fixerupper
Well-known Member
Thank you all for the suggestions on how to cure the banana bale problem. This baler is a 67. I fixed the problem pretty well by using the adjusting bolts on the outside of the baler to push the plunger over toward the stationary knife. The knives were reasonably sharp but not razor sharp. There was a WIDE gap between the knife on the plunger and the stationary knife because of the wear in the slides. Also, one hay dog had a broken spring and was rusted tight in the up position. Took an hour to loosen the dog and get the rusted cotter pin out of the end of it so I could remove the pivot pin.
The local New Holland dealer was very helpful and copied pages of an old owners manual for me. Their baler guy gave me pointers too. I will go back to that dealer in a heartbeat.
We baled about 250 bales, some brome grass hay and some oat hay. The bales were fairly uniform most of the time except in tough brome grass where the knives didn't do the job completely but still did a decent job. I had raked the oat hay into windrows that were too big so sometimes the old girl was completely full and was really ramming them out with the tractor in creeper gear but the bales were still coming out OK. In fact, we had to take the Oliver 88 off the baler and instead pull it with a 630 Deere because creeper gear is slower on the 630. What a difference in tractors, not saying one is better, just a huge difference between a tractor with a short stroke six cylinder engine and light flywheel and a tractor with two big pistons and a long stroke along with a heavy flywheel.
The knotter acted up some when it was ramming out the bales at full capacity and I found out I was running it a little too fast for the knotters to do their job completely so I pulled the throttle back a bit and it worked like a finely tuned clock. When that 630 pulled a Deere baler we ran the throttle wide open, but a New Holland is geared faster so the throttle has to be pulled back a bit. The New Holland made the tractor work harder than the Deere baler did, probably because the Deere had a slower gear box. Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other, just a comparison. Anyway, the hay is baled and the 2014 haying 'season' is history on the Nelsen ranch. Thanks again for the tips. Jim
The local New Holland dealer was very helpful and copied pages of an old owners manual for me. Their baler guy gave me pointers too. I will go back to that dealer in a heartbeat.
We baled about 250 bales, some brome grass hay and some oat hay. The bales were fairly uniform most of the time except in tough brome grass where the knives didn't do the job completely but still did a decent job. I had raked the oat hay into windrows that were too big so sometimes the old girl was completely full and was really ramming them out with the tractor in creeper gear but the bales were still coming out OK. In fact, we had to take the Oliver 88 off the baler and instead pull it with a 630 Deere because creeper gear is slower on the 630. What a difference in tractors, not saying one is better, just a huge difference between a tractor with a short stroke six cylinder engine and light flywheel and a tractor with two big pistons and a long stroke along with a heavy flywheel.
The knotter acted up some when it was ramming out the bales at full capacity and I found out I was running it a little too fast for the knotters to do their job completely so I pulled the throttle back a bit and it worked like a finely tuned clock. When that 630 pulled a Deere baler we ran the throttle wide open, but a New Holland is geared faster so the throttle has to be pulled back a bit. The New Holland made the tractor work harder than the Deere baler did, probably because the Deere had a slower gear box. Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other, just a comparison. Anyway, the hay is baled and the 2014 haying 'season' is history on the Nelsen ranch. Thanks again for the tips. Jim
