Wobbling through life - in Secrets from myself

The famous/infamous wobble box.

It's on the right side of the bean head for the combine. It converts rotation into back and forth motion to power the sickle blades that cut the bean stems. Note the eccentric/cam angle. Also if you wish, note the green flange that came from the John Deere dealer. It does not match the rest of the red paint.

Last year during bean season the wobble box failed. Son went to the combine salvage yard and got a used wobble box and installed it and finished the harvest. Later in the winter he ordered a factory rebuilt wobble box to replace the used one. In theory a factory rebuilt wobble box should be better than one from a salvage yard.

Not necessarily so.

There is a side story involving the pulley that drives the wobble box - that I am not going to go into right now.

Anyway the new rebuilt one failed in several ways that were fixable - with parts from John Deere. And that's the one you're looking at. It's still under warranty but getting a replacement would require transferring the pulley and no one wants to do that. It's too big a job. And it breaks and it's expensive.

Combines are like factories. They are complex collections of systems that are intended to work together to achieve an end. It takes a fair amount of planning and attention to make them work.

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It's another Friday night. Another week tossed to the wolves.
See you soon.