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East of Broken Bow | Rancherman gave some really good advice.
To add to that, do the wheel arms have bushings or bearings? If bushings and they are worn, the wheel will no longer be held square, which is a big advantage to the arms with bearings in them. As the bushings wear, they will allow the wheels to 'lean' a bit and they won't move heavy hay as well.
Also, look at the wheels. Do the leading edges of the teeth appear to be bent 'back' a bit? If so, the teeth are wearing out and the best fix is new wheels. We went down the road of replacing teeth as they broke, and found that as we did that raking performance would go down, having new teeth mixed in with old makes the wheels out of round, and in some conditions actually rakes worse than when all the teeth were worn. We have found once you break more than a couple teeth on a wheel, just get new wheels, or raking performance will suffer. I recommend new wheels over just new teeth because often the price difference isn't worth the work of doing the teeth one by one, but also the holes in the outer band that the teeth go through wear, and your new teeth will start out 'loose' in the holes and not rake as good as with new teeth.
If you ever go to Grand Island, NE, the best wheels I have found that bolt right on would be from Webb Manufacturing in Grand Island, NE. They make them in house, in a factory on the outskirts of GI. You can pick them up and save freight charges, but you may need to load them yourself, so be prepared for that. The teeth are just a hair thicker than the factory H&S teeth, so they are both heavier and stronger. This lets you have more weight on the wheels without over flexing the teeth, which leads to my last point, too much weight on the rake will over-flex the teeth, and it won't rake any better than with less weight, assuming you are over-weighting them, and will break teeth sooner.
Lastly,sometimes the hay is just too heavy and stuck to the ground, and you need to set the rake narrower for it to do the job. | |
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Wheel rake problems?
