Video Transcript:

Christian from MacDon here today, and we’re going to spend a few minutes talking about your auger and some of the adjustments that you can make. Do you want to run your auger in the floating position, or do you want to run it in the locked rigid position? Or do we want to adjust how much tension it takes for this auger to float up and down? We’re going to address some of those conditions in today’s series of videos.

First thing we’re going to talk about is the floating versus the rigid mode. When you receive your header it should be in the floating position. Your auger is designed to basically take your crop from your side drapers and feed drapers, and then get it into the feeder house to the combine. The auger has the ability to float up and down as crop enters it, so if you get a large clump of crop, it doesn’t get stuck underneath the auger. The auger can actually float up so the crop can get underneath. Once again, as we’re harvesting, if a big crop comes in there, then the auger can float up and down. Just to manage the crop as it enters the feeder house. The floating mode is good for the majority of the crops that we’ll harvest. Depending on what crops you’re harvesting, especially large, fluffy, high-volume crops, things like canola, oilseed rape or maybe peas, you may want to lock the auger in the rigid mode, which increases the clearance between the feed pan and the auger.

Make sure to drop the feeder house stop on your feeder house. So we’re going to come by now, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to adjust these levers over here. And this is how we adjust from floating to rigid position. If you were so inclined, inside your Operator’s Manual there are instructions on how to do this. But why would you want to read the Operator’s Manual when Chris will make a video? There is a little indicator there, sort of a squiggly line that indicates that we are currently in the floating position. To do this, we’re going to need some tools. Nothing fancy. We’ve got a 21mm wrench. Yes, it’s metric, I’m sorry. Undo this a couple turns and then we’re going to move this lever over to the fixed position. To rotate the cam because it does require a little bit of force, so I’m going to just put another 21mm socket on this bar. So you’ll feel it kind of go “clunk clunk.” And now it is in the rigid position. Now we’ll tighten up that bolt with our 21mm. Now that we’ve tightened the bolt, we need to torque it. The torque spec on this is 122Nm or 90lb-fts. So to get in here, what I’m going to do is this is the latch for the Poly door. I’m just going to move that slightly out of the way and torque it. Now we need to repeat this procedure on the other side of the auger.

Now if I go back in like I did before with my bar, there’s basically little to no movement because it’s already at its highest position. So now there’s a lot more room here. Now that we’ve raised it up and locked in position, that a lot more crop can be fed underneath because there’s physically more distance between the auger shell and the feed pan, and there’s a lot more room underneath the auger for crop to feed. So if you’re having issues with slug feeding or you’re hearing a lot of banging from your auger because it’s not a nice smooth flow of crop, because of course, sometimes we don’t always have ideal conditions, this is something you can try. Takes you basically about ten minutes to do it. If it improves your feeding conditions, great. Now, I probably wouldn’t leave it like this the entire season because again, if you get into some thin, light crop, the distance between the flighting and the auger has changed significantly. We’ve increased that. It may not convey like you want. So again, depending on your conditions, run in the floating position for most conditions, depending on your crop, depending on your conditions, you’ll want to run it in the floating position most of the time. But for some of that real high-volume crop, you may want to switch it to the fixed rigid position. If we want to undo this condition, we’ll go back underneath the header and we’ll put it back into the floating mode.

This is tough to see. This is something you might want to do again when you’re harvesting those high volume crops. In your Operator’s Manual there is a section called “canola optimization” and this is mentioned in that. If you want to adjust the auger hold-down tension, this bolt right here is where you want to make your adjustment. On the other side of this bolt is a pretty heavy-duty spring that’s keeping the auger in the downward position. If we back off this nut here, what we’ll do is we’ll release some of the tension, and we can make the auger easier to float up and down. So with a 16mm socket what we’re going to do is we’re going to just undo this nut, and as I undo it, you’re going to see that the stem of this bolt is going to get shorter and shorter. This is something you can experiment with, we want to make sure that we don’t take it too far off here. We’re at the point where it’s just snug, so I’m going to leave it right there. Now on the top side is a jam nut, which is not the easiest thing to access. So you want to make sure that you tighten up that jam nut as well, so again, this that doesn’t fall off. Be sure to do this on both sides of the auger, and you want to make both sides even. Measure how much of the bolt is extending past the nut and just make both sides match.

Here we can see the spring that we were adjusting. As we extend or retract that bolt we’re going to increase or decrease the tension on this, which will make the auger float up easier or heavier, depending on what we want. The jam nut, after you make your adjustment is right on the top of that plate. You can access it from underneath, but it’s not the easiest thing to get at. Now that you’ve backed off your tension on the top side, here is your jam nut. You can run that down with your finger and then snug it up from the bottom.

Now the pressure that it takes for this auger to float up and down is much less than it was before. Again, if you’ve got high volume crops, or maybe you’ve just got stuff that’s lodged and it’s coming in really lumpy, you can back off the tension. And if that helps with your harvesting performance, then go right ahead.

You can see that we are a little bit shallow here. If we want to put this back to where it was originally, we want to measure from the nut to see how much of the thread is exposed. And we want that to be between 7/8 and 1 inch (22-25mm), to restore this back to where it was from factory. Snug up the jam nut with my finger then lock it down. Repeat this on the other side and you’re done. It’s something that’s relatively easy to do, a little bit of time and no special tools required. 

To learn more about the FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header, visit our product page.

For additional resources check out our Owners Resources or visit your local MacDon Dealer.