IH 56 Planter Skips

Friend of mine has a 4 row 56 planter that he plants about 2 acres of corn with every year. He never seems to get a good stand. He always blames it on poor ground, bad seed, no good depth control, etc... Never paid much attention to it but I took a look at the planter tonight and it looks like a pretty decent design. Mostly gear and shaft driven, which in my mind eliminates a lot of places for things to go wrong. I took a look at his fields and it looks like it's going to be another bad year for him. A LOT of 3 to 4 foot skips in the rows. We dug around and couldn't find any seed so it is definitely skipping. There was even one spot where all 4 rows shut off for about 10 ft. That one I guess would have to be something sticking in the mechanism that puts things in gear when the planter is lowered. I recommended taking apart all the clutches and ratchets in the driveline and cleaning out all the old grease and checking them for wear. That might explain the whole planter shutting off, but how could the individual units be skipping erratically when they are all gear driven off the same shaft? He did use the correct plates for the seed. I've never had problems like this with my old Allis 600 or Ford 309. Any ideas what we should be looking at to get this thing planting like it should? Thanks

You might try running the planter over pavement with two people one on the tractor and one following to try to catch the units in the act of skipping and try to figure out why. It almost sounds like the seed may be too big for the plates.

Did he size the seed to the plates? There are many, many different plates available for those planters; one plate will not fit all corn seeds, since corn seed size varies from year to year, and variety to variety. If all the shafts are turning, I would look at the seed plates first.

I usually remove 1 row unit hopper from the planter, and throw handful of seed in it, look at how the seed fits into the plate cells, and then turn the plate by hand, and see how it drops seeds. There are also a ton of different ways to set the knock out pawl, etc, in the hopper/row unit. Buy an operators manual, and read it. It will tell your friend how to use the planting tool that he has.

Good luck.

I only need a couple pounds of seed to plant my sweet corn patch. I intentionally buy 10 lbs for each hopper so I keep the planter plate covered. That and having the correct size plates resolved my skips.

Match the correct plates to the size of the seed, seed too large for the plate cannot be planted accurately.
LA in WI

Have to agree with most. Make sure the plate is sized correctly and that the knock out pawl is working properly. Wouldn't hurt to clean up all the old crusted up grease. Used a 56 planter for years without and problems like you described. Dad planted many many acres with his 56 planter. It is still in the shed. Been wanting to buy it from him.

There is a rod that runs from the clutch to the shaft that the tire mounts attach to. This rod engages the seed clutch and there is another for the fertilizer clutch if it is so equipped. You can unhook them and engage the clutches so you can pull it raised and see how it is dropping seed.

Is he drilling or hill drop and if drilling does it drop a single seed each time. I wonder if they even size corn for plates these days. I also like the idea of taking a unit off and turning it by hand to see how it drops seeds and selecting plate accordingly.

One thing I always had to do when planting sweet corn was run along behind the planter and brush the seeds on to the plates...

You know if the skips are bad enough it might behoove you to pick up one of those little push-planters from Tractor Supply and fill in the missing spots.

Jeff: Are you talking about an IHC "456" planter?? in other words a 4 row planter in the 56 series which was built/sold around the 1960's.
I have one that I've used for the last 6 years. First thing I did was take all/most of the "slop" out of all teeth/gears every where.. I did this because too much wear had caused the teeth in all gears to push away from each other in making good solid contact under load... It made a big difference.. Before I could see planter plates hesitate (stop) for short periods of time and that is a Skip.. Gear teeth were Jumping around rather then turning smoothly.. etc. There were a few other things but this is the general fix required.. Too much wear in too many places all add up to skips and misses and plugged tubes from seeds not cleanly dropping down.. etc.. ..ag ret.

Do any of you guys know if the clutch on a 56 is the same as the clutch on a 58? When I had a 58 six row, the clutch 'facings' if you want to call it that, wore slanted so the two clutch halves would slowly separate and then sit there and chatter a while before it slipped back in, making a six row gap that was all the way from 1 foot to six feet long. Without a monitor it was very hard to detect from the tractor seat. If I remember right, I could remove the clutch spring cotter pin, slide the two halves apart and get up there with an angle grider and grind the faces to a 90 degree angle again. It's been a little over 20 years ago so my memory might be foggy about the face grinding part of it.

You guys are right about the bevel gears. They are running in dust and grit all the time so they wear pretty fast. Shimming them helps but eventually they get so cupped they start jerking.

I always checked the seed in the plate even though it was supposed to be the right plate for the chart on the bag. A plate that's just a twitch too thin can cause skips, along with a plate with too small of a cell, or too large of a cell where two seeds can wedge together.

I ran that 58 for 16 years at about 500 acres per year and made about every stupid mistake a person can make, but we learn from our mistakes (hopefully LOL).Jim

I gave up planting Sh2 seed with my 455 (predecessor to the 56) drill plate planter. The stuff is so small you could not get a corn plate small enough to singulate and sorghum plates needed to be opened up significantly. Even then the seed is so inconsistent in size and shape, even when graded, that it can be a crap shoot.

I replaced it with a lightly used 400 Cyclo and I am MUCH happier... At least for sweet corn.

The plate planters are pretty simple... Ground driven so if the tires turn the main drill shaft and the gear teeth are intact and the clutches are engaged to turn the drill shafts to the seed plate drives then the only real issue is probably inconsistent seed size with a plate that is a little "too tight". If it is a hill drop you have to worry bout the accumulator assembly also. These planters were pretty simple and I always kept mine well greased, including the bevel gears...