Belt Baler Recommendations

[David1968]

I will assume that it will have the intake rotor incorporated with the auger's to "narrow" the swath as it enters the baler.

It does, yes. And I did like the look of that design.

 

[spider mike]

We went from a john deere 590 to a vicon 2160. It was a revelation! Will bale grass for a start and just flies through straw. Hope it does you well

 

[BredRedHfd]

We went from a john deere 590 to a vicon 2160. It was a revelation! Will bale grass for a start and just flies through straw. Hope it does you well

Exactly the move I made. Revelation! Was taking 25' swaths of heavy hay, albeit slowly, but gobbling it up. Awesome intake... And one of the most reliable netters too

 

[David1968]

This is reassuring

Usually it's after you've taken the plunge that people start coming out of the woodwork to tell you you've made a mistake

 

[Matthew Britton]

This is reassuring

Usually it's after you've taken the plunge that people start coming out of the woodwork to tell you you've made a mistake

I bought the next gerneration to yours last year. I started off (having had big square balers) with a New Holland 740, it was ok but needed a bit of spanner in to keep going. Sold that just before I moved and bought a fresh McHale 550 because I wanted simple here in France. It was far from simple and I wish I hadn’t read all the hype about how wonderful they were. Sold that last year for the Kuhn 3160 and it is fantastic. My original gripe of not getting enough weight in the bales seems to have improved since i baled our barley straw this year and shone it up, bales seem heavier this year which is what I wanted. In short I am very pleased with it and would probably buy another. I hope yours is as good as mine.

 

[betterbreadbeef]

very good balers; I bought one of the first in 2010 when Kuhn bought the vicon factory. Have done prototype development with the factory and baled thick end of 100k bales with 2x 2160, a 2265, and the 7165HD baler. the intake is second to none. The 2012> variant of the 2160 with the "super silage" kit has some heavier duty bearings. The 65 prefix balers should all have had heavier duty or better sealed bearings. The 71 series is an entirely different animal that will eat the curtain door Deere for breakfast, but unfortunately has an astronomical pricetag. There's general wear points to look for. Keep your chains mint and tensioned to perfection. fill the lube tank with something like a 15w30 engine oil. Grease it regular. Don't force the input clutch if you're on heavy silage. or, if doing lots of silage with a OC14, spend the money and fit an OC21 input clutch to PTO. Sledge roll bearings do fail, knockout panels in chamber wall are an indicator of this. Replace the countersunk studs and check them. -can be an issue. new studs have a torx head and cope with tightening better. get odd niggles with sensors, but typically reliable. belts are good for 30k bales assuming part of the work is silage; I was doing 5k silage a year. Clean them down well in the winter or try and finish on straw to get tack off rollers. Release chamber pressure in storage too -tailgate lock valve and float allows pressure circuit to be relieved to 0. I'll think of other stuff if anyone has any queries. I've had a few bad breakdowns over the years, roller crack in half, another delaminate, 20B main drive chain snap in half, but they're pushed to the limit. peak output was 97/hour 125cm non chopped silage. 65/hour with OC14 in. straw at 152cm can easily do 83/hour with 2.2 turns of net. drops to around 65/hour with 3 wraps. Cannot beat the intake in the baler. It's why deere took it under licence for the 960 series.