IH 820 head - sickle breaking

Any idea what to look for? I only had about 10 acres of beans to do, never used this head before so I did not plant much. Worked like a champ for about 7 acres and then the sickle head broke while it was down cutting. I thought it must have hit something so I had it welded professionally and it was done well. Put it all back together and I only got about 400' done, raised the head about a foot off the ground and was driving around to the next row and the sickle head broke in a different place...weld was fine. The sickle moves freely by hand. No sign of binding, no broken sections or shiny spots. I don't know a lot about wobble boxes but it all seems tight and no broken seals, bearings, etc as far as I can see. I can buy a new sickle head tomorrow but it is $100 and a 3 hr round trip. I hate to do that just to cut another 400 feeet! This is a 15' knife/sickle...any tips on what might be the issue?

Is there a loose knife section that is catching on a guard?

Have a lot of grass in the beans?? Damp grass and beans plus a less than stellar sickle are recipe for disaster.

I could not find a loose section, but I am going to give her another look over.

No, not really. The snow flattened what was there, along with a few of the beans. How does one go about testing a sickle with a broken head? I can't keep feeding the thing $100 heads. I grab it and move it back and forth and it seems fine. Right before the head broke I swear I heard something hitting. I had just raised it off the ground...so maybe what I heard was hitting underneath? And raising it made it more audible and possibly hit worse because the flex head moved in a different way?

Is the sickle still in time??

How do I tell?

turn the sickle drive over by hand. See if there is too much free travel when it changes direction. I am not familiar with how your IH header sickle is driven. On the JD headers there is a gearbox that drive the sickle. If the wobble bearing go bad or get out of adjustment it will have a dead spot at each end of the sickle travel. This will cause the sickle to hammer in and out. In a very short time it will break the sickle some where, usually just beyond the reinforced part past the head.

I'm an IH man but the 820 header and wobble box drive was not IH's best effort..I liked my 810 IH head with a Hiinnker floating add on bar much better..

That can be kinda tough on some floating heads.

And tally tough when you don't have a sickle now.....

Move the sickle all the way left, and all the way right, with the driver. In both cases the sickle sections should line up directly centered on guards.

Any of the parts being loose or broken that we discussed could make it look ok with no beans being cut, but could move the sickle bar and create things to be off kilter when actually cutting something.

If you heard a click as it brok, a rock, a metal time from the reel, a loose sickle, a side rake tooth laying in the field, etc got in and wrecked it. Or the weld let loose. Or some such.

One time I was cutting 5 acres of beans 7 miles from home - less than a hopper full because it's likened with trees - and I heard a clicking, got out and looked. A rock had messed the sickle, and it bent up in a bit of a U shape, three sections of sickle were cutting -above- row top of the guards. The sickle backing actually bent in a U shape to do so.

Well, scratch your gphear, there by yourself 7 miles from home.....

Too, the guards off, got the crescent wrench and a hammer from the tool box, and bent and beat the sickle sorta straight again.

Somehow that held together to finish that remote field.

I'd never seen anything like that, nothing was busted or broke, it just somehow worked 3 sections up and over the top of the guards.

Odd stuff happens.

Paul

When you say move it by hand, are you sliding the siclkle bar, or turning the sickle bar gearbox by hand? If you can slide the sickle left to right by hand, it sounds very loose or worn. How are the guards?

If the sickle slides left to right ok, is there excessive slop of the bar front to rear? They can jam up that way too - kinda goes at an angle, instaed of staight.