strawturner
Member
- Location
- East Midlands
Bought a 4m unidrill tandem this time around, mainly for use after my carrier and a pass with the rolls. The idea was to try and reduce blackgrass by using a low disturbance drill to 'slot in' the seed and try not to move lots of soil encouraging another chit of the dreaded weed. But I'm having problems with it, not only is it not particularly low disturbance and moves quite a lot of soil but..
Firstly it seems to love bulldozing, more on loamy soils then clay, very frustrating when you cant do 1/4 an acre before needing to stop and unblock it, I've tried the coulters at 35mm above the disc witch didn't help much, and am now back at 20mm to try and reduce my next problem.
Second problem is I've now broken 4 of the shafts (stub axles) witch drive the coulter discs, in less then 40 acres, 3 of these were when the coulters were set 35mm so I thought the discs were in very deep causing more load around corners in the headlands etc, but then when I moved them back (not a small job!) I broke another one anyway. Our land is not particularly stoney but I now suspect stones to be the cause as on the last one that broke, a stone was wedged in there.
As well as all of this, I find setting the depth to be fairly hit and miss, particularly from left to right of the whole machine, the left of my machine seems to be running deeper then the right..
So where do I go from here will this machine be for me (don't think so at the moment!) what kind of drill for similar budget (£20k) would do what I want? I'm thinking of trying a sprinter, originally avoided because I thought it would move lots of soil, but it certainly wouldn't block up as much, what about a rapid, can you raise up the cultivation discs and use the coulters practically, this would give me more flexibility in varying conditions/land types/less blackgrassy areas..
Thoughts appreciated.
Firstly it seems to love bulldozing, more on loamy soils then clay, very frustrating when you cant do 1/4 an acre before needing to stop and unblock it, I've tried the coulters at 35mm above the disc witch didn't help much, and am now back at 20mm to try and reduce my next problem.
Second problem is I've now broken 4 of the shafts (stub axles) witch drive the coulter discs, in less then 40 acres, 3 of these were when the coulters were set 35mm so I thought the discs were in very deep causing more load around corners in the headlands etc, but then when I moved them back (not a small job!) I broke another one anyway. Our land is not particularly stoney but I now suspect stones to be the cause as on the last one that broke, a stone was wedged in there.
As well as all of this, I find setting the depth to be fairly hit and miss, particularly from left to right of the whole machine, the left of my machine seems to be running deeper then the right..
So where do I go from here will this machine be for me (don't think so at the moment!) what kind of drill for similar budget (£20k) would do what I want? I'm thinking of trying a sprinter, originally avoided because I thought it would move lots of soil, but it certainly wouldn't block up as much, what about a rapid, can you raise up the cultivation discs and use the coulters practically, this would give me more flexibility in varying conditions/land types/less blackgrassy areas..
Thoughts appreciated.