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Fulton County Ohio | It is one of the least aggressive options out there. It does a good job of sizing residue while mixing enough soil with it to help with residue breakdown. A downfall in corn stalks is it causes husks to loosen and blow in the wind creating drifts. On the plus side it does not pop root balls out like some tools. The resulting seedbed is smooth and mellow.
In soybean residue it eliminates the fine residue "chaff" that creates wet strips in the spring while leaving enough residue "stalk and root mass" to inhibit water and wind erosion.
I prefer to use it in the fall. We seldom have a dry spring to use it. Ideally I only want the planter and sprayer in the field in the spring. The stale seedbed it leaves is what I like. It will level the field over time. It will not fill in 6" harvest ruts.
180 PTO hp is a good match for a 20' Excelerator. More power would be good. Autoshift in an 8000 Deere will drop from 13 to 10th gear on a steep hill. Speed is your friend. 13th gear gets you in the high range of the transmission and will give a bump when you drop to 12th. It takes that gear to get above 10 mph. They suggest a slower speed in rocky conditions. They are built rugged, but do break. Newer models have heavier wing wheels. That is a weak point. Center frame wheels have not been an issue as they are a different design. The rock shaft failed. Never had a bearing fail and we wore the blades out. The flat bar roller has been beefed up. It needed to be. The star wheels handled rock better than expected. I think we only broke one tooth. They were worn out by the time the blades were shot. It would have done a fine job in soybean residue in the condition the blades were in. I felt it had lost it's aggressiveness in cornstalks. Blades remained sharp till the end of their life. None of them broke or bent. They were the heavier of the two options. 6 mm I believe. | |
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Krause Kuhn Excelerator
