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John Deere Row Crop Headers

B

boberjagel

Member
I have searched for the history of the development of these and find nothing. In the 1970'sand 80's 95 % of the soybeans in our area were harvested with these heads. Every brand of combine out there had JD row crops out front. Gleaners were most dominate at the time. Extremely popular for saving beans and fun to run as you could have fast ground speeds. Many stories circulated at the time even from Deere dealers that these heads were the product of a patent that was acquired from Massey Ferguson. We ran 653's and 653A's on 7700 and 7720 combines. Does anyone know about the history of how the development came about. Two of my neighbors still run them! Amazing!
 
I do know some 653's went on self propelled forage harvesters as at that time Deere did not offer a 6 row head. I have never ran one but have thought about trying one. I would need a 453a for my 95 combine to match out 7000 planter. Tom
 
There used to be lots of red kidney beans grown here in central NY. When JD came out with those row crop heads on the '00' series combines, they took over the market here. It seemed like no matter what color combine someone had, they traded for a 4400.
 
I'm presuming that most of those 4400's were rasp bar equipped. I wonder how that affected the pick when the elevator took the beans in? There supposedly a Central New York connection to that head but I had better double check my information before mentioning names. I've been burned somewhat lately on stuff proving to be inaccurate. Another story is Jim Blowers who had the JD dealership over to Hall, NY cut some red kidney beans using a 7720 Titan combine around 1987 due to a wet fall where the pull type Bob combines could not be pulled through the field. I remember Jim being out in a cold building during the winter sorting beans literally by hand to manage the pick. He and his family also bought red kidney beans for many years.
 
I don't know how they did it. I don't recall anyone having a spike cylinder in a JD combine. There was even a pair of custom operators with White combines running JD heads doing red beans. Before they bought a Bidwell, before my time, a neighbor put a spike cylinder in his A Gleaner, got a pickup head for it, and did beans. He never changed it back. His grain had some pieces of chopped up straw in it, but not too bad.
 
ran 853a on 1680 and later 2388. when they got well matured you could run as fast as you could stay on the row. no noticeable shattering. look like when you cut them off, they just marched right up to feederhouse and gave themselves up to the ROTOR GOD!! ps we was doing soybeans. we run 15 rows now
 
when we were cutting dry beans out in eastern colorado, the process was knifing them, then wind rowing two rows into one and using a pickup attachment to get two windrows at a time. we were using 95's and 105's because there was no clean grain return but wasnt ready to try 9500/9600s yet. anyway, i asked a couple times about running row crop heads and make a single pass, but there wasnt much interest. when those heads fell out of favor they got real cheap. I stil like running them on soybeans or milo
 
The story I heard when I worked at Deere dealerships was that engineers from Harvester and Ottumwa works (combines and forage harvesters, respectively) were working at the same test farm at the same time. Forage harvesters were using the new belted chain system and someone from Harvester looked over and said, Hmmm...

Scuffle between the two factories over which would get to market the new machine and obviously Harvester won. I remember some AE prefix part numbers (= Ottumwa source) for rowcrop heads.

Those were the days before roundup-ready beans so still a lot of mechanical cultivating and 30 row beans. Also, combine capacity increased beyond the practical limit of 12 rows for the header. Maintenance is expensive compared with a sickle. Guys didn't want to buy three headers if they grew a little wheat or other small grain. Guys who did benefit (and still do) grow some soybeans, some milo, and/or sunflowers.
 
They never took off here because the ground is not table top flat. Further, edible beans disappeared here around the mid-1960's because the seed varieties that did the best here were discontinued.
 
Those John Deere heads are based on the design of the Hesston, KS "head hunter".
Biggestdifference is that the hesston design was made to convert a gra8n header for beans. The john deere is crop specific
 
Yes, New Holland forage harvesters use rotary cutting disks to cut cornstalks. They have for decades. The gathering chains are metal not rubber like the Deere row crop heads and forage harvesters.
 
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