• Welcome to The Truck Stop! We see you haven't REGISTERED yet.

    Your truck knowledge is missing!
    • Registration is FREE , all we need is your birthday and email. (We don't share ANY data with ANYONE)
    • We have tons of knowledge here for your diesel truck!
    • Post your own topics and reply to existing threads to help others out!
    • NO ADS! The site is fully functional and ad free!
    CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

    Problems registering? Click here to contact us!

    Already registered, but need a PASSWORD RESET? CLICK HERE TO RESET YOUR PASSWORD!

Farming Thread:

sodfarmer said:
Nemesis you get the star student for that math. :sifone: Most the pivots I run are 1/4 mile machines that will cover ~140 acres.
Click to expand...
Pretty simple math, just looks bad with all them numbers :willynilly:

sodfarmer said:
How many towers is in a 1800' pivot. Ours are like 1300'. We run all Valleys. I have looked at the t-l's and I like the constant drive, but my Valley dealer is the best so I have a hard time trying anything else.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure on how many towers the big pivot is gonna be. The old man keeps changing his mind on the specs so we'll see how many it is when it finally gets here :shocked:.
We have 3 1300' Valleys that we run also. Our dealer has been pretty good but he's a long way away. The T-L dealer is going to be about 5 min away so that should be nice.

4wdaaron said:
Anybody out west run their wells dry?

We have almost unlimited water at 80 ft nearly everywhere around here.
Click to expand...
80'?!:holyshirt: Our deep well is cased down to 400' with the hole drilled ~1,200'
 
Last edited:
WeedNemesis said:
Pretty simple math, just looks bad with all them numbers :willynilly:



I'm not sure on how many towers the big pivot is gonna be. The old man keeps changing his mind on the specs so we'll see how many it is when it finally gets here :shocked:.
We have 3 1300' Valleys that we run also. Our dealer has been pretty good but he's a long way away. The T-L dealer is going to be about 5 min away so that should be nice.


80'?!:holyshirt: Our deep well is cased down to 400' with the hole drilled ~1,200'
Click to expand...


that water proly comes up boiling!!!

the local golf course here drilled 400' irrigation wells when they put them in about 10 years ago. that's the deepest thng around here for 30 miles i bet. most household wells are 25-120' deep.
 
4wdaaron said:
Only lasted 35 years?? I suppose you western guys run yours about 24/7 tho.
Click to expand...

We have to water pretty much nonstop from April 1 to October 31 most years. We will get some rain that will let us shut down for a few days here and there, but when the average rainfall is less than 14" you must make it rain.

Most our wells have the pump set at ~ 300'. I have never run out of water in our wells. KNOCK ON WOOD. Now and the our canal water gets limited, but we have had better snow years as of late and have not be limited.
 
Our deep wells are cased 220 or so, pump set at 200, drilled to 1000. Water level varies from 70-100 feet depending how hard people are pumping. On the other side of town though some wells that were shallow had to be redone. We run them almost constantly since the drought started in 2001, because it never rains. We get water from reservoirs in the mountains, but only if the snow melts right to fill them. Since 2001 that has been limited too. Lots of fields without wells or pivots that didn't grow anything.

We filled a massive hole with all the concrete ditches and shitload of rocks and rocky dirt to put the Reinke in. Wish we had pics of before we started.
 
sodfarmer said:
Small world. My uncle and his wife lived there for a long time along with her kids. Randy and Betty Marble. Her kids are Brent and Brad Wilson. Ring a bell?
Click to expand...

related to nate marble from here?
 
busdriver75 said:
WeedNemesis said:
Pretty simple math, just looks bad with all them numbers :willynilly:



I'm not sure on how many towers the big pivot is gonna be. The old man keeps changing his mind on the specs so we'll see how many it is when it finally gets here :shocked:.
We have 3 1300' Valleys that we run also. Our dealer has been pretty good but he's a long way away. The T-L dealer is going to be about 5 min away so that should be nice.


80'?!:holyshirt: Our deep well is cased down to 400' with the hole drilled ~1,200'
Click to expand...
that water proly comes up boiling!!!

the local golf course here drilled 400' irrigation wells when they put them in about 10 years ago. that's the deepest thng around here for 30 miles i bet. most household wells are 25-120' deep.
Click to expand...

Yeah, IIRC I got to fiddle with a 350HP turbine that was set ~1,000' down. This will bend your noodle, think about how many times the motor turns before the turbine bowls do...:eek:ut:

I've personally pulled (was part of a crew of 2) a ~450' domestic well that was on a hillside. That was a bitch, it was early spring ,still cold and drizzly, I was getting over a flu and I had 2 aluminum Ridgid 36" pipe wrenches and I was unscrewing 2" well pipe that had been in a hole for years.:banghead:
 
4wdaaron said:
Only lasted 35 years?? I suppose you western guys run yours about 24/7 tho.
Click to expand...

I can think of a few Valleys that old, not many, there were lots and lots of pivot manufacturers around here that long ago. Valley, Zimmatic, Reinke, Lockwood, Sargeant, Raincat, Pringle, (there is ONE T&L over here, P.O.S. btw), and there's others that I have forgotten.
 
83GMCK2500 said:
I can think of a few Valleys that old, not many, there were lots and lots of pivot manufacturers around here that long ago. Valley, Zimmatic, Reinke, Lockwood, Sargeant, Raincat, Pringle, (there is ONE T&L over here, P.O.S. btw), and there's others that I have forgotten.
Click to expand...

Haha, you got that right about T&L being POS. They seem to be making a comeback around here for some reason tho. Why people feel the need to put an electric motor in to drive a hydraulic system (or would even want a hydraulic system) when it could stay all-electric still gets me today. Unfortunately we don't have much 3-phase around here so most of our pivots are Valleys driven and watered by 4 or 6 cyl Deere diesel motors.
 
83GMCK2500 said:
I can think of a few Valleys that old, not many, there were lots and lots of pivot manufacturers around here that long ago. Valley, Zimmatic, Reinke, Lockwood, Sargeant, Raincat, Pringle, (there is ONE T&L over here, P.O.S. btw), and there's others that I have forgotten.
Click to expand...

We have 1 Lockwood that is 28 years old, but it has Valley tower boxes and panel to get rid of the old guide wire system. We run 11 Valley pivots and have had good luck with them.

4wdaaron said:
Haha, you got that right about T&L being POS. They seem to be making a comeback around here for some reason tho. Why people feel the need to put an electric motor in to drive a hydraulic system (or would even want a hydraulic system) when it could stay all-electric still gets me today. Unfortunately we don't have much 3-phase around here so most of our pivots are Valleys driven and watered by 4 or 6 cyl Deere diesel motors.
Click to expand...

What problems do the T-L's have? The big advantage I see is the constant drive so you don't get ruts from the starting and stopping.
 
hell, this might as well be the irrigation thread....

speaking of water, we might get dry enough at the end of the week to finally START planting corn this year....
 
The complaints I have heard from guys that have T&Ls is that they strip out the drives easy, and when they start leaking in a few years they are hard to keep in line. We drove by one where they were trying to start it up and it was fountaining oil in the air, ran out 15 gallons of oil in a hurry. Not too cheap. One guy got a new one that stripped out the driveshafts in the first year. I thought since they had hydraulic motors they had one per wheel but he said it had one motor on one wheel, then a shaft with a weak slip tube on it going to the other wheel and that shaft stripped out.

Not that a valley or reinke can't have problems when they get older... But still we don't have much trouble with them. We work on our old valleys more due to the age of them, they are just getting worn. There's still a lot of original gearboxes and other stuff on them though.

Oddly, the oldest ones around are all valleys. The newer raincats and zimmatics rusted out first and were replaced sooner. There are some older reinkes around but not as old as the valleys, I think just because there was no dealer around then.
 
NAR said:
The complaints I have heard from guys that have T&Ls is that they strip out the drives easy, and when they start leaking in a few years they are hard to keep in line. We drove by one where they were trying to start it up and it was fountaining oil in the air, ran out 15 gallons of oil in a hurry. Not too cheap. One guy got a new one that stripped out the driveshafts in the first year. I thought since they had hydraulic motors they had one per wheel but he said it had one motor on one wheel, then a shaft with a weak slip tube on it going to the other wheel and that shaft stripped out.

Not that a valley or reinke can't have problems when they get older... But still we don't have much trouble with them. We work on our old valleys more due to the age of them, they are just getting worn. There's still a lot of original gearboxes and other stuff on them though.

Oddly, the oldest ones around are all valleys. The newer raincats and zimmatics rusted out first and were replaced sooner. There are some older reinkes around but not as old as the valleys, I think just because there was no dealer around then.
Click to expand...

My 35 year old Valley actually had some original gearboxes on it when it was torn down. Same with the Lockwood the center towers have a couple originals.
 
Have any of you run frequency drives on your wells? We had 2 installed today on a 250 horse motor and a 100 horse motor. The seem to work pretty well even though I didn't have a chance to run them too long. Just wondering if anyone else has had any experience.
 
sodfarmer said:
Have any of you run frequency drives on your wells? We had 2 installed today on a 250 horse motor and a 100 horse motor. The seem to work pretty well even though I didn't have a chance to run them too long. Just wondering if anyone else has had any experience.
Click to expand...
Don't know anything about 'em. What are they and what do they do?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top