For those of you not familiar with combines, let me tell you about the ladder you climb to get into the cab. When you are out in the field the ladder hangs down the left hand side of the cab. It can be swung around towards the front for transport, because in the operating position it makes the machine a foot or two wider. The transport position is where the ladder was when I fired up the combine this morning to get it ready for wheat harvest. Then it happened.
Apparently something I’ve never noticed in quite a few years of combine operating this style of machine is that the ladder interferes with the clearance of a protective shield on the feederhouse that protects some moving parts. The header was in the lowered position since the combine has been in storage since fall harvest ended. So before I pulled forward I made sure to lift the header off the ground. That’s when I saw the ladder moving from my view in the driver’s seat. I had turned the hydraulic lift cylinders on the header into a shield squishing machine. Luckily I had only raised the header a little bit and I just bent things up a little bit and didn’t damage the ladder at all.
Here’s a picture of the other, undamaged side. Nice and straight and shiny. I moved the ladder back around to the transport position to look at the clearance issue. Apparently it’s quite obvious to see if one would bother to actually look at it. Oh well. If you compare the first picture at the top of the post to the one below you can see I got it fairly well straightened out. It’s functional again anyway, just not as pretty as it used to be.
