NH Baler Update

Well, I had showed you guys a bunch of pictures of the before/after cleaning of my New Holland 66 Baler... Well I took it into town to a local shop (good friends of ours) and had the guys look the machine over to see if it would be useable. Well, the general thought was that they would do all of the work for me for free, but I would still dump a grand or more into it... Soooo I came up with a new plan..

This morning I went out to the meadow and drug the 68 Hayliner up to the shop.. Dad and I spent a good couple of hours cleaning it up, and after a little work have ALMOST got it turning freely. Everything moves when you turn the flywheel, teeth, needles (were tying a bale when parked) etc... I am going to put my good engine on it tomorrow and fire it up to see how it does, what should I watch out for??

My plane is to sell the 66 and use the money to rebuild/fix the 68. Which is the better baler? I know that the 68's have a bad reputation for banana bales, but that can be fixed with adjustment right?? I would like to know you guys honest opinion on which is the better baler...

Let me know what ya think?!?! Bryce

Sell both of them and find a 275 for about $1350?

I'm with Gordo. I had a 275- great baler. Neighbor had a 66- not so much.

Neighbor baled about 5,000 bales a year with a 66 summers of 2010, 11, and 12. He had the patience of a saint! He is quite mechanically inclined and yet he still had to get off the tractor about every 5-8 bales to adjust or hand tie a bale that the knotters missed. I road the wagon helping him stack one day, and in 8 hours we had 150 bales made. After all that, the market for squares was poor here, the bales small-about 25 pounds, and he had to work hard to get $1 per bale. He went to a large round baler last year, made almost 200 bales, and sold them for $60 each faster than he could bale them. He told me he made more money in 1 day with the big baler than he did in 5 months with the square baler.
That said, like was mentioned, a 273 is a much better machine. Bales are good and solid and it is very reliable. A different neighbor has one and when his kids came home to help bale hay, he'd bale 2,000 on a weekend easy. He'd even borrow two wagons from me to use along with his two, because the guys unloading in the shed couldn't keep up with the two guys baling in the field.
If you are doing this strictly for fun and have a lot of patience, that's great to see an old machine like a 66/68 being tinkered with. If you plan to make a crop with it, it look for a 273 or something in that vintage to lessen your frustrations when you want to get something done.

If you have a 68 that is in good shape with good knotters, good feed tines and that is set right you can make a lot of hay. It's not fast, but they work. OTOH, if you can locate a newer baler for the same money you'd put in the 68, then go for it. The 68 has a relatively narrow pickup and not a lot of capacity.

I use a 68, it can be a trial.

I have a 67 and a 68, they are the same except the 67 is a short tongue. I have baled 300 bales in 3 hours on several occasions, it will miss a tie every so often but it is not too bad. Sometimes it will go 100-200 bales without missing and then it may miss 1 out of 5 a few times. I don't have banana bale problems as long as I keep a pretty decent sized windrow so the pickup chamber stays fairly full.
Zach

The 66 was a great baler, for a while had tying problems, different mechanic found problem without ever looking at it. Turned out the slides on plunger were wore and that was cause, replaced and done nothing to knotters, started tying perfectly. Only got rid of it when went to a thrower that we could not find to fit it.

Well, one of the guys in the tractor club said that he had a 210? maybe a 273/5?? Not sure.. He said that his son wasn't paying attention and they put a big hole in the side of the plunger or something?? He told me that he would sell me the baler as is for $1200, or fixed for $2500. I think it is PTO drive, with the self contaied Hydrolic bale tension system?? Would that sound like an O K deal??

I want a baler that can be good and reliable, because one day I AM going to own a farm, and when the time comes to buy one, I would like to already have the equipment needed to farm it... I don't have anything that would run a PTO baler, but I could borrow a Ford 5000, that would run one like a top!! Bryce

I can't recall what tractors you have but it doesn't take much to run a baler on reasonable slopes. I have pulled a 67 with a Massey 35, then a Farmall H and now a 300 and all had enough power to pull a baler and a wagonload of bales up and down some pretty good slopes. If you get into a higher capacity baler you might need more power, I don't know as I have not had one. $2500 sounds high to me for a baler with major repair work done to it, if you don't need one now I would keep looking and you will probably find a lot better deal than that. I have about $300 in my 68, $200 to buy it plus a used tire and a tube and a drive chain. Fall is often the best time to get a deal on haying equipment, but that 68 was in May, it just hadn't been advertised so nobody knew it would be there, and with the shredded tire it looked kind of sad.
Zach

It is easy to put a lot of money into a baler in a hurry, buying it is the down payment.