Video Transcript: 

Hi everyone is Christian for MacDon. We’re here with a FD250 and a John Deere X9. I promise it really is an X9.

You may have heard that you cannot put a MacDon header on a John Deere X9 combine and we’re here to show you today that it is 100% possible, and we also have full integration with all the John Deere controls. No extra harnesses, anything like that to run, we’re going to run this whole header straight from the cab with no extra controls.

Over here is your standard multi-coupler. It’s got your hydraulics for your reel as well as your electrical connection. Latching system down there at the bottom with pins very similar to what we’ve had for many years with a John Deere propeller shaft, single sided hook up, hooks up just like all of our headers do. We only require one shaft on one side of the combine. Some of the things that are unique to the X9 model, first off, the transition frame right here, you can see that it’s marked specifically on it for X9. The X9 has a very wide feeder house, so it requires its own transition frame. If you’re going to convert from one brand to another, that’s part of what you will need. Another unique component is over here on the backside of the float module there is a header controller. For us to have full control over all of our features and options, we require this module to communicate with the combine.

We’re going to go through some of the setup in the monitor. This is something you’ll have to do the first time you hook up your new or used header to your combine for the first time because we need to tell the combine some of the features that we have, and we’ll also go through some of our presets. All of this information that I’m going to go through is available in your operator’s manual. From the main screen we’re going to go into header setup.  On our monitor we’ve got a “header” button down here at the bottom.  We press that. This brings up our header parameters. We need to make sure that some of this is set up correctly, so we want to make sure that this is a Hinged Draper type. And then this will be the size of your working width of your header, and this is a 50ft header.  It’s already set correctly - hinged Draper 50ft. That’s our first step. The next thing we’re going to go to is our auto-controls. We touch that which brings up a new menu here, and here we want to make sure that we’ve got our features turned on and off correctly. We want to make sure that height-resume height sensing lateral tilt is enabled. Your “resume” preferences, these are what are suggested.  “Auto reel speed,” we’ll turn that on. “Fore/aft resume,” we’ll turn that on and “reel position resume,” on, we’re going to leave the “auto belt speed” off. We can now exit out of this menu. In your Operator’s Manual, there is a full list of settings and recommendations for all the different parameters. Now, for your header sensitivity. Some of this is going to change based on the software revision of your header.  We have actual software that goes into the header, and have recommendations for what these settings are.  These settings can be anywhere between 10 and 60.  You can drag that up to wherever you want,  we’ll set this at 40 just as a starting point. These you can experiment in the field with what works best for you, but the recommendation is between 10 and 60. Once we have the “height sensitivity” and the “tilt sensitivity” set where we want at least initially, and we’ll exit out of this screen. At this point now the combine is configured enough that we could go ahead and perform a header calibration so that the combine could learn all the sensor voltages and positions for our auto-header and our reel position and things like that. Refer to your Operator’s Manual for the calibration procedure for your combine. When you’re performing your header calibrations, we do suggest that you do the “feeder house tilt calibration” before the “header calibration.”

Now that we’ve got the base adjustments set up in the combine, we’re going to go through and we’re going to do some customization for our GSL presets.  We’ve got some customization around here, and you can set some of these buttons to perform some of the different functions. It’s up to you to decide buttons “1, 2, 3” what you want them to do. We’ll just go through some of the standard, more common presets. With the key on, we’re going to press the “header” button down below the display, and we’re going to unlock our controls.  Our “lock” button is lit up and now we’re going to unlock it, when we unlock it we get a pop-up screen here. And now we can make some changes here based on what we want these different buttons to perform.  We’ve got custom ability for these “ABC” buttons as well as the “D” and the “E.” We have the ability to do some custom set up on this screen here, and we can decide what features we want on Buttons “ABC.” These are going to correspond to your buttons on the back side of your GSL and we can determine what they are - it’s up to you to decide. It’s a user preference what you want the different buttons to do, we’re just going to go through some of the basic settings, you don’t necessarily have to set this up this way. If you want you can choose whichever button you want for whatever feature. First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to map the “A” button over here, when I press on the display it now gives me a selection here of what I want to do.  I’m going to map this to “header control,” and I’m going to map this to “wing leveling.”  “Wing leveling” is “header tilt” that’s the John Deere terminology, but we’re going to use it for “header tilt position.”  Now you can see that it’s changed in my display. We’ll come back later on and we’ll map some of these other controls. For right now, we’d also like to talk about ContourMax™.

Your ContourMax™ is again also, fully integrated into this set up here. From your so if we go back to our home screen hit the header page and select “Gauge Wheels,” and now we can control our ContourMax™position up and down with these buttons. Press the button down. I can position it wherever I like. We can also do this off of the GSL.  If I go into “header,” “unlock,” I’m going to make my gauge wheel position here “D.”  Now I can select through the different parameters here. And I’m going to select “gauge wheel height.” And now I can use the buttons on the GSL to raise and lower my ContourMax™ wheels. All the way up and all the way down or anywhere in between. Wherever is our desired position to achieve our desired stable height. All right. Our third option for our ContourMax™ wheels is we can also map it to these buttons on the side here. These “1, 2, 3, 4.”  We unlock this function. All right, I’m going to make “position 2” be my ContourMax™,  again this is the same way we did it on our GSL and on our screen. Select “gauge wheels” and now we can select up and down with these buttons as well.  You’ve got control over the customization, if you want to control it off of the console or the GSL it’s all user preference.

Earlier we mapped button “A” on the back of the GSL. And we made that our “wing leveling” which would be the “header tilt” feature, now that we’ve got that set up, the button “A” is a momentary contact.  If we press it once we’ve got a “header fore/aft,” then if we press it again, now we’ve got “header tilt.” So, you don’t have to hold the button “A” with your fore and aft. You’re basically toggling back and forth from fore/aft to header tilt.

Next, we’ll talk about Draper speed. We can control the Draper speed as well through our controls here. And I’m going to map this to a couple of buttons on the GSL. So now when I engage the header I can control the speed with the buttons on the back of my GSL.

All right, so there you have it. Header tilt, reel fore/aft, ContourMax™, and side draper speed, all adjustable right from your GSL. Customize it however you like and you’re good to go.

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To learn more about the FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header, visit our product page.

For additional resources check out our Owners Resources or visit your local MacDon Dealer.