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Changing Seed Spacing on Drill

I

in-too-deep

Well-known Member
Good Morning,

Do you think it would be possible to change the seed tube and opener spacing on something like an IH 5300 drill? Might remove some tubes/openers completely. Aiming to put down a twin rows 8" apart with a 22" gap between. Or, 30" o.c. I don't have a drill handy to go look at, but other than cutting and welding and lengthening some seed tubes, think it could be done?
 
You"d normally just construct covers (or a long punched plate) that cover the runs you don"t want to use. Mounts inside the box. Leaves all the externals in place. I suppose you could release spring tension on the unused openers and tie them up to reduce wear.
 
Yep, but the even factory spacing wouldn't do twin row. Most drills are on what, 6 or 8 or 9" spacing?
 
I don't know about the IH. Years ago I bought a JD 8250, 18-7 I think. The single disc openers were shot. I bought new double disc opener assemblies from JD. The front frame of the drill is slotted, and there are enough holes in the opener brackets, that you can get about any spacing you want. I ended up with 16x7.5". So two seed and fertilizer openings were blanked off. The flexible hoses are forgiving enough to reach sideways some too.
 
I did something similar on a JD 520 drill; went from 10 to 15 inch spacing. The flexible rubber tubes will stretch a lot, but if they are a little old the longer extensions might sag in the middle and become a seed trap. New rubber tubes will generally fix that problem. However another individual desired better seed placement than possible with corrugated rubber tubes and came up with a better solution by substituting two different diameter plastic tubes that would internally slide providing the necessary vertical displacement. I tried it on the worst (most offset) seed runs (four of the sixteen) and it worked great. Cyclo planter seed tube is the small one, the larger one is plastic water pipe. I used hot water black rather than white because the color matched and I thought the fit was a little tighter.
 
Something like a JD 750 has the two sets of openers very offset. I haven't looked close but if you could move the front set of openers one way or the other you could make a double row and block others off.

One of the neighbors over here just spent a boatload of money on a new machine and it plants double rows just like you say. I didn't notice that his beans did any better, but our four year drought isn't a good measure of anything.
 
I dont know where you are farming at but i will tell this much about all these different types of planting for corn and beans. we have tried it all here in eastern SD. from air seeders to corn planter' tyre drills ' press dr' end wheel drills.row spacing 6" to 38" and now almost ever one is using JD vac planters and 30" rows for corn and beans a few guys are 20" rows
 
in-too-deep, When I was farming the Okla. Panhandle, Some neighbors of mine a few yrs would use a regular ol grain drill to plant Double row milo On the Top of a row. (roughly the 11:00 & 1:00 position on a row top, the 12:00 can be used too for 3 row!) In a row water situation. Guys would take the tension off the individual disk openers so not to plant too deep. ((Block or tape off the units you were not using))! A 12 ft drill is perfect if you are on 40 or 38 in rows. one doesn't need to lift up or remove any row units. Just take all tension off the row units and they will not plant too deep.
Nothing special, Nothing fancy just eye up which openers need to be open and those they need to closed, and remove all tension from all openers!
Hope this helps! Adjust your seed rate to match your Plant Population! Hope this helps!
Later,
John A.
 
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