Add-On Dual Carries Chopper In Muddy Fields

Add-On Dual Carries Chopper In Muddy Fields HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Miscellaneous “Chopping corn silage in the fall of 2010 was miserable ” says Alan Burda a dairy farmer in far northwest Minnesota near Thief River Falls “The fields were so darn muddy I was knocking more corn down than I was running through the chopper ” Burda solved his problem by dualing the left wheel on his Gehl 800 2-row corn silage chopper He says the 15-in spacer and the second tire that he added made a huge difference in how the machine tracked through the muddy corn ground “With single wheels the tire on the left side was sinking about 4 to 6 in in the mud between the rows and the machine was sliding sideways behind the tractor The cutter head was dragging on the ground and I was knocking corn over rather than cutting it off ” Burda says “After I put the extra wheel on it wasn’t sinking hardly at all it tracked straight and the head was staying 4 to 6 in off the ground I was able to get all the corn chopped after I put on the second wheel ” To make his dual system Burda extended the axle on the left chopper wheel a few inches That moved the tire away from the chopper frame and also made it track beyond the center of his 30-in corn rows Then he made a 15-in steel spacer band that fit into the chopper wheel rim He mounted a 24-in wheel from a Versatile swather on the spacer with four large clamps The clamps and 3/4- in thread bolts hold the wheel and spacer tight to the rim of the left chopper wheel “The dual wheel is a few inches smaller than the original wheel so when I drove in the field the tire of the dual actually ran on top of a cut corn row That gave the machine a lot of extra flotation ” Burda says “I didn’t dual up the right wheel because there wasn’t enough room between that tire and the standing corn ” After adding the dual wheel Burda was able to pull his chopper and a 7-ton dump box with just his MFWD tractor Before that he had used a second tractor in front of the MFWD without much success “This setup worked really well and I may just keep the extra wheel on in normal conditions to help the machine track straight when the fields are a little greasy ” Burda says Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Alan Burda 927 Tindolph Ave S Thief River Falls Minn 56701 ph 218 686-6642

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