New holland 66 baler

This message is a reply to an archived post by AllisG on October 26, 2015 at 23:50:57.
The original subject was "New holland 66 baler".

This is an old post. .but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. .

I bought a New Holland 66 baler off craigslist last year .. it was stored in a barn and I could tell right away it was in pretty decent shape!
Not all rusted and rotted out...
There was twine still in the box. .and it was still threaded through the machine. .. there was still a bale in the chamber..
I had NO history of this baler. .the owner passed away and they were just selling everything off.

I'm half way decent turning a wrench.. but had absolutely no experience with balers..
I did get couple pieces of advise from an experienced farmer. .. Keep your fingers away from moving parts when it's connected to the tractor!!!!!!
and keep the knives sharp! . .and use the sisal twine.. If I was going to work on anything . .turn the wheel by hand!

I got the unit home.. and went through it. .greased everything up. .and turned the wheel by hand to make sure it was going to work.
I downloaded the manual online.. Oiled the chains and tighten them up just a little..
I bailed a little over 500 bales with it last summer.. was very happy with it .. .it paid for itself..

You said you're going to use a sickle bar . . There is more of a learning curve for those!!
That's what I use!. . I bought one from a guy . .it was sitting on a stone wall. .
It was about 3 years ago. . it took me some time to figure it out and how to run it. .
I'm pretty confident with it after tearing it down a couple times!

The hard part I had bailing last year . .was looking for that window of nice weather!.. and I only cut some of the field down .. which was about 100 bales..
so if something happened.. if something broke .. I wouldn't loose it all..

This year I hope to get a hay crusher/ crimper . . that would take a day off my dry time..
or even a tedder of some sort..

Will you post some pictures of your baler?

Here are a few pictures

Cool baler and its a classic..thanks for posting!

They are a good baler still. My only advice would be to buy a manual, it will be the best money you could spend.

Dad went right to one of those from an old big New Holland 77 with a Wisconsin motor. The capacity of the 66 was miserable in comparison. The gear box cracked on it after just a year or so. Overloaded it I guess.

That is a nice original looking machine, with olbvious care over the years. My neighbor has one, and I've bought some hay from him over the years. The bales are seemingly as good as any others made with balers of that time period.

(quoted from post at 16:39:55 04/29/16) Dad went right to one of those from an old big New Holland 77 with a Wisconsin motor. The capacity of the 66 was miserable in comparison. The gear box cracked on it after just a year or so. Overloaded it I guess.

Click to expand...

These early balers may have not had the capacity of the 77 but the design of the 66 was simpler and pointed the way for future designs.

Those 66 could keep one person overloaded on loading at times.

I never could figure out what the difference was in the 66 and the Super 66 except the placement of the tool box.

That baler looks to be in really nice shape. It's obviously been well taken care of.
We had one of those growing up. It started out with a Wisconsin engine on it and was later switched to PTO. Still later on Dad had an IH bale thrower installed on it. We used it that way for a number of years till it was eventually traded off.

The one we had couldn't overwork a nine year old kid. My uncle had an IH 46 that would bale circles around it.

On the New Hollands - which are the higher capacity balers? I currently own a 47 IH wire tie and I literally can't make my tractor go slow enough for the baler to keep up. I bale a lot of brome and even with windrows 6' apart they are usually big enough that I am constantly stopping for the baler to catch up - that's going 2.5 MPH (1st gear) at PTO speed.

I've been thinking about getting a New Holland because the dealer support is much better in my area.

Ours would bale as much or more than the IHC 46 we had. Only reason we changed was the IHC had the thrower after 3 of us got overcome by heat in one rear.

Different control on bale length, Pickup slightly different 66 had steel wheel to control pickup height, S66 had a solid rubber tire. Wheel bearings.

The trickiest part of making good soft green hay is cutting it when it heads out and before it gets too old. Trying to get 3 days of sun in a row here in SE PA is not easy in late May. Especially if you are trying to do it on the weekend!!! Welcome to farming.

It sounds like you had one small hidden spring broke in the wadboard,if that spring breaks the part of the wadboard that is supposed to push the hay in but if you get a foren object in that piece of the wadboard will fold back to keep things from breaking pushes back into safty mode and will not push the hay in. Cannot see it happening as the hay hides the actions of that piece. And every time the wad board pulls back it straightens it out to normal position so unless you happen to with the baler stopped and wadboard in a certain positin that you can reach in to try to move that piech that without taking the wadboard out looks like it is bolted solid instead of on a spring. We fought that problem for quite a while. And our baler had the 2 cylinder wisconsin as we pulled the baler with a 16' rack with a 1944 Ford 2N tractor. Put up 10'000 bale a year with that outfit.

My Super 66 has a steel wheel. Maybe it's not a super. I have two 66's. Tool boxes are mounted in different locations.