# disk mower bar types/ brands...



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Hey! Presently running a PZ Zweegers CM 212 drum mower that's getting kinda long in the tooth... Been thinking about upgrading to a disk mower in the nine foot range... Maybe a caddy too because hitching gets old I don't usually have help and I'm not getting any younger...

I'm curious about the different brands out there... And more than color, the different types of bars... When we got the zweegers disks and drum mowers were just getting started good in our area... I liked the simplicity of the drum over the disk with only six gears in the whole gearbox and the box running a foot and a half off the ground versus like 23 gears running daisy chained together in a bar running in the dirt... But drum mowers are hard to find new anymore and usually narrower than a comparable disk mower....

I've got a New Holland 5610S and ran a Kuhn 9.5 footer behind a 5610S for a buddy when he needed help and it handled it great...

I don't like shear hubs and other "gimmicks" and not being able to replace individual parts but I'm not sure who has them and who doesn't... Kinda like the looks of Modular bars with individual cutter units like the New Holland mowers... What brands are like that??

My regular dealer is mainly Kuhn, but I wonder about the shear hubs and bearing units durability... I'd like to hear about maintenance issues, costs, durability, ease of maintenance, etc....

I'd love to hear experiences and recommendations....

Later! OL JR


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## ANewman (Sep 20, 2012)

I've been well satisfied with my Kuhn GMD700HDII. Its 9'2" cut. I bought it used about 4 yrs ago. Think its 07-08 yr model. Low maintenance. I put a new set of belts on it year before last ($190) and check the oil in it at the start of the season. Other than replacing blades (I think about $70-80 for blades and bolts) that's all I've done to mine. I run it with a 62 PTO hp tractor.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

I like the kuhn as well, shear hubs wouldn't scare me....hard to beat NH as well....


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

*This is good to know... I was impressed with the Kuhn I ran for my buddy but there were a few things about it I didn't like... having to fold the stupid curtain to raise the bar up for transport was one... never could figure that one out, because from what I could see it would clear the tire going down the road... still, the boss said "fold it", well, I fold it. *

*Just read a fairly recent post on folks talking about having to buy the entire gear, shaft, bearing, housing, and hub to replace a burned out bearing instead of just putting in a new bearing... that sort of crap on new machinery makes my blood boil... Make you buy a $200 part instead of a couple $9 dollar bearings... In the same vein, those 'shear out' hubs just look like another moneymaking scheme... *

*We have fire ant mounds here and crawdad chimneys in the wet parts of the field after a wet spell, and I wouldn't want to get a mower that I'd have to be replacing hubs all the time because they hit an anthill or sheared off a clay crawdad chimney... *

*Just curious about people's experiences with them, what parts cost, etc... stuff to watch for or stay away from... *

*How heavy is a New Holland cutter compared to a Kuhn?? They look heavier... how is maintenance on the New Hollands compared to Kuhn?? *

*Later! OL JR  *


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Was the kuhn on a caddy? If I don't fold mine, the bar misses my tire but the curtain will scrub....I raise the hydro on the caddy and all is well forget the folding.....I have a 4760 KMC caddy


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## siscofarms (Nov 23, 2010)

With all these concerns and I'm not knocking you for trying to get info before you commit but maybe you should just go sickle mower . Wont have any of the issues your worried about .


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## Dill (Nov 5, 2010)

I don't have shear hubs, but I wish I did. A lot easier to swap one out than a whole cutter bar.


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## mike10 (May 29, 2011)

In my experience the only time the NH shear hubs shear is when they need to. If you don't want them you can always put the regular hubs on. The shear hubs will definitely save you a huge amount of money if you ever encounter a foreign object.

If you are the kind of person who will go and help a friend or neighbor mow his crop, I would not go without the shear hubs. That situation is where I see the most shear hub failures because the neighbor forgot about that stump, well pipe, rolled up wire, sign post or in one case a grader blade.


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

I own a Vermeer M7030 on a caddy made by Cutter Caddy that has been a good cutter. It has a modular cutter bar similar to NH's. I really like the quick change blades that can be replaced without using a wrench. Besides the caddy being easier to attach to tractor I also think cutter follows the terrain bette when on a caddy vs 3 pt.


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

All mowers can trace their roots to 2 brands. Gear drives are from Kuhn which introduced them in 68. Shaft drives are from Lely, which was introduced in the early 70s'. Patents usually run for 25 years, and at the end of that time is when you start seeing the variations.


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## ANewman (Sep 20, 2012)

luke strawwalker said:


> *This is good to know... I was impressed with the Kuhn I ran for my buddy but there were a few things about it I didn't like... having to fold the stupid curtain to raise the bar up for transport was one... never could figure that one out, because from what I could see it would clear the tire going down the road... still, the boss said "fold it", well, I fold it. *
> 
> [/b]


The reason you have to fold the curtain for transport is sp the transport lock can engage. Its located on the curtain frame. When the curtain is down you can even see the lock latch post.


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## cannonball (Jun 23, 2012)

luke strawwalker said:


> *This is good to know... I was impressed with the Kuhn I ran for my buddy but there were a few things about it I didn't like... having to fold the stupid curtain to raise the bar up for transport was one... never could figure that one out, because from what I could see it would clear the tire going down the road... still, the boss said "fold it", well, I fold it. *
> 
> *Just read a fairly recent post on folks talking about having to buy the entire gear, shaft, bearing, housing, and hub to replace a burned out bearing instead of just putting in a new bearing... that sort of crap on new machinery makes my blood boil... Make you buy a $200 part instead of a couple $9 dollar bearings... In the same vein, those 'shear out' hubs just look like another moneymaking scheme... *
> 
> ...


.Have worn out three Kuhn 700 gen 2 and never replaced a cutter head bearing or any bearing in the cutter bar...did replace the bearings in the large pto pulley....I changed oil in gear box and cutter bar every 100 hours...usually everything else wore out and still no cutter head bearings gone out...mine was on a 2840 and a 401b.....had a new idea 5409 on 2840 and it had cutter head bearings replace the first cutting season....


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## Dill (Nov 5, 2010)

Just reading a new flyer from Kuhn today, they are bringing a bunch of drum mowers over to the states.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

somedevildawg said:


> Was the kuhn on a caddy? If I don't fold mine, the bar misses my tire but the curtain will scrub....I raise the hydro on the caddy and all is well forget the folding.....I have a 4760 KMC caddy


No, haven't ever run a mower on a caddy... though I like the looks of it... I REALLY get sick and tired of wrestling the tractor and mower to hitch/unhitch 3 point mowers... when I have the money, I want to get a caddy (even a used one) to go with a mower... or get a pull type mower, but I unless I find a sweet deal on one, it'll probably be a mower and caddy...

Don't know what wheel spacing you're running, but I'm sure that plays into it as well. I have my 5610's set all the way out for 40 inch rows when we row-cropped. The guy I was running equipment for had his 5610 set ALL the way in, narrow as she'd go, which is about 60 inches center to center IIRC on the rear tires (for 30 inch rows). He wanted to be able to drive the tractor up on a gooseneck low-boy side-pipe-rail trailer to haul it between jobs, when necessary, since he did a lot of custom work all over, as well as various meadows of his own he had rented...

With my tractors, I have to crank the right hand stabilizer chain all the way in (short as it'll go) to pull the mower as far to the right as possible so that the mower top deck shield and curtain will clear the tire. The Zweegers has a fixed (non-adjustable) hitch on it, so that's the only "adjustment" one can make... the left lower hitch arm stabilizer chain turnbuckle is then tightened up just enough to keep the mower from swaying. This setup causes the mower to actually run a little "offset" to the right, IOW the top three point link and the PTO shaft are actually dog-legged to the right instead of straight back, but it doesn't seem to affect anything. As it is, I still only get a few inches of clearance between the tire and mower top deck shield/curtain (metal top shield with a perimeter curtain hanging down on the Zweegers), and basically I had to modify it to fit the wide spacing on the tractor when I bought the mower... the shield had a weird "notch" in it to "go around" the tire, but it didn't have enough clearance-- I basically cut the top shield a bit and bent the sheet metal down and then cut it off straight, to eliminate the dog-leg in the shield and make it a straight ~45 degree angle to the mower "bar" (gearbox) to give a couple extra inches of clearance and keep it from rubbing the tire. I used those tractors to row crop as well as hay at the time, so I couldn't set the wheels in, period... that was a non-starter. It's worked well all these years, though.

The Kuhn on the 3pt hitch of the other fellow's 5610 seemed to have a LOT more clearance, though... I think I *might* have folded it up one time for travelling between two nearby fields without folding the curtain, but I didn't travel like that... IIRC I remembered to fold the curtain before I took off, so I lowered it back down, folded it, and then raised the bar back up, picked the mower up all the way, and hit the road. Don't recall anything hitting though, but since I didn't drive with it unfolded, maybe that was just lucky...

Looked briefly at a new New Holland mower today-- seems very well built, even if the turtles stick up higher... what does that do for horsepower draw?? Seems like the more the grass has to move, the more "drag" it would create on the mower. The Kuhn turtles are SO flat that it's hard at times to see if the grass has even been cut in thick tangled stuff like dallisgrass... just rides right over them after it's cut! The Zweegers makes a "mini-windrow" of course, being a drum mower, but it's not really a problem here in SE TX with all the heat and wind we get... only time it gives you fits is when I cut some sorghum-sudan-- that's when you appreciate a FULL SPREAD on the cutter like a sicklebar mower... (of course a conditioner would help... but I picked up a two-basket tedder cheap one time and an old steel roller pull-type NH crimper (an old 402 model) for that stuff...

Anyway, just curious about experiences with different brands, parts availability, stuff to look out for, and such... I've learned the value of parts support-- you don't appreciate it until you DON'T HAVE IT! CASE-IH quit selling most of the parts for the older cotton pickers we were running, and so when I looked at upgrading, although all we'd ever run was red machines, and the old man was "in love" with them, I FINALLY talked him into going green, since I talked to guys and basically they told me they could get any part back to the old tractor-mount one row machines... I looked at combines years ago, thought about upgrading from our old Ford/Claas 640, to something newer... having had bad experiences with Case IH on parts support on the pickers, I didn't even bother looking at their machines-- heard enough stories about hard-to-get parts on guys running older red combines around us. Talked to some guys and they were telling me they can get parts for green combines all the way back to the old #45, Deere's first self-propelled combine... some parts even for the older still #16 pull-type even. Ford used to be pretty good about parts for their machinery, even though all of it came from various shortline manufacturers (usually multiple ones, like my Ford 640 combine is actually a Claas Senator, then a couple years later they sold the Ford 642, which was built by Long... then came the "New Holland" yellow twin-rotors... BUT, when New Holland took over Ford Tractor Division, the parts went from reasonable to outrageous, and basically they've quit providing parts for most of the older shortline stuff sold under Ford blue paint... and what you can get is extra-spendy...

I've been getting parts for my Ford 552 round baler (bought new in about 80-81 by my granddad-- first round baler in the county IIRC... they weren't very popular down here back then-- EVERYTHING was square baled back then-- but we got tired of fighting fire ants picking up bales and repairing various old barns used to store hay... plus help went from hard to find to impossible to find... now I'm pretty much a one-man show. I can get (some) parts from Ford/New Holland (well, Case/NH now) OR from the Gehl dealer in Lockhart, TX... course I heard Gehl quit the hay equipment business to focus strictly on ditch-witch and skid-steer type stuff for industrial use, so I don't know whether I can even get Gehl parts from that dealer anymore... haven't been out there in over a year... the Gehl red parts were quite a bit cheaper than NH parts-- they don't even bother painting them blue anymore for the extra cost, either...

SO, how about brands versus parts availability and stuff... I'd like to hear experiences from that angle too...

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

siscofarms said:


> With all these concerns and I'm not knocking you for trying to get info before you commit but maybe you should just go sickle mower . Wont have any of the issues your worried about .


Been there, done that, no thanks...

Ain't NO WAY I'd go back to a sickle... Got an old IH 55 (IIRC) sickle mower I picked up from the BIL just as a backup in case the drum had to go to the shop in the middle of things-- basically just use it to trim weeds... total PITA...

"Concern" is probably too strong a word... perhaps "interest" is better. I just don't want to get stuck with something that will need a $70 hub or something every time I turn around... I'm pretty careful about what I cut-- heck since I'm not doing custom work anymore I'm just cutting our own places, and I KNOW what's out there... no risk of running over engine blocks or old house foundations or stuff like that like some custom cutting jobs...

I can't say enough good about the Zweegers-- in all the years we've run it (since we bought it new in 89) all it's needed is a couple sets of belts and blade holders, and new skid saucers underneath, and I DID have to rebuild the breakaway bar once and a new overrun clutch hub twice, and one set of input gears ("cluster gears" as they call them-- those were pricy at about $700). Other than that, I've gone through probably 100 pounds of blades and replaced the little "transport strips" on the sides of the drums maybe twice... she needs a new curtain bad-- it looks like it's been shredded by shrapnel... (which is probably only too true).

Thing is, the Zweegers is getting kinda old-- I'd like to keep her for a 'backup machine' and get a newer model, and since drum mowers are hard to find (and I'm not sure that I'm crazy about the newer drum mowers, and usually they don't come over about 7.5 foot cut like mine) I'd like to move up to a 9.5 foot cut. Maybe even a caddy too at some point-- hitching is a pain when you're by yourself, and its hard to get my brother cornered to help me hitch up...

That's why I'm asking-- just to get ideas of how much "maintenance and parts issues" I can reasonably expect out of various makes and models, and if there's a clearly "better mousetrap" out there design-wise...

What have folk's experience been with the shear hubs?? Will they hold up to hard anthills or crawdad chimney impacts and stuff like that?? That's something new to me, because other than the breakaway, the Zweegers has no shear hubs or anything like that...

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Dill said:


> I don't have shear hubs, but I wish I did. A lot easier to swap one out than a whole cutter bar.


Have you busted a bar or stripped gears?? Are they that important?? Or is it more of a "designed to fail to keep you buying the darn things" type deal??

The reason I wonder is, when I was farming cotton, we used to run older IH pickers with cast-iron picker bars... NEVER broke one in all the years I picked cotton (grew up doing it from 12 on). Never even bent one as I recall, although the old man warned me to be careful, especially if some seeny beans got big on some field ends... Bought some newer pickers with ALUMINUM bars and those darn things would pop all the time... I ended up having to replace around a half-dozen a season, and even getting used ones from a picker guru running his own repair service and salvage yard out back wasn't cheap... things seemed to be MADE to fail-- inevitably they'd break just below the gearcase head bushing, just below the cam arm. Couldn't be fixed, only replaced. Granted the lighter bars allows the assembly to spin faster for higher ground speeds than the old machines were EVER capable of, but still... if the aluminum was probably just 1/16 of an inch thicker all the way around, they'd have held up...

I know it's sorta 'apples to oranges' but the principle of the thing is the same, basically... I'd just like reassurance from folks that have PRACTICAL experience running the things that they'll actually hold up... I've seen literature that had some shear hubs made out of sintered metal-- like those old "bronze BB" fuel filters, with all those little tiny grains/balls of brass pressed into a filter shape... Is that how most of them are?? That sort of design doesn't inspire much confidence... not for something experiencing high torque loads and high rotational velocity and vibration...

Just looking to hear folks experiences... good, bad, and ugly...

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mike10 said:


> In my experience the only time the NH shear hubs shear is when they need to. If you don't want them you can always put the regular hubs on. The shear hubs will definitely save you a huge amount of money if you ever encounter a foreign object.
> 
> If you are the kind of person who will go and help a friend or neighbor mow his crop, I would not go without the shear hubs. That situation is where I see the most shear hub failures because the neighbor forgot about that stump, well pipe, rolled up wire, sign post or in one case a grader blade.


I hear ya...

Used to do custom work... that's the first thing I'd ask about when consulting with someone about a potential job-- any well casings, house blocks or foundations, old house stoops/steps, machinery, or anything else I might hit out here?? Course you couldn't always count on a 100% accurate answer anyway... One time I saw an old V-8 short block in the grass right as my front tire passed it... hit the clutch and stood on the brakes and skidded to a stop right before it went into the blades...

That's one reason I quit cutting road hay around here anymore... Texas passed a bunch of laws years ago outlawing burning tires, and charging recycling fees on them, and for used motor oil and batteries... now ALL that stuff just gets tossed out on the roadside. Last road hay I cut was probably close to 10 years ago now, during a drought when I REALLY needed it, and that was enough. I'd be cutting and hear a loud buzzing and look back, and there'd be a TOILET laying in the windrow, or an old tire... cut a big old hubcap clean in two one time, and you'd hear the "ZING!" of beer bottles shattered into a billion tiny fragments by the mower hitting the underside of the steel top cover of the mower every few seconds... I'd be cutting roadside at 6mph and hear a loud "FOOM!" and look back, and there'd be a used motor oil filter shot out the back of the drum mower like a cannonball, tumbling down the side of the road at like 60 mph... One time one shot out and pinwheeled across the road at high speed-- man I was glad there wasn't a car coming or going by at that moment!

I unroll the bales down the hill in winter at Shiner for the cattle to eat (too much waste with rings) and there was so much paper litter and flattened tin cans... the baler picks those up easy-- the rake gets rid of the glass and the baler won't pick up unpopped bottles. I probably picked up $50 bucks worth of flattened out cans on that hill after it was over with.

After all that, I've pretty much given up on road hay-- plus they only shred once a year here (if that) and just spray crap on it the rest of the time, and we have huisache coming up everywhere in the road ditches now... not worth baling that crap up and spreading it around! We've gotten SO many 'suburbanites' out here they now consider this an "urban" county and you have to FIGHT them to be able to even cut road hay, so it's just not worth the effort.

Quit custom cutting after my Grandmother passed. We had a deal on the maintenance and parts and fuel and stuff and my Dad didn't want to continue with that, wanted me to pay for anything that went south on a custom job, instead of him buying all the parts and me doing all the repair labor... wasn't going there considering the rate of breakdowns on our older baler, especially, and the cost of mower parts... Plus, I'd have guys BEGGING me to come cut for them-- "I hire so-in-so but he's SO tied up he doesn't show up to cut it for a MONTH after it SHOULD have been cut, and then he cuts it and lets it lay on the ground a week or ten days before he comes and rakes and bales it all at once, and by then it's turned to cardboard... can you come cut it ON TIME??" "Sure" says I... "I have older equipment, takes me a little longer, but I can cut it when you call me... and I will rake it when it needs raking and bale it as soon as it hits the moisture target-- not let it lay flat for a week and then do it all at once..." (I rake at 50% moisture (wilted flat) which is usually 24 hours after cutting in good hot sunshine weather, and then bale usually 24 hours after that-- when I can't feel any moisture in a good "twist test" of the hay... I put up good, bright hay with a good color that smells like cured tobacco... some guys around here do fertilized bermuda, but cut it and let it lay flat in the scorching sun for a week, then come run the rake and bale right behind it-- turned yellow as a cardboard box and about as nutritious...)

OF course, old balers, even screwed up all the way to make the tightest bale possible, just can't make a bale ANYTHING NEAR as tight as a newer baler... they've made a LOT of strides in the technology since then. I adjusted my price accordingly-- fuel plus expenses and a decent (if not large) profit... I used to custom cut/rake/bale for $15 a roll, when everybody else was getting about $20... course this has been years ago already... part of the reason was, I realized that my older equipment wasn't making as "pretty" a bale as the new stuff was, and I could afford to charge less, not making payments on a new baler... Still, doing the best job I could (getting it cut, raked, and baled in a timely fashion) and even throwing in a "move it to the corner/end of the field for you as a courtesy" thing (no road transport-- just off the meadow so it can regrow properly without bales scattered everywhere on it-- the owner could stack it or haul it when he had time that way), I'd STILL have some guys griping "can't you make the bales tighter?" and all that. Kinda got sick of it... one reason I wasn't too upset about giving it up...

Later and thanks for your input!! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> All mowers can trace their roots to 2 brands. Gear drives are from Kuhn which introduced them in 68. Shaft drives are from Lely, which was introduced in the early 70s'. Patents usually run for 25 years, and at the end of that time is when you start seeing the variations.


Thank you! This is good to know...

So, what brands are shaft-type-- New Holland, Vermeer, Lely, any others??

Gear types would be Kuhn, Deere (green Kuhn), Krone, Vicon, ???

Do most folks stick with the "big brands" like Kuhn, Krone, Vermeer, New Holland, Deere, CIH, etc?? I see a lot of "off-brand" stuff out there, mostly Italian stuff I guess... "Fella, Sitrex, M&W, and a bunch of others..." Anybody run any of those and are they worth a darn?? Our New Holland dealer in Shiner sells MOSTLY Kuhns, both the new "top service" models and the new "old style" (tear the bar apart to service it) style... I don't think he's got a single New Holland mower on the lot... I also saw a big "Fella" mower out front by the new stuff last time, so I guess maybe he's carrying them too now?? Kinda leery of it though, "no name" brands... (course, nobody had ever heard of a "PZ Zweegers" when we bought it from him back in 89 or 90 either, but I can't complain...)

Really wanting to hear opinions of folks who've run different stuff... maintenance, parts availability and prices compared to other brands they have experience with, etc...

Later and thank you! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

ANewman said:


> The reason you have to fold the curtain for transport is sp the transport lock can engage. Its located on the curtain frame. When the curtain is down you can even see the lock latch post.


Ah, ok... it's been a few years since I ran it for him... basically ran stuff when he was MAJORLY shorthanded, to make a few extra bucks and help him out at the same time.

Seems like I might have forgot to fold the curtain one time until I had the bar up, but then realized my mistake before I raised the mower all the way and started driving-- put it back down, got off, folded the curtain, and then put bar up, picked it up, and hit the road... I remember thinking that part of it seemed kind of a pain...

My Zweegers could have had a cylinder added, but basically when you're done, you stop and let everything spin to a stop, back up a hair to take tension off the pin, pull a rope to release the arm that pulls the spring loaded pin out, and then pull forward cutting the wheels to the left... the mower will swing around straight back, and the pin will snap into place on its own. Then you grab the other rope and jerk it to pop the "transport lock" over and pick it up, and the lock will drop into place to lock out the balance springs, so it doesn't bounce. Pick the three point up all the way and you're good to go... reverse everything to unfold and go to work... never leave the seat...

Do other brands have to have the curtain folded and unfolded to go to work?? Not THAT big of a deal, but I'd be interested in knowing ahead of time... 

Later and thanks! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

cannonball said:


> .Have worn out three Kuhn 700 gen 2 and never replaced a cutter head bearing or any bearing in the cutter bar...did replace the bearings in the large pto pulley....I changed oil in gear box and cutter bar every 100 hours...usually everything else wore out and still no cutter head bearings gone out...mine was on a 2840 and a 401b.....had a new idea 5409 on 2840 and it had cutter head bearings replace the first cutting season....


Who makes the New Idea bars?? Gear type bar or shaft type bar??

How do you change oil?? How much does one hold?? The guy I was running for showed me how to check it (stand the bar up to transport position and take a level plug out) and I'm guessing that it's drained out a plug in the end of the bar and then refilled from the side?? Regular HD gear oil?? 85/140 or Hy-Tran or something else??

Interesting stuff... thanks! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Dill said:


> Just reading a new flyer from Kuhn today, they are bringing a bunch of drum mowers over to the states.


Interesting... what sizes??

One bad thing about drums is they ARE pretty darn heavy... I dunno if my 5610 could handle a 9.5 foot drum mower... especially a rear fold... (though IIRC they were kind of getting away from rear fold last time I was looking at newer drum mowers).

Are these the four drum models?? Used to have some books on those after Zweegers got bought out by Kverneland?? Or was it someone else... the newer four drum wider models were painted dark grey or black IIRC... can't recall who it was making them... I remember Zweegers got bought out...

At some point, if you've got a bunch of little drums spinning, might as well go with a disk mower that will at least lay the hay out all pretty much flat, instead of several 'mini-windrows' that multi-drum mowers would produce... that is the MAIN drawback of the drum mower-- sweeping everything into a windrow as you cut... I prefer it flat, really...

Later and thanks for the info! OL JR 

Just remembered something-- "PZ/Greenland" I think they were called after they got bought out...


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## mike10 (May 29, 2011)

There are advantages and disadvantages to the different styles of bars. The advantage of a gear on gear bar such as the Kuhn is they are strong. The disadvantage are leaks with the numerous orings, if you bend a knife you can cut right through the bar, if you have a failure you can kiss thousands of dollars down the drain, overfill the bar with oil and you can take it to the scrap yard. The Deere bar is a combination gear on gear bar with modular sections that can be removed. The problem with this bar and the Kuhn's is if there is a failure all the metal gets transferred to all the other gears and bearings in the cutterbar. If that happens it means a complete disassembly of the bar and replacement of the all the idler gears with their exposed bearings. I reused the idler gears one time in a NH which had the Kuhn bar and it lasted about 50 acres. I had cleaned and cleaned those bearings and lubricated them good before reassembly but it still failed. If an idler gear fails it can deform the cutterbar. I also did not like to inform a customer he was about to spend 5000.00 or more for a new bar.

The disadvantage of the modular bars is they are not as strong as the gear on gear bars, however with the shear hubs now in use they have practically eliminated module failures, at least with NH. Advantages of the modular bars is they are quick to tear down and repair, the damage is confined to one module and not the whole bar,


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mike10 said:


> There are advantages and disadvantages to the different styles of bars. The advantage of a gear on gear bar such as the Kuhn is they are strong. The disadvantage are leaks with the numerous orings, if you bend a knife you can cut right through the bar, if you have a failure you can kiss thousands of dollars down the drain, overfill the bar with oil and you can take it to the scrap yard. The Deere bar is a combination gear on gear bar with modular sections that can be removed. The problem with this bar and the Kuhn's is if there is a failure all the metal gets transferred to all the other gears and bearings in the cutterbar. If that happens it means a complete disassembly of the bar and replacement of the all the idler gears with their exposed bearings. I reused the idler gears one time in a NH which had the Kuhn bar and it lasted about 50 acres. I had cleaned and cleaned those bearings and lubricated them good before reassembly but it still failed. If an idler gear fails it can deform the cutterbar. I also did not like to inform a customer he was about to spend 5000.00 or more for a new bar.
> 
> The disadvantage of the modular bars is they are not as strong as the gear on gear bars, however with the shear hubs now in use they have practically eliminated module failures, at least with NH. Advantages of the modular bars is they are quick to tear down and repair, the damage is confined to one module and not the whole bar,


Thank you! This was EXACTLY the kind of stuff I was looking for!

Sounds like you've worked on quite a few... One thing that always worried me was all those idler gears turning in the bar type ones... I've seen more than a few used ones where you could turn the first turtle by about 1/3 of a turn before it would take all the "gear lash" (runout in railroad terms) slack out of the gears and get everything turning at the other end. That and the fact that, as you said, if one fails, the entire thing is circulating metal shavings and possibly gear teeth and stuff from one end of the bar to the other... a classical "chain reaction" type failure. I think I counted something like 23 gears with idler gears and stuff on one mower, which is why I went with the Zweegers originally-- six gears seems like it'd be a LOT more reliable (less failure points, statistically) than 23 gears all daisy-chained together.

Personally I'm leaning more and more towards the New Holland shaft-style mowers... they just seem to have fewer failure points. How do you mean "stronger"?? As in "the bar is more rigid" or the bolt-together units are weaker where they bolt together than an all-welded unitized box-bar would be, filled with idler gears as it is?? I'm not quite following. One thing that worries me is running the bars on inclines... I've read that the bearings and gears can starve of oil on the uphill end when cutting around contours and such... not a problem here, but at Shiner it's quite hilly, plus we have terraces on the place, making for some pretty sharp inclines in places. Something to think about.

I heard that the older New Hollands (old style Kuhn with the non-top service hub bars) were prone to wearing out pivot point bushings where the gearbox pivots on the mid-frame (between the gearbox and 3 point frame), and that would allow the bar to "angle back" and loosen up or throw the belts, and this bushing had to be replaced every so often. I'm wondering what sort of "gotchas" like this other people have experience with??

Thoughts, Experiences, ideas?? I'd love to hear them!

Thanks again! Great information and I REALLY appreciate it! OL JR


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## mike10 (May 29, 2011)

I think the gear on gear design can, to a point, take more of an impact than a modular non sheer hub bar without doing damage.

The disc mowers NH had with the Kuhn bars did have a tendency to wear the pivot areas after several years use. The bushings and pivot plates both wore so it was not just a case of replacing bushings.

If I were to buy a gear on gear bar, I would not buy one where the cutterbar is bolted together. They are not rigid enough and you have another seam that can leak oil.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Luke here's a little video from Kverneland, the company Kubota bought, shot in their welded cutterbar factory.


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## cannonball (Jun 23, 2012)

luke strawwalker said:


> Who makes the New Idea bars?? Gear type bar or shaft type bar??
> 
> How do you change oil?? How much does one hold?? The guy I was running for showed me how to check it (stand the bar up to transport position and take a level plug out) and I'm guessing that it's drained out a plug in the end of the bar and then refilled from the side?? Regular HD gear oil?? 85/140 or Hy-Tran or something else??
> 
> Interesting stuff... thanks! OL JR


Not sure who made New Idea, but they were shaft drive..It started out short shafts from one cutter head to the other and after the mower got a couple years on it the shafts got enough wear that they would let heads move around enough that blades would hit...I changed it to one long one, helped a lot....the Kuhn mower or Deere, have a plug down at the bottom of bar, when mower is in transport you pull both plugs and drain..I always bought the quart gear oil at Deere and it had the filler on it..would take and stick it in bottom and squeeze it up the bar, when bar is full put top plug in and then bottom plug...if it sits a while check the top and fill to full if low..you can always fill from top but it takes a while....the gear box has a check plug on side and fill on top....you drain while in transport mode, that will put check plug on bottom...this mower must be in mow position to check gear box oil.... not sure how much oil they take but all this will be in owners manual


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mike10 said:


> I think the gear on gear design can, to a point, take more of an impact than a modular non sheer hub bar without doing damage.
> 
> The disc mowers NH had with the Kuhn bars did have a tendency to wear the pivot areas after several years use. The bushings and pivot plates both wore so it was not just a case of replacing bushings.
> 
> If I were to buy a gear on gear bar, I would not buy one where the cutterbar is bolted together. They are not rigid enough and you have another seam that can leak oil.


The gear bar with bolt together "modules"... that's like the new Deere bars, right?? Yeah, I agree... that to me looks like the worst of both worlds-- daisy chained gears, common sump to circulate metal shavings or gear teeth if something goes wrong, and leak-prone (or leak-capable) bolt-together joints where the segments or modules bolt together... plus gear lash?? I guess the gear lash is established by the precise machining of the mating faces between the "modules" and the center-to-center distance between the idler gear bearing cups/bolts??

Watched some YouTubes today on the New Holland mowers, MowMax bars... those shear hubs look really easy to work with. Saw a video of a Kuhn "protectadrive" run at full cutting speed into a steel pipe hammered into the ground, with the curtain up... the shaft is designed to snap off and send the turtle flying out of the way... Looked pretty expensive to fix IMHO... The guy fixed it in the video, just run the bolts out, pop the bearing/housing and turtle gear out the top of the bar, and drop in a new one with a new hub and bolt it down... But I seem to remember reading in another thread recently someone complaining that Kuhn gets like $200 bucks for the bearing, housing, gear/shaft, and hub assembly, and doesn't sell the parts to rebuild the assembly?? Can't get the bearing elsewhere because it's a double-row ball bearing... I don't like that idea...

The only thing that bugged me on the video was that the turtles CAN hit after a NH shear hub goes... BUT, they said it's "designed" so that one turtle will bump the next one back into time, and showed slo-mo video to "prove" it... the NH hub is held down by a torque bolt and belleville (spring) washer pressing on splined washers to make a sort of "friction clutch" between the shaft and the hub to keep it spinning roughly the same speed as the rest of the turtles, from what they showed in the video... the splines in the hub keep everything in time... Looked pretty good from what I saw-- guy replaced the hub in like 5 minutes right in the field, WITHOUT opening up the bar (which, on a NH, would be "opening up a module" anyway I guess...

One thing I DID notice... in another video talking about the new MowMax bar modules, he said the OLD modules were designed to strip the teeth off the bevel gear spinning the disk, before they came out with the mow max shear hubs... Anybody know how often that happens?? I'd be curious to hear about real life experience with that... I'd suppose that's a "pull it and completely rebuild that module" deal, since I can't fathom putting it back together with sheared off teeth and metal in the housing...

I LOVED the video of the new "Mow Max 2" bars... looks WAY beefier, bigger disks, all that... course that's for bigger stuff like swathers, too...

How long have the MowMax bars been out?? Are the new ones all mowmax bars, or is that a 'special upgrade' over a 'standard' (old style) bar??

Interesting stuff for sure... Thanks for the information!

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Grateful11 said:


> Luke here's a little video from Kverneland, the company Kubota bought, shot in their welded cutterbar factory.


Thanks, great vids...

Been watching some YouTubes today of various cutters and balers... some really good ones from New Holland on the MowMax bars and stuff too...

Gotta love that new Deere 990 baler, too... (well, except that goofy curtain in the back instead of a tailgate!) Oh well... in some alternate universe maybe I could afford one of those... LOL

Later and thanks again! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

cannonball said:


> Not sure who made New Idea, but they were shaft drive..It started out short shafts from one cutter head to the other and after the mower got a couple years on it the shafts got enough wear that they would let heads move around enough that blades would hit...I changed it to one long one, helped a lot....the Kuhn mower or Deere, have a plug down at the bottom of bar, when mower is in transport you pull both plugs and drain..I always bought the quart gear oil at Deere and it had the filler on it..would take and stick it in bottom and squeeze it up the bar, when bar is full put top plug in and then bottom plug...if it sits a while check the top and fill to full if low..you can always fill from top but it takes a while....the gear box has a check plug on side and fill on top....you drain while in transport mode, that will put check plug on bottom...this mower must be in mow position to check gear box oil.... not sure how much oil they take but all this will be in owners manual


Ok, thanks for the info...

So the New Ideas used HEX stub shafts between modules, not the splined ones like NH?? Interesting. The hex ones would wear enough to let parts start hitting after awhile then?? Replacing it with a full-length hex shaft fixed it though?? How hard was it to stab a shaft that long through all those modules??

Thanks for the info on the Kuhn bar oil/fill/check stuff... Not quite getting how you fill a bar from the bottom, but... wouldn't be the first time I missed something obvious...

That's sort of my motto though-- "if all else fails, READ THE MANUAL!"... LOL Seriously, I've known a LOT of guys who could have solved 95% of their problems SO quick and easy just be reading the flippin' manual at least ONCE in the machine's lifetime!! The guy I used to run the Kuhn for-- he couldn't run it over 5 mph (5th gear on a 5610S at rated PTO RPM) because "the belts will slip". I inspected the machine (as I always do before going to work using ANYTHING) and found the belt tension spring seemed to be adjusted so the spring compression washer was about an inch or two above the "depth stop" tube (the tube the spring sits in, which should be adjusted so the washer is flush with it IIRC-- I DID talk him into letting me read the manual, which he did have in the truck, so we could figure out how to check the oil in it... but he never thought about checking the belt tension!) As it turns out, OF COURSE the belts will slip if the thing is only tightened up about HALFWAY! I tightened the belt compression spring to the right depth and I could cut ANYTHING at 6mph (6th gear on the 5610S at rated PTO RPM) without any problems whatsoever... it just walked off with it, didn't even know it was back there!

Later and thanks again! OL JR


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## rajela (Feb 15, 2014)

What did he say??????


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Luke, I'm going to give you my dimes worth. Any of the major makers mowers will serve your purpose. If you are worried about bar failure and shear hubs, what are you mowing? Would a sickle bar better serve you in a mine field? Since the day we bought our first disc mower in 1992 all we have run is a Krone. and only 2 of them. First one a 281 was trashed by dads hired man, let a bearing go out and he kept on a trucking. With my dying breath, I will still claim the are the best. Yes I've hit rocks to the tune of 650.00 for a cab glass, but just a change of two blades on the mower. Any of them will fail if abused and not taken care of and not given proper service. Most people treat them as a disposiable commodity, which is why buying a used one is a great risk at best. You have to remember most films you see a filmed in Europe where their hay ground is farmed and smooth as a baby's backside. Just because the pamphlet says you can mow at 20 MPH don't mean you have too. My current mower a 283 is 18 years old and still has a lot of life. I would like to see all the hay it has mowed piled up, but I'm going to run it for 1 maybe 2 more years, Lord willing, then maybe a ECR-360!


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Luke you might want to watch Krone's video on how their cutter protection works. Theirs shears a pin and the Turtle moves upward out of the way of other Turtles. It shows this at about 3 minutes into the video. We liked the Krone mowers but nearby dealers don't want to sell them, they'll sell their Tedders but don't want to talk about their mowers. Personally I think their shade of green scares the heck out of that other shade of green.


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## mike10 (May 29, 2011)

As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. The ideal solution is not hit anything. I am not to keen on having a disc come off when you hit something, all I can see is the disc trying to go through the conditioner. The roll pin idea is new to me and I am sure it works when the machine is new but what is going to keep the hub from seizing to the shaft after years in the corrosive environment of hay making. I also do not like the shaft spinning inside the unlubricated hub, after all the fit between the shaft and hub must be tight to prevent wobble or premature roll pin failure. One thing I was looking for is how do you remove the old sheared roll pin.

Luke, the bars I was referring to were the ones where the top half is bolted to the lower half. I don't think the JD bar would have a problem except there are orings between each of the segments, another potential leak.


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## rajela (Feb 15, 2014)

Vermeer has a good looking shear hub design and I like there mowers also. No I don't have a vermeer but have some friends that do.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Mike you may be correct on the seizing problem after years of use but I don't think the Turtle is suppose to come off it only moves up and out if the way, at least in theory anyway. Maybe Krone.1 could elaborate on this or someone that's actually had experience with a Krone shearing a pin. I'm going to make an assumption and say the pin has to be driven out with a pin punch.

So far we're happy with our new NH H7220. Everyone misses the the swivel hitch of the Kuhn but it's not that bad. Strange that a larger mower, the NH, seems to take less power to pull than the smaller Kuhn we had.


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## mike10 (May 29, 2011)

Grateful11 said:


> Mike you may be correct on the seizing problem after years of use but I don't think the Turtle is suppose to come off it only moves up and out if the way, at least in theory anyway. Maybe Krone.1 could elaborate on this or someone that's actually had experience with a Krone shearing a pin. I'm going to make an assumption and say the pin has to be driven out with a pin punch.
> 
> So far we're happy with our new NH H7220. Everyone misses the the swivel hitch of the Kuhn but it's not that bad. Strange that a larger mower, the NH, seems to take less power to pull than the smaller Kuhn we had.


I know when I post I am sometimes as clear as mud. I was referring to the Kuhn and JD mowers and the discs coming off. I am not familiar with either and I could be wrong or they could have changed the design by now. I know at one time the Deere did shed it disc when it hit a foreign object and the mention in this thread about Kuhn doing the same thing led me to my statement.


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

Your part about a disc coming off flowed right into the roll pin shearing off so I assumed you we're referring to the Krone system, my bad.

Did you leave out the word "not" clear as mud?


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

I think that I read somewhere that Vermeer bought into Lely or completely, don't see many Lelys' anymore here just used ones. You don't have to fold the curtain at all on Krone, just to service. As far a the disc flying off that would be a crap-house lawyers dream wouldn't it?


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## Grateful11 (Apr 5, 2009)

TJH said:


> I think that I read somewhere that Vermeer bought into Lely or completely, don't see many Lelys' anymore here just used ones. You don't have to fold the curtain at all on Krone, just to service. As far a the disc flying off that would be a crap-house lawyers dream wouldn't it?


This article is 10 years old but there seems to a connection:

http://deltafarmpress.com/lely-vermeer-form-strategic-alliance


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> Luke, I'm going to give you my dimes worth. Any of the major makers mowers will serve your purpose. If you are worried about bar failure and shear hubs, what are you mowing? Would a sickle bar better serve you in a mine field? Since the day we bought our first disc mower in 1992 all we have run is a Krone. and only 2 of them. First one a 281 was trashed by dads hired man, let a bearing go out and he kept on a trucking. With my dying breath, I will still claim the are the best. Yes I've hit rocks to the tune of 650.00 for a cab glass, but just a change of two blades on the mower. Any of them will fail if abused and not taken care of and not given proper service. Most people treat them as a disposiable commodity, which is why buying a used one is a great risk at best. You have to remember most films you see a filmed in Europe where their hay ground is farmed and smooth as a baby's backside. Just because the pamphlet says you can mow at 20 MPH don't mean you have too. My current mower a 283 is 18 years old and still has a lot of life. I would like to see all the hay it has mowed piled up, but I'm going to run it for 1 maybe 2 more years, Lord willing, then maybe a ECR-360!


Thanks for the info... I've looked at Krone and they look pretty good... only local Deere dealer around here carries them though. Not sure if he's really carrying them to sell, or just to "hold the dealership" on it and keep someone else from competing with him. I went by his lot the other day-- he USED to have a couple Krone mounted mowers around and a couple Deere (green Kuhns) but all the seemed to have on the lot was a pull-type Krone... (could be a deal there if he's looking to move it-- mostly mounted mowers in our part of the world).

I guess maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I just worry about stuff like that, because when stuff (inevitably) breaks, I never hear the end of it... That, and I've seen enough "engineered failures" in new stuff to make me nervous... That's why I asked about the shear hubs and durability and stuff... I service stuff pretty darn well and try to keep it in good shape, but you know how crap happens...

We dropped the sickle bars 25 years ago when the anthills got so bad around here you spent more time cleaning the cutterbar than cutting. Couldn't PAY me enough to go back to a sicklebar machine... we're on gumbo clay and when you hit an anthill, your picking clods of mud out of the cutterbar with a pocketknife, while 10,000 PO'd ants scurry up to your armpits as fast as they can go, stinging the crap out of you in the process... If we have a wet year, we can end up with crawdad chimneys all over a field-- those can cause grief with a sickle too, and when they dry out and the drum mower hits them and saws them off, they tend to explode like a grenade, with little balls of hard mud flying everywhere, or else the whole thing gets shot out the back like a cannon shell...

That's GOTTA be kinda hard on things... the drum mower can handle it (never been a problem) but when I get a new (or newer) mower, that's something that will worry me... how shear hubs will stand up to that, or gears, geartrains, bars, unit modules, cross-shafts, whatever... that's why I'm asking.

I hear ya on the cutting in road gear stuff... I don't do that anyway. I'm running a 5610S New Holland and will be for the foreseeable future, and cut everything in 6th gear at 1900, which is 540 on the PTO, which is 6mph ground speed. Fast enough for me. Basically rake and bale at the same speed too. Only time I've had to slow down to 5th gear and 5mph was when I was custom baling for a neighbor and he had fields sowed up in bahia and smutgrass, which if you're not familiar with it, is a tight bunchgrass that is very wiry and will form an incredibly dense hard to cut crown up to about 6-8 inches in diameter. The crowns CAN get even larger, up to around a foot, but usually anything over 6-8 inches the get "hollow" and are no harder, maybe even easier, to cut. That stuff and bahia both cut like steel and it's h3ll on blades... I started the job with new blades and by lunch had to reverse them, and by that evening I had to drop a gear because the mower couldn't keep up...

We're mainly bermuda and mixed prairie hay, dallisgrass and johnsongrass and natives mixed in, a little bahia here and there (but I HATE the stuff-- absolutely worthless IMHO, except for grazing) and I'm looking at putting in a field of Medio or Gordo Old World Bluestem. Had a field of bluestem I cut for a guy just to keep his acreage clean and got the hay for free (til someone decided to rent it out from under me LOL) and that stuff was NICE...

I know a lot of guys just treat a mower like expendable stuff and trade them off after a few years and ragging them out, but I don't consider a GOOD one a "minor purchase". Since all my experience base is with the Zweegers drum mower and those cursed sickle machines from my teenage years, That's why I'm asking about disk mowers-- I believe real strongly in learning all you can about stuff in advance...

later and thanks for the information! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Grateful11 said:


> Luke you might want to watch Krone's video on how their cutter protection works. Theirs shears a pin and the Turtle moves upward out of the way of other Turtles. It shows this at about 3 minutes into the video. We liked the Krone mowers but nearby dealers don't want to sell them, they'll sell their Tedders but don't want to talk about their mowers. Personally I think their shade of green scares the heck out of that other shade of green.


Thanks! Great vid... Interesting stuff for sure.

Any experience with the roll-pin durability?? I take it one just takes the turtle off, spins the hub back down on the threaded "bendix" (like an old-time starter), and hammers in a new pin?? Interesting stuff for sure... that design is elegant-- get the out-of-time turtle up and out of the way of the rest of the turtles...

I was looking at some Vicon vids and seems they use a shear key... anybody have any experience with those in terms of durability and ease of repair??

Later and thank you! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mike10 said:


> As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. The ideal solution is not hit anything. I am not to keen on having a disc come off when you hit something, all I can see is the disc trying to go through the conditioner. The roll pin idea is new to me and I am sure it works when the machine is new but what is going to keep the hub from seizing to the shaft after years in the corrosive environment of hay making. I also do not like the shaft spinning inside the unlubricated hub, after all the fit between the shaft and hub must be tight to prevent wobble or premature roll pin failure. One thing I was looking for is how do you remove the old sheared roll pin.
> 
> Luke, the bars I was referring to were the ones where the top half is bolted to the lower half. I don't think the JD bar would have a problem except there are orings between each of the segments, another potential leak.


Oh, okay... the top and bottom half-bars bolted together-- is that like the old style "tear the bar apart to service it" Kuhns and the old New Holland Kuhn-built mowers (462 IIRC?? The guy I ran the new Kuhn for had one of those junked out that he used to use before he bought the new Kuhn-- evidently his son ran it into an electric pole guy wire and the outer turtle didn't want to turn after that for some reason 

Do those use a really big O-ring around the bolted together gearbox joint (two halves of the bar) or what?? Can't see how they'd seal otherwise...

I agree that I like as few "connections" as possible when it comes to oil seals and stuff...

Later and thanks! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mike10 said:


> I know when I post I am sometimes as clear as mud. I was referring to the Kuhn and JD mowers and the discs coming off. I am not familiar with either and I could be wrong or they could have changed the design by now. I know at one time the Deere did shed it disc when it hit a foreign object and the mention in this thread about Kuhn doing the same thing led me to my statement.


I saw this and it made me scratch my head...






Sorry don't know how to embed videos on here... just have to click the link...

I guess it protects the bar well, but looks like an AWFULLY expensive way to do it! Wouldn't want to break any of those! Plus, it's all well and good to crack open a brand new cutterbar that's mowed 6 feet of grass, but after the things coated in mud, dust, filth, etc... do you REALLY want to crack open the gearcase to replace a hub in the field, or are you gonna run the machine home and pressure wash that part of the bar at least to keep the filth and grit out of the gearcase??

Now, this one makes a LOT more sense to me... still a little overly complicated next to shearing off a simple to replace roll pin or key (Krone or Vicon) but at least it's not pitching a high-velocity rotating turtle out from under the machine!






At least by first appearances I definitely like the Kuhn system the least!

Later! OL JR 

PS... well ain't that neat-- automatic embedding! Over on the rocketry forum you have to get html tags with a special button in the posting box and then shorten up your link to only what's left after the "v=" bit to embed vids... cool!


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Luke, if you have rocks that big in your fields so you really be mowing it at all with a disc mower? Really I would be more worried about the rock sending me to the Promised Land that a shear hub., which even though I have no experience with takes a bigger impact than you realize to shear, don't think an ant hill would do. I mow at 3 inches and the tilt of the bar makes most things go over it. The only guys I know that have trashed one hit a well casing or something of that order. if you want to look at a good drum mower look at Reese from Australia, US distributor tigercoinc.com.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> Luke, if you have rocks that big in your fields so you really be mowing it at all with a disc mower? Really I would be more worried about the rock sending me to the Promised Land that a shear hub., which even though I have no experience with takes a bigger impact than you realize to shear, don't think an ant hill would do. I mow at 3 inches and the tilt of the bar makes most things go over it. The only guys I know that have trashed one hit a well casing or something of that order. if you want to look at a good drum mower look at Reese from Australia, US distributor tigercoinc.com.


Oh, no, we don't have any rocks on this farm... we're on the coastal plains SW of Houston-- nothing but gumbo clay and a few sandy spots as far as the eye can see... heck you don't even hit gravel digging a hole until you get down around 20 feet, and then it's pea gravel and first water sand... Heck bedrock here is down around 300 feet or so IIRC... this was all ocean bottom at one time or other... Shiner, has some sandstone rocks here and there, but we've been picking them up as much as possible and using them to shore up the spillway out of the farm ponds and stuff...

I don't mind a shear hub going if one stumbles upon an old well casing or something like that... FAR better than taking out the bar... just didn't want one snapping off if I hit the odd seeny-bean (which can get up to an inch or two in diameter like a small tree, even if they're only 5-6 feet tall) or anthill that's grown through with bermudagrass roots and gotten hard, or something like that. That could get expensive.

From a durability standpoint, what have folks been getting out of various makes?? What's the longest you've seen one run before it's just too far gone to fix?? How about cost of ownership-- ie repair costs?? What brands are longest lived and lowest maintenance, and which are cheapest maintenance in your experience and observations?? Which are easiest to fix when something (inevitably) does happen??

Thanks for mentioning the Reese mowers... my Shiner dealer carried them for awhile back in the early 90's, but cut them loose. Guess there wasn't much demand. I don't know of ANY dealers for them in this part of the world. Last time I looked into them, the prices were pretty astronomical... I was frankly shocked-- they ARE much simpler in construction than a disk mower but the cost was actually the same or even higher than a similar-sized disk mower... I saw the pull-type conditioning models up at the Lubbock Farm Show years ago and they looked really good, but I didn't need one at the time and they were out of my price range anyway... I looked up prices on Reese mowers a year or two ago and was really badly surprised...

I figure if I'm gonna spend about the same money on a new cutter, better to have one with local dealer support, instead of having to do everything over the phone or internet five states away...

Later and thanks for your information! OL JR


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Luke, I believe that you are over thinking this. Any of the major brands will serve your purpose. Look at what the majority of the guys in your area are using a go with whatever tickles your fancy. If some brand was not holding up they wouldn't be selling. Any piece of farm machinery that breaks is not going to be cheap to fix. As far a cost of ownership is concerned it's all high. I kinda think outside the box, for example I don't look at cost per acre, or bale, but rather how much time it is actually doing what it was bought to do. For example, for town people that work 8 to 5 a working year is 2,080 hours per year. If you keep track of the time that PTO shaft is spinning or that rake is raking, I think you will be amazed at how little that piece of equipment is in actual use. Of course that is not really a fair comparison because you have to have it to get the job done. The point of it all is no matter what it is the cost of ownership is HIGH. As you have already found out I'm a Krone fan. When I cut the last swipe of the year it's brought to the house and I let the bar down to cool off then it gets a coat of primer on the bottom to cover bare metal before I ever unhook it. When time allows I pull all the disc and scrape all the crap out of the disc and flip the blades and it gets a coat of primer. every other year I swap the disc to rotate in the opposite direction to deep wear even. It sounds like a lot, but it really doesn't take all that much time, and the reason it has lasted me 16 years. In that time I've spent about $550.00 on it, 325.00 for a cylinder kit and 225.00 for a new curtain. The point of all this as was stated before any of the major brands are tougher that you think. Anything that causes a shear pin to break is a heck of an impact, and I don't believe an anthill or a small stone is going to do it.


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## Hayman51 (May 8, 2014)

I am new to this forum thing. I was reading through a few different threads and decided I would ask a question of my own. I am thinking about getting a KMC caddie for my Kuhn GMD 700 gii HD disc mower and I am trying to determine if it's safe to pull down the road. I am in southwest Georgia and nobody around here that I know of runs their mowers on caddies but I like the idea of being able to hook it up easy. Also I like the way a trailed mower runs but I don't like the extra price of one. It seems to me that it would be cheaper in the long run to buy a new 3pt mower for a caddy that you already own than have to buy a whole new trailed mower. I have about 100 acres of my own hay that I cut 4 times a year that is spread out over about a 20 mile radius and a good bit of custom work between cutting my own. It would be nice to be able to pull my mower with my truck. I know that KMC makes a weight that goes on the off side of the caddy for stability and I will definitely get one because the last thing I want is my brand new $10k mower in to turn over in the ditch. Thanks for any information.


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

I've pulled my Vermeer M7030 with a caddy 100's of miles on public roads with both my tractor to cut hay fields plus with my pickup when I purchased it used from another farmer.There's no way I'd want a operate a disc mower on the tractors 3 pt hitch.


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

I don't think you will need the extra weight, as the left hand side already has extra weight inside the frame to compensate for when the mower is in working position. As Tx Jim said it will pull like a dream both infield and on the road. You said nobody in your neck of the woods has one, nobody in my neck of the woods doesn't have one. You and I think alike on it being cheaper to trade mowers for the caddy than trade a trailed one and repurchase all that frame metal again. BTW welcome to Hay Talk.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> Luke, I believe that you are over thinking this. Any of the major brands will serve your purpose. Look at what the majority of the guys in your area are using a go with whatever tickles your fancy. If some brand was not holding up they wouldn't be selling. Any piece of farm machinery that breaks is not going to be cheap to fix. As far a cost of ownership is concerned it's all high. I kinda think outside the box, for example I don't look at cost per acre, or bale, but rather how much time it is actually doing what it was bought to do. For example, for town people that work 8 to 5 a working year is 2,080 hours per year. If you keep track of the time that PTO shaft is spinning or that rake is raking, I think you will be amazed at how little that piece of equipment is in actual use. Of course that is not really a fair comparison because you have to have it to get the job done. The point of it all is no matter what it is the cost of ownership is HIGH. As you have already found out I'm a Krone fan. When I cut the last swipe of the year it's brought to the house and I let the bar down to cool off then it gets a coat of primer on the bottom to cover bare metal before I ever unhook it. When time allows I pull all the disc and scrape all the crap out of the disc and flip the blades and it gets a coat of primer. every other year I swap the disc to rotate in the opposite direction to deep wear even. It sounds like a lot, but it really doesn't take all that much time, and the reason it has lasted me 16 years. In that time I've spent about $550.00 on it, 325.00 for a cylinder kit and 225.00 for a new curtain. The point of all this as was stated before any of the major brands are tougher that you think. Anything that causes a shear pin to break is a heck of an impact, and I don't believe an anthill or a small stone is going to do it.


Thanks! I appreciate it!

Perhaps you're right... I might be "overthinking it"... I just like to weigh the options BEFORE pulling the trigger. Around here, probably 2/3 of the machines out there are Kuhn. I have some experience with the Kuhn and it seemed to be a very good machine. I'm not looking at getting anything right away, so I have some time for more research. I just really want to get folk's opinions-- what they like, what they don't like... what's worked well for them, what hasn't. Things that they never thought about when they bought it that ended up being the "best thing since sliced bread" and was just the best feature they've ever seen, as well as stuff that proved to be THE biggest pain in the butt of any machine they've ever owned... Things like that... The little things that make life easier... AND the things that proved to be a total maintenance nightmare...

I think the conversation has become fixated on strictly the shear hub/repair issue... Now I'd like to know more about what people really think about their particular machine, especially compared to ones they might have experience with or owned and operated before...

Another interesting topic would be, "what about the 'off-brand' machines, the Italian machines other than the main "big brand" machines like the New Hollands, Kuhns, Krones, Vermeer's, etc... What about the "Fellas" and "Sitrex's" and "Vicons" and "Kvernelands", "IMA's" and "M&W's" and any other brands that I can't recall at the moment...

I'd love to hear experiences and input on those too...

How about new versus used??

Later and thanks again! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Hayman51 said:


> I am new to this forum thing. I was reading through a few different threads and decided I would ask a question of my own. I am thinking about getting a KMC caddie for my Kuhn GMD 700 gii HD disc mower and I am trying to determine if it's safe to pull down the road. I am in southwest Georgia and nobody around here that I know of runs their mowers on caddies but I like the idea of being able to hook it up easy. Also I like the way a trailed mower runs but I don't like the extra price of one. It seems to me that it would be cheaper in the long run to buy a new 3pt mower for a caddy that you already own than have to buy a whole new trailed mower. I have about 100 acres of my own hay that I cut 4 times a year that is spread out over about a 20 mile radius and a good bit of custom work between cutting my own. It would be nice to be able to pull my mower with my truck. I know that KMC makes a weight that goes on the off side of the caddy for stability and I will definitely get one because the last thing I want is my brand new $10k mower in to turn over in the ditch. Thanks for any information.


This is a great question too! Thanks for asking it!

I hope we get some really good information with folks with experience with them. I saw a pretty good (from my first estimation) used mower on a caddy at a nearby dealer...

I'm not getting any younger myself and help is increasingly hard to find-- it's mostly just me and my brother and he's working most of the time, and when he's not, he's usually at the inlaws or car shows or whatever-- doing his thing... I can deal with hitching now, but in a few years it may well be a different story... Lets just say I don't see things getting any easier over time...

So, lets hear it from guys who've run caddies and their experiences... brands, prices, construction, experience versus pull type mowers if applicable, etc...

Thanks again! OL JR


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Hayman51 said:


> I am new to this forum thing. I was reading through a few different threads and decided I would ask a question of my own. I am thinking about getting a KMC caddie for my Kuhn GMD 700 gii HD disc mower and I am trying to determine if it's safe to pull down the road. I am in southwest Georgia and nobody around here that I know of runs their mowers on caddies but I like the idea of being able to hook it up easy. Also I like the way a trailed mower runs but I don't like the extra price of one. It seems to me that it would be cheaper in the long run to buy a new 3pt mower for a caddy that you already own than have to buy a whole new trailed mower. I have about 100 acres of my own hay that I cut 4 times a year that is spread out over about a 20 mile radius and a good bit of custom work between cutting my own. It would be nice to be able to pull my mower with my truck. I know that KMC makes a weight that goes on the off side of the caddy for stability and I will definitely get one because the last thing I want is my brand new $10k mower in to turn over in the ditch. Thanks for any information.


Hayman, where the heck u at in southwest ga.....I hardly ever see one running without a caddy! You'll need the 4750 KMC (could be 4760) they only make two, one with and one without hydro lift, with a kuhn, you'll need the hydro lift....thnk they're around 3.2k....fantastic platforms, turns are easier, hook ups are easier, disconnects are easier and getting down the road is no problem. The 700 will not need counter balancing....like tjh said, they have weight (I think concrete) In the opposite side of the caddy, that baby ain't tipping at all with a 700....you'll wish you had gotten it years ago!


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

luke strawwalker

If you put your cutter on a caddy you won't regret it.


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Here caddys are mainly from stoney point machine. those that have the staggered wheel design say they like the mower being closer to the tractor. The Stoney Point caddy is a inline wheel and the one I have. As Devildawg said you'll wonder why you didn't get it years ago, I did. It's so much easier all the way around; hookup, operation in the field and transport, your tractor will not shift and sway with ever bump and feature in the field and the noise will be less. As for buying a used one, unless it's been wrecked there's not much to go wrong. Four bearings (including wheel) and two tires, the rest is just metal which may require a little paint now and then. Luke if you find a good used mower that you are interested in ask the dealer for the phone number of the person that traded it in. If they won't give it to you walk away. If they do call them up and ask why they traded it, Most will tell you, those that hem-ha you will be able to tell in the way they answer, but in my experience most will be honest. If it looks like it has been to hell and back it more that likely has, some trade for tax purposes or just want to spend some money especially if they look to be in good shape, again you be the judge. None of my equipment has been bought new. When I start looking for something it may take me 2 to 3 years to find it, then one day I just come across it. My NH 650 was bought at a dealer auction when JD shut them down, local dealer at the time 2000 was asking 12 to 14k and I got mine for 7k. My 283 krone was bought from a dealer that has carried Krone for years and I trust them they have Menonite service tecs and they are good and will tell you all about the machine, payed 4500 16 years ago, wheel rake from a retiring farmer 25 years ago 2500 and all are still in use. All it takes is a little determination and a little work and you can find some good stuff worth the money, and then just take care of it.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> Here caddys are mainly from stoney point machine. those that have the staggered wheel design say they like the mower being closer to the tractor. The Stoney Point caddy is a inline wheel and the one I have. As Devildawg said you'll wonder why you didn't get it years ago, I did. It's so much easier all the way around; hookup, operation in the field and transport, your tractor will not shift and sway with ever bump and feature in the field and the noise will be less. As for buying a used one, unless it's been wrecked there's not much to go wrong. Four bearings (including wheel) and two tires, the rest is just metal which may require a little paint now and then. Luke if you find a good used mower that you are interested in ask the dealer for the phone number of the person that traded it in. If they won't give it to you walk away. If they do call them up and ask why they traded it, Most will tell you, those that hem-ha you will be able to tell in the way they answer, but in my experience most will be honest. If it looks like it has been to hell and back it more that likely has, some trade for tax purposes or just want to spend some money especially if they look to be in good shape, again you be the judge. None of my equipment has been bought new. When I start looking for something it may take me 2 to 3 years to find it, then one day I just come across it. My NH 650 was bought at a dealer auction when JD shut them down, local dealer at the time 2000 was asking 12 to 14k and I got mine for 7k. My 283 krone was bought from a dealer that has carried Krone for years and I trust them they have Menonite service tecs and they are good and will tell you all about the machine, payed 4500 16 years ago, wheel rake from a retiring farmer 25 years ago 2500 and all are still in use. All it takes is a little determination and a little work and you can find some good stuff worth the money, and then just take care of it.
> 
> That's good advice... Thanks...
> 
> ...


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Just remember this, for every mfg except vicon, 6 disc=8ft, 7 disc=9ft, and 8 disc=10ft. Each will have a difference on how many inches follow. The 9 and 10ft Vicons will each have 8 disc, the 10 footer the disc are larger in diameter. Have fun and good hunting!


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

TJH said:


> Just remember this, for every mfg except vicon, 6 disc=8ft, 7 disc=9ft, and 8 disc=10ft. Each will have a difference on how many inches follow. The 9 and 10ft Vicons will each have 8 disc, the 10 footer the disc are larger in diameter. Have fun and good hunting!


Thanks for that... Good to know... I appreciate it... 
Later! OL JR


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