The Pretender - 8/1/2018 17:55

Last week I was called in to help the new owner of the farm I work on cut the oil seed rape. He has just taken delivery of a 2018 John Deere 780i and I was on our 2014 Claas Lexion 660. The John Deere is quite a lot bigger capacity-wise than the Claas.  

Now, I've not cut rape for over 20 years and certainly not cut any with a Claas, but the Claas was doing a far better job than the Deere. The head on he Deere just went over the top of any crop that was leaning where as the Claas was peeling it all up off he floor. When it did get into the machine, the Deere's chopper was poor at best with many of the stalks going right through the machine in one piece where the Claas was doing a very good job of shredding and spreading the residue.

The JD has a good 150hp more than the Claas and pushing another 2 and a half meters of head but it didn't appear to have significantly more capacity especially because I wasn't pushing the Claas hard at all, a more experienced Claas operator would have got more out of mine and I suspect a Claas rotor with similar power would have pulled its pants down and smacked its arse.

Any capacity advantage it did have was cancelled out by being stood broke down for a total of 6 hours with 2 breakdowns. Oddly enough, a farm nearby also has a new 780i which as exactly the same issues. Our Claas hasn't been stood that long in all of the time we've had i since it was new.

The John Deere takes a picture of the returns and displays it on a screen in the cab, the Claas just has a window over the returns auger which takes about 10 seconds to wipe every now and then.

No matter how good the service is from Deere, it won't be as good as Claas is here and I put it to you that the 780i is a poor machine.

 

I won't mention how their 7930 had been away for major transmission surgery so one of our Masseys was drafted in to help haulage duties.