Starting Roller on 605J Vermeer

wi4x4man

New User
I am new to round baling, but have been small square baling my whole life. The only reason I went to a round baler, is because kids now a days are a bunch of lazy goons who would rather sit in front of a TV or play a video game, rather than get their lazy butt's off of the couch and do some real work.

At any rate, a few weeks ago I purchased a Vermeer 605J round baler. After figuring out how to use it, I was a bale making fool just cranking them out, making about 18 bales per hour.

Well it was getting late in the evening, and ignoring my experience and better judgment, I kept pushing hard becuase there was a rain front that was "supposed" to move in. About 9:00 on Saturday night, I started a new bale and balled it up. So I got off, tried cleaning it out quickly, and whatnot.

Then I had the idea of opening the tailgate and getting the hay from the inside of the bale chamber. I got quite a bit out, but not all.

Then I had the great idea of starting the PTO with the tailgate open to help clear the one big ball of crap out of the way and spit it out the back. Well this was a dumb idea. What happened was the hay that was in ended up getting wrapped around the square starter tube. It wrapped up so quickly, that it went between the circular roller about 2" above it, within about 2 seconds and then bang.

So I shut it down, and start to dig it out by hand. In the limited darkness I could see that the square tube did not look straight any longer as I got more and more hay out of the way. So, I called it a night and went home.

On a nice clear dry sunny Saturday, I went back out there, loaded her up on the trailer and took her home. Low and behold, that tube was bent right in the middle, all kinked to hell. Not only that, but the roller chain on the RH side that drives that tube was also busted from when the tube kinked.

I tried everything to straighten it, but ended up getting the torch out to cut the kinked section out. I figured, what the heck, it is already screwed up, what more can I do to ruin it.

The question I have, is has anyone else been stupid like myself and done this or see this happen? If so, how did you fix it? Did you just replace the tube, or did you put a sleeve around it and weld it in place.

I am thinking if I make a C shaped sleeve with a plate on one side, I can then place it around the existing tube and weld it all back in place. The tube is very thin material to begin with, so I figured I would use 12 gage steel. However, this also causes the tube to instead be 3" square, to be about 3-1/4" square.

What are your thoughts out there. I would hate to have to take the whole bloody thing apart to get that tube out and replace it if I could just sleeve it in the machine.
 
Shortcuts hardly ever work for long.
If the roller ain't straight it may cause other problems like broke shafts and bearings and chains and such.

Do it right the first time.
I would build a new roller out squire tubing or 1 1/2" angle iron if it needs sharper corners.
 
I have a 605J I bought a few months ago. Mine has the square starting roller as well. The later models used a spiral roller. I believe they also had bigger bearings on the spiral roller than they used on the square roller. I would check to see if you can swap to the later spiral roller. I would not try to repair your current roller.
 

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