Thread: header fires are common as weather heats up, & the wheat harvest continues

Another side effect of harvest I noted going into town on Friday. Where I joined the Golden Highway, had to wait several minutes for full grain trucks going one way, and empties going the other (at 0800!).

Then after starting down the highway, I immediately noticed that it looked like someone had been travelling with an uncovered load of rubbish, and there were what looked like white bits of paper scattered all over the road. It took me about a kilometre to realise what it was - not rubbish, but white cockatoos. Flat cockatoos.

Trucks loaded with grain invariably have significant quantities that did not land in the body of the trailer, but on the frame, towbar mudguards etc. Once on the highway, this blows off onto the road, where it is easy pickings for grain eating birds such as these. Many are lacking in traffic sense, or simply too stuffed to move fast, in some cases simply too heavy to fly.

I'll discover tomorrow morning, although the same part was used up until about 8 years ago so new ones should be available, albeit for quite a price. The one that broke is unpainted and from a wreckers judging by the wreckers markings. Considering the age of my header and the years that I've had it and that the part was a replacement on the donor header, I suspect that the knuckle is the early version whereas mine was built with a heavy duty version. The later versions look the same suggesting that the iron formulation was changed for more strength so I'd only fit an original, painted one from one of the last models of the series. Case-IH appear to paint their headers after assembly so many replacement parts are unpainted, not that the idea is fool-proof.