Silage Chopping

I guess I am a little homesick for days gone by........Anybody have any pics of corn chopping with A-C equip? Its that time of year!

We had a chopping crew come in and do ours but we had our 8030 on the blower

Last year, made a few rounds. Uncle did most with 190 

Edited by Don(MI) - 27 Aug 2012 at 7:42am

I can't remember for sure don, I believe its a rayjay turbo, it used to have a thompson on it. I have a new 'air research' turbo I bought new, it lays on the shelf now, because it DOES NOT sound like the older turbos.

Found some more.....

Here are a couple of pictures from 2005 before I rebuilt and painted the chopper.  I also found a two row narrow cornhead for it too, but of course it needs a full rebuild.

Yes that is a Series III 190XT.  We used that setup until two years ago when the neighbor quit milking.  It was fun to run!

I don't have pictures here with me but many good memories of silage chopping.  Our first chopper was a 4-knife NH which would give the 45 all it wanted, especially if you were pulling an almost full wagon up a hill.  Then we got a decent chopper, AC lawnmower type that chopped better and faster than the old NH or my uncle's Gehl, used much less power, and was a dream to sharpen knives (5 minutes vs. 2-3 hours on the others).  The 17 was a great chopper tractor, but when we went to a 3 row head on a 780 we used the XT. It was hard to keep up with that using three wagons, had an AC blower at the silo as well.  All of that was excellent equipment that served well for years.  We hated to see that era end, but of course everything got bigger, and the AC choppers were pretty much maxed out at 100 hp.  But in their day they were the best.  

Using a chopper hooked to a tractor IS the old days of chopping.

Here's another:

The old days of chopping I hear about is when Grandpa's JD 70 didn't have enough power to run the chopper and pull the chopper and wagon in the low soft ground with tall corn. My uncle's first driving experience was about 4 years old pulling the 70 in neutral with the little Ford 600 tractor. If my little uncle had trouble Grandpa would just push the brakes and the Ford would just sit and spin.

Edited by Allis dave - 31 Aug 2012 at 8:05am

A 2 cylinder JD engine does not have a variable speed governor, it is a constant speed governor. There is no operating range (RPM) for the motor, they are designed to run at wide open throttle(which is PTO speed) and anything less than wide open is considered lugging the engine(taken right from the JD operators manual for my 720D) With that said, if you are running a PTO implement and hit a tough spot and the engine speed drops, not only does the RPM's drop to a point where you are lugging, the PTO spedd drops considerably as well.