths in a racetrack style but then you needed a wide enough swather that the tractor wasn't driving over the swath next to you.
Cheaper yes. A lot less practical to use. |
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ND | Mainly these pull type combines carried a pickup header either a 5 or 6 or 7 belt pickup with complete units made by JD or IH but a few companies built metal or rubber draper style pickup attach like Melroe or Sund & others. Later PT combines had offset rigid head that was a 17 to 18' head because the hitch on the combine could get moved over hydraulically & Deere had a head that was a Flex as well as a rigid. Northern ND & Canada farmers were buying pull type swathers & self propelled swathers with 18', 21', 25 & 30' cutting width's. Still farmers up there using these methods because when the grain is getting ripe waiting to cut directly doesn't work as well with the seasons as does swathing & waiting a few days to dry & its dry to combine but with rainy weather its not as good. Renn company out of Winnepeg built this brand of swathers & they subcontracted & built for JD, IH, MF. Later Premier brand built swathers for JD, CIH, & Premier as well as maybe others. MF also had a self-propelled swather that was built by Renn Industries. |
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| John Deere made special corn heads and All-Crop heads for the 7721(444 and 454 models) that had an offset throat as well. A guy around here harvested thousands of acres of sunflowers with 2 JD 7721s with All-Crop heads.
In reference to Renn Mfg., didn't they eventually become what is known as MacDon today?
Yes, the PT swathers of the late 1970s(IH 75, John Deere 590, MF and others) were all built by Renn. The later IH/Case IH 721/725/730/736/742/750 PT swathers were built by MacDon IIRC. The last CaseIH PT swathers (8220/30/40 models) were built by Hesston. |
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Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | mennoboy - 8/30/2015 10:18
Straight combine headers were very rare so were limited to picking up swaths for the most part. Seeing the 2+2 with a 1482 with what looked to be a flex header is something I've never seen before.
That was a 17.5' rigid platform in the HCOP pictures. We had one that we ran on a 1682.
In the later mid 90's we got heavily into clover and grass seed. We had a 7720 combine, but needed a lot more capacity for the small seed crops, which are always swathed. A 1680 was still a relatively new combine at the time and priced accordingly. We bought the 1682 at a very significant discount to what a SP combine would cost. We hooked it up to a new JD 8400 and it worked great, left the 7720 in the dust for capacity and was nicer to operate from a nice new 8000 series cab. The 7720 was there to open headlands, so there was never a threat of running over crops with the tractor on the PT. The 1682 really worked great, and we added a 1482 and a new 8100 tractor in 1998 or 99.
After a few more years the seed business went bad for us and we stopped growing clover and grass. We sold the 1482, but kept the 1682 and got the rigid platform for it so that it could combine wheat alongside our recently traded for JD 9600. The 1682 got just as much wheat cut once the field was opened and had a nicer sample than the 9600.
We stopped custom combining wheat in 2005 and the 1682 was sold to a local farm to combine canola grown for seed, which again is always windrowed. They ran it with a newer 7000 series tractor with an IVT, which pretty much made the PT equally productive as the 1680's in the field with it.
Some days I think that if the IVT transmission had come out 20 years earlier, the PT combines may not have gone away. Realistically though, the movement away from windrowing crops and toward bigger headers is why there are only SP combines now.
Edited by Big Ben 8/30/2015 13:29
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| A good description. A few small notes on the Deere models. The 65 was the pull type version of the 55. There is one of each about 10 miles for here. They both had the hercules motor behind the grain tank. All that was really saved in going pull type was the ground drive system, operators platform, rear wheels and steering system. All the other Deere pull types were PTO driven. The 96 was the pull type version of the 95. The 106 was the pull type version of the 105. I believe you are correct in that a 6621 never existed they just stayed with the 6601 model when the 6620 was introduced. I'm not 100% sure of this. Both the 7701 and 7721 existed as you stated.
Most pull types were used with pickups. The hitch was in the way of wide straight cut headers. I did see pictures of a hitch modification to allow a 24' (224) rigid header to be put on a 7721. I think there was no need to change the header opening as the hitch off set things enough for a standard center opening header. Not sure how well it handled side draft on hills. I think is was made by B and D manufacturing or someone like that in Sask Canada. It would be good if someone had some pictures or experience with one would chime in. |
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| Roosty6 has (member here) has video of them working on his youtube channel. Jon Hagen as/had one or two and was running it up until recently. |
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| ...on the 6601. I have a 1979 John Deere Titan combine sales brochure that shows a 7721 PT combine as well as a 6601 PT combine.
One the red side, the PT models are as follows-
CaseIH 1682(based on a 1680 SP)
IH-CaseIH 1482(based on a 1480SP)
IH 914 (based on a IH 915SP)
IH 402(based on a 403SP)
Older models included a "large chassis" model that started out as a 122, then became a 140, then 150, and finally a 160.
"Small chassis" PT combines since WWII were 61s, 62s, 64s, 76s, 80s, and finally 82s. |
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N.E. North Dakota | There are still a few being used around here. A lot of sugar beet and potato farms had the big two wheel tractors for that harvest and you could get a lot of harvest capacity at 1/4 the price. As mentioned this was before corn and soybeans were big around here. All grain was swathed anyway so it made sense. |
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Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | Old Pokey - 8/31/2015 13:06
Roosty6 has (member here) has video of them working on his youtube channel. Jon Hagen as/had one or two and was running it up until recently.
Yes, they were cheap, less than half the price of a comparable SP machine, easier to repair as you did not have to work around SP components, huge capacity , more than the SP version if you had a large enough tractor. (In my case, the 1480 powered by an IH 466, VS the PT 1482 powered by a KR1225 Steiger with a Cummins L10), no SP driveline to maintain.
They worked best picking large windrows, but windrowing was about eliminated as a method to dry down the crop with the introduction of pre harvest glyphosate burn down.
The direct cut header was only 17.5 ft, so hard to feed a large combine like that with the small header.
I called it white knuckle harvest, referring to the hand that never left the header lift control, often cutting wheat with the header inches above the ground at 8 mph.
They worked best direct cutting when working along side a SP combine that could open the field and cut it into large rectangles that the less agile PT setup could more easily menuver around.
as stated, it used a large tractor that often was otherwise parked all through harvest. Clean cool quiet harvesting with a modern tractor with good air conditioned cab.
Another big advantage to the PT machines, was that you almost never had combine fires in flammable dusty crops, because the red hot exhaust system of the tractor was 30 ft out in front of the dirty end of the combine, while it was directly above it on the SP machine. Never had a single "static electricity " induced combine fire in a PT model, even though they had the exact same picking , threshing, spreading system as the SP models but had dozens of them with the SP machines. ;-)
Edited by Jon Hagen 8/30/2015 15:15
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 Steiger + combine front jpg.JPG (32KB - 665 downloads)
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| When I was growing up probably 10-15% of the combines in the area were pull types. Eliminated an engine and transmission plus tractor air conditioners seemed more reliable than combine AC's at the time. When sunflowers started catching on in the mid/late 70's pull types pretty much disappeared. |
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Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | Jon Hagen - 8/30/2015 12:53
The direct cut header was only 17.5 ft, so hard to feed a large combine like that with the small header.
I called it white knuckle harvest, referring to the hand that never left the header lift control, often cutting wheat with the header inches above the ground at 8 mph.
Whether or not the 17.5 was too undersized apparently depends on where you were running. One of the wheat fields we custom harvested with the 17.5' head on the 1682 yielded nearly 180 bushels and was standing. There was nothing white knuckle about that.
Those axial flow PT machines have to be the simplest, easiest to work on combines ever built with that much capacity.
Someday I need to find the pictures of the first time we ran the 1682. We had a new 8400 Deere and a CaseIH 8940 out on demo and ran them both on the combine.
Edited by Big Ben 8/30/2015 15:37
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| Thanks for the story.
I am always amazed by the diversity in Ag across the country and the complete changes in techniques, equipment and crops.
INDY |
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Spring Lake, MI | Just to add a stick to the fire.
I grew up and first combined with JD7721's. Our family farm had three. Neighbors had two. Next neighbors had two more. Neighbors to the other side had the IH rotary pull types. Another neighbor had the Versy Trans-axial 2000's. This was in Northeast South Dakota.
The biggest reason for pull type combines, as mentioned earlier, was that we (and our neighbors) grew wheat, barley, rye, millet, etc. All crops easily combined with a pull type. Row crops are a pain for pull types, for sure, but in our neighborhood, it wasn't row-crops that brought the end to pull-types. It was weed control.
Most of the farmers around would swath (windrow) the crops in order to hasten ripening, but also to make sure the layer of foxtail, etc. wasn't going to ruin the crop. As weed control improved, the need to swath was lessened. That meant we could straight-cut our crops which saved us a trip across the field. On our farm, we switched to self-propelled combines long before row-crops came into our neighborhood. 1985 brought us a pair of 8820's, but we didn't raise corn until 1998.
By way of history: We would double swath, that is run two swathers in tandem: one discharging to the right, the next to the left. In this manner two windrows could be combined at once. First Versy 400's then JD2320's with Air Conditioning and 21' double swath headers. Each pass with the 7721 would thresh 42' of crop.
Pull-type combines were cheap, and spread out our horsepower, but they were also easier to run in some regards: the hitch out front had the effect of smoothing the operation of the feederhouse and pickup. Picture a road grader vs. a front mount blade... you can see the front mount blade easier (same with the header) but with the mid-mount blade/header, the operator doesn't have to fool with it as much. I couldn't believe how much I had to adjust the header lever on the 8820's the first year! It didn't seem to bother any of us to look behind the tractor and watch the combine... it was no different than disking, seeding, etc... we always looked out the back window more than the front.
Our 7721's were pulled variously over the years by: 5020, 4430, 4840, 8440, 8640, 8650. The tractor with the most trouble was the 4430. It was a nice tractor to run, but it did not have the weight or traction to pull the combine up much of a hill when the hopper was full! It took a bit to learn to steer the articulated tractors and stay on the windrow, but it was easily picked up. The 4840s were nice on the combines, but only 8 speeds sometimes meant that you had to give up some capacity because the gears weren't quite right. I second the IVT idea!
One last note; we could never figure out why the access ladder on the 7721's were bent inward like that! It made it so darn difficult to climb on them! Then we got the self-propelled 8820s... that rear axle was closer than we might have guessed it would be! To check the chaffer we used to walk along with a scoop shovel and reach in to grab a sample. The first time I tried that on the 8820, I nearly became rear tire tracks!
Please excuse the meandering history... |
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| joe63johnston - 8/30/2015 11:40
A good description. A few small notes on the Deere models. The 65 was the pull type version of the 55. There is one of each about 10 miles for here. They both had the hercules motor behind the grain tank. All that was really saved in going pull type was the ground drive system, operators platform, rear wheels and steering system. All the other Deere pull types were PTO driven. The 96 was the pull type version of the 95. The 106 was the pull type version of the 105. I believe you are correct in that a 6621 never existed they just stayed with the 6601 model when the 6620 was introduced. I'm not 100% sure of this. Both the 7701 and 7721 existed as you stated.
Most pull types were used with pickups. The hitch was in the way of wide straight cut headers. I did see pictures of a hitch modification to allow a 24' (224) rigid header to be put on a 7721. I think there was no need to change the header opening as the hitch off set things enough for a standard center opening header. Not sure how well it handled side draft on hills. I think is was made by B and D manufacturing or someone like that in Sask Canada. It would be good if someone had some pictures or experience with one would chime in.
Here's a link to the thread I wrote about the conversion kit to mount a 24 ft. straight header on a 7721:
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=355841&posts=1...
It was an update to an earlier post by "bravo":
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=333003&posts=2...
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Galahad, Alberta | The pt swathers of the late 70's/early 80's (IH 75, JD 580, MF ?) were Kilbury's, made in Winnepeg. The MacDonald family bought them out, designed a new version that would be the CIH 725/730/736/750, JD 590, Westward? There were a couple other companies who made pt swathers like Versatile and Renn, but they quit building them. A company named Autofold also made pt swathers into the 80's and 90's. Hesston made pt swathers in the 80's and later built them for CIH after CIH quit using the Macdon model.
Rosco |
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Galahad, Alberta | Like most others said, it was about cost savings. Everyone had a big 2wd sitting at harvest and most practical guys used it instead of having a more expensive SP machine. I grew up running an IH 914, then a 1482, then a JD 9501. We put a steiger CR1280 in front. Lots of power, but the tractor had poor harvest speeds. Round-up pretty much killed pulll type combines, as there was less need to swath, and straight cutting became more fashionable.
Rosco |
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SW Sask | Great questions! Grew up in SW Sask, all cereal grains, and all PT combines. Grandpa and Dad ran CCIL (Coop Implements - a Canadian manufacturer based in Winnipeg) 960's in the early 1970s. Graduated to a White 8650 (dad had two in sequence; never really liked the job they did). The last combine we ran was a Massey 851. Like all machines, it had some character flaws, but it saved grain and was a very low-cost machine to run (which makes me think that much of the love on here for MF combines of that era must be related to the drivetrain....)
So why pull-types? Farming practice here at the time was 50-50 rotation - crop every second year, tillage during the non-crop year for weed control. Even with the tillage, about 25% of the moisture received in the fallow year was saved, which made the difference between having a crop (maybe) and having a profitable crop. Moisture was limiting to crop yield until recently, because yields were low enough that nitrogen was not depleted from the soil when it was first broken.
Weather/climate conditions were such that there was consistently dry weather in fall, so crops were windrowed (swathed, in local terms). That killed any green weeds, and let them (and the crop) dry for storage prior to harvest. It was all about minimizing cost, so I have never even heard of aeration or grain drying until my late teens. We combined wheat and durum, sometimes barley, oats, a few years of canary seed, and it all came straight off the combine into bins on the farm for storage - we never hauled to the elevator during harvest, and had capacity for 100% of our crop on-farm. (lots of that relates to marketing and how the Canadian Wheat Board operated, which is a highly charged political discussion that I won't get into here...) There was the extra poss with the swather, but they were low power requirements (self-propelled or pull-type), and you could operate them fairly quickly, so the cost per acre was small.
Another key part of this came clear to me when I worked with a colleague who was involved with corn planters. As we discussed it, he noted that planting row crops is a critical part of the farm operation - a poor job planting will definitely impact yield. But careless harvesting with a loss of 1 bu/ac on a 150 bu/ac corn crop is (relatively) small potatoes.
Seeding small grains in the prairies is somewhat less critical - if you have adequate soil moisture (or rain), a poorly seeded crop will grow and respond mostly to weather. But when your wheat yield is 25 to 35 bu/ac, your profit depends on keeping every fraction of a bushel in the combine! So there was a wide variety of seeding machines (and operator care in maintenance and operation!), but virtually every farmer did his own harvesting to ensure the job was done as carefully as possible.
Oh, and as far as operation - lots of seeding was done at that time (and a generation prior) with discers - a one-way disc harrow with a seed box like a drill. So you started the spring looking over your right shoulder seeding, a pull-type swather ran on the right side, and then watching the pick-up head on the combine.... in retrospect, we must have all over-developed neck muscles, at least on one side!!!
Now: crop and mechanical technology have advanced to the point where cropping is continuous and rotational (not just cereals). Air seeders are pretty much standard for the convenience of large seed capacity and capability to place fertilizer at the same time. And when the sales volume on PT combines dropped off, manufacturers quit making them. Since people were basically forced into SP combines, the transitioned to straight-cut heads. Aeration on bins has bridged the gap so that if crops have to be harvested at moisture levels higher than ideal, the swathing step is basically obsolete for grains, and only used for oilseeds.
Love the discussion, love learning about agriculture in other places, hope to contribute with what I know.
danr |
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Pull type combine ???
