K494STOP Kit - Grinding Earlage with a 494 Series Claas®

Let’s talk about grinding ear corn with a 494 series cutter and grinding ear corn. At Kooima Ag, we developed this kit to help feed ear corn better in those machines. Nolan goes over why it is helpful and how to install this kit on your 494 series Claas^® machines.

As you know, Kooima Ag has developed ear corn adapters for Claas^® machines. These adapters work very efficiently but adjusting little things on the cutter and adding kits we have made will help it feed even better. In this case, we are going to pick up the upper rear feed rolls and replace the bump bracket on the upper rear feed roll to extend it up a little bit.

First, you will need to remove the old bracket. To do this, you just need to push the pulley out of the way and remove the nuts in the back. Then, you will loosen the old bracket and place that in your toolbox to use again when you chop silage. Next, center the Kooima bracket and reinstall it where it was located. The 494 series has 2 sets of holes for this bracket. The old bracket came from the front set. This bracket is designed to be ¾” higher, but if you want it to be a little more aggressive, you can turn the worn-out side to the back and raise it more that way. You can always place it in the back holes to be the most aggressive, but we chose to keep it in the front set.

There are a couple of different varieties of spring tensions for the 494 series. The 494 springs are very interchangeable to the crop conditions that you have. Nolan prefers to loosen the spring tensions as much as possible. Some farmers remove the springs completely, and in some conditions, this works well. We prefer to start the year with the springs loosened from the bolts on the upper rear and front feed rolls. This is how to adjust the right side of the machine, so now we will adjust the left side.

Now on the left side of the machine, we are going to work on raising the upper front feed roll. To raise the roll, we are going to add 10 washers (included in your K494STOP kit) to the shaft that holds it up. All you will have to do to install the washers is take the 2 nuts loose on the top of the shaft and slide the washers on. This will hold the upper rear feed roll up about an inch and a half. Like we went over earlier, we already raised the upper rear feed roll an inch, so this will allow the chopper to swallow corn much better. Once the washers are on the shaft, run the nut down where it was before and tighten the nut. Now you are ready to grind some ear corn!

You have a lot of choices when it comes to what you put on for adapters on your 494 machines. You can buy either a single paddle frame or a dual paddle frame directly from Kooima Ag. We have seen speed differences between the single paddle and dual paddle frames. The dual paddle frame can travel from half a mile to a mile an hour more with enough horsepower. If you have larger heads or have more than 300 acres, we do recommend the dual roll adapter.

Contact any of our sales team today to get a K494STOP kit or dual-roll adapter. Call us at 800-522-8874 or email us at [email protected].