by Lucas Benning, Vandalia, IL

Southern Illinois continues to get hit with rain showers. Not much has happened in the past week. We had customers in the Greenville area that only got a tenth of an inch of rain, areas around Farina that got an inch and a half, and everywhere in between. We have some guys starting beans but not too many, mostly the customers that have 2 planters are the ones planting beans. Looks like we will have some replant to do in certain areas. Most corn that is out of the ground is around the V3 stage or smaller. Cool, wet weather the rest of this week will not make things any better.

I got a couple reports back from customers that were using Autotrac for the first time this year. All reported that they didn’t know how they went this long without it and loved it so far.

Had two main issues this past week. First one was on a 8330 tractor and 1790 planter that I installed Autotrac on for the first time. It was randomly kicking out the Autotrac. After looking at the exit code that said wheel speed too high, I started watching the corner post and it would be running fine for a couple rounds and all of the sudden it would jump to 30, 40, or even 50 MPH. Did some checking and found a code for “wheel speed sensor mismatch” and then checked the address for that wheel speed sensor and found out it wasn’t reading anything. Put a new one on it and things have ran great for about 400 acres. With the speed, the customer was also getting lower population and has been fighting it for 2 years now. Will keep posted if problem arises again.

Second issue was on a 1770 24 row planter being pulled by a blue tractor that was constantly planting really low on rows 11 and 12, and the height switch was working erratically. the planter had Precision 20/20 and air force row cleaners, with liquid fertilizer. After checking the drive cables, chains, bearings, and checking for holes in the vacuum hoses, we found that when the planter was unfolded, the hoses were laying between the vacuum coupler for the wing and main frame. The height switch was corroded from the fertilizer that was leaking everywhere. Always keep in mind most fertilizer is corrosive so if you have any intermittent electrical issues always check places where a connector may have come into contact with the fertilizer.