Organizing air, wet kit,electrical hookups.

Our fld120 daycab field tractor has quote the jungle going on back there causing a lot of headaches when hooking up and when in operation.

Truck pulls a silage trailer in fields so there is a lot of off road abuse and a lot of movement required.

In addition to both air lines and the electrical hookup there are the two hydraulic lines, 3 additional 1/4" auxiliary air control lines and an auxiliary electrical plug.

Currently the air lines and electrical wire are coiled. They are an annoyance but are tolerable. I wouldn't mind replacing them with softer straight lines.

The twin line wet kit has lines both on the truck and trailer that each connect in the middle. They are a mess and are getting rips and tears everywhere. Total length on them has to be close to 10-12'.
I see a lot of show trucks with nice cleaned up boxes for hookups on the deck. The wet lines attach in the middle of the front of the trailer right at the bottom. The air/electrical/accessories all hookup off center to the drivers side.

What I was looking to do was clean it all up by having everything come out of a nice central box with the male wet line hookups right there as well.

I'd have the electrical and air bundled together as straight lines and hooked either to pogo stick or a Slinky for the cab.

The accessory wires/ hoses I'd like to bundle as well but would probably put a seperare slinky for them on the trailer and replumb/ wire it so they stat with the trailer as the are specific to that trailer.

The wet lines I would remove from the truck side completely and just have them hang from the trailer with a Slinky. I thought about bundling them together with abrasion sleeve but I think I might just wrap then individually and use a double sandwich clamp on them to attach the slinky to.


Anybody else have some suggestions or ideas thank you.

 

Thanks again KW forage. Always seem to have the same problems I do ha-ha. That looks about like what I want to do. I was thinking of running the lines more towards a 45* though.

I need to clean up the wet kit first though. just anextra overall mess because it'd set up as a 4 line kit actually for when we tried using the beater attachment we bough for the trailer. Some things went a little haywire there and we never tried again. But still have the mess on there.


Nice box you got too. What length?

You start into corn yet?

 

Very nice. I see lemmenes just bought a bunch like yours too. We run two h&s wide body's behind tractors, a ch613 Mack with 21' load line dump box, a Northern 40' hi-lift steel apron trailer with 2' extensions and some older concerted h&s and miller pro wagons if we need fill ins. Other.wise we have a couple local guys that will come haul with their red rivers if were really hauling a distance.

I think the trailer like you have would be better than the northern for just silage as they are much lighter but still unload fast. Our empty weight is 37,000-38,000lbs with a daycab FLD120 meaning the northern trailer weighs roughly 20k. If we just hauled corn and other feeds and byproducts the large red river aluminum belt trailers would be better for us as they seal tighter, are lighter and hold the same amount of feed.

The advantage the.northern has I think is strength. The box itself is built like a brick outhouse, but I can't say the same for their undercarriage or apron Tensioners and such. We twisted up the undercarriage in no time when we first got the trailer. The trailer repair shop said they don't reccomend that suspension setup even on dome van bodies. I believe its a meritor air ride.


Our 40' northern, a neighbors 36' boss and a buddies 53' red river all were bought new in the 50k range.

Loaded with the northern in good cornwill silage will gross 90,000-105,000lbs


We haven't chopped much around here.we got a few inches of rain just in time to save most of it and its really turned around and is looking nice.


We have been hauling for some friends of ours in NW Illinois. They've already cut 2,000 acres in southern Illinois and Missouri. Its very poor stuff. Running 9-10mph full stick ahead with the 10 row on their 970 and full stick ahead with the 940 they have as well. They run all 24' Meyer boss boxes on old trucks.

Were looking at probably going with boss boxes to replace the h&s ones.

Normally good corn with the nortern will net 30-35 ton on a full load. The stuff down there was very dry with no ears and would only net around 15 tons.

They've been swamped with phone calls and are looking at renting a 980 to run three choppers and also looking at running around the clock just to keep up. They figure they have 5,000-6,000 acres to go and have turned down a couple thousand acres worth of work due to not enough time and needing to keep the regular customers happy. The main spike in business is simply grain farmers looking for an outlet for their corn with no ears. Many of the fields we chopped around the good corn.

Well hopefully be a couple weeks out before we go full swing into our corn here.



Best advice I can give you for the trailer is to resist sliding the axles forward if you can. We left ours forward and that's what twisted our suspension all out of align. hauling manure was very hard on it.

Most if the bigger chopping crews know to load the drives first but if you get an operator that doesn't make sure you have a chat with him. Also remember that everything behind the trailer tandems acts like an anchor. If you have troubles getting around just make sure the chopper doesn't fill behind the tandems.

Keep lots of towels and window cleaner because the chopper guy is always going to pick you for splits or opening up because it's the biggest hole to hit. The good again if they have a Deere or NH that can't throe it over the truck you'll be free and clear.

When making the 2nd pass with a smaller head, drop back when going around corners so that your truck in next to the chopper, hell have to be a good operator and play with the spout a lit but it avoids collisions. Make sure to stop right at the end of the rows too when squaring off corners, wait for chopper to back out then you should be able to make corner and have ### end of trailer lined up perfect without needing ti pull a loop or back up.

Sorry if any of that was obvious to you. There's a ton of guys I sre wasting a ton of time out there.

 

Well finally got everything designed for doing it and ordered all of the additional adapters and hose ends I'll need. Also ordered two different filter bases and filters as the ones we had on weren't quite adequate enough I guess. Got a few Quick snap phillips springs and a Techtran AirPower 3n1 for straight elec/air.

Ill be relocating filters to inside curbside framerail with the top of the mounts flush with the top of the rail. The valvebody will get relocated vertically on the inside of the drivers framerail. The return tower and two current filters will all be ditched as will all of the current lines. One line will run from the pump through a filter back to the tank. That is the 20gpm side of the pump we will no longer be using, after a long call with a couple companies it was suggested to filter that fluid as it returns as well. It was also suggested to go to running two high pressure (800psi) high flow (50gpm) filters versus the 30gpm 150psi ones that were there. The other line will run off the pump to valve. Line out from the valve to the coupler to the trailer. The bypass from the valve will tee at the coupler for the trailer and both will continue on to the other filter then return to tank.

Should be a much more streamlined setup and will all be out of sight as well. I am also setting everything up so that all hose ends will be JIC 37* Female Swivels with most of them being straight. While we stock the 90s and 45s in that size some places dont if we ever blow one in the middle of nowhere. NPT fittings are a PITA and constant hassle.

Heres the before pics. Ill get the finished stuff up next week if I get it done by then.