wally
Guest
Our experience with viney crops (soybeans, edible beans such as black-eyed peas, pinto beans, etc.) is that the smoother you can make the inside of that rotor cage, the less tendency of the viney crop to rope and twist. Also cuts down on bean cracking. We advise harvesters to 1: make sure your transition cone and rotor cage vanes are in good shape (the new 3_16" stainless-steel vanes are well worth the money.) 2: set all of the vanes to the fast transport position, since generally threshing these types of beans is not the problem, getting rid of the vines is. 3: install an extra set of helical kickers on the rotor (4 on 88-size machines, 66-size uses 3.) 4: if necessary, grind and smooth out protruding angles inside the rotor cage,transition cone, and concaves which may provide a place for the crop mat to hang on. 5: We have had great success with the new edible-bean concaves in these types of crops; they are definitely the final answer to roping and rotor plugging in vines. Think "smooth-bore" like a shotgun, except for the cage vanes; very important to have a good sturdy set of vanes which will not bend over. We have found that the viney crops will snag and wrap up on the spiked tooth of the rice rasp bars and make the problem worse. In fact, the worst rotor plug I have ever seen on an Axial-Flow combine was caused by pea vines snagging on a rice spike bar; the whole inside of the rotor cage looked like a giant levelwind fishing reel with the worst backlash you can imagine. Took 2 men 4 hours to dig it out with carpet knives and hay hooks. At least that's how it works in viney crops here in West Texas. I haven't personally used the disrupters you mentioned, but I kind of think they would actually make the problem worse because what you want to do is to MOVE IT ON OUT, unless you have a threshing problem. Hope this helps.