Looking to update our swather

Massey swathers aren’t great for canola. Is what the Massey salesman told me. We have never had trouble with our 30’ honey bee on our NH swather.

I can't speak from hands on regarding the newer models, however of people I know who run the new ones, the Macdon is much preferred over the Honey Bee. And these are guys who have had both.

I assume New Holland would come with a Honeybee head? Neighbor has one looks nice, but then anything new looks nice!

We used to swath everything and have owned and operated all the swathers in question here. Several CNH units, a few macdons and a Challenger(same as Massey). I'll try and hit a few highlights for each.

CNH: Nice cab, good visibility, somewhat confusing header float system, prone to hydraulic leaks at the block on RH side behind cab(keep spare o-rings), laid a good swath at 36' and U11 reel was reputed to have some issues although I never put enough acres on to find that a problem(I think that comes from rough fields and fast reel speeds).

Macdon: Good dealer network and resale, simple controls(best of all 3), laid a nice swath but one was a 40' and major trouble flowing riper canola through that one), poor hydraulic hose and electrical quality(several issues there), burns more fuel, I had a bad batch of guards and lots of breakage but I think that is generally not as much of an issue, stupid rotating operator console needed to get proper road speed requiring cab be emptied of toolboxes and if pulling a roller requires more messing around, good reel, canvasses sometimes plug inside with wet canola, best system to detach for storage.

Challenger: nice quiet cab(have a 9840), very easy on fuel, best transport speed in forward operation, header float again somewhat confusing, I have a 35' 5300 header with a cross auger and it is lights out in canola(best swather I have ever owned), had to put a pipe extension on divider for canola, header does NOT tow at highway speeds.

The 9840 has been parked since fall of 2018, been straight-cutting everything since. Finally reached the pinnacle of canola swathing and the pod-shatter completely changes things....oh well.

I’ve owned a MacDon 9200 since 99’. It has a 972 head which is good for shaving the ground if you want to cut edibles or soys. We bought it new in 99’ when the Invigor canola grew to 5 ft tall. It handled that swath easily, but it is a 25 ft header. I agree SWMan about the hydraulic hoses. I must have replaced most of them because I haven’t had to replace one in a while. We did custom swathing until 2016. And the machine has just under 4000 hours. In all these years I’ve replaced the reel bushings once. I’m thinking of trading up to a 30 footer now that I have a bigger combine.

How much difference is there between the 97XX and 98XX Massey/Challenger models?