May 5, 2010

View of the day-Lots of action at the CNH plant today, this was the first look at our new combine.

We were up earlier today, looking forward to see things happen with our new combine. We checked out of the hotel and headed over to the plant only to find road construction going on which meant driving a couple of miles out of the way just to get across the road.

After we got into the building we were rerouted to meet with Charlene and our tour guide, Lew. They were waiting for us outside with some bad news...we would not be able to drive our combine off today because they had just started building it this morning. We decided to do the tour of the plant anyway and did get to see our machine a few times as it worked it's way down the line. We originally had thought it would be a good idea to do the tour one day and then just follow our machine to the end on the second day, so this actually worked out great for us.

The only down side was that it will now take us a day longer to get home and Marilyn is already cutting it close with the performance on Saturday. Had we known, we could have taken in a day at the 3I Show in Great Bend, but the tour was much better and we are 200 miles closer to home.

The tour showed us how the combines are built from scratch, a lot to take in, and even though we had just gone through the tour a couple of years ago, there were changes to the process. It was neat to see how everything flowed down the line and amazing how the 88, 20 and New Holland series combines were assembled at the same time.

After seeing the first steps and some of the fabrication of the panels with the laser cutters and the paint process, we finally got to see where our machine was on the line. As we walked by a lot of the stations the, workers would stop to talk to us and congratulate us on our purchase of a CaseIH combine. It was surprising how they knew who we were, which machine was ours and that they had worked on it earlier in the day. This plant is non-union so we were able to talk to anyone at anytime and they were all more than happy to talk to us.

After lunch we went back out to the floor to see how our machine was coming and to see the steps that the 7088 had gone through to get where it was now. The hopper had been installed and it was starting to get a lot more hydraulic and electrical lines installed. We checked out the rest of the process that we will be able to watch tomorrow as the combine goes through it's 300 point testing procedures.

Thanks to Charlene and the good folks at CNH we were back at the Holiday Inn for another night and we were treated to the best steak we have ever eaten at Uncle Ed's Restaurant...absolutely amazing...they were right. After supper, Al watched his hockey game and Marilyn did a few laps around Walmart...just to walk the steak off, of course.

Tomorrow morning at 7:30am we get to turn the key on the combine for the first time and then we get to travel along with it as it goes through the last stations before we drive it off the line.

Which means an ultra early morning...