How not to repair wiring

This spring I bought a parts 892 for $200. When talking with the farmer, he said they were having troubles with the metalert giving false alarms and it wouldn't keep working.

I have our 892 we picked up last fall ready to roll for corn, but figured I'd try to disable the metalert completely, like it was done to our other one before we bought it, just to see how the base works and if it'd be worth fixing up and running along side out other one. One thing his son tried, who is a mechanic at their local NH dealer, was to cut off the connectors for the metalert, and then just splice the wires together....

Here's what I found...



While going over it, I notice the wire that comes around and goes to the lower feed roll has been cut. Don't know how, or when it would have been cut, but my gut tells me that may be part of the problem....

There's also a few other minor issues with it, but for the little bit of sudan grass we need to chop, if it works, great, and if not, it's gonna remain a parts machine. One thing that gets me is that they never replaced very worn out #60 heavy chain that drives everything (maybe $50 worth of chain, at the absolute most), so a $300 and a $430 sprocket is JUNK. I'll just bring them to the local sprocket shop where I used to work and have them cut the old ones off and replace them so it should be considerably cheaper, but WOW. Most of the other chains are bad also, but none were as bad as this one...

Trouble is, the same sprockets on the other 892 are also worn, just not as bad as this one. If I do it to one, I'll need to do it to the other as well.

Donovan from Wisconsin

(quoted from post at 06:11:50 10/11/13) This spring I bought a parts 892 for $200. When talking with the farmer, he said they were having troubles with the metalert giving false alarms and it wouldn't keep working.

I have our 892 we picked up last fall ready to roll for corn, but figured I'd try to disable the metalert completely, like it was done to our other one before we bought it, just to see how the base works and if it'd be worth fixing up and running along side out other one. One thing his son tried, who is a mechanic at their local NH dealer, was to cut off the connectors for the metalert, and then just splice the wires together....

Here's what I found...



While going over it, I notice the wire that comes around and goes to the lower feed roll has been cut. Don't know how, or when it would have been cut, but my gut tells me that may be part of the problem....

There's also a few other minor issues with it, but for the little bit of sudan grass we need to chop, if it works, great, and if not, it's gonna remain a parts machine. One thing that gets me is that they never replaced very worn out #60 heavy chain that drives everything (maybe $50 worth of chain, at the absolute most), so a $300 and a $430 sprocket is JUNK. I'll just bring them to the local sprocket shop where I used to work and have them cut the old ones off and replace them so it should be considerably cheaper, but WOW. Most of the other chains are bad also, but none were as bad as this one...

Trouble is, the same sprockets on the other 892 are also worn, just not as bad as this one. If I do it to one, I'll need to do it to the other as well.

Donovan from Wisconsin

Click to expand...

Don from my experiences that's pretty normal old time farm repairs. Seems to me most farmers today are doing a better job.

Rick

What is a metalert?

Stops the feedrolls if metal is detected in the incoming material. Prevents metal from reaching the cutter head.

With out being there myself it is hard to say . When Eugene first brought me that piece of junk 782 Chopper that he drug out of the weeds and said fix it and make it work i about pulled out what little hair i have left . The wiring for all functions was a desister it was chopped cut pulled apart the conectors were smashed . So i had to build a wiring harness for it . What i used was truck trailer wire i used one seven wire cable and one six wire cable and for ends i used Delco 56 connectors and male and female trailer plugs . Where i had to splice wire onto the control motors i sodered them and used heat shrink tubing over the joints . Here again i used the best stuff i could get . This was done about fifteen years ago and the system works flawlessly , just plug and play so to speak . As i rewired every bit of that system even the control box.

When I was a lot younger a friend bought an old motorcycle
the chain and sprocket were so worn that it just jump the
sprocket teeth when you gunned the engine. Bummer
Walt

Hi
welcome to my world! I fix these farmer wire fixes all the time. Just done a Versatile 4400 swather.It had large chunks of wiring that was " FIXED " Like this.
It took a fair while to figure out the problems, But it starts and runs good now.
My dad had metal alert on a 719 NH harvester, it was good for Steel T posts and stuff like that.
But sometimes it would stop with a fence staple.
Kinda a pain in the @$$on an old fence line , when they did custom harvesting.
A few years ago there was a custom crew war going on, the other crew went down some rows throwing fence staples in the swaths. The metal alert was picking them up every few ft. Guy was not to happy.
Also I've heard they can sometimes give false readings. Maybe this is why it's been goofed with.
Regards Robert

Actually that repair doesn't look all that shabby compared to
some I've come across.

Or probably made, when you are out in the field and all you
have is a Cresent wrench and make do.... Unfortunate when a
person leave it that way tho once you get back to the shed.

What is a proper way to splice 12 equipment wire? I've never
been real good at wiring 12v stuff, or even just figuring it out....

Paul

Best way is solder and heat shrink tube. Close second is crimp on & heat shrink tube. The only reason this was done, is because they were on a wild goose chase and tried to make the Metalert work by cutting off the connectors between the tractor control box and the chopper, and just doing this. In doing so, the control box was permanantly attatched to the chopper, and out in the elements since they quit using it this spring.

There's a similar splice just 12" up the wire loom.

Since the 2 choppers didn't use the same power cords, or even the same connectors to the chopper on the other control box, I couldn't just use the 1 box we have for the 2 choppers. I bought some 6 guage parallel wire and made up new power leads w/universal connectors that go right to the battery, and put new leads in the 2 control boxes that I need to use.

I got the spout deflector to turn, and there is no motor on the spout to turn it right now so I'll borrow that from our other chopper for testing purposes in the field. Didn't get the reversing gear box to reverse yet. This chopper came w/ 2 control boxes. One of them did nothing with the reversing box, and the other kept trying to move the motor even without a finger on the toggle switch. I am gonna try the one that did nothing for now, as the gearbox is fully engaged (so I don't have to worry about slipping) and I won't burn the motor out unintentionally.

I'm still on the fence if all this trouble is worth it since our other one works great, but I figure I might as well try. If I can get this one working, I can tear one apart next year and replace sprockets and not have to worry about down time and not being able to chop anything. If nothing else, I could sell one for a small profit then if I don't stick too much into them.

Donovan from Wisconsin

I don't know squat about metalerts and choppers, but I know a whole bunch about field repairs on wiring. There's a reason the Good Lord invented electrical tape and wire nuts. Keeps those dead shorts from catching things on fire! There's usually a roll of tape and few nuts on all my tractors, especially during haying.