Did Gleaner build a hillside L?

I was paging through my Norm Swinford book and saw listed along with the MH a combine jast named Hillside or Sidehill (one or the other) and the specs matched the L including the 48" cylinder. It was built from something like '72 or '73 through 1976. Has anyone here ever seen or heard of one? I thought after the GH it was only the MH/MH2/MH3 models.

Yes there were MH combines built but it looks like there was also an L version built too.

Pretty neat what they came up with to navigate slopes.

I'll have to look at my book. I'm sure the specs just are incorrect, as they never made an "LH" machine, only MH.

Never any talk of a L hillside out here in hillside country.

Edited by Ray54 - 25 Jan 2022 at 12:07pm

That’s the one I saw Brian may be mistaken on the model

Ray54 wrote: In the information Lonn posted anybody know what the difference of H to the HY is? Because the the L is only HY model.  So my guess is maybe HY did not level as many degrees as H would. Because never any but H model here. And a bit of ground was farmed that a H would be fully level.

I think HY just means Hydrostatic transmission...... I think

Let's get something straight.....there never was a model L-L2-L3 HILLSIDE combine. On page 331 of Swinford's book, he has made an error that seems to be getting everyone wound up. The first column is for the model "M" which was made 1973 thru 1976. This is correct. Second column that says "Hillside", should have said model "L", which was made 1972 thru 1976 and was capable of 4-6-8 row corn heads. A TRUE HILLSIDE GLEANER COULD NEVER EVER HAVE A CORN HEAD mounted on it because it required two feeder beaters !! One on the head and the other in the throat. This allowed the 23 degree tilt that these machines were capable of.  Usually in Gleaner specs, anytime HY was used it meant HYDRO transmission...nothing else. We always wanted a combine that would compete with the 6620 Deere "side-hill" ( not hill-side) combine which would level up about half the degrees of a true hill-side combine and was sold in the midwest with a corn head on it.

I would say so, yes. Remember, Norm got this information from somewhere and he wasn't a combine guy, so it easily could have gotten by him a bit inaccurate.

Back in their day, N-6's were doing some of the MH's work. There was even talk of a "level-up" cab to make it nicer to run.

I'll check sometime but I think the curtain is removed. Not sure about the cylinder bars or leveling blades. There is a strap iron on each side of the rear raddle that sort of look like they would push material inward a bit if those are what you are referring to...... but they look to only move material over maybe only 2 or 3 inches if I remember correct. I'll have to pull her out soon and start to get the old girl prepped for a go again this year. I'll make it my goal to clear up the grain saver issue. Thank you Dr Allis

You've got to do one to see how it works. The crop goes in on the low side of the cylinder because of the combine leaning. When the cylinder bars are turned correctly, because the majority of the crop feeds in on the low side, the cylinder bars thresh on one side (pretty much) and throw the threshed crop to the uphill side. This trick doesn't affect threshing and to a degree hurts level land capacity a bit, but in side hill country sometimes adds 50% more BPH capacity in corn harvesting. The wider the machine the better it works.

Edited by DrAllis - 31 Jan 2022 at 5:50am