Your thoughts on nh 66 baler

Found one about 100 miles away for $200. No pics but supposed to work. Would you all buy it or run away. I imagine it's pretty crusty. Will call him tomorrow.

My dad and i bought a NH 68 at a sale many moons ago,, gave 50 bucks for it, no paint and had not been used in years,, He did a tune up on it we used it for 5 years or so baling 25,000- 50,000 bales a year until I adjusted the plunger up one year and the next day the bolts holding the adjustment rail in place rusted in two and waded the plunger in the chamber,, she was a baling machine until then

I bought a super 66 a few years back for $250, it had been kept inside and after a bit of tinkering with the knotters it works great
for our limited amount of baling. Last season it never missed a bale. Bale length seems to be not uniform, but after it goes through
the cattle it doesn't show. Depends on how much hay you plan to bale I suppose.

Real slow going. Not much capacity. Dad bought one when the old 77 caught fire. I was like going from a D8 Cat to some little backyard Struck crawler.

Had one for years, Dad bought it new. Only got rid of it because went to a thrower and could not find one for it. And it would put out all one person on wagon could keep up with stacking So I do not have any Idea how these newer bigger capacity balers you could keep up with loading a wagon. The 66 has only 3 different length settings, 30", 36" & 42". Came from factory on 36 that we used for several years then set to 30" that we liked for handling a lot better. The S66 had a different way to set bale length and what what we had on replacement baler but of a different make And that setup while supposedly could make a lot more different lengths was very hard to set and hold. On that 66 check how much wear is on the wood plunger slides, not a bad job to replace but when they get wore it will not tie and you think you have knotter problems. We did have the engine tho and I think the engine gave greater capacity as you could vary the ground speed with just a touch of the tractor throttle but with PTO you are limited to the speed for the heaviest part of the winrow. Remember they were made in the middle of the 1950's. Also make sure the wad board is good, slide easy with no bounce around and there is a small spring in the plunger that cam break and if that happens then they will not feed in. It keeps the small flex end of the plunger in place but lets it swing back if a plug of some kind gets in. If I was still farming that is the baler I would want. And no problems with the banna bales always talked about with New Holland balers.

Thank you for the replies so far. I don't need the baler. I already have a 271 NH and a 720 Oliver. Thinking I could buy it and resell or keep for back up. We have few months until hay season. I only put up 10-20 tons a year. I just like fixing old equipment and dabbling in farming.

I still have a Super 66. It was well used when we got it. Dad didn't like it because it seemed to pack more hay in one side of the bale. Bales were sometimes curved. I always thought the problem might be with the wad board. I thought maybe the wad board fingers were worn off or it wasn't coming into the bale chamber far enough. It was aways a pretty dependable baler.

(quoted from post at 18:09:42 03/18/17) I still have a Super 66. It was well used when we got it. Dad didn't like it because it seemed to pack more hay in one side of the bale. Bales were sometimes curved. I always thought the problem might be with the wad board. I thought maybe the wad board fingers were worn off or it wasn't coming into the bale chamber far enough. It was aways a pretty dependable baler.

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I didn't go get it. I'm still thinking about. I figure $200 is pretty cheap for any working baler. He had a rake and mower. I was going to buy all three but the rake sold fast..I might still go next week. It will probably be a gamble pulling it 120 miles.

He did not have the drive chain for the wadboard timed corectly. Supprise it did not bust something.

NH 66 and 67, maybe 68, balers do not have wheel bearings, just sleeves, therefore they can't be pulled on road at any
reasonable speed. Years ago BIL found out that on a 66. I had difficulty pulling 67 on the road some years later. For the
heavy side wheel, I welded up a stub axle from a car front spindle and used the car hub and wheel. No problems then.

KEH

That's a great point, The 68 definitely has wheel bearings - at least mine does.

The Allis Chalmers Roto Balers only have a bronze bushing and no bearing on axle/hub pulled one of those over 100 miles with no problem.

Super 66 does have bearings though.

We had one in the late 60s. I wanted to buy a IHC 44T, and bro wanted a NH 66. Well nobody ever listen ed to me. We got the 66. It was already shot by then. It wasn't worth a damn. Wheels sashayed from side to side around 6in. One side wouldn't tie even with an expert looking at it. The shield finally fell off, and I got hit by the wad board a few times before learning to make a wide swath around the end of the damn thing.

If you would have put new wood slides on the plunger it would have tied. I am sure like most they just worked on the knotters and did not know about those slides.