Here are three EPA-legal ways to optimize the horsepower of a combine’s engine:
1. Make sure grain platform cutterbars are sharp and well-adjusted. Dull or out of adjustment sickles eat horsepower. Have you ever used a dull hand-sickle or scythe to cut weeds? Imagine the extra effort required by a dull 30’ cutterbar on a combine.
2. Worn concaves and rasp bars make a combine work harder to thresh grain. I once had a customer complain he couldn’t combine beans at more than 3 mph without lugging the engine. Wear to his rasp bars and concave exceeded specifications, so we hustled and changed them in one day. He returned to the same field the next day, without significant changes in weather or crop conditions, and could cruise at 5 mph without any strain on the engine. He said grain quality also dramatically improved.
3. An OEM combine engineer told me that, depending on the design of a straw chopper and crop conditions, up to 25% of a combine’s engine capacity can go toward running the chopper. Dull chopper flail knives not only use excess engine horsepower, but do a poor job of shredding residue, which can lead to tillage problems next spring.
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