Horsch co 4 updates

[Fish]

Have you got the dry fert on this yet? Any other updates? I’ve just fitted a slug pelleter to my sprinter and had all sorts of fun and games getting it into the airstream without back pressure appearing…!

No, I’ve come to the conclusion that the co’s frame is simple not strong enough to take the weight of a dry fert tank, it could be done, but would require major fabrication work.

The way forward is a front tank for the fert, feeding the fert to the drills coulters by separate distribution system, a lot of work for little reward in most cases.
The only crop I grow that fert at drilling is vital (IMO) is osr.
For the moment, I’ve got round this problem by using the drill pre drilling to place fert at around 5/6 cm deep and then ( using rtk) drilling the crop in the same runs but only 2/2.5cm.
Yes two drill passes, but it works well and all our osr looks good this year.

 

[Northdowns Martin]

@Fish Interested in your recylced JD harrow fitted infront of the wheels. Pictures are usefull to see how you've attached the 3m centre section, have you got any photos of the outer wings? Also are there any modifications made in last 2 years? Cheers Martin

 

[Fish]

The original jd following harrow we just cut off the silly middle joint, fitted in the required length of steel box section, same size as the original.
The joint was made by inserting a smaller box section and creating a spigot and welding up. The out wings are just the original jd wings cut to fit.
The whole thing was thrown together one Friday afternoon just to see if it would work and as it worked so well we have never bothered to refine it. This autumn because it was so dry we have drilled with out either following harrows.
The only major upgrade as been the removal of all the original wiring and control boxes and moved to iso bus, it now runs on the same software you would find on an avatar.

 

[Northdowns Martin]

The original jd following harrow we just cut off the silly middle joint, fitted in the required length of steel box section, same size as the original.
The joint was made by inserting a smaller box section and creating a spigot and welding up. The out wings are just the original jd wings cut to fit.
The whole thing was thrown together one Friday afternoon just to see if it would work and as it worked so well we have never bothered to refine it. This autumn because it was so dry we have drilled with out either following harrows.
The only major upgrade as been the removal of all the original wiring and control boxes and moved to iso bus, it now runs on the same software you would find on an avatar. View attachment 1073742View attachment 1073743View attachment 1073744View attachment 1073745View attachment 1073746View attachment 1073747View attachment 1073748View attachment 1073749View attachment 1073750View attachment 1073751View attachment 1073752

Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I've set up our C04 to drill at 50cm row centres with a 5" band point, however only 3 rows out of 8 end up with covering discs and the other aren't getting as good seed cover as I would like hopefully this will help achieve that.

 

[Huntstreet]

We have been upgrading our old CO4. Ours in from 2004 and the metering unit runs of a wheel that lowers down onto the packer wheels. It is a real pain when it is wet! What metering unit could we replace it with? Also we would like to fit blockage monitoring system . Does anyone have a recommendations? Many thanks

 

[Deutzdx3]

We have been upgrading our old CO4. Ours in from 2004 and the metering unit runs of a wheel that lowers down onto the packer wheels. It is a real pain when it is wet! What metering unit could we replace it with? Also we would like to fit blockage monitoring system . Does anyone have a recommendations? Many thanks

Try speaking to horizon, George sly, they could most likely hook you up with a metering unit that’s electronically driven. Not sure on cost mins. Depends how much you want to spend I guess is the key.

 

[Fish]

We have been upgrading our old CO4. Ours in from 2004 and the metering unit runs of a wheel that lowers down onto the packer wheels. It is a real pain when it is wet! What metering unit could we replace it with? Also we would like to fit blockage monitoring system . Does anyone have a recommendations? Many thanks

I guess you have several options, you could convert the accord system to electric drive and then go to RDS Artemis for the iso/gps rate control or Artemis lite, maybe even the Horsch iso system could be made to work with the accord metering unit, don’t see why not.
Or replace the accord with the Horsch metering unit and convert to full Horsch iso.

All this depends on whether your tractor/tractors are full iso, if not, then I guess RDS will be your best option.

Blockage monitor, sorry no idea, what’s the problem ? seed stalling or soil plugging the seed outlet.

 

[Just because]

@solo

 

[Huntstreet]

Thanks for the replies. I spoke to the Horsch dealer and a conversion to Horsch metering unit would be in the region of £6k. I also considered another option. Buy a fount hopper like the Horsch partner, this would sort out the metering units. I would then just need to buy a seed tower and blockage sensors. For the smaller 1600l Horsch partner and these other bits I would be in for £21k.

Having thought more about it i think the way to go is to buy a sprinter, sell the co4 and a 2017 6m vad. The question i am thinking now is whether to buy a 6m or 4m sprinter. I would be running 19mm vos openers most of the time for wheat and beans so I am not sure what HP I would need for a 6m. We have some nice hills about the place as well. They are a lot of money at the moment. A decent second hand 4m is £50k so i assume a decent 6m will probably be £70k.

 

[alomy75]

Thanks for the replies. I spoke to the Horsch dealer and a conversion to Horsch metering unit would be in the region of £6k. I also considered another option. Buy a fount hopper like the Horsch partner, this would sort out the metering units. I would then just need to buy a seed tower and blockage sensors. For the smaller 1600l Horsch partner and these other bits I would be in for £21k.

Having thought more about it i think the way to go is to buy a sprinter, sell the co4 and a 2017 6m vad. The question i am thinking now is whether to buy a 6m or 4m sprinter. I would be running 19mm vos openers most of the time for wheat and beans so I am not sure what HP I would need for a 6m. We have some nice hills about the place as well. They are a lot of money at the moment. A decent second hand 4m is £50k so i assume a decent 6m will probably be £70k.

Depends what you call decent. My 2011 4m was 26000 maybe 4 years ago. There was a 4m this year in the Clarke and Simpson sale 2012 and that was 22-24ish from memory. 50k would buy you a very very good one. Out of interest how much was the 1600 partner on its own? Is that still available with the muller screen or does it have to be ISO?

 

[Huntstreet]

The 1600 partner was £16-17k on its own. However, i think Southern Harvesters have a second hand one for sale for £15k which looks nearly new.

 

[solo]

@Warnesworth and @Two Tone were looking to convert a co4 about a month ago on here. They may have got sorted by now.

 

[Warnesworth]

@Warnesworth and @Two Tone were looking to convert a co4 about a month ago on here. They may have got sorted by now.

@Huntstreet My drill uses the original Horsch Drillmanager (Agtron) system which seems to have glitch somewhere. We have looked at converting it to the original wheel drive system, as yours is. I wondered if it's possible to put in a proper landwheel rather than driving off the packer wheels but it would take a bit of doing. I also had a look at a CO4 recently which had been converted to RDS Artemis lite which looked a very neat conversion.

I haven't made any final decisions yet apart from spending a bit of time soon tracking down the glitch which I think is a loose connection or broken wire with the drill manager system.