Balers - Bulldozers - Shear Bolts and Pick-ups

Bill VA

Well-known Member
Lining ourselves up for new wood plunger slides,
bearings, bushings and u-joints on the NH68. More
daylight each day and looking forward to getting
this baler back together and running again!

We kept the baler throttled back a bit last year
during our hay making sea trials, but will turn it
up a bit with the refresh this year.

Last year I probably broke 3 shear bolts at the
flywheel. I chalked it up to sending to large a
wad of hay into the bale chamber and between the
knife gap and the dullness of the knife, the
plunger knife probably couldn't cut through the
wad of hay and sheared the flywheel shear bolt. I
now understand the concept of how the flywheel
moving at full speed helps prevent shearing the
flywheel shear bolt - so hopefully with the
refresh of the plunger stem to stern, I can kick-
up the rpms.

The other thing that we encountered with the NH68
was if the windrow was to large or there was just
a large pile of hay in front of the pick-up,
sometimes the pick-up would stall. Not sure yet
if I need to adjust the tightness of the pick-up
drive slip clutch - yet.

When you folks are running your NH or other brand
balers, do you have any trouble stalling the pick-
up in a heavy windrow?

Mostly on the New Holland balers I read - they
like a lot of hay, large windrows. Question is -
if the plunger and knife are in good order, are
you shearing flywheel bolts when you feed to much
hay into the baler?

I'd like to get 12 strokes per bale if possible,
but I've read of some balers making a bale on as
few as 3 flakes!

Question is - anyone just flooding their baler
with hay - like a bull dozer, plowing through
thicker areas of windrows, without letting the
feeders get the hay in to the bale chamber and off
the pick-up and hay piling up in front of the
baler like dirt in front of a bull dozer blade -
no slow down, jam the baler with hay until the
windrow thins in a few yards ahead and living with
a few 3 or 6 flake bales AND - NOT stalling the
pick-up or shearing the flywheel bolt?

Ready for Spring!

Thanks!
Bill
 
too much hay will break a shear bolt yes they will only handle so much(size of baler will dictate windrow capacity) but sometimes the reason is you hit a wet spot or "slug" in the hay that will definitely bust a shear bolt especially if the hay is overall too wet.you can definitely hear the baler/plunger in tougher hay.
 
The 68 isn't a high capacity baler like the newer NH balers you need to keep the amount of hay going into the baler down some,never pays to crowd a square baler anyway.Also what rake are you using?
I used to have a JD rake it tended to "rope" the windrows and make them somewhat uneven,now have a NH 256 does a nice even job.
 
My experience with a 67 and a 68 is that when I used to cut hay with a sicklebar and rake and bale on the third day l had to keep the throat no more than 2/3 full of hay or it would plug and shear the pin on the flywheel. Now that I am cutting with an old haybine with a conditioner the hay seems much drier on the third day and sometimes I even bale on the second day under the right conditions and it seems to bale best at around full PTO speed with the throat full. If I throttle back I shear more pins. I don't know why, that just seems to be how it is. I have made 150 bales in an hour sometimes. Keeping the throat full also helps the bales to come out squarer and seems to prevent banana bales. I have never had a bale with as few flakes as you describe, a 36" bale always seems to have at least 8 flakes and sometimes more. The really dry hay that has been conditioned seems to compress a little more so a full bite of hay doesn't make a huge flake.
Zach
 
Have a IH 47 it use to slip pickup tightening clutch helped. It is almost worn out though for its tightened as far as we can go still slips some. We don't run it at full capacity unless NEEDED say it IS starting to rain, hay's still dry lets see how far we get. Already bogged tractor and baler just barely kept up. It has a clutch in the flywheel if we hit a slug. Takes a few times stopping and reversing(by hand then power ramming) to get through when that happens. Yes we had bolts blow because of dull plunger knives, usually just blow safeties. Never did count "flakes" per bale just throw in gear and go, but watch for any problems. The bales are set as tight as can go with out blowing out string from to tight(40-50lbs are average). We run with a flat rack behind and stacker watches for "misses". If we can catch them we fix them. The baler we found works best just UNDER the 540 PTO RPM. or the knotters miss more (to fast for them to work properly, I think).
 
Never used a 68, but have used a NH 77 when I was younger. Check the shear bolt at least once a day, they are bad to work loose, and when they do they will shear easier.
 

You are correct that higher Rams reduces stress on many parts in a baler. When I was baling with a JD336, I used to break a shear bolt in the same place in one field every year due to a patch of reeds canary grass causing a huge wad to be pulled in no matter how slow I went. Since I got my MF 224 I have never broken one there. One time while baling around a tree in the middle of a field, The baler got a hold of a second double windrow before I could get the clutch in. I braced for the bang but it didn't. it spit out a second bale on top of one already on the ground. I stopped to take a look, there were fourteen inch flakes in that second one. That MF will eat some hay as long as it is completely dry.
 
WHen I had the 65 I had to run smaller windrows or else.. My 273 likes alot of CONSISTENT hay.. not chunks..It takes some getting use to but I can feel how hard the baler is working listening to it and through the tractor.. consistent hay keeps a rythem going but a wet chunk or chunky hay causes a different sound in the baler, tractor and esp notice how the pto shaft moves..If I notice a chunk going through I stop the tractor and let the baler hopefully work through it.. most times it will sometimes it shears..takes awhile to get use to how each baler works and what it likes.. I have a buddy that has a 336 J.D. likes half windrows.. meaning he wont combine two 9 foot swaths into one.. only rakes one but runs along faster.. Manual on mine says to keep consistent hay in chamber at lower tractor speeds. Funny I knew a guy that ran a baler with tractor at half throttle.. wanted to save gas by doing so.. tried to tell him about strokes and rpms per bale etc. but aint listening.. his bales were always loose...two cents worth..
 
First off you are running a 50 year old hay baler so you have to think in 50 year old ways and terms. A NH 68 is not a high capacity baler so windrow size makes a big difference, It was made to bale hay from a 7' swath raked up.

From what I have learned baling hay over the last 40 some years is this. First no 2 balers bale alike! Every baler has a sweet spot (pto speed) that it runs at and you have to find that speed. Some run the best at full pto speed and some need to run slower, Its just the nature of the beast and you have to figure it out on yours. Having a uniform windrow is a must for any baler to make good bales. Ground speed should be to ware you see the windrow (or rope) being picked up and just starting to be pulled into the baler by the pick up. Never cram or push the windrow (this is ware things go wrong and brake). And with any baler they need to be well greased and oiled and kept in adjustment and the knifes kept sharp. Like I said having a baler adjusted up right and sharp knifes to start off with is a must. The more you bale with it and watch it the more you will figure out what to do and not do. Reading your manual is a must and if you don't have one get one as it will make your baling hay a lot easer. My uncle ran a NH 68 for 15 years (still has it) and I ran it a lot for him, We pulled it with a 2010 JD diesel and I found it ran the best between 17 to 1800 RPM's on the tack and it ran like a sewing machine. They good balers but you have to get to know the baler and find her sweet spot. Bandit
 
My NH 68 Hayliner, has a built in "Pick Up Drive Slip Clutch"

The are 2 or 3 large spring loaded pins that are being rotated by a chain, and when the pick up is feeding TOO much material, the pins are pushed in, and then pop back out a few seconds later into the next set of holes and continue driving the pickup again.

First time this happened to me last year I had a LOT of hay in the machine (toooooo much) and due to a bad operator, if the slip clutch had not have kicked in, it would have killed the Wisconsin on the baler, and I would have probably never got it going again!!! :

Make sure it has some lube in the pins, mine were rusty, and went in, but didn't feel like coming out! :)
 
Unlevel ground- a hump in the field or a small ridge will temporially stall the pick-up fingers, cause the loose hay to gather in front and then all at once the wad picks up and will jam the baler. I have some ridges from plowing and were not smoothed out before seeding, I try to rake the windrow to one side or other.
 

I ran a 67 NH which is like a 68 except it didn't
have the swinging hitch and long pto shaft. If I
made small windrows it made banana bales, worked
better with fairly large windrows at reduced
ground speed.

As for breaking shear bolts, that's the nature of
the beast. Keeping the nut on the shear bolt
tight helps,as stated above, but sooner or later
they will break. I got in the habit of replacing
the bolts periodically. Didn't have to deal with
the occasional retiming grief that way.

KEH
 

Shear bolts are going to break Bill. I've had them break with no hay being fed to the baler. We tighten them and that stresses the bolt and the vibration and packing motion causes them to crack and over time they are going to break. That's has to be accepted. As far as choking the baler, the worse shape the feeder tines are, the more it want's a lot of hay. Good feeder tines, IMO!, make everything easier. You have to find the sweet spot with your ear, eye and seat of your pants. You'll learn when the baler is laboring. You slow down or stop for a minute and let it clear itself. Or maybe you need to avoid that section of the field and tedd it again.

Baling is as much art as science. Dry hay, a consistent windrow and a good running baler make it all easier.
 
As others have already pointed out your baler is real close to being 60 years old so you have to think similar to that era.

Low capacity, slow and easy, and does not take much tractor hp to operate but the PTO rpms should be somewhere real close to the ballpark of 540 rpm as that is where the entire system is designed to operate. Few people had big tractors in the mid to late 1950's.

My NH 65 baler will slip the belt on the pick-up feed drive if you try to cram the hay to it. If that huge cram of hay somehow makes it past the feed to the chamber it will shear the main shear bolt. Nothing wrong with the baler, it is simply an ultra low capacity machine designed to operate on ultra low tractor hp.

I expect my new to me NH super 68 will be slightly higher capacity but nowhere near a modern one either.

Most critical job in haymaking is not the baler operator but the rake operator. Even baling with a low capacity baler , tractor with non-live PTO tractor, and a tractor with poor selection of slow ground speeds is still easily possible if you have a good rake operator. A good rake operator will make the windrows sized to fit the sum of these limiting factors. Contrarily, Put an idiot on the rake though and you will have a long day of frustration.

Live PTO, tractor with superb selection of really slow ground speeds, and a higher capacity balers run at a lower end use capacity can all help compensate for an idiot on the rake.
 
Couldn't agree more with the pain of having to follow an Idiot Operator!

BIG lumps, wavy rows, inconsistency, just a HUGE pain in the a$$! VERY hard to be efficient....

Bryce
 

I run a 1960's MF #9, 540 PTO RPM and I run it full at all times, makes best bales at capacity, about 12-13 strokes a bale. I bale about 4 MPH with it. If the hay is too heavy for 4MPH, drop a gear or two or three.

Only do about 2500 squares a year with it now. Have not broke a shear pin in a few years.

Two key things, windrows being even and a good sharp plunger knife and to listen to the machine, if it's overloading, shove the clutch in, and rake the windrows even.
 

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