Beatin' A Dead Horse.......

This is driving me crazy! (didn't have far to go anyway).

Howard was good enough to provide us with these pictures of an old IH beet topper at work last year in the Platte valley of Nebraska and I know he is not an old beet farmer.

Nevertheless, I've been looking at this thing for a week now and something is just wrong. First, that plate, where the flinger/knife assembly mounts to the side rail, did not stick out in front of the tractor nose like that.

Secondly, there doesn't seem to be a kicker bed between the diggers and the elevator. Also, there is a jackshaft missing (across the top of the diggers) which drove the chainbox for the elevator.

The kicker bed was normally driven by the sproket that is driving the elevator in this picture. And (this is the biggie), didn't that elevator mount behind the axle? Didn't the kicker bed assembly run under the axle? I remember the goofy thing was about 4' long.

Can anyone remember? Did IH make different models of this topper? Or, did these guys just mount it up wrong?

Or, am I totally crazy, need to go lie down, take a nap and try to forget about it? :>(

Thanks,

Allan

So your just talking sugar beets. I have quite a few photos of those harvesters, and what I can see the elevator goes under axle and up behind it.

Speaking of loading into semi's today, there is a beet harvester near here they don't even try and keep up to with semi's. Has it's own hy dump box, articulated in middle, has three steering axles and about 30' long. They chase that thing all day with two John Deere 8640 with tracked dump trailers. They don't even try to truck them, just pile them along roadways for later trucking. I watched this thing working one day in 4" of snow. It was blowing snow and tops out side and putting clean beets in bin.

Yeah, you've no doubt heard the story. We are in the "other" Nebraska. :>)

Allan

The big thing about beets is the tare (dirt, tiny beets & excess tops) 'cause when you got 'em to the dump, the machine there would load you back all the dirt you had hauled in and would only pay you for the beets and their sugar content.

That's why these machines were so great and they used every single power source on the tractor. The hydraulics, the pulley drive, the PTO and the transmission, of course.

That front "foot" bent the top over & adjusted the knife height, the spinning blade would slice the top off, then a rotating "flinger", which had small 'rake-like' teeth would grab that beet-top and pitch it out under the left side of the tractor.

Behind that, two long "diggers" would lift the beet out of the ground and the forward motion of the tractor would lift the beet up and onto the kicker bed, which was a series of rotating wheels that shook & pulled all the dirt off the beet.

At that point they were fed back into that elevator, which lifted 'em and threw 'em back into that tank. I can still hear those beets hitting that empty tank to this day. :>)

The darned things are heavy too. We always filled those old 1 1/2 ton trucks with about 8 tons. They just 'moaned' the load to the dump.

Our place is 4 miles from the beet dump and that little H with this one row topper and pulling in low gear, needed at least three trucks to keep up with it.

Nowadays farmers top and pull 8 rows at a pop and load into semi trucks.

Allan

Since this is a 2 1/2 ton truck, it can haul an easy 10 or 12 ton. So, it has sideboards also; they likewise, open out and up as the box tips outward.

Allan

Horse? did you say something about a horse Allan?

This afternoon, the cat and I learned that she would really like to have a JD 2010 Utility. Can ya believe it?

It is what she had on the chicken farm down in Arkansas and assumes that a farm just cannot operate without a utility tractor. I've got my hands full, that's for sure. :>)

Allan

Did they use the sled to make the trough for the beats to lay in til they were loaded? And, did they use those big ol' topper knives with the hook on the end?

Geeeze! You make me feel old! (Guess I am)

Allan