Depends on what kind of forage you're raking and the acreage too. The real benefit of wheel rakes is in large square or rectangular fields where you have a LOT of ground to cover, as you can go faster with wheel rakes. The downside is that on rough or rolling ground you will probably have more broken teeth and wheel pivots, stuff like that. Wheel rakes generally have to be run with the teeth contacting the ground a little more to drive the rake wheels and that's hard on them in rough ground. Also, having worked for a guy running wheel rakes, if you're doing anything with johnsongrass or weeds, that stuff can tangle in the wheels and roll up one heck of a ball of hay before you catch it. The guy I worked for would usually end up with a ball of hay 4 feet wide and at least 3 feet high or more when it plugged, and it plugged often enough that he usually just folded the rake up and let the ball roll out of it and then folded it back down into working position and kept going, leaving an unraked spot probably close to 10 yards around of missed/lost hay. Since he was doing custom he just kept going, time is money, and the landowner was just SOL. Of course I heard his son pulled one of these balls up into their BR740 round baler one day just a little too fast and plugged it up so tight it took them all day to unplug it and get back to baling. Wheel rakes really shine in large fields with rather short, thin, or low growing hay, more grassy hays or short legumes, where tangling isn't a problem, you need to cover a lot of ground fast, and the wide swath is necessary to make a nice windrow.
I use rolabar rakes, a NH 256 and a 258 with a homemade articulated dual hitch I got at the auction for $150. Works like a champ and I can rake 15-16 feet in one pass. The first rake delivers off the left and the rear rake rolls that windrow over it's swath and delivers off it's left, so in thin stuff I can just keep rolling the windrow over until I get it the size I want it. Usually doesn't take but two passes even in the thinnest hay. The nice thing is, when I was doing custom work, especially cutting smaller odd shaped fields the big boys around here wouldn't mess with, I could go in there with a single rolabar and rake it pretty as you please, and yet still have the dual hitch and other rake ready to go on the bigger fields. The rolabar rakes can rope long tall stemmy hay like sudex or johnsongrass hay, or viney stuff like winter peas or stuff like that, but I haven't had any problems with it. The rolabar rake hay tends to be a little cleaner, because you should run them with the tines JUST BARELY touching the soil, if at all. Wheel rakes depend on the tines touching the ground pretty firmly to drive the wheels, and they pick up a little more dirt and rocks and stuff because of it. Because they run a little farther off the ground, rolabars can leave a little more hay behind than wheel rakes, but if properly set the difference is inconsequential. I run them on rolling hog wallow ground and don't have any more hay left behind than the guy I worked for running the wheel rake on similar ground. The rolabars are a little more complicated than wheel rakes, since most have a gearbox and drive ratchet clutches, but they're very straightforward and have never given me any trouble. I've never had to rebuild a NH rake gearbox. I had to rebuild the ratchet clutches on the wheels of an older model 55 we used to have, but that thing was older than the hills (first rolabar rake made for tractors instead of horses IIRC) and had a million bales on it!
I bought the 258 at auction a couple or three years ago, and if you buy at auction, BE CAREFUL. Be sure to turn the rake by hand and make sure the basket turns smoothly. Twist each bar to see if the bearings are shot or the bolts have worked loose from the end spiders and worn the hole egg shaped (or worse). Look at the teeth, check for how many are missing, bent, or broken. Put it in gear and roll the basket thru some revolutions again. Watch the driveshafts and U-joints and listen for the clutches clicking to ensure they're working. Try turning the basket backwards to ensure the clutches will catch and hold to drive the rake. Push the basket cage up and down to check the suspension, and look at the pivots and linkages, and the springs and bellcranks. The biggest mistake I see people make with hay rakes is running them TOO LOW and sticking the tines in the dirt. That sorta thing tears up the clutches and knocks the bearings out of the bars. Raking too low may save a LITTLE hay but really tears up your rake in the long run. The rake tines should JUST BARELY touch the ground in short hay cut very low. In longer hay cut higher, the tines should clear the ground by an inch or two. The quickest way to see if the rake is set right is to stop the tractor quickly at raking speed-- the rake should continue to freewheel for a couple turns and the clutches' clicking should be easily heard. If the basket stops almost immediately, or worse stops immediately and springs back a bit of a rotation, it's being run WAY too LOW.
If you can get a rake with straight metal even with knocked out bearings at a good price, they aren't that hard to rebuild. That's what I did. I put all new bar bearings in it, one new idler spider since it had an egg shaped hole from a loose bar run for a long time that way, which will never run true or stay tight that way, put new suspension pivots on it, cleaned and repacked the clutches and wheel bearings, cleaned her up and shot her with paint, and she's like a brand new rake for about $1000 altogether.
With the 256 I'd bought new about 10 years ago, and the $125 homemade dual rake hitch I got at auction, I have a handy rig that really covers the ground and does a good job.
One other thing, I'd stay away from the rubber teeth. The rake I bought had rubber teeth, some of them original, and they started shedding immediately. I bought the TSC rubber teeth to replace them (they are 3 times higher than the equivalent steel teeth, over 4 times higher from a NH dealer) and they didn't hold up much better; I was shedding new teeth about as rapidly as the 25 year old ones. I finally decided they cost too much and started replacing them with steel teeth and the clips as I found them broken, and now about half the teeth are steel and for some reason the rubber teeth that are left beside/between the steel spring teeth seem to be holding up much better... I think the steel teeth help protect the rubber teeth from flexing too much and the rubber tearing. Plus, 90 cents a piece plus about 20 cents each for the clips is sure a lot cheaper than $3.00 each for the rubber teeth, even the cheapy TSC ones. That's been my experience anyway...
GOOD LUCK! OL JR
