# need help with banana shaped bales



## yarnammurt (Jan 1, 2014)

I have a NH 575 that I am having trouble with banana shaped bales. I have moved the packer fork at top and bottom. Just cant figure it out.


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## 8350HiTech (Jul 26, 2013)

Are you raking windrows sized appropriately for a 575? Are your hay dogs all free and the springs good? Is your packer fork timed properly (and the rotors too)?


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## yarnammurt (Jan 1, 2014)

Yes, What would you consider the right size windrows. I cut with a 7'bine and rake two together.


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## SwingOak (May 19, 2014)

I had a banana bale problem, and the answer was the hay wasn't getting pushed far enough into the chamber. All it took was moving the hay fork one inch.


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## Hayman1 (Jul 6, 2013)

I have owned a NH 273, a NH315 and now own a NH570. Used a NH56 rake, a 258 rake and now a Krone rotary 38T. All my hay is tedded 1-3 times before raking. All of that said with multiple types of grass hay, 1 through 3rd cuttings, thick and thin, I have never had a banana bale problem. Windrows all over the spectrum, feeding to the right, the left and center but no banana bales.

Maybe I am just dumb lucky-wouldn't be the first time. Just don't believe it is a windrow issue with NH balers anyway. I do believe that ground speed and pto speed are or could be factors as well as the feeding mechanism adjustment. the feed on the 570 is soooo much better than earlier NH balers.

Now, I remember as a kid that we had a neighbor with a ford baler bale for us. He could not make a straight bale under any circumstances. We were a bunch of monkeys handling those bananas...


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

I had 2 different NH balers(I think they were model 565's) bale for me and both made banana shaped bales. I complained to baler owners to no avail. Feeder mechanism timing plus large windrow will help.


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## occranch (Feb 15, 2012)

Try a left hand feeder wedge. It really helps in grass hay. It mounts in front of the plunger in the rotary feeding chamber. I also added the bale case extension to mine. Also improved bales. Using a NH hay wagon you will try anything to make good bales


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## Shetland Sheepdog (Mar 31, 2011)

Hayman1 said:


> I have owned a NH 273, a NH315 and now own a NH570. Used a NH56 rake, a 258 rake and now a Krone rotary 38T. All my hay is tedded 1-3 times before raking. All of that said with multiple types of grass hay, 1 through 3rd cuttings, thick and thin, I have never had a banana bale problem. Windrows all over the spectrum, feeding to the right, the left and center but no banana bales.
> 
> Maybe I am just dumb lucky-wouldn't be the first time. Just don't believe it is a windrow issue with NH balers anyway. I do believe that ground speed and pto speed are or could be factors as well as the feeding mechanism adjustment. the feed on the 570 is soooo much better than earlier NH balers.
> 
> Now, I remember as a kid that we had a neighbor with a ford baler bale for us. He could not make a straight bale under any circumstances. We were a bunch of monkeys handling those bananas...


I gotta agree with Hayman on this one! My 570 doesn't make "bananas"! Doesn't seem to matter whether there's 10 strokes per bale or 25 strokes per bale, whether the windrow is huge or tiny, whether the feed is to the left or right side of pickup! I gotta believe it's all about feeder tines, hay dogs, wedges, etc, and my baler doesn't have a bale case extension either! I guess I'm just living right!


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## kiteflyingeek (May 15, 2014)

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the knife clearance. My NH68 and MF124 both have 1/2 inch plus of gap and that just causes the hay to fold over instead of get cut off. I'm working on the MF124 now to get the plunger knife re-shimmed so it is in the 1/16" range the manual specifies.

--andrew


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## SwingOak (May 19, 2014)

kiteflyingeek said:


> One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the knife clearance. My NH68 and MF124 both have 1/2 inch plus of gap and that just causes the hay to fold over instead of get cut off. I'm working on the MF124 now to get the plunger knife re-shimmed so it is in the 1/16" range the manual specifies.
> --andrew


I'll have to pull out the plunger guide rails on my s68 because some of the adjustment bolts are broken off. Easy enough to fix, just have to do it. Every once in a while I'll get two bales tied together by hay that didn't cut all the way through, simply because I have about 1/4" of knife gap. No problem in a heavy windrow, only when they are light.


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## Coondle (Aug 28, 2013)

I have had problems with banana bales on a NH 570 and tried many solutions.

But first check that you are not overfeeding the machine, overfeeding causes the bale to be overpacked on the right side (knife side). One cause of overfeeding is driving too fast. Another and the most common is lack of slippage on the pickup drive belt.

The pulley sheaves on the belt drive need to be shiny. New machines have paint in the sheaves and older machines can have rust there. Even after 35,000 bales there was a full coat of paint in the sheaves on my 570.

Ease the spring tension on the belt drive idler pulley (left side of machine) until the belt can slip. Instructions on the correct torque are in the manual but here goes  .

The 575 is designed to have slippage in the pickup rotation when under load with hay. Look on the left side of the baler (left and right is determined by standing behind the baler)

Before doing any thing carefully watch the smoothness of the pickup with the baler being turned by hand and listen for any components making contact that should not be, the most common is fingers on the guards.

On the left side there is a vee belt in a sheave behind the toothed cog that drives the knotters, and that goes down to another sheave that drives a shaft that crosses over to the right side of the baler.

There is an idler pulley riding behind the vee belt and tensioned by a spring (adjustable).

The pulley sheaves must be clear of rust and paint.

This belt is designed to slip to prevent overfeeding of hay up the pickup. Overfeeding will result in banana bales with too much material in the right side of the bale (cut side) and too little in the left side.

THe correct adjustment is between 15foot lbs and 20 foot lbs at the pickup, but 20 may be a little high.

How do you set this?

Put a bar (edge up) under the centre shaft of the pickup, (a flat bar will fit between the pickup guards) and over the top of one of the bars that the pickup fingers are on and under the centre shaft of the pickup.

Measure carefully from the centre bar out along the flat bar a distance of 34 inches. The best trick is to put a small notch in the edge of the flat bar so when it slips under the pickup centre shaft it locks into position, and you can thus have the 34 inch mark in place and similarly notched.

Put the hook of a spring balance in the 34 inch notch and get your trusty helper to turn the baler by hand. The belt should slip ie the pickup not rotate with the spring balance reading at least 53 lbs and no more than 69lbs.

Adjust spring tension on the idler pulley accordingly to bring the point of slippage into this range.

If there is not enough adjustment then make an extension link to add between the hook on the end of the spring and the idler pulley. I could not get slippage to polish the paint out without that extension and then had to tighten up the spring once the sheaves were polished metal.

THe next thing to check is the packer fork setting. To pack more material in the left side, set the packer fork connecting rod in a lower hole of the packer fork. Moving this mounting point down packs more material in the left of the bale. If still not enough move the connecting rod rod to the right at the anchor point.

New Holland suggested adding another set of holes to the rear and 50% phased to the top of the packer fork, the effect of which is to lay the packer fork further back.This was fitted to another baler with success, see Youtube

New Holland Banana Bale Problem Reply to Barta84

This seems to be a fix for not enough material in the right side of the bale . it did not work for me as the problem for me was not enough on the left side.

REMEMBER that the timing of packer fork to plunger Must be checked whenever the anchor/connection points are changed.

As a further modification I added another rotor teardrop on the rotor shaft immediately before the packer fork, such that this shaft then carried three teardrops. The extra teardrop was added to the rear of the shaft with a woodruff key installation the same as the original. The reason I did this was to provide extra support to the volume of hay being moved by this rotor, there being about 9 inches of material behind the standard rotor teardrop There is room to clear the rear of the bodywork and the packer fork.

This helped more than any other modification, including the left hand feeder wedge and the long/ short grass hay wedge


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## Rodney R (Jun 11, 2008)

The problem with banana bales is a combination of pto and ground speed, and windrow size. With alfalfa we'll rake about 20-24 ft in a roll and in 2nd grass it'll be upwards of 40ft. We had many 575's and now have a couple BC5070's. Depending on the crop we'll vary the pto speed, and ground speed, if we can't get enough hay into the baler to make a decent bale. If the roll is really thin, you just have to drive faster, and slow the pto speed down. What the feeder wedge referred to is supposed to do is simply stop the hay from sliding across the feeder floor. The hay will stop at the wedge, and once enough accumulates, the fork will move it to the plunger. The poor man's way of doing this is to simply increase ground speed and/or slow down the pto.

Rodney


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