I looked at the 313 a few times in the past with flail conditioners, and felt like it would be pushing the envelope with the tractors that I like to cut with. Looks like a handy booger, though.
I agree with you on the lack of grease fittings, but that's 90% of new machinery in my opinion. One exception is the NH rake I bought last year, that thing has a pile of fittings on it.
Thanks for your thoughts.
The 310/312 may be more up your alley if you do not want the shear protection. Seems that they have suspension built into the cutterbar itself that allows it to move independently from the whole header.
I think there should be fittings on the wheel lift pivots, and on the heim joints in the header suspension arms. Both of which the New Holland has.
We've got a Vermeer 604 Pro baler, seems like they have gone to extreme lengths to hide the grease fittings, it will test your vocabulary. Has probably 30 in total, most of which are easy, but there's a couple in the driveline that are next to impossible to get at, you need to unbolt the side shields to get at the main pickup shaft bearings, and there are four on the door hinge mechanism that you need to crawl on top of the baler to reach, PLUS you get to do it twice, since you can only reach two with the gate closed, gotta open it, crawl back up, and get the other two.
I also forgot to mention, Vermeer seems to be pretty behind times with parts availability. There are no parts or diagrams available online, the only way to get parts is through a local dealer, which is about 50 miles away for me. Half the time they don't have what I need, so you gotta wait for that, then you need to go get it. I can get parts for Kubota, Case, New Holland, JD, whatever from many online dealers and have it on my doorstep in three days.
Their Haydoc service is excellent, but the guy that services our area is stretched pretty thin.