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Opinions on a Vermeer R 23 rake

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AC Diesel

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I'd like to park the old Rowse dump rake this year, my son's finally old enough to help out and I thought a V rake would be nicer for him to run. I don't need anything too fancy but it's got to be hi-capacity, I had a 10 wheel Tonutti on a cart and something like that is not an option. I've been looking at Vermeer R23 rakes lately and they are more in my price range, I know there are more moving parts to keep up but I would think they would pick up hay really well. Our meadow is flat so hills or dip's won't be a problem. Just wondering if any of you guy's have any experience with these? Thank's in advance!!
 
If you can swing the R2800, go with that. They're both good outfits. You'll have trouble with the front wheels where they pivot, at some point. If they only made their bale processors that good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9l2q0KFnKM
 
The R 23 is a fine rake but personally I'd wait till I could afford a hydraulic fold. The R2800 is an awesome rake, we run ours over some very rough ground and it just keeps working, I'd recommend it to anyone.
 
But just double check that your tractor has enough hydraulic flow, as they take a lot. The 2800 has trouble raising up with the wheels running on a JD 55 series. Works much better on a newer tractor.
 
4Diamond said:
We runs ours on a 2955, did replace a weak hydraulic pump but after that no issues.
Click to expand...
The 4455 might have had an issue I don't know about. Very high hour tractor. I just want to make sure AC Diesel checks into it before he writes a check, since we don't know what he'll be pulling it with.
 
Thanks for the info guy's i'd like to but a 2800 but we updated the baler and bought another tractor. So the budget only allows enough for a r23. I'm going to pull it with a 766 IH, so i think it should handle a r23 pretty well. The only person that I know that used one was my uncle and he had nothing bad to say about them at all, he ran the JD 700 version.
 
Skipping in heavy crops, alfalfa & cane, was my experience with them as well. In "normal" conditions they did fine.
 
Not trying to start an argument, :lol: , but the more hydraulic output from your tractor, the more you get away from the skipping in very heavy hay, provided speed is reasonable for conditions. They can rake together a windrow that you almost can't drive over, or pick up without the "mega wide" or equivalent baler. I would suppose there has been changes to the hydraulic drive motors over the years, don't know.
 
That was my experience close to 20 years ago. As I recall we were using a 4030 that was shot and the hydraulics weren't very whippy, either.

I'm sure with a little more modern tractor, the results would be more copacetic.
 

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