How fast do you combine

[IHBOWEN]

We run two 2588’s with 30 foot macdon heads and also have a 8 row corn head. We usually run about 4.0 to 4.2 mph in 55 bushel beans with no problems. Talking to a guy a few days back and he said I can’t believe you all run so slow, I never run under 5 mph and usually 5.5.  How fast do any of you run your combines? 

[1256pickett]

I worked for a custom cutter years ago. 2188 was new I think a 1083 corn head. He never said much in the wheat but with corn I remember he said “those gathering chains run at 4.5mph so try to match that. Not slower not faster”. For some reason that stuck in my head to this day. Today my brother does grain and I stick to cows so that is my most modern reference 

[766 Man]

  Usually 3.5 MPH as any more the autumns are typically wet including the plant material going through the combine.  I'm not that old but old enough for me that unplugging a combine is a miserable chore.  When I was a lot younger and the combine a lot newer we would combine beans at 4.5-5.0 MPH.  

[Dirt_Floor_Poor]

4.5 is as fast as we ever go. We spend much more time driving 3.5 than anything. I’m well aware that there are people around me driving faster, but most of them don’t ever give a second thought to how it is affecting the machinery. They only need it to last a couple of years at best and then it’s someone else’s problem. 

[Big Bud guy]

I don’t go near 5.5 mph unless conditions are perfect which isn’t very often.  Put me in the cut wider go slower camp. Cut better, better header height reaction, make better use of combine capacity in poor crops, not total destruction if you it an unforeseen object in the field.

[dale560]

3 hours ago, IHBOWEN said:

We run two 2588’s with 30 foot macdon heads and also have a 8 row corn head. We usually run about 4.0 to 4.2 mph in 55 bushel beans with no problems. Talking to a guy a few days back and he said I can’t believe you all run so slow, I never run under 5 mph and usually 5.5.  How fast do any of you run your combines? 

4 to 4.2 is moving along in 55 bushel soybeans. 3.3 mph on 60 bushel wheat is all a 2588 will handle. This year with short low yielding beans guys were down to 2.5 mph just to save soybeans faster would cost you 3 bpa. Even good corn 4.5 mph is a handful for those combines.

[Lazy WP]

You run as fast as the corn stands still, unless you are in 240 bushel corn with a 6 row wide head on a 750 Massey. Then you go as fast as the engine allows. 
 

[Farmall1066]

8010 with 40’ draper, and 12-30 chopping corn head, pretty much 3.5 with both, and our yields can be 50-55 bushel beans, and on good years, 210-230 bushel corn 

[Sledgehammer]

Rode with a guy when the 8010’s were brand new. I was calibrating his yield monitor.  He was running an 8 row gheringhof (sp) head and complaining that the combine didn’t have enough power at 7mph. When I ran research plots people used to ask how fast we went. Each plot was 1/1000th of an acre which is 2 rows at 17.5’ long. I just told them you can go as fast as you want as long as you can stop in 17.5’. There was a guy that ran things hard and I remember him stopping hard enough to almost see daylight under the rear tires on the old NH plot machine a few times. 

[ChrisNY]

So many variables, yield, ground conditions, combine set up etc. 
I run anywhere from 3.0-4.5 with my 1460 and 6 row head in decent corn. 

[INTERNATIONAL 1466]

Really depends, never saw a 4 in the mph in beans this year. There is harvesting and there is crop raping. Have to let the machine do it's job. We run a 1680 with a 1083 and a 20 foot 1020. 3.5 in both crops is a good speed. Can we run it faster, sure, and sometimes do. We are after the best job we can do though, not the fastest. I have seen plenty fields where they perform combine racing, not pretty.

[856 Custom]

I don't know anyone around here that looks like their going 5-5.5 mph. I've got a 2588 with a year old 30' 3020 head. Yeah I know draper only way to go, but I don't feel I can justify that.  If you ever owned a 2020 like I did and went to a 3020, you'd feel like the 3020 was a draper I can tell you that, lol! 6 row Geringhoff because I have a 12 row planter. Every year is different, and lots of variables, like ChrisNY said. Good dry bean stalks that cut off good 3.5. Corn like we had this year 3.5. Normally faster than that. Have a neighbor who you have to drive stakes to see him move he's just wearing the combine out  I'm about getting as many bushel to the acre I can. I'm not about how big of a showing I have at the end of the day for the neighbors to see.

[JaredT]

1460 with 883 in 200+ corn was 2.5. 1480 same header, same yield 3.5 mph. In soys 1460 with 20' 1020 2.3 in 65 bu beans, sand likes to drag the faster you go. In 100 bu wheat we are crawling 1460 is happy at 2.0 as is 1480 with 25' 1020. We try to put the crop.in the front and put it in the bin not out the back, but I don't believe in wasting time either.  

[DT Fan]

Watched the neighbor combining some organic corn Saturday. He's running a newish green combine with 12 row head. Looked to me like he was going about 7 MPH! Now, this was some of the most pathetic looking corn I've ever seen. Wonder if it paid for the fuel?

[1256pickett]

1 hour ago, DT Fan said:

Watched the neighbor combining some organic corn Saturday. He's running a newish green combine with 12 row head. Looked to me like he was going about 7 MPH! Now, this was some of the most pathetic looking corn I've ever seen. Wonder if it paid for the fuel?

Organic corn has to be easy on the equipment. Especially at harvest there is so little of it!

[hagan]

I used to cut dryland wheat out here in Southeast CO with my 715 and 17.5 810 header. Had a Diky John Grain Loss Monitor and in 25 bushel wheat 5 MPH day in and day out if not handling a lot of straw. Now in the irrigated wheat that was 4 ft tall it was 2.5 to 3 MPH. Later years ran a 843 Corn head and 2.5 in 200 bushel corn was a lot for that little machine but it hung in there.

[Loadstar]

Anything over 3 mph is fast for me. Be it 22 foot direct cut 1010 header or picking up a 21 foot swath I'm happy if I can maintain 2.5 to 3 mph. If I'm going any faster I know its a thin and light crop. This year was one of those and I was running as high as sixth gear on the 7130 magnum and pull type 7721 at times. High speed is fine but its hard on man and machine as far as I am concerned. 

[acem]

In good rice, 200 bushel per acre, 1.5 mph is max with the 1460 and 16.5 ft 810 or 1480 and 20ft. The rotor is so loaded the rumble turns to a constant gnawing sound. If you get a slug at that speed you're plugged!

Newer machine are about the same. A small diameter rotor in the 80/88 series supposedly increases capacity but I've never been around one.

Thx-Ace 

[Delta Dirt]

I haven't operated a combine since the mid 1980's--------(MF-750s).

This was prior to GPS and current grain monitoring systems.  I actually bought and installed an auxiliary grain loss monitor------seems like it was a "Watchdog" brand.  Never was happy with the monitor-------but end result was it taught me alot about combining.

I found the most reliable means of setting a combine (particularly forward speed) was checking for grain loss out the rear of the combine.

Most combines (including rotaries----in most crops) will handle alot more feeding into the throat than they can thresh and process going out the tail end.  Conversely------too slow in light yielding crops will result in excess loss from too much air.

No substitute for checking the ground behind the combine.  I used to have a 3x3 ft sq steel tray that I tossed under the combine to catch what was coming out the rear and to the ground.

If I remember correctly-----in most soybeans 3 or 4 beans per sq ft equalled 1 bu/ac.

After checking loss from rear of combine------pick the tray up and compare header loss/shatter.

At $12---13/bu soybeans;  you can learn alot in a hurry!!!!!   Based on germination behind some of the newer model Red and Green machines can still use some fine tuning on their grain monitoring devices.

Don't still have my old tray------but find myself still scratching behind alot of combines.  Old habits are hard to break!!!!!

Good luck.

 

DD

[ChrisNY]

I throw a 1’x1’ square out behind mine to check for loss. Just randomly toss it and check

[Dirt_Floor_Poor]

18 hours ago, Delta Dirt said:

 Based on germination behind some of the newer model Red and Green machines can still use some fine tuning on their grain monitoring devices.

 

All I hear around here is dealers and BTOs preaching that you have to keep them full or they just won’t work. Once upon a time there was a young farmer who thought he had the world by the tail. He combined a field of soybeans on a piece of ground that he recently got a long established farmer kicked out of. The landowner thought that guy was the second coming. The owner had a few cows and always used the harvested fields for fall pasture, done it that way his whole life. After this guy combined the beans he turned his cows in in the stubble like always. Several days later cows started turning up dead. That guy had ran so many beans out the back it killed several of the cows, but man he kept that combine full. Some guys around here are running six row heads on class six and seven machines and judging by the lack of volunteer corn, I’d say that they don’t have to be full to work right. 

[Loadstar]

18 hours ago, Delta Dirt said:

 

No substitute for checking the ground behind the combine.  I used to have a 3x3 ft sq steel tray that I tossed under the combine to catch what was coming out the rear and to the ground.

Don't still have my old tray------but find myself still scratching behind alot of combines.  Old habits are hard to break!!!!!

Good luck.

DD

True but the problem I have with that is the combine I used this harvest has a hydraulic chaff spreader on it so everything coming off the seives is spun out back over the full width of the swath. Makes it pretty hard to tell how much is going out. Especially canola. Trying to see those little black seeds on the dirt reminds me of one of my dad's old sayings, "like trying to pick fly $hit out of pepper". 

[poor farmer/logger]

Typically I don’t run much faster then 3-3.5 mph. If conditions are really good and the grains thrashing nice I might bump that up to 4-4.5 but that’s about Max. In the barley this fall I was cruising along with the 30’ honey bee at 4.5 mph.  Canola I never push it hard for fear of putting it out the back. Conditions can change so much in a few hours too. 
 

We have a 18”x30” roughly sized pan that we throw under the combine to check with the spreaders off.  Admittedly if yields and conditions don't change much I don’t usually check it again after it’s set unless I change crops then I check it again. 

[Mark (EC,IN)]

5 hours ago, Loadstar said:

True but the problem I have with that is the combine I used this harvest has a hydraulic chaff spreader on it so everything coming off the seives is spun out back over the full width of the swath. Makes it pretty hard to tell how much is going out. Especially canola. Trying to see those little black seeds on the dirt reminds me of one of my dad's old sayings, "like trying to pick fly $hit out of pepper". 

You first need to see what your loss is by just throwing the 1' by 1' square out (I can't remember the seed to loss ratio,  it's written on my square for beans and corn).

After you know what your loss is,  then you need to see where it's coming from.

Do a "power stop"...just turn the key off with the machine full,  grain on the ground in front of where you were is pre harvest loss.....grain on the ground between where you stopped and the front of the combine (behind head) is header loss....behind the combine is separator or cleaning loss.

Look inside the machine and see where grain is that it shouldn't be to locate the loss (on walkers...rear of rotor...back of sieves etc.)

I will admit a seed as small as canola might make this tougher all I deal with is corn and beans and maybe wheat,....good luck

[1480x3]

Never have done the "power stop" myself.  The only guys i know who did it was when they bought a brand new 1680, also their 1st and last red combine, anyhow a company guy was in field on day 1 when the power stop sheared the bolts on the rotor drive hub.