Hello, my name is Bryan Messick with Messick Farm equipment. Today, we are here, we are going to talk about how we evaluate a used piece of equipment and what we look for when we go out to trade one in and the type of conditions that it is. We are going to be looking at a small square baler here. This is a New Holland BC5070 baler. We're just going to start at the front of the baler and we're going to work our way back through. What are some key things we look at when we come out and look at a baler?
We start with the hitch. We're going to want to look at the hitch. We're going to make sure the hitch is in oblong or egged out. If it is, we know the baler's has definitely had a lot of hay through it, it's been used a while.
The other thing we come to is, look at PTO shields and the knuckles in the PTO. We want to make sure there isn't any excessive play and we want to make sure whether the PTO shields are on the baler, not cut or broken. We can see on this one, the PTO shield is broken. That's going to take away value of the equipment as we go back through.
As we come back through on the baler, we typically go to the pickup. The pickup is very easy to look at. We want to make sure that all the pickup teeth are on the baler. We move it around and we just make sure that we don't have any bearings out on the camp.
We look in on the baler, and we look at the flow of the baler, and make sure that the floor in here isn't rusted out or has any holes rusted through it or even worn through it. This particular liner is replaceable, but older balers was not. You're going to have to cut the floor out if you got a lot of holes welded in it.
We'll take the fly wheel and we'll just move it back and forth, make sure we don't have a lot of excess slop in it. Then, we can get in to look at the knife on the baler inside the plunger and make sure that the knife doesn't have any nexus, it's still sharp.
You can also, when you roll the plunger forward, you can see the bearings there and we just want to make sure that the plunger is tight. We can even grab it and move it, make sure there isn't excessive play in the plunger.
We come up through and just look at the main gear box of the baler. Make sure there isn't any leaks or anything like that. As we come back along the baler, we are going to stop here and we look at our pick up drive belt. Make sure it's not torn or frail too bad. This one has some fairly decent wear on that belt. We come back and we get to our knotter stack. Big thing we want to look at knotter stack, we want to make sure there isn't too much play in the knotter itself. You always going to have some, but you want to make sure it's not excessive.
We look at the needles, in under here, make sure that the groove in the needles is not worn though too bad. If it is, you know you might be replacing needles on the baler. It's one thing that we always look at.
We look at the general overall condition of the bale chamber, making sure that there isn't any excessive wear. Making sure that the hay dogs are still underneath there and not broken out. That can commonly happen, and then they would need to be replaced.
This particular baler is equipped with a quarter turn chutes, so we don't have a thrower to look at. But if we had a thrower on here, we'd look at the thrower belt, make sure that they're not smooth, that they still have grip on them and we'd look at the drive on the thrower, make sure that it's okay as well.
One of the last things we look at baler as we come around, we check the cross rotary feeding system making sure that everything is tight. There isn't any bearings out there. Then we just step back and then we do a general overall look at the piece of equipment. Make sure that the tin work isn't dented and smashed in it. The shields are straight. Things like that. Just it's overall appearance and how it would look and present to the customer.
If you have any equipment needs, parts, sales or service, you can contact Messick's at 1-800-222-3373 or visit us on the web at messicks.com.
