PHOTO: HANS PRINSEN PHOTO: HANS PRINSEN
TYRE TECHNOLOGY ▶▶▶
A tyre that keeps your sugar beets firmly in place
Y BY FRITS HUIDEN
ears of sowing beets using twinned row crop wheels have shown Dutch contractor Jos Van Kempen that the tracks left next to planted rows are
just too deep. What’s more, the narrowness of 270/95 R54 row crop wheels means that in or- der to retain some load capacity, pressure can never be lower than 3 bar. This causes prob- lems for beet varieties with a higher top height in particular, such as the varieties intro- duced by BTS (Beta Seed) some years ago. ‘These are high-yielding beets, but they also grow higher above the soil and not quite as far down. They overturn more readily during top- ping or simply disappear into the deep sowing tracks when we lift them. This is made worse by the fact that beets along the deeper tracks will tend to grow towards that track, which can reduce the space between rows from 50cm to as little as 40cm. The beets do not sit upright for the harvester, which can then tip them over and into the sowing track. This is even more of an issue when you’re not work- ing on clay but in sandy soil like ours. Beets simply stand less firmly in this type of soil,’ confirms Mr van Kempen. The contractor was therefore looking to switch to wider tyres with low pressure. Wide tyres not only allow the pressure to be reduced, the air chamber in them positions itself better compared with the two small air chambers in twinned wheels. Mr van Kempen also wanted to be gentler on the soil in which the beets are sowed and ideally avoid driving on it altogeth- er, as with twinned wheels. Together with Euromaster tyre specialist Erik Lohuis, he therefore set out to develop a tyre to serve just that purpose.
A 15cm gap Their goal was to develop a tyre that would have as wide a profile as possible and a 15cm wide, 5cm deep recess in the middle – directly above the planned position of the beets. This
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The challenge with any tyre is to strike the perfect balance between traction, soil compaction and load capacity. However, for contractor Jos Van Kempen there is yet another factor to contend with. His goal is to keep his beet sowing beds intact by not driving on them at all.
would avoid any pressure on the soil along the seed row. They were clear it had to be a VF tyre as this flattens lengthways. They decided to use a second-hand 900/50 R42 tyre with a car- cass that was still in good condition. The sur- face, which was poor quality due to wear and tear, was machined off. Two rubber treads were then added, with a gap in the middle for the seed row. The addition of a shallow block profile to the treads ensures the soil passing underneath is not left too smooth. For this season, Mr van Kempen has even added serrated discs with a diameter of 45cm
directly behind the tyre. These slightly roughen the soil after the wide tyre has passed over it.
Issue of bouncing reduced The rims were made by Mr van Kempen him- self, to ensure the tyres would fit his 4-cylinder, 150 horsepower Massey Ferguson 6615. The gap remaining underneath the mudguards is no more than a couple of centimetres. Mr van Kempen sows his beets using a 12-row Kverne- land Accord weighing 1,700 kg and the MF weighs approximately 6 tonnes. Using a less powerful tractor and seed drill is not an option.
The carcass of the used 900/50 R42 tyre was still in good condition, with only the tread worn. This was machined off. Next, two treads were created by adding rubber layers. A block profile was added to these to ensure the soil passing underneath would not be left too smooth. The gap in the middle measures 5 cm in depth and 15 cm in width and lines up precisely with the aggregates of the beet drill.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 24 May 2019
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