This is a cotton picker
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Category: Allis Chalmers
Forum Name: Farm Equipment
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URL: https://www.allischalmers.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=43038
Printed Date: 18 Jul 2025 at 5:19am
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Topic: This is a cotton picker
Posted By: Sam T-Ga
Subject: This is a cotton picker
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 1:40pm
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AC cotton pickers were built in Gaston, Al. at the same plant were the G tractor was built, this unit is mounted on a D17. the D17 runs backwards, there is no frt end under the engine, it just hangs out the back. The steering tires are in the row dividers. It picked the cotton with spindles that would spin and wind the cotton up on the spindle, picking the cotton out of the boll.
The stripper on the other post was built in the LaPort plant, It used several parts from the F2, cab, engine-433I, transmission and final drives. It strips the complete boll off the plant. The cotton goes thur a stick machine that removes the boll and sticks before blowing it in the basket. The model of the stripper was an 880 and this one was built in 82.
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Replies:
Posted By: injpumpEd
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 5:39pm
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WOW! The 801/802 were the last of the AC pickers. I have never seen any other AC pickers besides the ones we had when I was a kid. There is a guy on red power forum with an AC 2 row in his avatar pic. really nice to see some pics.
------------- 210 "too hot to farm" puller, part of the "insane pumpkin posse". Owner of Guenther Heritage Diesel, specializing in fuel injection systems on heritage era tractors. stock rebuilds to all out pullers! |
Posted By: D-17_Dave
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 5:41pm
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Sam, 82 or 62?
I have seen several of these over the years. I grew up in upstate SC. Lots of cotton in that area. I parted out one of those and converted it back to a regular 17. I still have several parts and tags from it. ------------- Yea, I can fix that..... |
Posted By: MNLonnie
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 5:44pm
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That looks pretty cool. ------------- Waukesha B, B, IB, G, styled WF, D15, 615 backhoe, 2-Oliver OC3's, 4 Ford Model T's, 3 Model A Fords, AV8 Coupe, AV8 Roadster, 1933 Ford Wrecker |
Posted By: Breeze
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 5:54pm
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SamT, thanks for the pics, sure is a nice looking machine. Lots of cotton around here but Ive never seen one of the AC pickers. Was the 801 at a show up your way? |
Posted By: injpumpEd
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 6:29pm
------------- 210 "too hot to farm" puller, part of the "insane pumpkin posse". Owner of Guenther Heritage Diesel, specializing in fuel injection systems on heritage era tractors. stock rebuilds to all out pullers! |
D-17_Dave wrote:Posted By: AaronSEIA
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 7:35pm
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Help me out a bit...this picker was built in 82, but used a D17 for the base drivetrain? There is what...20 years between a D17 and 1982? I must be misunderstanding something. Very neat. Someday I need to get to a show down south to see the different equipment. AaronSEIA
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Posted By: D-17_Dave
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 7:43pm
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I think Ed has it right. That's kind of what I wanted to point out. I think that's what Sam ment.
Very interesting machine. I've had my hands into cotton pickers, tobacco harvesters, potatoe diggers, grape pickers, even poultry loaders. We can build darn near anything but fix our government. ------------- Yea, I can fix that..... |
Posted By: TedBuiskerN.IL.
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 8:29pm
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D17 Dave, there is nothing wrong with our government that a change in people wouldn't cure. ------------- Most problems can be solved with the proper application of high explosives. |
Posted By: AllisChalmers37
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 8:33pm
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I blew the picture up and I'm about positive it is an 801. Very nice machine. ------------- 1937 WC, 1950 CA, 1959 D14, 1967 190XT, 2006 Ram 3500 |
Posted By: DREAM
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 8:45pm
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There's some confusion about what Sam said, because he was adding in relation to an earlier post he made. See "spent the day with a stripper" and you'll understand. Sam has a model 880 stripper built in 1982. He was just explaining the difference between that and a picker, which is shown above.
Speaking of which, it seems to me that the stripper would be the way to go, from the looks of his fields. That is the cleanest cotton field i've ever seen that was machine picked. Wonder what the disadvantage is? ------------- I didn't do it! It was a short, fat, tall, skinny guy that looked like me! |
Posted By: injpumpEd
Date Posted: 31 Dec 2011 at 9:37pm
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the older pickers are what was built on the reversed D17 chassis. the cotton strippers are component built like a combine. In fact the stripper shares many combine drivetrain components, and steer axle. Strippers are usually used where the cotton is harvested after a freeze. picked cotton fields get picked twice.
------------- 210 "too hot to farm" puller, part of the "insane pumpkin posse". Owner of Guenther Heritage Diesel, specializing in fuel injection systems on heritage era tractors. stock rebuilds to all out pullers! |
Posted By: D-17_Dave
Date Posted: 01 Jan 2012 at 5:57pm
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A lot of the choice between picker or stripper depends on the variaty of the cotton. I've seen a stripper sitting on the testing campus of Clemson University. This unit had the header modified for use in the Carolina's. Basicly they replaced the row head with something like 3/4" angle iron on a slant about 1/2" apart all the way across. This allowed for use on a smaller cotton bowl and didn't require planting it an a spaced row. Force of forward motion pushed the bowls up the 20 or so inches of angle into a feeded auger like a grain head. Never seemed to catch on. I think the humid climate and how hard it was to "pop" the bowl off the stalk had something to do with this fact.
The pickers used tapered stainless spinning spindles on a rotating group to pass by a cotton stalk and spin the cotton off the stalk. As the rotating group spun the spindle group out of the plant row it passed by a water nozel and a rubber "doffer" pad rubed the cotton off the spindle and dropped it into an airflow to be pushed into the basket.
A real maintinance nightmare. All the thousands of moving parts and the buckets of grease it would take to run one. My first job was tearing pickers apart and rebuilding them for a local friends company.
I got to see several companies mounted picker conversions. Deere, IH, and AC were the only ones I know of that ventured into R&D on pickers and made anything. Most I saw were piggy backed onto a regular tractor chassis. Although built on WD45 and D-17 chassis I think AC was the first to actually make a picker with the intent of leaving it as a dedicated machine. I think they were also the first to do 2 row unit. This is simply way ahead of anyone else at the time. These 2 row units took lots of power to run and that's why AC built the first with 226 gas engines and soon after placed 262 gas and diesel engines in the pickers.
Most of the Deere and IH pickers I saw that were tractor based were tractors with a lot of external linkages and brackets bolting it up to a base tractor. Not all that hard to remove so the base tractor could be used year round. Although the AC's were 17 based I don't think they were made to use as regular tractors as they took a lot of work to convert. I used a lot of parts off a donor tractor when I converted mine. I seem to recall somewhere reading something about AC offering a kit to do this conversion after the technology outdated these pickers. Maybe in Norm Swinfords book of knowledge or something. Although bulky and underpowered, these were really well built units. Wish I'd have took pictures of all that when I had the chance. Economics of the time I had to sell that 17. But, I think I had a 17 with the fewest number of hrs on it anywhere. lol ------------- Yea, I can fix that..... |