Neil: Neil from Messick's here, we’re out today with the Kubota hay rake, joining me here today is Anthony Rhodes, our Kubota hay tools product specialist. We're going to do a quick walk around this piece here, show you some of its features and functions and have a conversation about what customer might be best served by a rake like this.
So Anthony, what's the difference between a rotary rake and a wheel rake?
Anthony: Okay you look at a rotary rake here, it's going to be a nice gentle sweeping action of the hay, so it's going to sweep the hay across the front and release into a nice fluffy windrow. So, it should be a lot more gentle on the crop, it's going to create a fluffier windrow, it's going to allow that crop to dry down in the windrow better. Wheel rakes are maybe a little faster, you can cover a little more ground but you're not going to get a better windrow than out of one of these rotary rakes.
Neil: before to wheel rakes are more apt to pick up dirt, rocks and that kind of stuff and throw it into the windrow because they're contacting the ground right?
Anthony: Absolutely, so you look right here you see a gearbox here that drives this rake, so it's going to turn the rake for us, you actually set it just down into the stubble so it's not picking up any sticks, any rocks, it doesn't require contact with the ground in order for it to operate correctly.
Neil: So, if your goal is to make nice hay, you're going to make nicer hay with a rotary rake than you would with a wheel rake?
Anthony: Absolutely, if you want a real nice consistent windrow with no big bunches, nice small windrow to go into a small square bale or other applications, a lot of people really like these rakes.
Okay, so a couple things I want to point out to you here, first things first you notice that the tine arm here is bent, comes up flat and then it's bent up, so that allows us to get a little more capacity as it rakes across because it's actually bent back a little bit and then as it releases it releases higher. If this rake arm was straight here, it wouldn't release as high. So it helps us to create a nice fluffy windrow compared to the competitors out there. The other thing you'll notice you see these tandem wheels, these wheels can actually rotate 360 degrees.
If you happen to fall in a ditch, you pull this thing across a ditch or groundhog hole or something, I want to make sure you lift up the rotor up off the ground but this rear wheel will actually flip up over and help pull itself up out of that undulation to the ground. Remove this linchpin here and move this Rick tine arms just like that, it stores up here in the frame for transportation.
You'll see, if you take off these arms and you take the curtain off or you hydraulically fold up the rear curtain here, your storage width or you transport width it's pretty much the width of these tires, so it transports and it stores very compact. Same thing goes with our single rotor rakes. Our RA1042T rake is practically the front half of this large 2781T rake so you would remove the tine arms, fold up your curtain and we can pack it away for the winter in a very small place.
So, if it's time to put this rake away for transport or storage, you obviously want to take the tine arms off and store them, you also want to put these shields, in order to do that; you flip this up, you push it in. Pull up, you pull it out.
Neil: We also have the single rotor RA1042 out here today, we didn't run this one here today or get it dirty yet but you can see the single rotor version of this is like Anthony said, basically the same as the double rotor version just cut in half.
Anthony: Okay so you notice we're pretty much in transport with now but we haven't removed all the tine arms okay. We took three tine arms off of each side and we installed this lock here which does not allow the rotor to turn. So if you just want to move the rake field the field or something in season, you can just remove a couple arms on each side, secure this rotor from moving and go down the field, you know your minimum width just like that.
You notice the safety guards here are a little bit different, still very easy to remove them. Another thing I'd really like to point out, these rakes I mean it's not anywhere near as high as it can go, they can lift way up and you can completely clear a windrow, get into the field or just drive right across it if you need to.
Okay, you basically have three adjustments on this rake, your up-and-down adjustment, so how far you let the rotor down, this is simple, screw down here, you pop this out, spin it around to go lower or up to lift the whole rotor up, set your one adjustment right there. Your second adjustment will be right here, that adjusts your front to back, how level the rotor is front to back, it allows you to adjust how level the rotor is front to back if you've got it too low in the front or not low enough to the front, you can run this in or out to make that adjustment. The third adjustment's right here, so if you need to adjust the level right to left, if you don't have it low enough on the right side or too high, you can run that in or out to adjust the whole rake.
A lot of people ask us, what does terralink mean, what is this? It's a patented design that Kubota came up with which actually allows our frame in between the two rotors to actually flex. You notice we don't use a ball joint or anything to allow this rear rotor to independently follow the contours of the ground, they actually allow this beam right here to be able to flex. Special kind of steel that allows us to flex and actually allows that rotor to go up and down the different angulations in the field.
Another thing you'll notice are our tandem axles here are pulled, so the chassis is pulled which allows it to pull over rough areas of the field much smoother than a push chassis. Some of our competitors actually attach it from the rear and you think trying to push a heavy machine that falls into a dip or something to get it back out it's a lot more of a challenge in this particular setup. One of the things is that a lot of people like this particular rake for, it allows us to swing this rotor to the right or to the left. This rear rotor we can swing it to the the right to basically rake 20 couple feet together all into one windrow, we can swing it to the left, use a second curtain up front and now make two windrows. So you're basically going through the field one time, raking two windrows.
So, great versatility for somebody that's doing a lot of different applications, maybe got a round bail and you do some small square bail as well or different types of crop, sometimes it's a little heavier in the spring, not quite as heavy in the fall, that allows you to swing the rotor the other way and put 40 foot together if you so choose.
Neil: That's a quick walk around of the Kubota series of hay rakes. If you have any parts or service needs for your equipment or we could help you purchase a piece like this, give us a call at Messick's we're available at 8002223373 or online and messicks.com
