Sunflowers And Conventionals ?

ez to thresh , issue is heads hanging over the  header sides and clogging.  There were special long dividers and finger extensions to prevent head loss.  Book setting were spot on. 

One thing about them after a day cutting your combine will be smooth and quiet as can be.  Harvested them in a L2 and boy was she a smoothly oiled machine

I have no experience but have heard that there is a danger of fire from build up of dust? or something so need to know what to look out for. It was said that certain combines are more suceptable to fires but another said sunflowers will burn down all brands....so be carefull/aware.

We did oil seed flowers one year, harvested with a 81 L2 pushing a 6r30 Jd all crop header on a Bish plate to fit the Gleaner.

IIRC cylinder settings similar to corn, I think we used the corn chaffer and only enough air to keep it clean.

As far as fires, no combines are immune to fires, but it seems Gleaner designed the conventionals to be as fire proof as a combine can be. There is a reason the ribs on the side of the body are angled down. very few places for chaff to collect.

Engine sits up high, tight compartment with hood closed to keep air velocity high enough to self clean, etc.

Overall loved to harvest them, also helped a bigger farmer who ran 30' Lucke pans on a rigid platform, but our local confection market dried up thanks to mis-management, and oil prices are not good enough to appeal to us, and there seems to be quite the weed pressure during and after, so we didnt raise them again, and the big farmer I help sold his stuff off so hes definitely out of the sunflower business as well.