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Ten or fifteen years ago, I paid $190 for a 6 row narrow at an auction. A few years later I bought a 4 row wide for parts for $50 at an auction. About the time I bought the first one, dealers wanted over $1000, because they could part them out for even more money than that. Today most would bring their value as scrap iron. I still have them but I don't plant with them. I found that with a good brush in the drum, a good drum seal and attention to seed hopper seam leaks, that mine did a good job of dispensing predicted quantities of seed. What I didn't find was anything near even seed spacing in corn. Three seeds together makes for three wasted seed then there's a foot and a half gap then a couple together... Makes for a poor corn crop. I converted the four row wide into a liquid 32% N side dresser for 30" rows. I stole a part or two from the 6 row cyclo 400 for that. Its vital to the working of the cyclo 400 that you swab out the pipes to remove insect caccoons and spider webs right before you go plant. And don't forget the pressure equalizing pipe from drum to seed hopper. If that's not clear, seed won't feed. In corn its very handy to buy round seed, then they won't double much. Small flats (especially with a worn drum brush) tend to over plant to the point I ran out of seed before I ran out of field. My cyclo 400 uses belt drive for the fan. One spring (nearly the last time I wasted seed with it) 2/3 the way through planting 12 acres, the belt wore just enough that pressure was a hair shy. When I got to the end of the field, I had too much seed left but had to wait until the crop came up to see where it had quit. Planting corn in Iowa in the middle of June doesn't make for a great harvest. That year or the next year one row plugged with beans (and I never did determine why). But I planted 5 rows. I mounted a mirror so I could see the drum on the side that should be rising with seed, then I painted stripes on the drum so I could detect it turning. Still I missed that corn failure since the tips of seed corn were fairly dark. I never did succeed in making the monitor work. It needed a speed sensor that my 400 doesn't have apparently. Gerald J.
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