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Leesburg, Ohio | kmk: I think you would be very pleased with the EZguide and EZsteer for your purposes. We have had both for two planting seasons now. I would recommend getting the t2 terrain compensation upgrade. The performance on even slight hills is better, and performance thru waterways is great. Without t2, it would "get lost" at every waterway. We have used the system on single and double grain drills, 12 row corn planter, pull-type sprayer, pull-type discbine, ripper, chisel, field cultivator and combine. It has been in the combine and four different tractors: JD4250, 4450, 8300, and Cat 75B. It does take some tweaking to set it up for each vehicle, but the setups can then be saved to use the next time its moved to that vehicle. I usually found good performance quicker by going to a low (10*) angle/turn, high freeplay (3.5) and high aggressiveness (130) numbers on our vehicles. I really like the ease of moving the system around, especially the lightbar...that's about a 20 second install. The whole system can be moved to another vehicle in about 5 minutes, once it has been there before.
We did go with another separate system (Outback) for the 8300 this year, mainly because of Deere's chintzy plastic steering column on the 8000 series tractors...it just won't hold up to the stress of the EZsteer motor mounted on it. (The combine is also plastic, but has held up so far.) We also wanted to run two systems at the same time while planting corn and beans with separate outfits, and combining beans and drilling wheat in the fall.
It seems like I have to "nudge" the EZsteer alot...every few passes somedays. But it's easy to do. The Outback requires fewer nudges, but it's not as easy. The EZsteer has gone "haywire" once in a while, but will usually come back if i shut it off and start it up again.
The Outback probably takes less tweaking to get it right, but I don't think we have been able to dial in the accuracy we can with the EZsteer. (That's not proven, just my gut feeling.) The outback is a more complicated install (but not bad...2 hrs. for a good tech) and can't be moved easily unless you have a valve body and steering lines on the other vehicles. They're both good outfits, just different. I hope this doesn't come across as a sales job... I don't sell 'em, I use 'em. I'm sure there are other good ones, this is just our experience.
Sorry for the long post...
FWIW
Ken | |
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Trimble EZ Guide and EZ Steer
