Gleaner L3 beans wrapping

Seems all these Gleaner flex heads have this issue. My 322 is no different. There’s a major design flaw here. It’s a full 2 feet between knife and auger there’s no reason it should be that far.
I even have the updated raised feathering sheets. I just put baler belting on my reel hanging an inch or so below reel fingers seems to help sweep them in. When in the tall beans it feeds like a dream but when in the 18” or less it’s a problem.

We noticed that our reel drive chain was getting too loose and when we tightened up the chain it fed a lot more even.  We also had to tighten up the cylinder drive belt, too.  Things worked fine in the dry beans last year, but this year's green bean stems are a bugger.

gleaner1 wrote: Seems all these Gleaner flex heads have this issue. My 322 is no different. There’s a major design flaw here. It’s a full 2 feet between knife and auger there’s no reason it should be that far. I even have the updated raised feathering sheets. I just put baler belting on my reel hanging an inch or so below reel fingers seems to help sweep them in. When in the tall beans it feeds like a dream but when in the 18” or less it’s a problem.

Besides moving the auger as far forward as you can and raising it 3/4" off bottom I did this.....I first had my belting (12" wide stuff staggered every other bat and over each row, means for my 15 foot in 30" rows it used 18 flaps) an inch below the reel teeth but found I needed to extend the flaps to about 3 inches past the reel teeth. I knocked on 3/4" lock washers every third of the way around the auger flighting. Takes a good vice grips and a good aim with a beefy hammer and it takes a little practice. They will never come off. I put 3" field drain tile (which measures about 3-1/2" outside diameter) behind my sickle using conduit clamps every couple feet and it flexes great with the head. And cut at an angle if you have to.

Yep and for me it turned a miserable job into mostly pleasure..... then came the R52 which I have done some things to to make it better but it was comparably a great pleasure to run from the start.... especially having the reverser. The 820 header needs just a couple of those tricks next.

First thing on an 800 series header is to make a slow-down drive sprocket for the 30 inch diameter auger. Unless they've slowed them down since the first ones made, they were toooooo fast. Same RPM as the 24 inch auger, but at 30 icnh diameter too fast. Another first year engineer graduate design.

Lonn I’m curious if gleaners a plentiful in Russia

wekracer wrote: Lonn I’m curious if gleaners a plentiful in Russia

Oh yes