Disc Harrow

Thanks for that. Looks to be doing very good work there. How is the tractor coping at 4 inches?
There’d be a good steady pull on her when you drop it to 4 inches but a good hill would test it out. 4wd on and full set of weights for stability. I normally till ploughed ground using a 4.5 meter harrow and dual wheels at about 8 kph and it’d be a similar pull.
 
There’d be a good steady pull on her when you drop it to 4 inches but a good hill would test it out. 4wd on and full set of weights for stability. I normally till ploughed ground using a 4.5 meter harrow and dual wheels at about 8 kph and it’d be a similar pull.
I'd be an advocate for letting a tractor work good and hard once the right lad is on it. Its amazing what modest horsepower can achieve with a bit of driving. Have a few banks here but light sandy ground so a bit of compromise. Is it a 7740 you have under it?
 
I'd be an advocate for letting a tractor work good and hard once the right lad is on it. Its amazing what modest horsepower can achieve with a bit of driving. Have a few banks here but light sandy ground so a bit of compromise. Is it a 7740 you have under it?
6640, about 85hp. It’s amazing what work it can get through, I’d also be a believer of giving a tractor a good workload, up to its capacity really without overloading or dogging it. Careful on the clutch and gentle with the controls and no black smoke out of her. It’s an excellent tractor really.
 
I can see the black smoke from here and OPEC are sending MF30 free gifts now as a result!

All joking aside, that's a nice job there MF30.
Your are mixing up the very frugal 6640 with the alcoholic earlier Fords. :lol:
They don't do black smoke like the older Fords and use way less diesel.
 
6640, about 85hp. It’s amazing what work it can get through, I’d also be a believer of giving a tractor a good workload, up to its capacity really without overloading or dogging it. Careful on the clutch and gentle with the controls and no black smoke out of her. It’s an excellent tractor really.
Great stuff, they were a fantastic machine, a lot of them got dogged as yard tractors over the years but them and the 7740s got through mountains of work in plqces
 
So the disc harrow had its first day out, just discing stubble today. Tilling about 2 inches deep at 11 kph doing about 6 acres an hour.

I fiddled around with different depths and speeds, easy to loosen soil four inches deep so I wouldn't be afraid of sowing grass straight into stubble.
I ran the discs a few runs at 90 degrees to the way I disced the whole field, it improved it slightly as the next photo shows but it would be hard to improve it twice as good at the same depth.
Well impressed with it in general. Next test is the seeder unit...
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An awful pity your not living next door 😀
 
Well wear. Tidy set up.
let us know how you get on with the seeder. I’ve got grant approval for one and not sure to go for a broadcaster or an air seeder
The seeder got its maiden voyage today sowing grass seeds at 12kg/acre. In order to calibrate I was to run the seeder at a set rate for 60 seconds and collect the seed and weigh it. Ah, too modern of a method for me...so I just measured out a certain measured small area of ground and picked a number between 1 and 30 and started sowing. Had to open it to max setting to get the correct rate so my trial and error method took me 20 mins extra to resow the trial piece. Spreader vanes were set around 4 metres wide and slight breeze out.
I'll come back with the finished result in a month...
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Only gripe I'd have with the seeder is the agitator is actually an 8mm drill bit which I thought insufficient so I attached a cable clamp to it. Works fine.
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The seeder got its maiden voyage today sowing grass seeds at 12kg/acre. In order to calibrate I was to run the seeder at a set rate for 60 seconds and collect the seed and weigh it. Ah, too modern of a method for me...so I just measured out a certain measured small area of ground and picked a number between 1 and 30 and started sowing. Had to open it to max setting to get the correct rate so my trial and error method took me 20 mins extra to resow the trial piece. Spreader vanes were set around 4 metres wide and slight breeze out.
I'll come back with the finished result in a month...
View attachment 97128
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Only gripe I'd have with the seeder is the agitator is actually an 8mm drill bit which I thought insufficient so I attached a cable clamp to it. Works fine.
View attachment 97137
Is the drill bit and U bolt your own agitator design?
 
Is the drill bit and U bolt your own agitator design?
No, the drill bit was already in it to my surprise, couldn't see it doing much by itself so added the U bolt. Could only tighten it through the hopper drain outlet but I need to lower it an inch lower.
 
Mate of mine has a Delimbe spreader.
All I'l say is that the book is useless for most settings!😂
 
The seeder got its maiden voyage today sowing grass seeds at 12kg/acre. In order to calibrate I was to run the seeder at a set rate for 60 seconds and collect the seed and weigh it. Ah, too modern of a method for me...so I just measured out a certain measured small area of ground and picked a number between 1 and 30 and started sowing. Had to open it to max setting to get the correct rate so my trial and error method took me 20 mins extra to resow the trial piece. Spreader vanes were set around 4 metres wide and slight breeze out.
I'll come back with the finished result in a month...
View attachment 97128
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Only gripe I'd have with the seeder is the agitator is actually an 8mm drill bit which I thought insufficient so I attached a cable clamp to it. Works fine.
View attachment 97137
Was seriously wishing pur disc had one of them on it today, 3 runs had the field perfect(2deeper and one just deep enough to knock out the wheel marks) plan had been to go with the one pass then but our packer roller does not like sticky clay which it was. Ended up using the fert spreader going twice at half rate off opposite ditches so for all I know it may end up looking like a dodgy chequer board 😂
 
Was seriously wishing pur disc had one of them on it today, 3 runs had the field perfect(2deeper and one just deep enough to knock out the wheel marks) plan had been to go with the one pass then but our packer roller does not like sticky clay which it was. Ended up using the fert spreader going twice at half rate off opposite ditches so for all I know it may end up looking like a dodgy chequer board 😂
Yes, it's great to do the final pass and seed in one go and leave no tracks. I dropped the crumbler to its lowest setting and lenghtened the hyd toplink so the crumbler just carried the harrow and the discs just scratched out the tyre marks. Was travelling at 6kph while sowing to get the correct rate out so wasn't too slow either. Rolled both ways to finish it off.
 
Yes, it's great to do the final pass and seed in one go and leave no tracks. I dropped the crumbler to its lowest setting and lenghtened the hyd toplink so the crumbler just carried the harrow and the discs just scratched out the tyre marks. Was travelling at 6kph while sowing to get the correct rate out so wasn't too slow either. Rolled both ways to finish it off.
It rolled out well for you in the end, I’d have been afraid with the lower speed and the cage roller leaving the slight ridges that it would have gone a bit like a corrugated sheet. Find ours leaves a much better finish with some speed up, I was doing 15k down and 13k up the hill and it left it just flat on top
 
It rolled out well for you in the end, I’d have been afraid with the lower speed and the cage roller leaving the slight ridges that it would have gone a bit like a corrugated sheet. Find ours leaves a much better finish with some speed up, I was doing 15k down and 13k up the hill and it left it just flat on top
I couldn't go any faster as seeder was at max flow although I could have sown half rate both ways to get around that. I rolled it initially at right angles to the direction in which it was sown and thought there might be a few ridges so went opposite direction as well. 10ft roller with 36 inch high drum with one ton of water added to it. Disc harrow seems to firm up land better than a standard conventional harrow too.
 
The Powerstar engine fitted to the 40 series was a huge improvement to the previous engines in the ten series, lots of Powerstars around with close to 20k hours without being opened.
The one in the 6640 is about as unstressed as an engine can be, no turbo and 85hp from a 5 litre block, compare it to some 6 pot engines of 6.75 litre capacity putting out over 300hp.
 
I couldn't go any faster as seeder was at max flow although I could have sown half rate both ways to get around that. I rolled it initially at right angles to the direction in which it was sown and thought there might be a few ridges so went opposite direction as well. 10ft roller with 36 inch high drum with one ton of water added to it. Disc harrow seems to firm up land better than a standard conventional harrow too.
I’m a bit surprised that it’s maxed out at that low a speed really but I suppose compared to a lot of smaller seeds the 12kg of grass is quite a large volume! Half rate with the disc would be a bit sketchy I think incase it ended up burying seed a bit to much
 
I’m a bit surprised that it’s maxed out at that low a speed really but I suppose compared to a lot of smaller seeds the 12kg of grass is quite a large volume! Half rate with the disc would be a bit sketchy I think incase it ended up burying seed a bit to much
I was surprised too, number 35 being the highest rate I started at number 20 and it was putting out very little. If it was turnip seed etc it would fall a lot faster being heavier. Think I need to lower the U bolt closer to the outlet, not sure if it was bridging below that. Agitator spins at full motor speed so it’d be fairly buzzing at the bottom of the hopper.
 
The seeder got its maiden voyage today sowing grass seeds at 12kg/acre. In order to calibrate I was to run the seeder at a set rate for 60 seconds and collect the seed and weigh it. Ah, too modern of a method for me...so I just measured out a certain measured small area of ground and picked a number between 1 and 30 and started sowing. Had to open it to max setting to get the correct rate so my trial and error method took me 20 mins extra to resow the trial piece. Spreader vanes were set around 4 metres wide and slight breeze out.
I'll come back with the finished result in a month...
View attachment 97128
View attachment 97129View attachment 97130View attachment 97131View attachment 97133View attachment 97134View attachment 97135View attachment 97136
Only gripe I'd have with the seeder is the agitator is actually an 8mm drill bit which I thought insufficient so I attached a cable clamp to it. Works fine.
View attachment 97137
That's a smashing job. Would you be tempted to give a few runs of the disc and then something like a power harrow and skip the ploughing altogether?
 
That's a smashing job. Would you be tempted to give a few runs of the disc and then something like a power harrow and skip the ploughing altogether?
I don’t have a power harrow as our ground doesn’t need it after the plough but I probably should have tried it on the bare sod before I ploughed it. It was a very old ley that needed to be turned over on top of a lot of dung. But on stubbles you could bypass a lot of wearing metal with it,
 
I don’t have a power harrow as our ground doesn’t need it after the plough but I probably should have tried it on the bare sod before I ploughed it. It was a very old ley that needed to be turned over on top of a lot of dung. But on stubbles you could bypass a lot of wearing metal with it,
Ah yeah that's fair enough. It looks a great versatile machine anyway. Well may she wear with you.
 
Ah yeah that's fair enough. It looks a great versatile machine anyway. Well may she wear with you.
Thanks, hopefully the grass will come up evenly from its first day out. Should get plenty of use in the spring and autumn.
 
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