Combine Clinic Videos: Flagship Feeder Houses

Birkey's combine clinics focus on keeping your Case IH combines in peak operating condition. While we won't be hosting in-person or virtual clinics this fall, we want 2021 to be your best harvest yet. We're sharing the full series of 2020 virtual combine clinic videos, whether they're a perfect refresher from last year or a brand new experience for you. The second half of the first video covers Flagship Feeder Houses. 

Feeder House from an 8240

Feeder Face Position: If you’re running a Draper or cornhead, typical setting for feeder face positions is approximately ¾ of the way back. From the factory, the feeder face comes in the center position.

If you have a hydraulic adjust, you can set it wherever you want, on the fly, as you go. For newer combines, the pivot point for the hydraulic adjust feeder face is low. For manual adjust feeder faces, the pivot point is in about the middle. Keep in mind: if you have a hydraulic adjust, the pitch is going to pull the head farther away or closer to the drum. If this happens, you could notice some bunching, depending upon the crops in the center.

If you have an auger bean head, this would be dependent on what the cut is and how it’s cutting.

If you have a draper head, and you’re getting balling in the center and between the two drums, the best action would be to roll the feeder face most of the way back and use the head to adjust the angle of cut. This will get your drums close together and solve any bunching or slugging problems you may be having.

7250 Combine on the Front of the Feeder Face

Poly blocks are for factory Case IH heads. If you are running Geringhoff, these cannot be there. For MacDon, it doesn’t seem to matter if they are there or not; however, MacDon does say to remove them.

Proper Adjustment of Feeder House

When the feeder chain is removed, the tension is fully backed off. However, your adjustment, when you would adjust it, you want the bottom of the washer to be level with the top of this tang.

If you go any farther, the washer (there’s a spacer inside) of the spacer is barely shorter than the tang. So if you try to crank it a little tighter, you’re basically bottoming it out and you will have no spring action left.

They have used this tang all the way to the 50 Series from the 20s on up. The 10s were manual adjust. There’s a kit available through parts to upgrade a manual adjust 10 to this. In the 50 Series, they changed it slightly. It’s still the same basic idea, but the tang gives a little reference window. This would be the top, what you’re aiming for the bottom end, but you still want to keep the bottom of the washer for proper adjustment.

Talking about the feeder chains, on the 50 Series feeder chain, they went to this heavy cast slat. The chain itself is the same in all combines.

If you’re ever replacing a feeder chain, you have the option to put this as your connector link. So rather than J-wires, it’s threaded with lock nuts. So then you don’t have to worry about bending the J-wires the correct way. 

If you have a J-wire, you need to keep in mind when you put the J-wire in, the pre-bent hook of the J-wire needs to go on the top and towards the back of the combine. So you’d bend the bottom up. Point being: as the material comes in, the bent piece is going to catch the material and it will keep it tight. If you happen to put it in backwards, the material will rip it open, fall out, and then you’ll have bad things happening.

Around 2017, Case IH went to a newer style drive for heads. It’s basically a small 1,000 PTO shaft you’d have on a tractor. With this, you’d need a different yoke on whatever heads you have. The old style, for instance, like on the 8240 feeder house, is a wider spline of a 540 shaft. So PTO adapters are not recommended, at all. Head torque is going to exceed what those can handle. So the easiest way would be to just put a new yoke on the drive shafts.

Grease Points on Feeder Houses

The 50s are equipped from the factory with greasable rock trap beater and greasable feeder sprocket assembly. On a 40 series feeder house, it has just gotten the rock trap beater and the sprocket assembly replaced for spline wear. If you notice on the rock trap beater, it now has a grease zerk on the left side. There’s only one: a 100-hour grease zero.

Also, the sprocket assemblies: they come with two grease zerks, there’s one on each side, and they are also a 100-hour grease zerk. And what these grease zerks are greasing is the male shaft to the female splines in both of these two pieces. So, on the sprocket side, since it’s got a grease zerk on either side, you can grease either side, whichever one is up, basically, pump her full. You’ll hear it kind of squirt a little bit of grease out at the gearbox spline. There are no seals or anything to be damaged from excessive grease other than making a mess.

Factory production of the greasable sprockets started in 2015. The serial number was YFG230000 if you’d like to check your combine. So just because your sprocket has grease zerks doesn’t mean it’s greasable. The early sprockets only had one grease zerk on them; and those are absolutely not greasable, because of the factory grease zerk for the slip clutch in the sprocket. And if you over-grease, your sprocket will slip too easily. As we get a little later in time, they did go to two grease zerks, but just to confuse everyone: just because it has two grease zerks doesn’t mean it’s greasable.

So unless you see the 100-hour sticker, your operator’s manual says it, or you can check with our service department if it’s been replaced by part number to see if it’s greasable.

Common Questions 

One phone call I get frequently throughout the season is “I have a grain leak under my feeder house.” The most common fault is a seal at the pivot. What happens is this door is meant to hinge up and down as the feeder house raises and lowers. With time and dirt, there’s a hinge under here which causes dirt to get stuck in it, and then when you lower the feeder house down, it sticks. So then when you raise it up, it does not move. And the little canvas seal they have there isn’t enough to hold the corn grain back when you get full height of your feeder house.

So, if you notice a grain leak, at full height, when you’re coming to the ends, it’s most likely the hinge is getting sticky on your feeder door.

A question I get from time to time with the 250 series is about the feeder lift cylinders. On a 40 series or older, you have two different versions of lift cylinders. On the smaller version, the neck back here is not here and this is all one solid piece. This is the larger cylinder. Now, if you compare the cylinder to what’s on a 50, the 50 (series) cylinders are quite a bit smaller. What they did is they went to a different cylinder for this and they changed the mounting point on the feeder house. You have a better mechanical advantage to handling the larger heads. So, with these cylinders, even though they look smaller because of the better mechanical advantage, you don’t need quite the cylinders to raise and lower your feeder house.

Watch this full video and more at birkeysclinics.com.

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