Sorry...long story to describe what I've tried so far.I have a JD 214WS wire tie baler. It was given to me by a friend and when I first tried using it, it wouldn't grip the wires on up to 2 of every 3 bales, so I shut down and worked at fixing it. I tried all of the easy suggestions first - cleaning debris from the gripper mechanism and making sure the gripper mountings bolts were tight. Then a retired JD mechanic suggested I check the tube that holds the springs that the lever attached to the grippers bear against, and thus maintain pressure on the wire to make sure the mecahnism moved freely. The springs were frozen solid, and after cleaning and reasseembling, it worked better, but still wasn't gripping reliably. Next I adjusted the needles as it looked like they weren't positioning the wire far enough into the grippers. That helped enormously and we were able to bale with only a few gripper failures. As I learned more about baling hay, I wanted to make my bales a bit more dense - the baler had previously been used only on wheat straw, and I didn't make any length or density adjustments. I tightened the resistors and immediately the grippers started failing, so I backed off and accepted lighter bales. Currently in very dry grass hay, I'm running about 45-55 lbs in a 36" bale. Bales are straight and tight enough that lifting by the wires gives only about 4 inches between the bale and the wire. By the second cutting, I learned a little more about fertilizing and fertilized right after the second cutting, and it paid off for the third cutting - best yeild yet. Even with lighter bales, the gripper was failing too often - more on one side than the other. I found that by dropping the speed to be sure to not overfeed, I would only fail to grip occasionally. The most recent fix, on the suggestion of an old-timer, was to put a couple of pennies in each side of the "spring tube" mentioned above to try to pre-tension the springs for a little tighter grip. IF that did anything to help, it was negligible. However, I find it hard to believe that folks who do it right run as slow as I am having to run to minimize the problem. I am baling grass hay that in our country gets pretty dry by the time I bale. We get very little rain in the summer, so my baling cycles are set by my full-time job schedule and my irrigation cycle. My yield isn't up to where it should be yet, so my windrows, even where heavy, aren't even close to what I see in alfalfa fields. I use a MF35 diesel, and at an engine speed of around 1600, I have to run in low-first to minimize gripper failure. That doesn't seem reasonable. QUESTION (finally!)...can anybody suggest what I might check next to try to get the grippers to work more reliably? Do I need to replace them? They don't look like something that wears out...even after 30-40 years. If I can get only one or two failures every 30 bales, I call it success, but I know it should do better than that. Thanks!
Chuck, WA
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