One more on the Gleaner

There is a possibility that the F3 may be a bit out of the budget based on the numbers in some of the responses below. Are the F1 and F2 a good option if I need to keep my cost down initially. I am switching a few fields over to grain from hay. Kids are going to both be in college so, in addition to that expense I am also wanting to cut back on the time I demand from them...hat being labor intensive. So I am wondering as I go back thru the models how do the prices run? Just in general.

Gas machines sell real cheap here.

Hydro is a really nice feature, worth extra.

F is getting mighty old, a gas F is gonna often sell for what it weighs, but they have less capacity and boy a lot of very old bearings and sprockets and such... Would need to be well kept to be worth lots any more.

Prices. Well, we kinda hate to talk about ourselves, but over the past 5 years....

Can find a green stripe hydro diesel F3 with both modern heads for $3500.

Can find a gear drive F3 diesel with good but tad older heads for $9000.

Saw a pair of F2 diesel sell last year, little older but had been used the year before for $1200 each, can't remember but think one had corn, one had bean head with. I'd say they were serviceable but would need to go through a bit they were rode hard.

I've seen gas F series sell for under $1000 with both orange heads but that was before the price of scrap iron went up.....

Kinda depends on when and where you are what you stumble into. The green stripe hydro F3 was by far the best machine, was less than half the most expensive....

Location means a lot, are you in big farm country or smaller farms, they are too small for the big farm country these days.

Paul

Big farm around here is 800-1200 acres and that sure isn't me! I understand about the green stripe but, whereabouts on the machine is the stripe...just so I understand?

If you go to an F2, get the long shoe...sn 39201 or above. Under is basically the same capacity as an F.

Up around the grain tank, they used orange accents.

When Deutz got involved, they changed to green accent color.

As Jim says, the first F2 came out in 1977. And was mostly just an F hardly any difference st all.

Then in 1978 they made many updates, including a longer shoe which lets it handle high yield corn better. Also added handy features, more electric, etc.

Don't know why they did it that way.

Paul

OK...I think I have it and will post it all into a folder on my desktop so that I have it and don't ask twice. Sad, but I think this machine is now getting outside my comfort level on price. It has cruised over $4K and hasn't even hit the late bidding rush. I am sure I saw better ones for sale last fall when I started looking at them. I can let this one go by if need be and have one trucked in here if it is a better machine for the money. Thanks much for the info! This will happen soon, probably not this week though!