# JD 337 square baler problems



## memory (May 29, 2013)

We have a JD 337 square baler, not sure of the age, that is giving us all kinds of trouble in making consistent bales. We will get banana shaped bales which don't want to stay tied and the bales are not consistent in length. This doesn't happen every other bale but it happens pretty frequently. We have been dealing with this the past couple of years. Basically the whole back end has been rebuilt.

One thing I have noticed is the bale tension springs are even but one side is easier to turn then the other side. Are the springs supposed to be even? We may tighten the side that comes out longer and see what happens. We also have the chute lined with that plastic stuff, called bale skis. Even if we solve the banana shaped bales, what is causing the different length bales.

I have been doing some reading on the net and it seems most people will say the amount of hay going into the baler is most likely the problem. I am not so sure. We just baled some rye and on the double windrow, which is pretty good sized, the bales are still uneven in length and banana shaped. I am not sure if it is a mechanical problem or something else but it is driving us crazy. We sell alot of hay and straw and these type of bales are hard to stack in the barn.

We are almost to the point of buying a different baler. Are JD balers notorious for this or is there something wrong somewhere? I have always heard that New Holland makes the best bale.


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## urednecku (Oct 18, 2010)

I have a 336. I don't have any problems with bananas, but have have also wondered what to do about the length of bales varying ~3-4" or so.


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## t becker (May 29, 2013)

Bale length can be affected by the size of wads going into chamber, if it trips and then a 3 inch wad versus a 1 inch wad the bales will vary. Also check to make sure that the nut on the star wheel shaft is tight, the star wheel has teeth on it , the length adjusting trip arm has teeth to match the star wheel teeth that raises it up to trip knoters, are they in good shape or worn? When the knotter trips and comes around and pushes the trip arm back is it dropping all the way to the stop or stopping at random spots along the way? Had one that the arm was bolted together wrong and so the trip arm wasn't straight up and down and would stop where it felt like. A long light spring can help pull it all the way down if it's slow getting down. Screen door spring. Is the bushing in the front of the trip arm in good shape? Is the knotter brake set up right and have enough tension and not to much. These are where I'd start and then I might think of some more. I buy and sell balers and like to try and bale with them in the mean time.


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## t becker (May 29, 2013)

Banana bales happen when a different amount of hay is consecutively added on different sides of the bale. On a side winder if the bale is arching away from windrows and toward baled rows, the hay wads aren't getting all the way to the back of chamber. Check for wear on the chinaman, and maybe the throw of the chinaman into chamber. Measure the flighting height on the auger and how about bushing wear in the auger bushings. Adding flighting and tipping it toward the chamber will make it feed more aggressively.

Also make sure the bale wedges are in good shape in the bale chamber. These are the tin wedges on sides of chamber that have 2 bolts to hold them in. You can play with these and add or subtract on either side to make a tighter bale and also to take out curl. You can also make some out of angle iron. Does your baler have the adjustable side doors down the chute past the knotters. Try adding more resistance on the side that is longer as this may help push the hay to the side thats light on hay.

My centerline adds hay from the bottom and in light hay rows you can get a U or full circle bale.


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## memory (May 29, 2013)

t becker said:


> Bale length can be affected by the size of wads going into chamber, if it trips and then a 3 inch wad versus a 1 inch wad the bales will vary. Also check to make sure that the nut on the star wheel shaft is tight, the star wheel has teeth on it , the length adjusting trip arm has teeth to match the star wheel teeth that raises it up to trip knoters, are they in good shape or worn? When the knotter trips and comes around and pushes the trip arm back is it dropping all the way to the stop or stopping at random spots along the way? Had one that the arm was bolted together wrong and so the trip arm wasn't straight up and down and would stop where it felt like. A long light spring can help pull it all the way down if it's slow getting down. Screen door spring. Is the bushing in the front of the trip arm in good shape? Is the knotter brake set up right and have enough tension and not to much. These are where I'd start and then I might think of some more. I buy and sell balers and like to try and bale with them in the mean time.


The teeth are in good shape, it was replaced just last year. Yes the arm is dropping all the way. I will have to check that bushing and the knotter brake. Honestly I don't think there is anything mechanical wrong since we just had everything rebuilt in the last year. Although I suppose something could be setup wrong.



t becker said:


> Banana bales happen when a different amount of hay is consecutively added on different sides of the bale. On a side winder if the bale is arching away from windrows and toward baled rows, the hay wads aren't getting all the way to the back of chamber. Check for wear on the chinaman, and maybe the throw of the chinaman into chamber. Measure the flighting height on the auger and how about bushing wear in the auger bushings. Adding flighting and tipping it toward the chamber will make it feed more aggressively.
> 
> Also make sure the bale wedges are in good shape in the bale chamber. These are the tin wedges on sides of chamber that have 2 bolts to hold them in. You can play with these and add or subtract on either side to make a tighter bale and also to take out curl. You can also make some out of angle iron. Does your baler have the adjustable side doors down the chute past the knotters. Try adding more resistance on the side that is longer as this may help push the hay to the side thats light on hay.
> 
> My centerline adds hay from the bottom and in light hay rows you can get a U or full circle bale.


What do you mean by chinaman? I am sure the auger has wore out flighting compared to a new one. Will making it feed more aggressive make the bales more even? When you say wedges, I assume you are talking about the pieces that keep the bale from moving backwards. If so, we just had the chamber lined with Bale Skiis which have those built in and the bale does not mover backwards. I am not sure if ours has the adjustable side doors, I will have to check that out. I am thinking it doesn't.

One thing that is odd is that the side that is usually loose is the side closest to the auger. In the next day or two, we have a bunch of hay to bale. Hopefully we can get something figured out on this.

I appreciate the help.


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## Josh in WNY (Sep 7, 2010)

I think what Becker was calling the "chinaman" is the packing fork that pulls the hay from the auger into the bale chamber. This fork is adjustable by switching which of the three holes the linkage is set too. Since you said the bales are ending up with too little hay on the right (knife) side of the bale (or too much hay on the left of the bale) you could change the setting of the packing fork so that it doesn't move as far across the bale chamber when it pulls the hay in. This adjustment should be explained in your owners manual. If you don't have an owners manual, I strongly suggest getting one. There are a multitude of adjustments included in the manual that will help you keep the baler running in top shape.

To answer your earlier question, banana bales tended to happen more with the older NH balers that used the track system to feed the hay into the bale chamber. This happened when there wasn't enough hay being fed into the baler. The newer NH balers now have a packing fork like the JD balers have always had and this problem isn't quite as much of an issue. You can pretty much get any baler to make banana bales by not feeding hay in fast enough, but it seems to be less of an issue with the ones that have a packing fork.

Since you mentioned that you had it serviced, any major problems should be gone, but sometimes the service tech doesn't know everything about a baler or misses some little thing, so check it over yourself. I had the experienced "baler guy" from our local JD dealer come check our baler one time and he did find a couple things, but completely missed the twine needle not being adjusted correctly and causing the left knotter to mis-tie about 2 out of 3 bales. The more you know about how to check and adjust your baler yourself, the less money and downtime you will spend waiting for someone else to show up.

Good luck, Josh.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

No one has mentioned but check the hay dogs over carefully and their springs. Balerman on youtube has a good video showing this on a 348 or 346 I think it was.


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## gf5205 (Jan 20, 2009)

With banana bales you would tighten the spring on the loose side because that side needs more resistance relative to the tight side, but I doubt that that is the problem. How dry is the hay? How many flakes per bale? The more flakes per bale the smaller the variation in length. Try aiming for 15 flakes per 36 inch bale.


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## memory (May 29, 2013)

Just a little update, we just baled 1100 bales of rye and timothy. We baled about 500 bales of timothy first and the we did not get any banana shaped bales. But they were not even in length. I would say every four or five bales, we would get a couple longer bales. We have not changed anything mechanical except for the tightness of the springs.

Then we baled about 600 bales of rye and we were getting both banana shaped bales and uneven length bales. The windrows and pretty good sized, almost too big where the tractor can't drive slow enough. So I know it is not the amount going into the baler unless it is too much. To be honest, I just think it is just that rye is a little more picky than anything else.

I really didn't have time to do any adjusting on the baler this time. I think the banana bales can be solved by tightening the springs but we would really like to figure out the uneven length bales.


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## Josh in WNY (Sep 7, 2010)

Bale length can be affected dramatically if you are trying to push a lot of hay through the baler. The more hay that is in each plunger stroke, the thicker the flakes will be. A consistent feeding rate is key to getting uniform bales. As gf5205 said above, try to get a consistent amount of flakes per bale (with a consistent about of hay in each flake), then you can adjust from their. You should be able to look at the bale and see if the flakes are consistent or not.

If your flakes of hay are already consistent and it's just the number of flakes per bale that is the problem, then I would start looking over the star wheel and it's associated linkage really well. If anything is slipping or loose in that, it will cause problems as well.


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## memory (May 29, 2013)

We just got done baling same timothy hay and barley straw and the bales are all over the place in length and we still get banana shaped bales but the length is the biggest problem. We have not had much time to check out the baler but I do think it is mechanical. When baling barley, we bale it straight from the combine which uses an 18ft head. The windrow is almost to big for the baler so I don't think the amount of stuff going into the baler is the problem.

I have noticed one thing when baling timothy, normally my grandpa, who is 80 years old, is the one driving the tractor. Well he usually has his certain way of doing things and one of those is picking up the hay on the outside of the baler. After a couple of loads, I told him to pick up the hay on the inside of the baler. For about half of that load, sometimes we hook a wagon behind the baler, the bales were pretty good, then they started getting too long and too short.

How big of a difference would the rpm's of the tractor make? Another thing that grandpa likes to do is run the tractor around 17 to 1800 rpm's. Is it better to run full throttle?

I may try to look at some things tomorrow, we have just been so busy around here, we have not had time to do anything extra like this.


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## slowzuki (Mar 8, 2011)

I'll say it again, the absolute best you can do for bale length is plus or minus one flake from the setting. If you are putting 6" thick flakes in bales, you will get about 12" variation in bales on a perfectly performing baler. If you really tinker and you have perfectly uniform windrows you can have long runs of bales being the same length but as soon as there is a slight change in windrow you'll get a longer or shorter bale.

If you run your baler at the fastest speed its designed for, and feed the right sized windrow into it, you will get 2-3" flakes and the bales will vary 2-6" in length.

Things that help are not too much or too little hay. Picking up on the far side of the pickup helps JD balers make consistent bales. Adjusting the packer forks to match condition helps, the 337 will have 5 positions for the bolt.

Adjusting those springs on the back won't help. Adjust them roughly even. They apply tension quite uniformly to only the centre strip of the bale and can't make more or less hay go to a side.

If your knotters are letting a knot slip partway this can cause banana bales a bit.


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## Josh in WNY (Sep 7, 2010)

memory said:


> How big of a difference would the rpm's of the tractor make? Another thing that grandpa likes to do is run the tractor around 17 to 1800 rpm's. Is it better to run full throttle?


As long as the RPMs are steady and you maintain the same ground speed, you shouldn't have a problem. If you are baling up and down hills, you can get a little variation in this due to the ground speed of the tractor changing more than the RPMs of the PTO. I have this problem on all but one of our tractors (our IH 784) and that tractor is now the only one I put on the baler. It changes its ground and PTO speed very little when going up or down hills.

As for what RPM to run it at, I would start at the rated PTO speed and go from there. Our baler is an older JD 336 and doesn't tie well at the full 540 RPMs on the PTO, but if we back off a little it will bale all summer long without missing a tie.

As far as the hay dogs that Slowzuki mentioned, you may also want to check the hay restrictors in the sides of the bale chamber, if they weren't removed when the bale skis you mentioned were installed. If one of them was missing or completely worn out compared to the other, it might contribute to the banana bale problem.


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