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| We are looking at adding another planter just to plant beans with, and have found a 955 12/23 with AFS hydraulic drive. Is the AFS system good and reliable or should we go with a mechanical drive to keep things simple for a second planter. Any other goods and bads would be appreciated. |
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Geneva, Ohio | I sent one down the road a few years ago that was a AFS. Worked awesome most of the time. When it had electrical issues good luck they only made 18 of those planters and most of them were sold by birkeys and they are the only ones that know how to work on them. If it was a mechanical i would have probably kept it! |
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Southern IL. | I bought one last summer a 12/23 AFS. I used it this spring and it worked fine. We already had a 1200 ASM 16/31 with similiar controllers and screen. The hydraulic drum drives look to be the same motor as our sectional drives on our 1200. Some of the hopper stuff seems to be different electronically. They may have only made 18 of these, but if most Case Mechanics can work on 1200's they can work on these. Ours had some MIU faults for the row sensors when got it. We called J L Equipment where we purchased it used and they sent a mechanic out that worked on the 1200 series planters and never had any trouble locating and fixing any problem intially. Never had any issues during season. They say ground driven has 3 seed transmissions to change when setting population. The AFS just changes on screen. We pull ours with a 2001 MX 180 fwd. |
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Paxton, IL | as a second planter I'd lean away from the AFS model myself. I love the technology when it works but as a second bean planter I'm not sure it's worth the trouble when it doesn't work (which will happen). Since your only looking at it as a bean planter at the moment I'd assume you'd basically set the sprockets and leave them there on the ground drive version so changing over from corn to beans isn't a concern (which isn't hard by any means but it is nice to just touch a button rather than switching sprockets.....you'd still have to swap drums and all though anyway) I'm not sure what the price difference between an AFS model and a ground drive model is but it's all up to you I guess. I think the AFS would be a great planter as long as it keeps working. parts I'm sure would be more expensive. |
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| If you are used to the cyclo/blow planter system, it's a good planter - ie. clean out the seed tubes in the spring, make sure cut off wheels and drum seal are not leaking. It only holds around 45 bushels though and a 12/23 kinze with box extensions gets closer to 60 bushels - on the other hand it's only 3 boxes to fill. I've heard the planter has a lot of tongue weight and CNH had a kit to support the tractor tongue from the 3 point center link bracket.
Another possibility would be the 5500 30' soybean special - 15" planter with planter units and 2 drill boxes. These had issues with the seed tubes kinking since I think they didn't set the seed boxes back or at least higher when they changed from drill units (seed drops straight down) to the planter units where the seed has to travel back about 10". Someone may have figured out how to prevent the problem though. Anyway, you get the IH planter unit with a much simplier seed delivery system. You can install SI meters for better population control also (but they don't plant really big seed though). I'm guessing you could buy either planter for similar money.
hth,
Pat |
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Southern IL. | If you do buy negotiate the price down. We ended up paying $13,500 straight out no trade and delivered for our 12/23 AFS. |
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Renville Minnesota | guys around here made seed drops out of two sizes of PVC pipes that slide into one another..... We had it on ours for about 4 years...... Problem solved with the rubber hoses sagging and filling with seed...
(I think thats what you were talking about?) |
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| Yep, that's the issue. When I copied the design using an old GP drill I had the same issues and tried some different seed tube configurations with some improvement. However, when I raised the boxes up 6" it helped a lot and when I set the boxes back 6" it pretty much cured everything - seed drops directly into unit (well, not quite the seed tube comes out of the unit at an angle). I wondered if caseih would have moved the boxes on later versions, but I think they dropped their box drill line with the introduction of the 1200 (or at least it looks that way). Naturally once it was working good I sold it and put pushers on a kinze TL16 - holds 90 bu and it was weird planting beans with someone else's design for the first time in 13 years (I was always cobbling together bean planters - probably a form of autism).
thanks,
Pat |
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East Central Ia | Not sure where u r located at but we have a 12/23 afs 955 planter that we added a 24th row to make it a 15'' bean planter for sale.
We have had our share of electrical problems with it but made it much harder on ourselves then it needed to be lol. We have figured out 99% of problems, no matter what its doing is a seed sensor wire that got pinched or rubbed. Since learning that its been a great bean planter. |
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Paxton, IL | bleedred, can you send me a picture and description of what you did to add the 24'th row? I got a 955 12/23 this year and don't care for the fact that the last row is so far from the edge of the bar when I'm going along a fence line it leaves a pretty good gap. I want to add a 24'th row but haven't really looked at it in detail yet to see how to do it. [email protected] |
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Paxton, IL | Pat H - 6/18/2011 09:50 It only holds around 45 bushels though and a 12/23 kinze with box extensions gets closer to 60 bushels - on the other hand it's only 3 boxes to fill. I've heard the planter has a lot of tongue weight and CNH had a kit to support the tractor tongue from the 3 point center link bracket. Another possibility would be the 5500 30' soybean special - 15" planter with planter units and 2 drill boxes. These had issues with the seed tubes kinking since I think they didn't set the seed boxes back or at least higher when they changed from drill units (seed drops straight down) to the planter units where the seed has to travel back about 10". Someone may have figured out how to prevent the problem though. Anyway, you get the IH planter unit with a much simplier seed delivery system. You can install SI meters for better population control also (but they don't plant really big seed though). I'm guessing you could buy either planter for similar money. hth, Pat a 12/23 should have the hopper extensions from the factory where a 12 row did not. With the extensions it holds around 60 bushels. The tongue weight can be an issue. I think these planters came from the factory with a drawbar helper that hooks to the centerlink of the 3 point hitch to help with the added weight. I didn't use mine and swapped the heavy duty drawbar from my mx255 to my mx180 that I'm using to pull it. One of the big problems with one of these planters is the negative tongue weight when you pick the planter up on the ends with the hoppers full. It tries to pick up on the rear end of the tractor so it helps a lot to have a MFWD tractor with some weight on the rear end as well. I've also seen guys that pull them with a small frame 4WD tractor too. |
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East Central Ia | I'll try to get some pictures but I don't think we did anything special. We had a machine shop come in and cut out the wing vertical pivot points and weld in new ones. The old ones were egging out letting the wings trail back a bit. They had the hoppers off it at that time to really go through the bar and make sure everything was is good shape and square to the world. Dad did most of the work with a mechanic at the dealership. But I think they made it a true 24 row 15'' planter. Meaning they didn't just add a 24th row to the end. They slide all the row units... I think! I am always in the sprayer so I rarely use that planter. I guess some pictures would help me understand what all he did as well! lol |
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CIH 955 planter
