Combine Fire

2 combines in my area harvesting wheat caught fire and appeared to be completely destroyed. Is this a more common occurrence then I would expect?
 
A guy around here had a baler catch fire last year baling wheat straw. Destroyed the baler and tractor that was pulling it. Had about 20 acres of wheat stubble burn before the firemen could get it out.
 
Been common since thrashing machines. Combine hot dry weather, flammable dust and chaff, hot bearings and fire from engines and it's bound to happen. I would imagine these new and quiet machines with clean cans the fire can get big before it gets noticed. I always carry a fire extinguisher in the combine.
 
Happens every year. I too carry a fire extinguisher, but one would have to detect the fire very early to stop it. I keep the field sprayer full and hooked to a tractor in the field with a long hose on it as well. Some guys keep a tractor and disc ready to ,make a fire break if the field catches fire.

Ben
 
When we run my brothers combine we do a pre trip on it and look it over good before starting. It suprise on how things hold product here and there and should be clean off at the end of that day. We had some small fires on it at times that were up by the motor. We ended putting a fire superstore on it in all the areas that could catch or start a fire. This was put on because the insurance would not cover the lost of it if a fire.
 
I blow my off every night with a cordless leaf blower and keep a 5 gallon pressurized water fire extinguisher on hand as well as 2 small abc extinguishers .
 
Here's one we put out couple years ago. We had a good response to it (only 5 miles from the station) and owner had dumped two dry extinguishers on it already. It started between the engine and the cab under the grain tank. Didn't look that bad to me, but the owner told me later it got to far into the electronics so the insurance company totaled it. Maybe for the best it might have been a nightmare to keep it running if they fixed it.
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A JD combine harvesting wheat , 5 miles to the west of me lit the field on fire. The combine was sitting out of the field, with no obvious damage. A big old articulator with a chisel plough was out in the field ripping up the hard ground making a fire brake. 5 fire trucks and a water tanker were on the seen, trying to knock down the flames. My guess is 40-50 acres were burned off. The good side of the story is, most all of the crop had been through the combine, and they saved the machine, only loosing the straw.
 
Looks to me like the manufacturer has put way too many "plastic" shrouds on these machines to make them look nice. Unfortunately design people (who have probably never seen a combine work in a wheat field) forget how much dust & chaff the nice looking shrouds are going to collect behind them. Dirt, dust & chaff are just fuel waiting for a little heat & oxygen, in my humble opinion.
 
I had a John Deere 105 get on fire once, but that was my own fault.

It was parked by my shop and I was welding on the muffler. Some slag from welding dropped into some greasy crud under the engine. I was able to put it out.

But, yeah, it seems like every year one or two combines burn in the field in my county.
 
Sometimes it does not take much for a combine to go up and now with more PLASTIC being used they get cooking really good .Back in the early 90's i had my pride and joy lite up on me opening a corn field . I had the headlands open and was opening up the middle and almost to the north end of the field the cylinder variable speed adjusting crank hit me in the elbow and started spinning and wwhen i looked at it i caught the smoke coming up off the right side of the machine . I shoved the speed control wide open and got it out into a hay field stopped the combine and jumped out grabbing a five pound extinguisher and empted it and hardly slowed down the fire . I was about 500 feet from a house trailer that i saw a garden hose hanging off the side of it and back up in the cab and as fast as my little Massey would go i ran it over close to the trailer and got the hose and was hosing it down . I was getting it under control when the fire dept arrived as a passing motorist saw the smoke and flames and called it in and the fact i was about a mile from the fire dept and three of the fireman lived next door . A bearing had gone out in the cylinder drive and the only real damage was one bearing and the cylinder drive belt and smoke damage and 15 years off my life . Round balers and mounted corn pickers go up fast also and i can tell you a five pounder will NOT get the job done , It takes WATER to cool the fire and wet the chaff. I had just washed that combine off after i had finished up at another farm and was starting clean on this shelling job . If it wopuld have caught fire at the opther guys place she would have been a crispy critter due to the fact i was inbetween the far reaches of two fire dept's and WAY back in over some pretty rough ground where we could only use tractors and wagons , was hard enough getting the combine back in and the 4 wheel drive pick up back to take fuel in.
 
The chance of fire is a constant with a combine. When you get combines running in the very dry western wheat country everyone is on alert for the smell of smoke. We were harvesting a wheat field in eastern Idaho one evening. Someone a mile or two away was burning something maybe just a burn barrel but the heavy evening air carried the burning smell across our field. I was on the other side of the pivot in a combine, another combine was rolling up to a truck to unload when one of the truckers radioed to the combine driver he smelled smoke coming from the combine. The smoke smell really was from that small fire a mile or so away but everyone on the crew was on constant high alert for fire. When I looked that way I saw maybe a half dozen young guys climbing all over that combine, I don't know how they scaled the side of the combine so fast but they were crawling all over opening inspection doors. When they found out the combine was safe they gradually climbed back off the combine and sauntered back to wherever they were before this happened. Part of the excitement came because they were bored and needed something to do but some of the quick response had been taught to them by the crew owner. He told them whenever they think they smell smoke come running. We did have several fires while I was on the harvest but the owner kept plenty of water fire extinguishers and dirt shovels on hand for the young guys to grab and use so the damage never was real bad. The only combine they lost to fire was a combine that was stuck in the mud and a pickup with a gas engine drove across the stubble and set the stubble on fire on a windy day. The combine was an 8820 Deere. The combine was not running but when it caught fire a couple of burned bare wires crossed and started the engine. It sat there running while it was on fire then suddenly the engine went to wide open throttle and sat there screaming away till it finally died. Not a good day for them.
 
Part of the problem is a nearly useless 5lb dry Chen fire extinguisher . A pair of 2-1/2 gallon pressurized water extinguisher with a pint of dish dish soap will knock down a deep seated class A fire . Or cool down a hot bearing .
 
Bailer fire reminds me of a city council meeting I was at a number of years ago. One of the council members was being given a bad time because his bailer had burned for the second time in the season. (He lived in town & farmed right on the edge of town.) He said that the early fire had been put out quickly by the FD & insurance had made him get the bailer rebuilt. It had never worked correctly after the rebuild. This time when he saw it smoking, he pulled it out on to the neighbors summer fowling, pulled the pin & drove home real slow before he called the FD. By the time the FD got there this time, there was nothing left to rebuild.
 
If a fire suppression system were an option, would enough new combine buyers choose to buy that option? Insurance companies might reduce their premiums on a combine with a fire suppression option.
 
That story does leave a guy wondering if the baler actually started smoking before or after he pulled the pin!
 

I've been custom rd baling since 1987. I lost 1 rd baler due to fire about 25 yrs ago. I thought I had fire extinguished 3 times then depleted the water from fire extinguisher. Some belts were on fire so I disconnected tractor so I could save it from burning. Fire Dept arrived 10 or 15 minutes later but baler was toast. Another one of my rd balers had fire in it about 3 weeks ago but we got it extinguished.

Np matter what brand or color all rd balers are subject to catch on fire & burn
 
had a fire call today guy lost the baler messed up his tractor and 100 of down marsh hay 12 + fire departments and DNR one big hot fire lucky it was a calm day or it could have burned 1000s of acres
 
I’ve had smoke on ny combine twice, cross shaft was making embers of the chaff around it for 4 rounds, I couldn’t find anything and figured it must be a barrel or brush fire in the neighborhood, finally got bad enough I could see the smoke haze a bit. Went home cleaned it out and soaked it down, was in a very hard to get to area.

Secon time was a very dry fall, with extremely low dew points. We don’t ever get it that dry here.

The chaff laying back by the engine was just glowing, very scary. At night you could see the embers. Tried to keep it clean, but every couple rounds would be there again.

I left the combine parked outside away from buildings, was just an odd couple of days for here.

Paul
 

Due to the fact when I 1st started custom rd baling was with an open station tractor it's difficult for me to believe one would want to continue breathing that dust/chaff created by a rd baler. Then if hay happens to get rained on the dust multiplies. Then there's the dust that gets into rd baler operators eyes.

Not me Vern. That's one of the reason's cab tractors were produced.
 
One of those backpack sprayer from Harbour Freight makes a pretty good fire extinguisher. I keep one full of water here because there is grass all around me. I also keep a big fire extinguisher in my shop. My brother did custom combining. His pickup started the wheat on fire. He was able to save his equipment but the wheat field was a total loss. He had to sell everything to pay the farmer for the wheat.
 
We don't combine much around here. mostly hay some corn. that being said we have had several tractors burn up. Neighbor burnt his hand pulling out a rats nest on top of the engine on his JD, I was able to fix it not bad. Another burnt his JD round bailing and my nephews boss burnt his new holland mowing. He said it only took a couple minutes and used up his fire ext quick.
 

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