GLEANER'S newly arrived S77 combine has made an impact during harvest with growers reporting a strong performance.

Horsham AGCO dealer Kym Irwin delivered a handful of the new machines in preparation for 2010-11 harvest, including one to Nhill cropper Daniel Colbert.

Harvesting cereals, canola and pulses, Daniel said he was pleased with the results the new technology machine delivered with the S77 doing everything expected.

"They said we could take a lot of a crop off and not put it all out the back and have a good sample at the same time and I thought we might achieve two of those three things, well the Gleaner did three out of three."

Not averse to switching brands, Daniel previously ran a John Deere STS but was convinced enough of the Gleaner's attributes to place an order in February 2011.

"We run Fendt tractors and Kym Grosser hadn't really put the idea of a Gleaner to us in the past but he reckoned it was a product that would suit our operation and his word means a fair bit to us, so we jumped into it.

"They were effectively sold out by the Wimmera Machinery Field Days in early March, so we weren't the only people who thought that Gleaner had put a good package together," he said.

"We always knew Gleaners could take off a lot of crop but it is the combination of that, its in-paddock efficiency being a big grain tank combined with quick unloading and Irwin Motor's back-up and support that is the most important thing when trying to get the crop off as quick as possible."

Running a chaser bin, the quick unloading is not super important Daniel said, "but it all adds up in the overall efficiency and time is money at harvest.

"If the chaser bin is sitting beside the header for less time that's great - if it doesn't have to come back as often because the machine can carry more grain that's even better."

"I have harvested around the place beside Gleaners, but never really had much time for them at all to be honest - they could always strip a heap of crop but there were other issues with them that impacted on their tonnes harvested per day capacity. That's all been straightened out in these new machines," he said.

The S77 has a 20 per cent larger rotor and 10 per cent larger concave and a 11,629 litre, 15 per cent larger bin than the previous R5 series models, which speeds harvesting. Emptying in just 98 seconds via a 356mm unloading auger, the S77 uses only two augers to shift grain from the tank to unloading.

Gleaners are the only machine on the market with a traverse rotor design, which the company claims draws lower power for added fuel saving and offers greater capacity with less grain damage than other designs.

"It didn't miss a beat and didn't throw anything out the back," Daniel said. "I was a bit worried coming from other brands as it is a totally different processing system to get your head around, but it was very easy to get used to, easy to set up and if I had any issues Kym Grosser, Chris Crawford or Irwin's team were always on the other end of the phone to assist."

Daniel ran a 12.2m Gleaner dynaflex draper front, which features hydraulically dampened tilt arms to provide a flexible cutter bar. With the tilt arms positioned every 76cm, the cutter bar offers up to 20cm of vertical travel, flexing every 76cm allowing harvesting at ground level in all conditions.

A Gleaner "rake" up front made a "big difference" on the canola harvest, which accounted for about 35 per cent of the harvest.

  • For more phone Irwin Motors 5381 1385.