New Idea Corn Picker Clogging

JRSutton

Well-known Member
A friend's got a new idea single row corn picker we play around with once a year, mostly for fun. Not sure, but we believe it's a no. 7.

We do about 3 acres - somebody else plants the corn for us. It's always worked well enough, but this year we can't go more than 50' without it fully clogging.

We waited on the corn much longer this year than in the past so it's pretty dry. It's also planted closer together, so that doesn't help.

I've try researching what to do since we really don't want to have to pick it all by hand now.

I've read about wrapping the snap rollers with chicken wire, barbed wire, leather, and welding spots on the rollers, or building the rollers up.

Would like to see if anybody here has some suggestions. I'm not a big fan of introducing any metal into the corn since it'll be fed to my animals. So I'm shying away form the barbed wire idea.

I can certain weld some spots on the rollers or weld them to build up areas, but I just have no idea what people mean by that. As in - where on the roller.

If anybody's done this -might you have some pictures?

Any advice would be appreciated (short of buy a new picker - we just don't do enough to justify any purchases)
 
The stalks are probably brittle and breaking off aren't they? That issue about drove me crazy Friday with my 325. They were frozen and breaking off and just laying there. By 2pm or so it was warming up enough for them to get a little tough. I picked a few loads in the mist and fog Saturday and I was right back to going four and a half miles an hour.
You'll just have to try a warmer wetter day most likely.
 
The tough thing is, I've never really watched too closely to see how things flow when it IS working.

What seems to happen is the stalks get drawn into the rollers - work right up to the end, then don't go far enough to the straight/fluted section of the rollers that will suck them straight down and through.

It starts with a few getting clumped in there and the clog then builds very quickly into a huge pile of stalks which gets bigger and bigger until you admit to yourself that you've got to stop again to clear it again.

It was actually unusually warm when we did it - 50's or so.

I'm sure the condition of the corn is a huge factor, I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to the rollers to help - especially in way of welding them.
 
Could be stalk rot if it is i feel for you about 40 years ago my dad got some corn from a neighbor to try . It got stalk rot we had a IH 234 picker on a 706 .The picker had straight strippers like a combine and a 1000 rpm drive line i would go in low first with the torque back which is pretty slow and the picker would plug up with stalks all the time . it took us 4 days to pick 5 acres after that i could go 4 and half to 5 miles an hour in good corn. I dont know much about new idea pickers but a neighbor told me that there is a threaded rod that adjusts the gap in the rolls he said they use to cut more threads on them to tighten up the roll gap. also check to be sure there arent any bad bearings on the rolls
 
If the stalks are breaking off,there psobably isn't anything you can do. Once they've broken off and are laying there,it's just a waiting game to see if they'll go up the primary elevator.
There was a beater available for the 324 and 325 two row pickers (I wish I had one in mine). There's one in there above the elevator,but these mounted farther ahead between the rolls. They broke up the stalks and pushed the pieces along up the elevator,but for the one row pickers and older models,you're probably out of luck.
 
Maybe it will pick better when the stalks are wet.Make sure the snapping rollers are tight together. They should strip the ear and pull the rest through and if they can't get a grip then the moving picker will break them off. If they are badly worn maybe a welder can add some grip.
 
Thing we used to do,look at your snapping rolls and you will find threaded holes.Cut a piece of rubber out of a tire sidewall(2-3x 6-8 inchs)take a cap screw&washer and bolt in the leading edge of rubber strip and spiral around the roll,works wonders and last 50-100 acres.one roll or both as the need calls for.BIAS TIRES work best.New Idea use to offer them as parts.""DANGER WARNING DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT GETTING CLOSE TO THOSE ROLLS WITH THOSE STRIPS ON THERE""
 
Slow down. You probably tried that.

Or speed up. Let the stalk, anchored in the ground, pull itself through the rolls, not get ground up by the rolls as you creep up on it. Works once in a while.

Some years, that is how it works. Just miserable. Nothing much helps. Rotten weak stalks.

Dad welded a lot of rolls in his day, but he picked 80-100 acrs a year between his and his brothers farm. The rolls wear down.

The rolls have that little shoulder, or notch in the rib? That is where it snaps off the ear. When they wear down low and smooth, a little weld on the top of that notch, in a halfmoon like the notch is, will make the rolls more agressive again. A rough weld is great, you want it built up.

Roll them through by hand after, you don't want the new bumps pushing into the other roll, that wears things bad, breaks things.

Now, the aggressive bump might actually break off a stalk easier, like a knife. So kinda depends where you are at with wear, stalks, etc.

Paul
 
You bolt the leading end of the rubber flap down and let the tail wrap around the roll. I installed many of them in my youth we kept extras in the toolbox. The holes are up towards the top of the rolls. Easiest position to install them is with the threaded hole pointed up and toward the opposite roll, when installed there the tail should be up on both sides. As I remember they will make just over 1 turn if cut the correct length. I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the roll adjustment. There is a lever to adjust how far apart they are. As I remember it is behind the right hand tire in front of the husking bed. Also you really need to learn to look back and see what is going on. I spent a lot of time pulling a NI #10,, the most of it looking backward.
 
Forgot to include that the flaps work best when you install two on one roll and one between them on the other roll.
 
On my #7 my neighbor added some weld to the high spots on the snapping rolls . That help me a bunch.
Are you using the same tractor and population.
I had to go in first gear with my M.
There were high speed gears available so ground speed was slower. Loved greasing that thing. Only 97 or 100 depending on the day.
 
I had never heard of flaps like that, good to remember.

Yea I ran a NI 6A for a time, I recall looking back a whole lot, and a lot of time with a pocket knife too.

Paul
 
Do like Butch says.We started with 1 and went from there and put 1 on each roll if needed(1 above the other.)Did that on MH SPs and NI Mounted .
 
Thanks, I'm going to try adjusting it first, but will make up some rubber straps just in case. We tried finding an adjustment, but when you're in a field pulling clogs, racing the sun - not the best time to try to figure a complicated machine like that out!

I do spend a lot of time looking back at the machine, but pretty much always just watching that I'm straddling the row and that corn's shooting out the end. I just haven't used it enough to get a good feel on exactly how the corn moves through the rollers.

Again - this is just a side thing mostly for the fun of it when the haying season's done. So I haven't done much corn at all. Only the third year we've run the thing.

Thanks to all for the help. I'll let you know how we make out.
 
Pickers are a different world than running a modern combine and corn head where the big decision of the day is what radio station you want to listen to. With a picker when conditions vary you need to be aware of it and what happens to the picking thus my comment about a lot of time looking backwards and watching. That roll adjustment I talked about earlier is important. If too wide the corn goes all the way to the back and plugs, if too close it pulls the ears off too quick and everything piles up on top of the rolls where it can't get to the elevator feeding the husking bed. The rubber flaps fix a lot of ills but not all. The tension of the upper gathering chains can have a huger affect on feeding. Besides the mechanical adjustments brittle stalks are a problem as are stiff stalks. Sometimes you have to drop a gear or speed up a gear, sometimes it is as simple as changing the picking height. Sometimes you have to pick when damp, other times only bone dry work. Sometimes nothing works and you want to throw a match in the works, GRRRRRRRR!!!!. Another thing is rust, rust is your friend for pulling material through the rolls and may have been helping you along for a few years and now you are getting things polished up?
 
I have a new idea #7. Back when i picked with it on my old home farm back in the day. Mine had the little welded bumps already on it.Part of your problem is variety of corn, part is the picker design. I've tried adjusting the snapping rolls in and out and really didnt notice much difference usually. The pickers snapping roll design back then is like a lot of them. THe snapping rolls need to be more like the newer superpicker and later ford pickers. I went to a 325 2 row narrow picker and it paid for itself in shelled corn savings. The snapping rolls were designed with not enough angle on them so they break off fragile corn stalks too easily and ears will sit and float on top of the rolls and shell till they get shoved or bounced off of the rolls. According to the way of checking shelled corn loss i always figured it at around 14BPA[ bushels per acre], This went down with the newer style to i think 3-4bpa.The older varieties of corn , the shucks stayed tighter on the ear and this helped it get through the snapping part of the picker without much shelling. Of course the corn moisture,weather,humidity,and stalk rot and insect damage can all play a part.The nice thing about the corn picker is usually they could pick up downed corn better than most combines of the time due to the design and the gathering chains.My dealer always told me to keep the gathering chains pretty loose so they stayed on the gears .I think this was to keep from wearing out the brass bearings or bushings.My neighbor told me to pick at a bout a walking speed and try to get the stalks about 2/3 s of the way back in the snapping rolls. I still am thinking about fixing a piece of steel so it will help push the ears off of the rolls to lessen the shelling. :D
 
I haven't thought too much about the picker till now because it always worked. The two past seasons, across a few fields each year, everything worked fine. So we never touch it other than to grease it (if it aint broke...)

So nothing changed on the machine as far as we can tell, so it must be the corn itself. We went from zero problems to not working at all with constant clogs.

Amazing that a difference in the corn can make that much of a difference, but obviously it can.

But as I like to say, you'll never know much about a machine until it stops working.

I'm looking forward to trying it out again, but I hear we've got over a foot of snow on the way... We may not get to figure this one out this year.
 
The stalks should never make it to the end of the rolls, they should be out the bottom by about 2/3 the way up the rolls. And we did pick corn in a foot of snow with snow on the complete stalk. Turned out it built up in the husking bed and froze things up solid. Dealer ended up with it in heated shop putting a torpedo heater directly on it over night and finally got it thawed out. Was an Oliver No. 5 of same vintage as your New Idea. And Dad went with the Oliver over the New Idea due to what he thought was a better design even tho the New Idea was built only 40 mile from home.
 
We must have gotten lucky. We used a no. 7 at Farmamerica on Nov. 8. It had not been used in close to 10 years, and not very much then. All we did for adjustments was to tighten up some chains that were loose and made sure everything was turning when the PTO was engaged. We only picked about 3/4 of a load, but it worked perfectly and never missed a beat.


mvphoto13374.jpg
 
It sounds like your stalks may just be too dry and brittle? If that is the case try picking in the morning or wait for a dampish day.
 
Never owned a #7 but had a few other New Ideas, take a gunny sack, most of them are plastic, but they will work just not as well as the burlap ones. Stick a corner of the sack into one of the holes in the snapping rolls at the back and lay it across so when you turn the machine on it will feed in and wrap around the one roller and cover about 2 feet of the roll. Works great and will last for 3-4 acres or more. Gene
 

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