New Gleaner Side Panels Material, and Speech Ideas

Still metal. Only combine in the market with metal side panels and still lighter than everyone else.

I love all your ideas Creston. I really think that Smart Cooling has got to be the greatest idea ever when running a liquid cooled combine!! I wonder how long till John Deere tries to copy it? LOL!! Ryan

One issue that a friend has with an axial-rotor IH combine (and could be an issue with an axial Deere depending on how the concaves are setup and how much you push them) is that his IH will shell most of the corn on the right side of the rotor and send the majority of the grain down the right side of the machine to be cleaned.  When you start pushing capacity, if you open the chaffer and sieve up to take the large volume of grain on the right then you take in the trash from the left side.  If you close the chaffer and sieve, then you get a clean sample and dump grain over the rear on the right side.  Another friend I have does run a Deere 9560 STS rotor and doesn't have this issue, but he also doesn't push the combine to capacity.  The friend with the IH is running a 7010 IH and if he goes much over 2500 bushels per hour is when his yield loss goes up.  One major point to make on the Gleaner vs Deere debate is the service-ability of the rotor.  The Gleaner you open the side panel, remove the "stop sign", and pull the rotor.  If you know what you are doing, you can have the rotor pulled in a half hour or less.  For servicing a Deere rotor, first you remove the engine since the rotor must be removed out the rear of the combine since the rotor is stepped and has no physical way to be removed out the front like an IH is.  The same friend with the IH combine seen a family farm talking about their Gleaner and that they had swallowed a rock and damaged the rotor.  He couldn't believe that in 4 hours they had: pulled the rotor, made necessary repairs, and reassembled and were back to harvesting that afternoon.  That friend wants to buy a Gleaner (looking at an S78), but is having trouble justifying spending the money for a combine upgrade right now, but I think his next combine will be a Gleaner when he does trade.  Also to keep in mind on the service end of things is how many fewer moving parts the Gleaner has in comparison to the Deere.  There are several more pulleys and drives to keep repaired on a Deere that also increases failure points to start fires.  Another service item is the grain unload through the turret auger on the Deere.  Not only do you have two augers in the floor of the grain tank, but pushing the grain up the vertical section of auger to the turret eats horsepower and the auger isn't going to last as long.  The machine size is another consideration when looking at a Gleaner.  The machine is shorter in height (door head clearance), and also shorter in length (machine shed floor space, and room required when opening fields to avoid running crop over to turn).  Then with the weight, having the lower grain tank floor lowers the center of gravity making the machine more stable even on flat ground.  I don't know if any of this will help on your presentation, but hopefully something will.

Gleaners also have a fully welded main frame for strength. The new ones have a fully pneumatic shoe because of the perforated cascade pan.

You might also mention price of the two machines,  I suspect the Gleaner is a bit cheaper, also because of the more simple design and weight, the Gleaner should use less fuel, "More bushels per gallon".
As a side note, in the latest Old Allis News, there is an article about the Gleaners and how they are the most profitable brand AGCO sells and that they are not considering dropping the Gleaner line.  I can only hope that is true.

Creston, Is this a technical writing/speech class?  If so remember your audience is composed (likely) of 100% non farmers... And a non- farmer is likely judging your grade...

AC7060IL wrote: Interesting post. And, good luck with the speech. All the above is true & worthy of praise. I run gleaners. Where you are going to come under considerable opposition is - AGCO's lack of dealer support. The remaining AGCO dealers are fantastic, but many have closed. So now a farmer usually has to drive 70+ miles for parts.

Yep, so far that’s my only weak link...there used to be a dealer right here in this town, until about October of last year.
Hopefully no one brings that up during the Q&A time, because I get the feeling the John Deere guys (actually from farms) in the class are going to try to tear me down. Lol

Edited by CrestonM - 14 Nov 2017 at 7:29am

We had to disable the Smart Cool on the S78. Had the smallest of fire due to it. The fan still reverses, but now it is full forward or full reverse. To save power, the Smart Cool would adjust the fan pitch only as needed. This would allow dust and chaff to build up on the manifold and it doesn't take much to make a mess of your day.

Edited by Unit3 - 14 Nov 2017 at 9:31am

DiyDave wrote: CrestonM wrote: DiyDave wrote: Creston, Is this a technical writing/speech class?  If so remember your audience is composed (likely) of 100% non farmers... And a non- farmer is likely judging your grade... Not trying to criticize, but keep that firmly in mind... I’ve kept that in mind. The class is called “Agricultural communications” but even then, not everyone is from a farm. However, the Prof lets us “choose” who our audience is. In other words, if I want the audience to be “a group of farmers in the market for a new combine” instead of just college students, that’s how they pretend to be. It’s kinda nice I guess, because then I don’t have to dumb everything down. OK, its a little better than I thought, then.  I had an English technical writing course, way back when, the prof had an in class assignment, it was to pull an object, from your pocket, or person, write a detailed description of it, read said description, to the class, then a person at random from the class got to draw a picture of the object, that I had described.  Only thing I had was a pocket knife style folding spark plug gapping gauge... The idjit chosen to draw the picture of it was a black girl from brawltimore, who prolly couldn't add 2+2 twice, and come up with the same result...  That picture weren't pretty...

That’s funny... just this morning my philosophy professor was giving a demonstration and asked the class what it is we humans exhale ... there was a black girl behind me that said “oxygen!”
Lol
I guess that’s kinda true, but total exhaled gas is only about 10% oxygen I think.

Does anybody have an estimate as to what the price difference is in a Gleaner and Deere? I haven't priced a combine since the S8 series came out. 

coggonobrien wrote: suprised nobody mentioned the shear simplicity (less drives, belts, gear boxes,etc) of the gleaner vs the deere.

That is one of my sub points when I’ll talk about their light weight.

And the new red ones are like a refinery with all the piping and hoses on them.  YIKES

Those smart cool fans are nice until you have to replace one. $4500.00. I dont know how far you are going back in comparing.  But all the combines today have the electric over hydraulic to perform the functions in the cab. That Gleaner came out with in 1972. Deere finally caught up in 1989.

Well guys the speech was today. I feel it went very well, and the peer reviews seemed to reflect that. I was allotted 10 minutes, but I ran a bit over time and was docked 5 points. I don't really care though. I got my points across. Surprisingly there were no questions at the end. 

CrestonM, AGCO needs more people like you. Nice job.