Gleaner hillside blower attachment

It's almost too cold to work in the unheated shop and my mind gets to wandering and I think about things I would like to try but probably will never get around to. Heritage Iron mag came with a story about Gleaners in it. One of the pictures showed the blower mounted on top of the back of the combine and the tubes that took the air to the sieves to blow grain back across the sieves when you were on a hillside. How well did they work?? There were a couple of 6600 Deere's around here that had them added on, both machines and owners are long gone, so asking them about it is out of the question. Wondering about trying to find a blower in a scrap yard and putting on my 6600. Any thoughts on this?? Thanks, Chris

They had a pendulum with a cast weight on the bottom, hooked to a vane at the blower outlet. If the combine leaned to the right on a hillside, the vane moved to give more air to the tube on the right side of the thresher. Helped to keep the grain from sliding to the downhill side. Blower was run via belt to the front crankshaft pulley. On my M2 I added steel strips to the top of the chaffer and sieve dividers to keep grain within each section. Probably works equally well, but I don"t have much for slopes.

I had 1 on a '73 "M". I farm some steep ground and was never impressed, No matter how slow I drove or opened the sieves I couldn't keep corn from going over the back, JMHO but I don't think there was enough air pressure to move the corn across the sieves because occasionally the tubes would fill with shell corn or maybe it was the pendulum would stick. There's a reason gleaners are known as "Silver Pheasant Feeders" around here. The 4420 I owned after it did a lot better job getting corn in the tank. I'm glad to hear your Wife is getting along better.

Thanks for the info. As I think about it more, if they worked as well as intended, they would still offer it today. Have a safe and prosperous New Year. Chris

I do not want to start a fight but Gleaner machines needed the hillside blower and Deere hundred series do not. Dad had several Gleaner combines and liked them but changed to Deere because he had to much trouble keeping grain from going out the back on hills.Two machines had the hillside fan and the worst problem was the hoses did not hold up as they have to flex all the time. On a Deere hundred series if you have lots of hills it helps to change the outside augers side to side so they do not drop the corn against the sides of the machine.The Gleaner problem is the same as my 95 and 105 Deere in that with a raddle chain the crop works to the lower side of the machine and overloads the downhill side of the cleaning shoe which lets grain ride right out the back.Manchester Mfg. makes a hillside raddle chain with fingers to hold the crop from moving to one side for both Gleaner and deere machines. Deere had a factory hillside kit with raddle chain with fingers and dividers for the top seive as well. Dad had a Gleaner E,E-3 and an F but changed to a Deere 3300 and 4400 because of keeping grain in the combine on hills. On flat land the Gleaner was as good a machine and much easier to work on.We grew lots of hay for horse people and we had to get a good job combining small grain so that no grain regrowth was in the following years hay. Tom

Have one on my F3, the tubes went shot pretty quickly, I taped over the holes the tubes blew in and really don't notice much difference.

Paul