Any Claas round baler owners out there?

I'm looking at a Claas round baler model 160 to bale silage bales with. They were recommended to me by my main mechanic. He "says" they have fewer moving parts, less wear parts and are an all-around good baler. (my mechanic is not tryng to sell me one) Who of you have used these balers and what are your thoughts?

RodinNS has one he has had good luck with. I have a Gehl roller baler which is sort of a SAE dimensioned copy of or the Claas is a metric copy one way or the other.

I've been happy with mine, I've only had it a season, bales fast, simple, far less trouble starting a bale than the last hard core baler we had. The centre is softer, outer part is hard. If you store on ends they keep shape. If you like to stack on the sides they can get a little oblong but not bad. If you don't have enough ponies to pack in the last layers of hay you will have poor bales!

Mine is a 5x4 and the things runs like its empty for 90% of the bale then the last 10% she will make the 100 hp tractor snort if you are pushing it. 70 hp would do it if you slowed down the last bit.

i have a older 34 twine tie ,had no problems with it. ods and end parts have been no prblem getting. friend has a 44 with net wrap. Its must have over 30,000 to 40000 bales threw that thing. we just changed the chains. as long as the oiler is working it seems bearing last pretty long. Everything is metic also. great balers in our book.

We've had a 44s for upwards of 25 years. Made over 30k bales close to half of that as silage.
I'm not familiar directly with the model you're looking at but generally speaking if it's lime green and has steel rollers, it's what you want for baling silage.
They have far less to go wrong with them on a daily basis and most things can be taken care of ahead of time. I've changed several rollers over the years, all of which were damaged by baling rock... because that pickup hauls up anything in it's path.
The basic idea with the steel rollers vs belts is that they stand up to the stresses imposed by baling silage on a daily basis. While others 'can' bale silage, the Claas is 'designed' to bale silage. It doesn't need any of a half dozen special kits to do a half assed job. It just goes and does it, simply. Are they picture perfect bales? No.. but they get the job done, fast.

Rod

A 160 is Claas' first belt baler, they are ok, but i have heard that some of the parts aren't quite up to the task, the second generation 260 or 280 are heavier apparently (i have a 280 roto cut)... A 160 makes a 4 ft wide bale by i think 5ft tall max... my 280 will make up to a 5.5ft bale, but they tend to be top heavy and fall over when you try to put a spike into them...

Not entirely certain on the 100 series, but my 280 has a #80 main drive chain on the right hand side of the baler, and another #80 driving the rotor/chopper, then a #80 driving the lower roller in the door (where the bale sits), claas roll the bale opposite to mos other manufacturers, the hay/silage comes in through the pick-up and rotor, the curls forward and upwards to form the bale, standing looking at the right side of the baler, the bale rotates counter clockwise.

The one thing you may want to consider is how close a dealer is, most of the bearings are standard of the self parts, but sprockets and such on my baler are often splined not keyed, so using jobber parts maybe impossible... Claas has usually very good pars back up, they may not have the part in North America, but they will in Germany, take your cheque book!

We had a 62 which made a 4x5 bale ( so no good for silage) but we put thousands of straw bales through it and only ever replaced 1 roller and a couple of chains. Claas stuff is very well made they certainly put more metal into their equipment than say JD. We had a JD 550 for silage, it made a nice bale but it was 'tinny ' when compared with the Claas. In The UK they have a saying about combines "You should only buy a green combine if its pale green and the wheels are red!"

Roy, why would a 4x5 baler be "no good for silage"?

I have a claas 66, very, very, very happy with it, don't ever see getting rid of it.