Late 73 1066 plans

Before anyone goes hammer down on me for suggesting this I'm putting my 1066 on my super 717 once I get tractor home from seller. I want to run it half throttle and have reserve power for chopping corn. It has to be the super 717 no other chopper. Are there heavier components that can be added,790 driveline/gearbox? Thanks -Neil

You will not be happy with half throttle as your torque curve and Hp peak will not give satisfactory performance. You will need to either go wide open or be unplugging it a lot. The fan will not throw the corn far enough back to fill the wagons properly meaning the load will be in the front half of the box. You could go to a 1000 to 540 adapter and not have much left of the drive line when you pull that throttle back for the extra also.
Just use it like it was made to do and you will be happiest. For lowest power requirement sharp knives and tight to the ledger plate will reap best results all the way around. Fuel,power and cut length.

Run it like it is supposed to be run. Shear bolts are there to protect the drive line and speeds is needed to keep the cutter spinning and throwing.

Don't mean to offend, or criticize, so don't get me wrong, but my friend was running a chopper / shredder at wrong speed or feeding it wrong, and got plugged, so he just stuck his hand in to clean it, and got snagged, and only has one hand now. I will not give you any details, but they are horrific. My only thought is safety, here.

+1 on running the chopper at PTO speed. It will not work well at all running at 1/2 throttle. The rotor needs to be spinning at a certain speed in order to chop the forage consistently and efficiently.

The tractor's engine will only produce the power necessary to run the chopper and pull the wagon for the given conditions. Let the governor do the job you think you'll be doing by running it at 1/2 throttle.

As long as you don't try to feed to much material into the chopper you will be fine. There should be shear pins and/or slip clutches that will prevent you from putting too much material in. Make sure those shear pins are the proper ones for the chopper (i.e. if it calls for a grade 2 bolt don't use a grade 8), and/or the slip clutches are adjusted by the book.

The only thing i will say is that that chopper is rated for like 80-85 Hp , and if you plan on running it with a 1066 you are probably like my buddy , as he wants to go fast and FORCE FEED everything . Even a 806 will over power a 717 if you try and FORCE feed it , your cutter head is only so wide and only has somany knifes on it and it is a CUT and THROW . I just rebuilt our 717 and flat told my buddy that if he was going to try and run it on the 1066 and it broke AGAIN that the next repair job was going to be with the cutting torch and little three foot pieces of it . Even a 782 New Holland is to small of a chopper if you want to go fast , IF you run that chopper in GOOD tall corn second gear it will chop all day and all night with no problems , BUT if you try and run third low Then you start plugging breaking shear bolts and spending time fixing your problem that all comes back and bites you in the donkey for tryen to FORCE feed . Now if you plod along in low second it may get the job done BUT they would work way better behind a good running 560 D or a 706 D as it would make you slow down when it started to pull down the tractor as this way you would grab the T/A and slow the feed rate and allow the chopper to catch up . My toher friend has chopped a lot of corn with a old Super 717 pulled behind a S/MTA for years and ran second gear but his S/MTA has some serious pony power and has had that power since the total rebuild of that tractor when it burnt under the picker many years back . What i went thru to find the same pistons that came out of it when i did his rebuild twenty years ago . Lets just say his S/MTA was the perfect match for a 717 .