In my area there aren't any pussy combines sold but I have heard alot of good things about them. When they do make them available for demonstrating I will be one of the first on board for a test run. AT present I have been running tx66 and tx68 NH combines and they make the competition, the Deeres, the Agcos, the Case IH's, the Massey's out to be nothing but "PANTY WEIGHTS", when it comes to combines and harvesting in the 21st century. In my experiences after switching to yellow after running and witnessing these other combines in the fields for over 30 years that 10 years ago the TX model combine was 10 years ahead of where the competition is today! I'm no New Holland salesman, but a farmer that considers his Tx combine purchase one of the best business decisions I have made in my farming career thus far. I used to trade combines every 2 to 3 years to always keep a fairly new machine around. In 1985 I quit paying good money for junk tin and paint. Since the development of the floating cutter bar back in the early to mid 70's the American combine manufacturers went stagnant. All they did was change the tin works a little bit, put some new stencils on, jack the price up, maybe put another bar in the concave and voila a super combine has emerged and we bought them like crazy. Not to mention, these new model combines were being built cheaper, less meat being put into the structure and the components just like today's cars and trucks. Today's combines need substance, iron in their internal structure to give them the fly wheel action to handle big wadds of tough grain. Build their structures out of steel not tin that over a short period of time fails under vibration and fatigue. All the North American combine manufacturers are guilty of this. Today's farmer has to harvest under different conditions than he did 30 years ago, the grain straw is tougher, the yields are greater, the time he has to do all this is becoming shorter, the grain itself is more fragile. Demands on today's combines has never bean greater but our manufacturers have let us down. With the majority of combine manufacturers going to rotary versions good or bad, it seems a lot of harvesting at night is shut down early because the straw gets a little damp or a little sprinkle of rain drives these rotaries out of the field prematurely because they can't function, even though the grain might still be suitable for harvesting for another hour or so. Maybe the weed herbicide didn't work as well as it should have, or a late season rain brings on a second flush of weeds and we find ourselves harvesting this crop at a snail's pace with our 21st century combine stopping every so often for a couple four hours or so to unplug the rotor straw by straw. Or maybe we have found ourselves harvesting a couple of 200bu crops back to back and find the sheet metal is just about wore through on our clean grain system, or at 600 hrs our cylinder bars, our feaderhouse chain or our strawalker bearings need collectively about 15000.00 dollars attention. What about our auger flightings on our bubble up augers needing changing after a couple of harvest seasons. All these components that have to be replaced prematurely cost the North American farmer big dollars needlessly. Instead we find ourselves trading in these new couple of year old machines for new models just to avoid these costly repairs. Today we look around with dealer lots filled with 40 or 50 used combines worth nothing and we wonder if buying a new combine is a good investmentIJIJIJIJ Well the last four years of owning and operating an European built NH tx combine has been the greatest pleasure of my life. This machine is built and designed with a Forty percent factor built into it, where every component is 40% heavier, and 40% stronger than required. Each component is designed to work hand and hand as a well balanced intrical part of a well balanced structure. This machine doesn't require special power boosting components in its engine to unload on the go because its unloading system is simple and can operate on a minimal amount of horsepower draw, even though this combine has one of the largest horsepower classes going. With a double knife drive, lateral tilting feaderhouse as standard equipment, state of the art hydraulic header and feader reverser, independent lateral tilting sieves, high inertia fine cutting and spreading straw chopper, fiber optics and computerized self diagnosis trouble shooting, big fuel efficient high horsepower engines along with the 40% built in engineering factor make this combine a suitable norm from which all North American combine makers should work from. Since the caterpillar combine is built overseas as well it probably has some or all of these features and traits mentioned above, I truly think it is worthwhile pursuing before any North American combine. While the North American combine owner is spending hours unchoking his rotor straw by straw I will remain in my air conditioned cab and push a toggle switch to allow my European technologically advanced and designed combine to hydraulically reverse the slug from my cylinder out my feederhouse. In a few minutes I can be back to combining rather than cussing, swearing, sweating and tearing the meat off my hands for the next 4 hrs. In closing I would like to say after owning and experiencing a TX combine for four years, it takes several years to completly understand all the features this combine offers and be able to utilize them to the optimum. I hope I haven't offended anyone.
