Ford 530 baler issue(s)

Im new here and to working on farming equipment in general. Im a pretty good nuts and bolts guy but find that working on some of these older pieces of farming equipment takes a little more knowledge and experience than just knowing how to replace components! So heres my current problem and hopefully theres still someone around who knows enough about this stuff to help me.

Ive been banging my head against a Ford 530 baler for going on 3 weeks now. I started out with the baler, completely intact and a spare knotter bar(complete with two rusty but functional knotter mechanisms attached). When I began, the left side, looking from the rear, was knotting. The right side twine disc was not grabbing the string. I was asked to look at it after the owner and a mechanic had already given up trying. Had I known what I know now, I woulda just adjusted the right side needle closer to the twine disc. Im sure that was probably the entire issue. But I didnt know lol! So I made a ton of work out of what shoulda been a small problem by replacing the entire knotting mechanism on the right side with one of the spares(after cleaning it up A LOT and greasing the heck out of it). After that, we broke a needle because I didnt know about timing. Got the needle fixed and needle, piston perfectly timed and now the right side knots 90% of the time but the left side wont push the knott off the bill hook 90% of the time! I never touched the left side lol! Just a bit more info for you here; I have gone through the manual and carefully put everything related to the needles and knotter into the correct specs. In other words, the needles come as close as they are supposed to to the twine discs, and rise up from the tension plate between 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 inches(as stated in the manual). Ive adjusted the twine fingers so that when they begin to turn in, they are less than 1/4 inch from the rising needles. All of that stuff works fine now anyway.

To rectify the right side not knotting 100% of the time I am going to replace all of the very worn and grooved string hole grommets. I believe the string gets caught up in them on occassion, creating too much tension when the bill hook flips and tries to knott. Anyone know the real name for those grommets or where to get them???? Or what can be used in place of them??

To rectify the left side stripper not pushing the knot off the bill hook, Ive replaced the original knife/stripper arm that had a lot of play in it compared to the right side. I tried tapping on the knife/stripper arm with a hammer and gotten it so close to the bill hook that the stripper is just barely touching the bill hook as it passes. Now the knot gets pushed off but only where the stripper comes into contact with it on the bottom of the bill hook. The rest of the knot still wont pull free from the bill hook(most of the time). Now, before anyone yells at me for not trying to adjust the bill hook tensioner before I replaced the knife/stripper arm and all that-I did do that; Both before I replaced the arm and after. I've adjusted, readjusted, and READJUSTED the bill hook tensioner(spent an entire afternoon with a wrench, walking beside the baler round and round a field, adjusting the tensioner half a turn by half a turn). While this does seem to get some results, they arent very consistent at all. By the way, the bill hook jaws look and feel smooth and seem to open and close fine when I work the mechanism by hand. Even so, my next move will be to replace the bill hook with one of the three spares that I have.

1) Concerning the knot not getting pushed off the bill hook on the left side, have I missed something? Is there something else I can do that might help get it to function correctly?

2) Does anyone know the real name for the plastic(bakalite?) string guards so I can search for them on the net? They are the round grommet looking inserts that go in the holes that the baler string threads through out of the string box. There are 8 of them on a 530 I believe. Better yet, does anyone know where I can purchase them? Or a good substitute for them???

Please do not assume that I know anything about what Im doing based on what Ive written above. I had never even touched a baler before all of this. Everything I know about this baler was learned over the past 2 or 3 weeks, one really good YouTube video, reading posts in forums like this, a whole, head banging truck load of trial and error, and practically memorizing the manual. You cannot insult me with advice that you might deem too simple to give lol! Thank you in advance.

That was a lot to take in all at once so Im gonna
address the complaint I saw the most. Stripping the
knot: the stripper (wiper arm) should swing across
the heel of the billhook and COME IN CONTACT
WITH IT about 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch from the tip of
the billhook. To secure this adjustment the wiper
arm is carefully bent. The arm is malleable iron for
this purpose. Do not be too concerned about how
loose it is in the knotter frame, the adjustment will
overcome this. One thing that was unclear to me
was is the knot failing to be wiped off the billhook,
or are the ends of the twine simply gripped in the
jaws? If it is the latter, this is not your tying problem.
Soon as the bale moves, it will pull the twine from
the jaws and this also serves to pull the knot tighter.
A picture of the failed knot would be helpful. You
really,really need to get a Ford baler book which
trouble shoots the knotter thoroughly, especially if
you had the whole thing apart it needs to be set up
again. I have a spare 530 book if you need one, just
PM me.

Your twine finger-to-needle clearance sounds pretty good, if that were at fault , only the top strand of the twine would have a knot in it.

Ok I just saw where you have a manual, thats good. If you are confident everything is by the book, you will now need a helper to turn the PTO slowly while you watch the tying cycle. I encountered this on a 532 some years ago -on the left side- ever since it was brand new, you never knew when it was going to miss. The knots that it tied were not exactly like the pictures in the book, some of the strands were not pulled all the way through, forming a strange little bow. They held, for the most part but it was obvious something was wrong with the mechanism. Got fed up with it after 20 years, took it to the dealer and said do what you have to. They said the knotter assembly needed to be re-stacked. Got it back ($800) still did exactly the same thing. 10 years later I got the bright idea to watch the mechanism while someone turned the flywheel. The problem turned out to be that as the needles were rising, the point of the twine finger (left side) would actually pierce the twine and only lay half of it on the billhook. This could not be detected during operation because by time you realize it mistied, 2-3 bales had gone past and the evidence destroyed; not to mention a foot of twine wound around the billhook. The cure for this is not in the book. The twine fingers, by the book, are a certain distance from the needle slots, when the knotter assembly is in the park position. To properly adjust the left twine finger, you will have to be part way through the tying cycle; the objective is to see when the twine is in position to be grabbed by the twine finger. This is accomplished by shortening the operating rod of the twine finger. If everything else is correct, if the finger hooks the strand, it will tie properly. When the tying cycle is complete and knotter in park, you will notice that the left finger is quite a bit farther ahead than the right one; maybe even partially across the slot. This is the way it has to be. Might consider dressing the back side of the finger, in case the strand has to slide over the back of the finger to get into position. The reason for all this? Well I never actually measured it, but I believe through some manufacturing failure, the knotter shaft is not parallel to the bale chamber; that is why you can rebuild the knotter stack until helle freezes over and nothing changes. The twine fingers are still in the same position they always were. Regarding your worn out grommets, cant you jus turn them 180 degrees? The slots are less than ideal but I dont think they are contributing to your tying problem, unless youre running a fatter twine and its causing fraying problems. Good luck.

Very good reading. I'm fascinated. Can you
rotate the twine grommets in their holder
to expose new meat? Best wishes!

Thanks for the reply and sorry I couldnt get back to you sooner(and forgive my super long posts!).

I did adjust the twine fingers to the specs in the manual but Ill try advancing the left one to see what happens. Cant hurt, might help so who knows? I appreciate the suggestion. One of the problems that I encountered at first after replacing the right side knotter mechanism was that the twine finger was too far advanced which prevented it from grabbing the new string coming up on the needle and thus that knotter was making "one string" knots. As you can imagine, such knots dont work very well. With the finger adjusted to manual specs, that hasnt been an issue anymore. I will say though that getting the new string that comes up on the needle to the bill hook on the left side hasnt been an issue(Ive video'd it with my phone and played it in slow motion). I do end up with multiple knots on the bill hook but only because previous knots are not coming off.

So what happens as far as I can see is that everything is working the way its supposed to BUT the bill hook on the left side is being completely stubborn about releasing a knot. The stripper actually pushes the bottom of the knot off the bill hook yet the bill hook STILL clings to the rest of the dang knot! Technically, loosening the bill hook tensioner should resolve such a problem but it hasnt! Ive even replaced the tensioner itself lol! Thats why I am strongly considering replacing the bill hook. The existing bill hook looks fine but we all know that appearances can be deceiving. Maybe theres some tiny burr on it or something that is causing the twine to get hung up in it. Anyway, replacing the bill hook is another, "cant hurt, might help" intervention so why knot? Ive got three spare bill hooks to play with.

Finally, about the twine hole grommets; The grommets on our baler are probably the originals. They have been turned, and turned and turned again lol! 6 out of 8 of them have really deep grooves in every direction. Im talking REALLY deep, almost worn through grooves. There is no way to run a string through them without the string falling into one of the grooves. Two of the grommets still have a spot or two of ungrooved space left so could be considered marginally serviceable. Also, yes. We are using thicker twine. Tried using thinner twine after reading somewhere that these balers can be finicky about which twine they like but thinner twine made our problems worse.

And finally, finally, I did find the grommets on the net after my first post but they are made from brass and the seller is price gouging by demanding $42 each. Thats totally ridiculous for what they are. Ill fabricate something before Id even tell the owner of the baler that the brass ones exist! Like make em on a lathe out of hard wood. They'd eventually wear but so did the plastic ones. Neither are the grommets exposed to constant friction(just intermittent) so I doubt theres any fire risk.

Anyway, thats all I can think of for now. Again, I appreciate the reply and suggestions. Ill try the suggestions and see what happens.

PS: The right side knotter puts a small loop in its knot but the knot holds. The manual states that this is caused by incorrect bill hook tension. I havent tried to adjust the loop out of that yet since it is making knots that hold. Figure Ill get the left side straightened out before I risk messing up the right side



:roll:

Yes! Exactly. I discovered that myself in one of my trial and error(mostly error) sessions lol! The right side twine finger wasnt far enough advanced, so not catching the new string coming up on the needle. Adjusting the twine finger to the specs in the manual fixed that.

Sorry, meant to say it was too far advanced, not "wasnt far enough advanced". It was half curled in by the the time the needle brought up the second twine.

This post was edited by jjchvl on 07/09/2022 at 04:28 pm.

One last thing in response to your reply; Quite a lot of my work on and attempts at diagnosing this baler have been done while turning the flywheel by hand and watching the mechanisms function, as you suggested. The owner is a 71 year old woman(who can outwork most 40 yr old men! No exaggeration!!) and it is she who usually does the flywheel turning while I watch things work. The problem with trying to replicate real time function this way is that 1) with real time function, the pull on the string by the bales is stronger than what I can do by hand. and 2) the pull on the string by the bales is at different angles than what I can do by hand. What this all means is that when I cycle the baler by hand, even using bungy cords to act a bit like bales to keep tension on the strings, Im not getting a real time duplication of function. Just because I cant pull a knot off the bill hook doesnt mean it wont come off in real time operation. Or vise versa; just because I CAN pull a knot off the bill hook doesnt mean it will come off in real time operation. Its a terrible catch 22! So anyway, while turning the flywheel by hand and watching the knotter work in slow motion does offer a great deal of insight to many problems, it doesnt perfectly cover them all. Unfortunately. Those are just my findings though. Your mileage may vary.

When looking down on the knotter assembly from
the rear, that dog-leg shaped casting with the spring
(both pieces in plain sight) is what controls the jaw
tension on the billhook. I am a little surprised that
you loosened it up and it still wont let go of the
knot. As I said , my email is open, so feel free to
contact me; Im sure we can figure this out. I was
just marveling at the acres that must be on that
baler to have all those notches worn in the eyelets.

My experience...ON my NH balers...the pressure of the plunger pushing the hay back tends to pop the knot off the bill hook... happens only
when actually baling..not when turning by hand. As for porcelin guides...I have seen My some electric fence porcelin insulator spools for
posts that might work for you ????

Number one. If you can't make a baler tie in the yard by holding the strings from an empty chamber, it's not going to tie in the
field.
That said... have you adjusted the tension on the bill hook fingers? Id start there with the one that won't strip. Loosen it off
until it's moving free, then bring it back up so it will just hold onto both ends of the twine without letting them slip away...
then mabey a little more tighter.
If at that point it won't strip the knot... look closely at the relationship of the stripper to the billhook. The spec is to
make contact at 11/16 from the tip... and thats fairly hard contact... but it needs to stay pretty tight to the tip or it won't
wipe. If the stripper is gaining a lot of clearance towards the tip I'd say either the stripper arm bushing is very worn or the
billhook is worn/bent. For what it's worth, I went through this with my 532 about 12 years ago and it gave me a lot of misery
before I got it to tie. It needed new billhooks... and they were bent relative to the new ones. If you replace them you'd do
well to put all twine hooks in it. NewHollands use the same hook, or at least the 532 did.
Far as the string eyes go... just find something that looks close and fab up what you need to hold them. Parts support for those
things is poor to say the least.

Rod

Hi Fritz. Sorry for another delayed reply but late evenings is usually the only time I can jump on the computer.

So! I spent another afternoon banging my head against that baler today but feel that I actually made some good progress. First of all, I switched around the eyelet grommets so that the worst two are up under the hood of the twine bay where the twine doesnt come out of them at 90 degree angles. I also put the best two directly under the needles. Furthermore, several were being held in place by screw clamps(regular worm gear hose clamps). Those clamps are wider than the rear of the grommets that they were clamped around so extended beyond the rear of the grommets and provided a much sharper/rougher edge for the string to catch up on. I fabricated spring O clamps from a vintage coathanger that work almost as well as the original "real" spring clamps that are still on the baler. Gotta use a "vintage" coathanger though since new metal coat hangers arent much thicker than 24 awg wire lol! So, after doing that, I got the right side(looking from the rear) to knot 99% of the time. There's still a loop in the knot but Ill work on adjusting that out with the bill hook tensioner later. So, the right side is now working very well. On to the left....

The first thing that I did was change the bill hook and during that process, noticed something interesting. Someone(probably long ago!) put a washer under the bill hook tensioner adjustment nut(between the nut and the spring). A rather large washer. And the tensioner bar itself has a protrusion that rises up on one side of where the tensioner bolt comes through it. Well, tightening the tension adjustment nut even a little caused the washer to contact that protrusion and, in effect, clamp the tensioner down onto the knotting mechanism. I didnt notice this at first because its not a complete clamp down. Only one side of the washer contacts that protrusion on the tension foot thingy whatever its called, while the other side of the washer can still depress downward to an extent(crookedly) and this allows you to still turn the adjustment nut thinking you're doing something when you're not. So I removed that washer and put one with the same diameter as the spring on. Im not sure a washer is needed there but one of the appropriate size certainly doesnt do any harm. After replacing the bill hook and removing that washer, we took it to the field for a test run.

Results were that I could get the bill hook to hang tighter or looser to the knots fairly accurately now by adjusting the bill hook tensioner nut in or out and we went from 90% failed knots to about 50% failed knots. But 50% is pretty horrible in this instance so back to trying to figure out whats going on. I then tried adjusting the twine finger on the left side as you suggested and found that doing so did decrease our ratio of failed knots but not by much. Finally, I got fancy and whipped out my smart phone and caught two videos of a failed knot and one of a successful knot.

[b:7b3cd08a6c]IMPORTANT PART HERE[/b:7b3cd08a6c]
What I discovered by watching the videos in slow-mo is that the twine hook is getting both strings to the bill hook, no problem BUT when the bill hook starts its spin to create the knot, the new string that just got brought up often slips off the tip of the bill hook altogether! This creates a one string knot in the string that had already been waiting there and a clean cut off of the string that was just brought up by the needle. So what causes this phenomenon? I figure its got to be that the twine is under too much tension. This could be caused by the twine getting hung up somewhere-which, after shuffling the grommets around, Im pretty sure isnt happening OR the twine tensioner attached to the twine bay is screwed down too tightly for the left side. Having no experience with these balers, I have no idea what the twine tension should be. Im now suspecting that I had the twine tension too high all this time. Im guessing that the tension should only be enough to prevent the twine from being pulled willy nilly out of the twine box since, now that I think about it, I cant imagine any benefits for having it clamped down tighter than that. Is that a correct assumption? What do you recommend for string tension?

Anyway, that last revelation about high twine tension causing the string to slip off the bill hook before it could be tied came to me at the end of the day, while I was watching the video Id made. I loosened the tension but we didnt have time to go out and test the new configuration. The owner is going to mow(if it doesnt rain) and we will test later this week. Let me know what you think and Ill let you know what happens.

Take care.

While I do agree that the pull of the bales helps get the knot off the bill hook, there is a "knife/knot stripper" arm on the knotting mechanism which is pretty essential for getting the knots off. After the bill hook does its flip around to create the knot, the knife/stripper arm swipes across and the knife cuts the two pieces of twine just before the stripper scrapes along the top of the bill hook to push the knot off the bill hook. Without this arm, Im pretty sure that the bales wouldnt be able to pull the knots off by themselves.

I wasnt having trouble getting knots to tie when turning the baler manually. My problem was whether or not those knots would pull off the bill finger once out in real world action. Whether or not they would did not seem to depend upon whether or not I could pull them off by hand in the shop. As another fella in this thread pointed out, I think the pull of the bails works in conjunction with the twine stripper in getting those knots off.

But fortunately, that problem has been solved. There was a washer that I didnt realize was interfering with the bill hook tensioner nut/spring. You can read a fuller, WAY longer and much more boring account of it in my reply to Fritz. So now I can get the knot to pull off but the new string coming up on the needle is often slipping off the tip of the bill hook as the bill hook begins to spin to make its knot. I suspect that the culprit of this problem is a twine tensioner that is adjusted too tight on the left side. Ive made the adjustments but, unfortunately, wont be able to do a test until later this week. I will definitely come back and let you know what happened. In the meantime, if you know of anything else that would cause the symptoms that Ive described, I would be extremely appreciative to hear about them! Thanks!

PS: Thanks for the bill hook tension adjustment technique. I will try that. I didnt think of sticking a couple pieces of twine in the jaws and adjusting accordingly.

Your assumption about twine tension is correct. It should be just enough that its not free wheeling out of the can.
With the twine slipping out of the hook while twisting... have you tried to tighten the billhook finger down some more? There's a
fine line there between losing the string and not stripping the knot. You can also check the holder tension on the discs if it's
pulling out of there. Once again you walk the line between pulling out and too much tension where it will break the twine.

Rod

Doubt you are still checking this thread. But I have found that after the wiper sweeps the knot off the billhook, it helps the tying process
when the pressure of the bale pulls the last little thread or two of twine off the bill hook. Also saw some ceramic electric fence insulators
at Rural King that might work in a pinch. Cheers, good luck. Hope it works.