What Did Lee Really Like About This Combine?
5 Jan 244 min 35 sec

Lee Lubbers wraps up his trial of the Fendt IDEA 8T Combine with a few more features that he really liked.

00:10 Well now we've had a chance to run the ideal eight t in the field, and there's a couple pretty cool 00:16 features that we really liked. And the auto dock system really got our attention because we've never seen anything like it. 00:24 Yeah. So moving field to field, whether it's a corn head, draper head with the auto dock feature, you know, 00:29 we're not having to get outta the cab, we pull under the head, put our hooks under, and we press a single button from the cab 00:36 and that combine hooks directly to that head, both electrically and, and our PTO shafts and we're ready to go. 00:44 And how long does that take? About eight seconds. And like I said, it's easy one button and you're hooked to that head. Well, 00:51 That's about as long as I can ride a bull. The auto dock was awesome. We've never seen that before and we really like that. 00:58 But another thing that we really liked, well actually loved was the tracks. And uh, this year we have some tile lines. 01:07 We put them in, it was in a drought, they didn't settle down good. And then we got eight to 12 inches of rain this fall 01:13 after the crop was mature and they all settled down. And with our wheeled machine, we were down mile, mile and a half an hour, the auger flying around. 01:22 We, we could just crawl over 'em or else we were gonna damage the machine and we could come up to the tile lines with this four 01:30 and a half, five mile an hour and glide over it. And, and it was gliding through the field, but even glided over the tile lines and that just amazed me. 01:39 Yeah, the track, the ride is phenomenal. Um, you know, another part of the track, you know, I know you're, you guys we're not in mud out here, 01:46 but a lot of growers are facing mud this fall. Um, you know, this track and mud is really where guys want the track system is. 01:54 You know, you get wet conditions. We want to reduce compaction but then increase our flotation. 01:59 We got a 55, 60,000 pound machine and keeping that machine above that wet ground is so important, you know, 02:06 and then the other thing that's important to guys is day in and day out, when we look at serviceability 02:12 and just ease on the operator, we wanna be able to have a track that sheds the mud. You know, having this large driver, having tons of space 02:20 inside this track allows that operator to run in those wet conditions but not have that mud build up to where they're having 02:27 to wash those tracks out or bring that machine back to their shop. Yeah, this is our first true hands-on experience 02:34 with tracks and we are really impressed. Uh, we've got numerous friends that do have tracks and there's been some real frustrations. 02:41 I know with the more closed systems and then digging out three to 500 pounds of mud, but after seeing this, we can see that's not gonna be an issue. 02:50 The thing we didn't talk about was from field to field, you're running 26 mile an hour with this track. So having that large track also gives us 02:57 that large revolution gives you that high road speed without creating heat. Well, that's important because, uh, as my brother 03:04 and I always say, you don't make money farming the road. Another thing we thought was so neat, 03:08 but actually a potential lifesaver, uh, was the self reversing fan because in the days that we ran this machine, uh, 03:16 the wind was blowing a, uh, bmy 25 to 40 mile an hour with dry trash and uh, that's a terrible recipe for fire. Yeah. So the reversing fan on this 03:26 machine, it's automatic. So you as an operator are not having to put any input into that. 03:30 Uh, so yeah, every 10 to 20 minutes or whenever you shut that separator off, that fan reverses, sucks that engine bay out so that that risk 03:39 of fire is not there. You know, there's a lot of guys around here that also grow sunflowers west of the river. 03:45 That is one of the most important factors in, in sunflower harvesting, is keeping that machine clean and having that reversing fan really reduces that risk. 03:54 Well, we've raised a lot of sunflowers over the years and, uh, a normal habit is stopping going over to the service truck and getting out an air 04:05 hose and blowing it up. The engine compartment out two or three times a day because your fires always start in the engine compartment. 04:12 Well, it's been a great experience so far, so let's go wrap up the last 35 acres. Sounds great.

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