TRANSCRIPT:

Hey everyone, my name is Quinn. I work for MacDon. I'm a product support specialist and today we are going to go over checking and adjusting We are going to go over checking and adjusting draper deck seal clearance.

Checking and adjusting draper deck seal clearance allows us to ensure we're not wearing out components early and on the other side ensure that we're not having a a gap that's too large to allow debris, crop, seed inside the draper and potentially cause other issues or cause seed loss from the header. My favorite way, on the combine so I can get it at a reasonable working height. So we've pulled our reel all the way up and all the way back. We have our reel safety props engaged and I have my feeder house stop on to make sure that it's not going to go anywhere on me. Tool list. We have, I generally like to use a an impact but T40 torx socket. We have a hammer. Some sort of marking tool. I got a paint marker. Pry bar. 24 mm or 15/16 inch ratcheting wrench. 18 mm ratcheting wrench. 18 mm combination wrench and then miscellaneous wood block.

We have our wings into the locked position. Float also in the locked position. Make sure we're doing this to both the left and right hand side of the headers.

We're going to take our feeler gauge because our specification for this adjustment is 1 to 4 mm. We want to make sure we can get that 1 mm shim in there everywhere. That way we know the setting is not set too tight and I'm going to go along the entire way and we're going to try and see if we can get with relative ease the tool in between the metal cover right here, which is our deck seal, and the draper. I'm just checking to make sure that it's relatively easy for me to get this 1 mm shim, getting a little bit tight there.

And then coming along and we get a pretty big gap there. So, that's just something that I'm noting. On the opposite side, we want to take a 5 mm shim. If we get the 5 mm shim in there, um it's not conforming and uh we do need to make an adjustment. We can see I can get my 5 mm shim in along the draper in multiple spots.

Most of it is good, and just keeping in mind what areas may need to be adjusted. We get just a little bit loose right there.

I did measure this before and I've marked with a paint marker just where that adjustment points need to be made. So, to make the adjustment, we're going to loosen off our draper tension. That's just going to make it a little bit easier to uh access the hardware.

So, we're just going to put our wrench on and loosen off the tension. At the point where it starts feeling pretty loose and our indicator has gone all the way outboard on the draper deck,  we know our draper is loosened off all the way. We're going to go along and we're going to remove all the hardware.

I like to throw them up further on the drapers in the position that they were sitting in on the seal, uh it does matter what order you put these back in at, especially on on FlexDraper® Headers. They kind of only go in one way. So, right here we have a draper deck, which is what the drapers ride on. That's our frame structure inside of the drapers. And then we have the attachment point of the draper deck to the cutter bar of the header, which is what we call our deck support hook. It's a steel casting. So, these two 18 mm head bolts are what we are going to be adjusting. If our gap is less than 1 mm, we need to lower that deck to maintain a 1 to 4 mm gap. And if the gap was too big, we could slide our 5 mm shim in between the seal and the draper, we need to close off that gap.  So that would mean bringing the deck up relative to uh to the seal. Note, depending on your header size, uh there are a different number of deck hook castings. So, different number of mounting spots on a 61-ft versus a 30-ft like I have here. So, now that we've got easy access to the adjustment bolts, we are going to loosen them off, but just loosen them off a little bit. We do still want some force on that bolt, just so the deck doesn't fall all the way down on us. Using our 18 mm wrench, sometimes it's easier to get in there with a ratcheting wrench, sometimes just a standard combination wrench. We're going to loosen that joint off.

With our bolts a little bit loose, we now have to remember what the measurements we took are. What we found was that the gap was a little bit tight at the roller. Ultimately, it's normally going to be just a little bit tighter at the roller than it is in between the deck hook spans. So we're going to lower that deck down just a little bit, which will generally put us at about 4 mm, through the center spot, and then we might go a little bit tighter on the next deck hook just to kind of lever that deck up. And we get to use my favorite tool, which is a hammer. I'm just going to take my pry bar onto the casting down here.

And we can see as I'm hitting that, I'm watching that the deck is creeping up relative to the casting, which is what we're looking for to decrease our deck seal gap. So if we had a 4 mm gap, a 5 mm gap to start off with, I've probably moved it enough now that we have about a 2 mm gap. So, we're going to tighten that hardware back up. We're going to put that deck seal back on, and we're going to check to make sure that our adjustment is correct and then move on to the next one.

And just a note, we do need to tighten up the draper for every time that we do want to check it. We're just going to tighten this bolt up with our 24 mm wrench until the white indicator is on the inside half.

We can take our deck seal, we can reinstall it and check our gap now that we've made the adjustment. This seal does go underneath that panel, so just watch that when you're installing. The only piece of hardware that matters is at the ends, we do have a washer.

We can check our gaps again. I always like to start off with my 1 mm shim, make sure it's not too tight. I can in fact get that shim in the whole way. Which we've now confirmed. I'll take my 5 mm shim stack now and just make sure that I can't get it in at any points.

Which I can't. That's what we're looking for and we'll continue that adjustment down the rest of the header. Next situation we ran into is as I was measuring we had our 1 mil shim was unable to enter the gap. So now we have to try the opposite process and go through and lower the deck instead.

And it is just snug so that I know it will move. And now I'm going to pull my 2 x 4 out and all I'm going to be doing is I'm going to take my hammer from the top side of the draper and very gently tap down onto this metal piece right here, which is our draper deck frame. And that's just going to shift that deck down on the casting to increase our gap.

And then what I like to do, you can see we've got our deck hook casting right here. I like to come feel the deck frame with my hand and then very gently without smashing my fingers tap it down. In this case, I can feel it moving. It didn't move too much, so I hit it a second time. And now we've probably moved a couple millimeters, which is all we were looking for. We're not looking for lots of adjustment here and hence why those bolts stay just a little bit tight to help us out hold everything together. Just going to tighten this hardware back up. Again, bolt with washer on the end.

Check to make sure that you have your minimum gap. That the feeler gauge slides in there relatively easily. Take our 5 mm shim and ensure we can't get it in.

Visit our product pages to learn more:
FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header

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