KMacGinley
Well-known member
Anybody have or had one? What did you think of it?
Gehl 1500 round baler?
- Thread starter KMacGinley
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KMacGinley
Well-known member
Thanks A/B, there is more support in my area for them, I was curious what people that had had one thought, I just want a no frills baler without all the bells and whistles.
rdbigfarmboy
Well-known member
I bought my first 1500 in the 80s. Makes a 5 by 5 manual tie (rope pull). About 5 years ago bought a 1500A has hydraulic tie and 6 inch wide belts. Last year I bought a 1500A for parts. Most parts (cept for gear boxes or the big drive roller at the top) are off the shelf at TSC.
I roll about 400 rolls a year with this antique.
Good simple cheap machine.
These are closed throat meaning theres a roller that the hay must feed thru. So real damp hay or rocks or post wont go thru. All the 1500s were made late 70s early 80s. The Gehl brothers are out of the ag business and the company only resells construction stuff. Only one dealer exist within 100 miles of me. I also have a 315 Gehl manure spreader great machine.
I roll about 400 rolls a year with this antique.
Good simple cheap machine.
These are closed throat meaning theres a roller that the hay must feed thru. So real damp hay or rocks or post wont go thru. All the 1500s were made late 70s early 80s. The Gehl brothers are out of the ag business and the company only resells construction stuff. Only one dealer exist within 100 miles of me. I also have a 315 Gehl manure spreader great machine.
luke strawwalker
Active member
I've got one of these in Blue Paint... sold by Ford as the 552 round baler back about 1980 or so. We were one of the first ones in this area to switch to round baling. Grandpa bought that one in about 80 or 81. We still have it and bale our hay with it every year, and I did custom baling with it up until about a year or so ago after Grandma died and Dad reneged on the deal I had with her, baling the farm's hay for free and doing virtually all the repairs myself in exchange for her buying the parts and letting me use the equipment to do custom work as I saw fit. When Dad said "if you break something while on a custom job you pay for parts and fix it" I quit messing with custom work. I mostly did old folks and small neighbors with patches 'too small' for the bigshot hay operators around here to waste their time on. A lot of guys want to hire the bigshots because they like seeing new paint in their pasture; I baled some for my boss at the school and he was like "can't you make those bales any tighter/bigger" and I was like "no, I'm not going to blow the guts out of my 25 year old baler trying to make rock hard bales like these new $30,000 balers will do, not for $20 a roll for cut/rake/bale. If ya want 'em that tight/big, hire the big guy with the new baler, and pay him $25-30 a roll for baling, and wait a month or so for him to come out and get around to cutting it, and let it lay on the ground a week or ten days burning up or getting rained on before he decides to come bale it." (This was something he complained to me about the other guys when he hired me to do it for him-- I get it cut, dried down, and in the roll usually within three days, at the proper moisture, and with a good green color still in the hay, not sunbleached burned up wheat-straw looking stuff these big guys pawn off as 'good hay')
The baler is pretty good. She's an old girl, but she can still dance. The only thing I've had to replace on it other than a few bearings here and there was one of the rollers, the one with the double sprocket on it where the top belts come off the bale and go up the front to the belt shuttle... I had bowed that roller years ago due to some of my own rush/stupidity and straightened it with an oilfield jack, but it was never 100% true again, and it finally got to where it was eating bearings on a regular basis. I got a new roller from a Gehl dealer in Lockhart TX for $400. I did replace the belts, both top and bottom belts, about ten years ago. I nearly choked when I saw what the Ford dealer wanted for them so I ordered some from Hammond Equipment in Alabama; WONDERFUL folks to deal with and a GREAT product! The price was terrific, like 2/3 what Ford wanted, and I had them delivered to my door within about 4-5 days. The Ford version is basically identical to the Gehl version, except the Ford has stripper bands on the pickup while the Gehl runs without them (only baler I've ever seen built like that). The Ford has the gearbox on the left side (from direction of travel) and some Gehls have the same box arrangement and some have them in the center. The Ford uses a hydraulic cylinder to move the twine arm. They are a good simple solid baler, and do a good basic job. They don't make the prettiest or densest bales out there by a longshot, but then they don't cost what those newer balers that make those pretty rocksolid bales do either, and that counts for a lot. They're pretty easy to maintain and get parts for. I basically just go to the Gehl dealer in Lockhart for my parts, as Ford generally orders them from Gehl anyway and then marks them up. I don't mind bolting red parts on a blue baler if it saves me money! The only other problem I've had was the springs that hold down the crimping roller right behind the pickup. When I was baling a lot of ryegrass, which tends to be slick and a little harder to feed than a lot of other types of hay, I welded six beads equally spaced around the roller with 6013 rods to give them a little more 'bite' on slick hay, and she's fed a lot better ever since; that roller REALLY gets slick and polished like a new dime feeding that hay into the chamber. Anyway, that roller is mounted on pivots on either end so it can ride up over the hay coming off the pickup going under it and onto the bottom belt. The crimping pressure on that roller is maintained by two springs about 6-8 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter, made of wire about 3/16 thick with a hook on each end attached to the pivots at the top and the baler frame at the bottom. About 8 years ago, one of those springs snapped off it's hook while I was baling, and without the crimp effect it had a lot of trouble feeding. I made a trip to the dealer and got a replacement, and it worked good for a couple years, then it broke. I was in the middle of a big cutting and so I just pried a car hood hinge spring off my brother's 70 chevy project truck he was working on and slapped it on there, since it was about the same size, length, and strength. I had to use a bit of spare chain to get the length right, but it slipped right in there and is still there to this day. The other one on the opposite side broke a year or two later and I used the other hood spring and chain trick on it and it's fine too. We got a small collection of car hood springs we grabbed of junkers before scrapping them for spares if we ever need them.
Other than that, I don't really have any complaints. The only thing I'd change about the design is to use a bottom drum instead of the bottom belt (which Gehl did on it's later models) and of course bigger bearings, as they're a little on the light side, but I don't have too much trouble with them, and they're cheap enough at TSC. I'm a big fan of greasable bearings and some of the heavier bearings on this baler are, but all the top belt bearings are sealed. That's my only pet peeve. Good luck! OL JR
The baler is pretty good. She's an old girl, but she can still dance. The only thing I've had to replace on it other than a few bearings here and there was one of the rollers, the one with the double sprocket on it where the top belts come off the bale and go up the front to the belt shuttle... I had bowed that roller years ago due to some of my own rush/stupidity and straightened it with an oilfield jack, but it was never 100% true again, and it finally got to where it was eating bearings on a regular basis. I got a new roller from a Gehl dealer in Lockhart TX for $400. I did replace the belts, both top and bottom belts, about ten years ago. I nearly choked when I saw what the Ford dealer wanted for them so I ordered some from Hammond Equipment in Alabama; WONDERFUL folks to deal with and a GREAT product! The price was terrific, like 2/3 what Ford wanted, and I had them delivered to my door within about 4-5 days. The Ford version is basically identical to the Gehl version, except the Ford has stripper bands on the pickup while the Gehl runs without them (only baler I've ever seen built like that). The Ford has the gearbox on the left side (from direction of travel) and some Gehls have the same box arrangement and some have them in the center. The Ford uses a hydraulic cylinder to move the twine arm. They are a good simple solid baler, and do a good basic job. They don't make the prettiest or densest bales out there by a longshot, but then they don't cost what those newer balers that make those pretty rocksolid bales do either, and that counts for a lot. They're pretty easy to maintain and get parts for. I basically just go to the Gehl dealer in Lockhart for my parts, as Ford generally orders them from Gehl anyway and then marks them up. I don't mind bolting red parts on a blue baler if it saves me money! The only other problem I've had was the springs that hold down the crimping roller right behind the pickup. When I was baling a lot of ryegrass, which tends to be slick and a little harder to feed than a lot of other types of hay, I welded six beads equally spaced around the roller with 6013 rods to give them a little more 'bite' on slick hay, and she's fed a lot better ever since; that roller REALLY gets slick and polished like a new dime feeding that hay into the chamber. Anyway, that roller is mounted on pivots on either end so it can ride up over the hay coming off the pickup going under it and onto the bottom belt. The crimping pressure on that roller is maintained by two springs about 6-8 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter, made of wire about 3/16 thick with a hook on each end attached to the pivots at the top and the baler frame at the bottom. About 8 years ago, one of those springs snapped off it's hook while I was baling, and without the crimp effect it had a lot of trouble feeding. I made a trip to the dealer and got a replacement, and it worked good for a couple years, then it broke. I was in the middle of a big cutting and so I just pried a car hood hinge spring off my brother's 70 chevy project truck he was working on and slapped it on there, since it was about the same size, length, and strength. I had to use a bit of spare chain to get the length right, but it slipped right in there and is still there to this day. The other one on the opposite side broke a year or two later and I used the other hood spring and chain trick on it and it's fine too. We got a small collection of car hood springs we grabbed of junkers before scrapping them for spares if we ever need them.
Other than that, I don't really have any complaints. The only thing I'd change about the design is to use a bottom drum instead of the bottom belt (which Gehl did on it's later models) and of course bigger bearings, as they're a little on the light side, but I don't have too much trouble with them, and they're cheap enough at TSC. I'm a big fan of greasable bearings and some of the heavier bearings on this baler are, but all the top belt bearings are sealed. That's my only pet peeve. Good luck! OL JR
