Adam Suess - 3/24/2013 12:18

I have run a 9720 for 12 years now. They are big. 31.5" rotor ran front to back. big feeder house and cleaning system the feeder house is big and hard to plug. Drives nice and is quite. It runs out of power around 3 mph in green stemmed beans with the 30' head. I don't have any trouble with roping unless the leaves are still on the beans. Then it will rumble a little. In dry 50 bu beans I can run close to 4 mph. Runs about 3 to maybe 3.5 mph in 200 bu corn with a 12 row the limiting factor is the clean grain auger. It's easy to set and gives real nice samples. The main reliability problem I have is with it, is the sealed feed impeller shaft bearings. It's a beater shaft between the feeder house and rotor intake that knocks out the rocks. AGCO sells skf brand and I was doing good to get 100 hrs out of them. No grease in them so i found out. I rebuilt the feeder house which used the same bearings on the top shaft and have had trouble ever since with it also. I'm hoping to up date it to the newer style spiral style feeder with bigger bearings kinda like the newer MF combines have this summer. The engine is a 640 v8 perkins mine is terribly cold blooded and likes to run hot above 75F but the only repair has been a water pump. It tends to collect allot of dust on the engine and tons of chaff every where else. I blow it off all the time. It's allot of work to keep it clean. Other than that it's been pretty reliable with general off season maintenance. It's got 5500 hrs and I have no plan to retire it. The last few years i have slowly started restoring it. It's as much a collector item for me as my main combine any more.