We have been having high heat weather warnings all week and they weren't wrong. We almost hit 40C/104F...at least there was a good wind to cool things down. Relatively speaking.
Al went out and started where he had left off in the barley last night. Marilyn got lunch ready and was just about to head out, when Al called and told her to hook up the shop trailer and head over to the bins. It didn't sound good.
At the bins, Al had the cover plates taken off the table auger on the pickup head. A shaft holding the disappearing fingers that pull the crop into the feeder house, had come out of the holder inside the auger tube. When we took the last cover plate off, we could see it was more serious than first thought...the bearing holder had torn the plate that it was mounted on. It looked like it was beyond repair...at least for us to do.
We called around to see if there was someplace we could get it done professionally, but then decided it would be better in the long run to get a new drum, so we wouldn't have a repeat wreck. Although, we have never had this happen in all our years of combining.
With the decision to go new and it being the weekend, we had to find a pickup head to use. Luckily our next farmer wasn't ready to start combining until next week, so we managed to rent his pickup head. We were back in business.
We were working in the barley with another red combine, but he had bearing issues that put him out of commission as well. We both got back into the field just after noon and the rest of the combining day went smoothly...except for plugging the rotor a couple of times. The hydraulic reverser on the rotor saved the day both times.
We didn't have a grain cart in our field, so a lot of time was spent driving to the trucks to dump. This took a lot more time since the barley was running close to 90 bu/ac, which meant the combines were filling fast and the trucker had to be on his toes...and he was. There was never a wait for a truck.
More heat tomorrow...
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