Clogged Combines: The Damage Weeds Can Do to Machinery

Whether you call it slugged, plugged or wadded-up, a combine jammed with weeds or damp crop is enough to make a preacher cuss. Here are tips to minimize your frustration and downtime.

• Clear the clog now. Damp weeds and crop material swell and get tighter the longer the machine sits. Waiting to clear the clog in the morning or after you get the grain trucks emptied only makes it worse. 
• Resist the temptation to hit it one more time, to see if it will clear on its own. If a threshing cylinder or rotor is plugged, at a minimum, fully open the concave before that Hail Mary attempt. 
• Aftermarket companies offer cheater bars, pulley hub adapters and other accessories to help unplug combines. Some manufacturers offer OEM tools and gadgets for unplugging their brand of machines. Check with the parts per-son or service manager at your dealership before harvest. 
• Appropriate tools make tough jobs easier. Grandpa used a pocket knife and a hay hook to unplug his combine, maybe a bean hook, too. (If you’ve ever walked beans, you’ll remember that tool with a 3" hooked blade on the end of a long handle.) Mechanics now use box cutters and battery-powered reciprocating saws to slice through the tangled mess. 
• Fractions of an inch count when unplugging a combine. Loosening the bearing mounting bolts for a cylinder or beater shaft can gain just enough clearance to drag out those first strands that lead to more strands. The same applies to loosening concaves, beater grates or housings associated with the clog.

KEEP CLOGS AT BAY

After the clog is cleared, investigate for damage that could lead to a replay:

• Replace charred or cracked belts. Burnt belts might be narrowed in areas where pulleys or sheaves slipped. That will make the belt jump when it goes around a pulley and shake the entire machine.
• If threshing quality is poor after clearing a plug, check the concave clearance and brackets. The torque of eating a wad or breaking loose a slug can tweak the adjustment of concave grates from side to side on conventional machines and from front to rear on rotor combines. 

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