July 27, 2012

View of the day-Al does do his own windows occasionally. Well...the back one, at least.


Another foggy day to start, and there was a bank of clouds on the other side of the Missouri threatening to cross over and hold us up.  Fortunately, it headed SE and before long, the sun was breaking through and we had hopes of getting started before noon.


We went out to the field, did our servicing, then Marilyn started combining...which lasted a pass and a half, before the return elevator plugged...and it happened without warning.  On the monitor, there are warning symbols...five squares, followed by three triangles...the alarm starts after all five bars and the first triangle appear.  This time it was just, BAM. Plugged.


Al opened the trap on the return elevator to clean it out, then checked the bottom sieve...it was pretty much closed.  This meant that the grain would go through the rotor, shake across the chaffer and any grain that hadn't been thrashed out, would head back through the return elevator to the rotor to get re-thrashed.  Apparently when the sieve was closed, it wasn't just the grain getting sent back, but all the chaff and small straw bits...and that created the jam.


After getting the sieve set again, Al went back to his tractor and Marilyn finished the round...almost.  Plugged again.  How the heck could that be???  Nothing had really changed from yesterday, but when he went to check the sieve again...it was closed.  Ghost in the machine?  Loose linkage?  We had no idea.

When we checked the linkage, we had to take a piece off the back of the combine to get inside and apparently we didn't pay attention to how it came out.  We figured it out after it had chewed up the fins on straw spreader.  We spent the better part of two hours trying to get it set right.  Again we ask...what the heck could have changed?

We ended up having to have a sample that wasn't as good as it had been in the beginning, but it was the only way we could keep going.  While Al was waiting for a load, he had to move a wire in the next field to allow the combine to get in and he had an audience.

The strangest thing of all was when we finished that field and moved to the next one just across the road, the sample was so clean it was ready for the drill...and we didn't do a thing. Go figure.

We cut till dark, then shut it down.  Al dropped Marilyn off at the camper and went over to Java to get fuel for tomorrow.  Our neighbours have moved out and now we have a view of the pile across the road...it's getting bigger.


Now to catch up on the Olympics...