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Alberta, Canada | Normally Pentagon has me a guy within an hour as well, and they're about 40 minutes away. As this was mid-September, harvest was in full swing. I called at about 7pm, service department told me to take a number, so I called Brian (the owner, our salesman) to ask if he'd honor my warranty if I re-timed it myself. Instead, he had somebody out working on it by 9am. All the other times, I've been happy with the response time, especially considering how short-staffed they were.
I went through all but one of the stuffer shearbolts they sent with the baler in the first 400 bales. After it was re-timed, no issues. Have broken a few fly-wheel bolts in the straw when I was putting out a bale every 30 seconds but other than that, nothing.
I don't normally go that fast. Like you, I prefer to keep my stroke count around 40. For custom straw though, those rules don't apply. I didn't actually hit 84 bales an hour, I hit 676' / hour, so that was actually 74.7 9' bales/hour, so that works out to about 84.3 8' bales. Which really wasn't that hard. I was getting about 15 bales per pass(1/2mile), and was averaging 6mph. That worked out to 12 passes an hour.
I was really impressed with the capacity, but I don't think I'll ever try that in hay unless I'm racing a rain or dew. I don't sell any of my bales, so if I have some lighter bales, it's not a big deal. I use 440/4000 string, so no issues with breakage.
It was actually Hanlon that mentioned there was a guy in Tilley running a 16k behind a new 3x4. I was talking to Keith about a baler, but he wasn't able to get me a tandem until next year. Ironically, my accumulator is from Hanlon, as is my disc header. The baler and windrower are from Pentagon.
You say you can keep up to the baler........ how far are you hauling? I imagine our 7630-IVT would be ideal for running the 16k, but as my fields are up to 20 miles away, we would likely get a little 4 ton semi w/ automatic transmission.
I'm not so sure it would speed up our hauling any, but it would sure reduce the number of times it's handled. For in-field stacking, yes, it would beat a loader hand down, but taking it to the main stack 15miles away.... I can't see it exceed 24 bales an hour, even with a truck.
Edited by JoshA 10/6/2008 11:49
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Baler Fires Hank, in OR
