Silage chopping

We laid down our two silage bags last weekend. 7' x 150'. Put the 4440 on the chopper this year (3940 Deere chopper) that is a lot better fit than the 4020....but the other side of that brain storm was the 4020 on the bagger.....it didnt go so well, in fact I called a neighbor to get a 4430 after the first load and a half....

The 4020 seemed to have enough motor, ponies were not the problem....but the PTO couldnt seem to get it to the bagger, it would apparently slip, you could hear it and visually see the shaft slow down when feeding the silage in.

This tractor had a new clutch maybe 10 years ago, and the only pto work it has done is run a feed grinder since to speak of.

Any ideas? Seems like a good excuse to add another 4440 to the mix to me.....lol
 
Get yourself a couple of Whites Mike. I just finished up about 7 o'clock. Chopped with the 2-135,hauled with the 2-105,pushed and packed with the 1365. 77 loads in the 30x80 bunker all alone. It's heaped up there pretty good.
 
The problem deere did with the 4020s pto is the rated speed is at 1900 rpms, doesn't give it enough torque when it needs it on applications like that, on the wagons thou it works well.
 
I would have figured a 4020 would've been able to run a badger with corn just fine. We've run a 10' bagger with our Massey 285 when our chopper tractor went down and we had to run the bagger tractor on the chopper.

We ran it once with my Oliver 1600, but I smoked the clutch doing that.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
Your 4020 should play with a seven ft bagger. I bagged for years with an eight ft Kelly Ryan bagger with a 4020. We did always run it slightly faster than pto speed. We made a seven ft tunnel for our bagger and the 4020 runs it without even working hard. You could have a leaking rear engine seal or front trans shaft seal. If it is an early 4020 (hyd on dash) reach inside the dash and shorten up the rod that engages the pto to make sure it is going in the whole way. On a side console tractor you could be low on hyd pressure and that will let the pto disengage. Were the springs all replaced the last time it had a clutch? Deere offers heavy springs(4320 or 5020) and we put that in ours as we stalled it off a few times over the years bagging and that is a big load to get going again. Nothing wrong with another 4440 either. What brand bagger do you use? I made my seven ft tunnel to ground corn when we had the dairy cows. Now that we quit milking and have a small beef herd we do all our silage in seven ft bags. Made a 150 and a 200 of cornsilage and have two 150's of haylage as well. Still use the small silos but not sure why when bagging is so easy. Tom
 
The farm I work on bagged haylage with a 1755 Oliver (80-85HP) on a 9 foot bagger. The brakes stuck a little and there was enough pressure to split the bag in some spots just a little. Had no problems otherwise.
 
We used to run an 8 ft silopresse bagger with a 574 on it. Used to put up 7 bags per year for ourselves and some custom work. They used their own tractors for that though. Never had the PTO go out or give trouble.
 

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