Soybean Not-Quite-So-Fun.

So there is a belt on the right side of the 2188 that runs, among other things, the beater and the straw spreaders. When the bracket that holds the tension spring rod breaks (or more specifically, when our patched-together-with-a-washer-bracket fix breaks,) it stops the show instantly.

Here is the bracket. It originally wore out during milo harvest 2004(?)





Dad welded it back up, and we put the tensioner back together.
(Insert picture of assembled spring tension rod here)

The problem though, is that the beater throws the stems coming out of the back of the rotor over the chaffer and out the back of the machine. Because I wasn't quick enough to shut down the separator when I originally got the warning indicators, the rotor kept on feeding material into the beater and I now have the beater clogged up. So I got to climb up on top of the chaffer (inside the machine) and pull all of these soybean stems out by hand. This was actually way better than last time this happened, because this break down occurred at about ten in the morning. Back then I got to pull a bunch of milo stalks out by hand--and it was about ten at night.