D17 with 8420 Round Baler

Tie the bale before it starts struggling.

My guess is bale chamber is FULL..

There still COULD be a tractor issue. When's the last time it was given a good tune-up with a new air filter ??

The 8420 is just a rebadged Hesston 530/5530. Good balers for what they were meant for, but designed to get by on low, low HP. Possibly the lightest pulling round baler made. As the OP will know, they made a small (39" x 4') bale. And although they were a hard core baler, the bales are still not packed as tight as other hard-cored balers. And they were built light, to have less weight for the tractor to lug around.

So not really comparable to the 8480 on the IH mentioned above (or any other round baler for that matter). A D17 really shouldn't have any trouble pulling an 8420. In fact, it should barely feel it. Worth checking out the tractor as Doc mentions above, but I'd be looking at the baler too. All rolls turning good with no evidence of a bad bearing? A bad roll bearing can really gobble the HP (and will soon start a fire). Has it ran enough this year to have the sides of the chamber polished up? How fast in how thick of a windrow? They really weren't a fast nor high-capacity baler. And don't try making a bale larger than their max diameter - those balers were built light with no slip-clutch nor shears pin. You can overload and break something without a lot of trouble on one of those.

Edited by DanielW - 01 Jul 2026 at 2:56am

DrAllis wrote: There still COULD be a tractor issue. When's the last time it was given a good tune-up with a new air filter ??

You say Infact sometimes it has a hard time turning the bale.

We had an AC 444 square baler with a 44 bale thrower. If you ran it at PTO speed (540 rpm), it would seldom miss a bale. If you ran it much faster or slower, it would miss much more often.

Edited by WF owner - 01 Jul 2026 at 11:39am

To be more clear , if it's about 70% of a bale I'll hear the engine start to work harder and can definitely tell the bale is not rolling as fast as it should be. On a few of them I had to go to neutral with the power director.Allow the bale to regain momentum And feed twine. Even if I wasn't full size bale.

DR

It's a Gas and has only had maybe 30 hours since full carb rebuild and new filter. I only bale for about 10 hours per year. So it's been 3 years. And no the tach doesn't work. Haven't needed it until now. I've been running full RPM and in some cases low 1 just get the job done and believe me it's not heavy hay.

From your description, something is definitely not how it should be. Are you sure it's a power issue, and not a slipping clutch/power-director? Does the engine really bog down hard, or is it rather that the baler/PTO is slowing down?

if the hay is wet to the point it makes gummy green stuff stick to the sides -- that is harder to roll in the chamber than dryer hay. Also make sure your chains are all driving the rollers. My neighbor had  a Gehl 1470 that he had been working on. 

Like the tailgate must be more than gravity closed ?? It has to be hydraulically forced shut as much as the hydraulics can close it ??

Another tip for that series of baler: Like the G-series Vermeers, they were strictly spring tensioning on the bale. But unlike the Vermeers, they needed the belts quite tight when the gate was closed to start turning under tension right off the hop or it would have problems starting the core. So you didn't want to store them under tension, or they'd get slightly stretched and not be under full tension when empty. Hesston (and Massey/Case when they rebadged them) issued pins for long-term storage - you put in holes in each side with the gate open, then closed the gate. The pins kept kept the tension off the belts for long-term storage (can't remember if they did this by just keeping the gate slightly open, or preventing the tensioning mechanism from extending completely).

Edited by DanielW - 03 Jul 2026 at 11:54am

Jason above makes a good point re: tailgate closing: If the tailgate doesn't close and latch fully and positively (or if it doesn't stay latched), it can pop open a little when running. If it pops open a lot it will just stop picking up and make a mess, and you'll know something's wrong. But if it only unlatches a little and the hydraulics are (kind of) holding it mostly closed, it might still make some half-hearted, ugly attempts to keep the bale rolling, but suck a lot of power doing so as the bale won't be properly captured and supported on the belts/rollers.

Some more diagnostics , the baler belts do not turn with a pipe wrench on the drive line. So they are slipping on main roller. Also rear gate does have hay stuck but it seems that it is latched, although not by much, so I will give these some more attention and see what is what. Happy 4th yall.