We purchased a 66ft BG XTC on 10" spacing, using 3/4'' tips, with MRB's, regular tire package, and a 7700 tank with conveyor, sectional control, Topcon blockage, X30 monitor and no saddle tank. We were coming from a long long history with 54ft 5710's on 9.8" spacing, original MRB's, and 6450 tank. Finished seeding with it 2 days ago and thought I'd share my experience while its still fresh in memory. I may be barred from this forum for my views on what seems to be the most popular drill on the market today:
Pro's:
- sectional control saved us quite a few acres of overlap and once you wrap your head around it and get your timing sets works as described with only a few deficiencies
- when you plug the toolbar with trash it clears 99% of the time by swinging out and lifting openers, the 5710 would require a lot of manual labor to unplug
-when you plug your primary lines they are actually easy to disconnect and clean out. No WD40 and heat gun required. Only happened once.
-the drill would stay in the ground when going through washouts and we never had to double seeded any. It would dig into the ground pretty good just on the opposite side of entering the water run, so hopefully those seeds didn't get placed too deep
-it was very easy to lock the MRB's up when they weren't required
-pretty easy to change the depth of the MRB's
-though a long ways back from the tractor cab, the stairs up the cart were a nice change from the previous ladder setup we had on the old cart
-with a triaxle grain trailer with Micheals hopper augers we could hit all the cart tanks from one spot. No moving the truck required and it is a LONG cart!
-Topcon blockage (1 per tower) worked good as long as the X30 was setup properly. When changing from seed to seed and fertilizer it would change a bunch of the settings and you would manually have to go in and re-enter all the sensors, etc. Bourgault recognized this as a software glitch and hope to address it in software updates
Con's
-biggest disspointment was the depth control, and consistent depth was the entire premise for buying the drill. Started with everything set at same depth on the indicator (ranged from 4-7 depending on soil moisture). Regardless of packing pressure (1150-1500psi on cab indicator) the depth was very inconsistant from opener to opener, up to 1.25". Some seeds were much too deep, some were barely covered up. It was certainly no better and actually had more variance than a well set C shank. Ended up putting anything in a wheeltrack 1-2 notches deeper but inconsistency remained across the drill. It wouldn't be as big a deal if we weren't so dry and I didn't have 1/3 of my seeds that are laying in dust. If we changed the depth to make it find moisture, then 1/3 we're getting much too deep. VERY FRUSTRATING
-we went from 5.2-5.5mph with our 5710 to 4.4-4.6mph with this unit to avoid stepping, but with dry soil stepping was still an issue. You need a lot more than 12 extra feet of drill to make up for the lost ac/ft/hr by going slower. I gained little to no efficiency trading drills
-changing the depth is easier than all other independent drills (besides QDA) but still takes 1 guy 20-24mins and that adds up when you're finding you have to change every field, sometimes within a field
- drill pulled quite heavy and often brought the 580 quad to its knees in the hills, especially with the MRB's down
-there is no forgiveness with closing tines on MRB's and rolling backwards a little because you're tractor stalls to neutral in 1st gear, full throttle because it can't pull the hill. Takes an hour for 2 guys to remove all the bent tines
-trash clearance was marginally better at best than the 5710, and the 5710 was bad! Left a pretty nasty finish on some fields. Maybe 12'' spacing would help or a heavy harrow
-the MRB's really block the view of the openers on the mid and back rows so it was difficult to see if you were plugged up
- when you were plugged up the openers by the plug would trip out and the seed would not be put in the ground. This was at 1400-1500PSI on packing pressure indicator. 5710 would keep openers in the ground
-the remote for the cart sucks! All those controls should be at the top and bottom of the conveyor, just like the auger setups. It's bulky, eats batteries like a fat girl eats cupcakes, and you can't see the buttons in the dark. I already have the remote for the truck chutes/endgates around my neck. I don't need this stupid thing.
-the conveyor works ok, but there is still a lot of product that sits on the sides of the hopper that needs to be swept up.
-the conveyor is ridiculously heavy and can easily take you for a ride if you try to move it from the top of the cart and you weigh 150lbs soaking wet. If they add more friction on the part of the auger that you move manually then it would feel even heavier, but it wouldn't get away on you so easy. Not sure what to do besides add another ram, but 2 for directional control is enough
-it took easily twice as long as 10" deluxe auger to get conveyor into/out of its cradle for loading and over the course of seeding this really added to our fill times
-even with very conservative section control timing the X30 still paints the picture for 15-20ft when you raise the openers. As a consequence when you come across this painted area it shuts those sections off so you aren't really seeding that ground, just covering up broadcast seed. Maybe fine in wet conditions, but not dry conditions like we had
-we had a lot of product hoses that got pinched either through folding or raising/lowering the openers
-secondary lines take on a pile of wear. I still had 75% original secondary hoses on the 10yr old 5710 that did around 45,000ac. The hoses on the XTC looked worse after 2000ac
-many many loose hydraulic fittings and broken fittings. Lost a lot of oil......
I wouldn't say I have been overly happy with the purchase. Some positives, some negatives, but overall for dollars invested it will be one of my worst financial returns on investment. I'm really not sure what all the rage is over these drills. I really had high hopes, especially for depth control, but it did not live up to my expecations at all. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but a well set 5810 BG or 5000 Flexi with a 6000 series BG tank would be the best dollars invested on a seeding machine for my farm.
My Bourgault XTC/7700 tank experience
Pro's:
- sectional control saved us quite a few acres of overlap and once you wrap your head around it and get your timing sets works as described with only a few deficiencies
- when you plug the toolbar with trash it clears 99% of the time by swinging out and lifting openers, the 5710 would require a lot of manual labor to unplug
-when you plug your primary lines they are actually easy to disconnect and clean out. No WD40 and heat gun required. Only happened once.
-the drill would stay in the ground when going through washouts and we never had to double seeded any. It would dig into the ground pretty good just on the opposite side of entering the water run, so hopefully those seeds didn't get placed too deep
-it was very easy to lock the MRB's up when they weren't required
-pretty easy to change the depth of the MRB's
-though a long ways back from the tractor cab, the stairs up the cart were a nice change from the previous ladder setup we had on the old cart
-with a triaxle grain trailer with Micheals hopper augers we could hit all the cart tanks from one spot. No moving the truck required and it is a LONG cart!
-Topcon blockage (1 per tower) worked good as long as the X30 was setup properly. When changing from seed to seed and fertilizer it would change a bunch of the settings and you would manually have to go in and re-enter all the sensors, etc. Bourgault recognized this as a software glitch and hope to address it in software updates
Con's
-biggest disspointment was the depth control, and consistent depth was the entire premise for buying the drill. Started with everything set at same depth on the indicator (ranged from 4-7 depending on soil moisture). Regardless of packing pressure (1150-1500psi on cab indicator) the depth was very inconsistant from opener to opener, up to 1.25". Some seeds were much too deep, some were barely covered up. It was certainly no better and actually had more variance than a well set C shank. Ended up putting anything in a wheeltrack 1-2 notches deeper but inconsistency remained across the drill. It wouldn't be as big a deal if we weren't so dry and I didn't have 1/3 of my seeds that are laying in dust. If we changed the depth to make it find moisture, then 1/3 we're getting much too deep. VERY FRUSTRATING
-we went from 5.2-5.5mph with our 5710 to 4.4-4.6mph with this unit to avoid stepping, but with dry soil stepping was still an issue. You need a lot more than 12 extra feet of drill to make up for the lost ac/ft/hr by going slower. I gained little to no efficiency trading drills
-changing the depth is easier than all other independent drills (besides QDA) but still takes 1 guy 20-24mins and that adds up when you're finding you have to change every field, sometimes within a field
- drill pulled quite heavy and often brought the 580 quad to its knees in the hills, especially with the MRB's down
-there is no forgiveness with closing tines on MRB's and rolling backwards a little because you're tractor stalls to neutral in 1st gear, full throttle because it can't pull the hill. Takes an hour for 2 guys to remove all the bent tines
-trash clearance was marginally better at best than the 5710, and the 5710 was bad! Left a pretty nasty finish on some fields. Maybe 12'' spacing would help or a heavy harrow
-the MRB's really block the view of the openers on the mid and back rows so it was difficult to see if you were plugged up
- when you were plugged up the openers by the plug would trip out and the seed would not be put in the ground. This was at 1400-1500PSI on packing pressure indicator. 5710 would keep openers in the ground
-the remote for the cart sucks! All those controls should be at the top and bottom of the conveyor, just like the auger setups. It's bulky, eats batteries like a fat girl eats cupcakes, and you can't see the buttons in the dark. I already have the remote for the truck chutes/endgates around my neck. I don't need this stupid thing.
-the conveyor works ok, but there is still a lot of product that sits on the sides of the hopper that needs to be swept up.
-the conveyor is ridiculously heavy and can easily take you for a ride if you try to move it from the top of the cart and you weigh 150lbs soaking wet. If they add more friction on the part of the auger that you move manually then it would feel even heavier, but it wouldn't get away on you so easy. Not sure what to do besides add another ram, but 2 for directional control is enough
-it took easily twice as long as 10" deluxe auger to get conveyor into/out of its cradle for loading and over the course of seeding this really added to our fill times
-even with very conservative section control timing the X30 still paints the picture for 15-20ft when you raise the openers. As a consequence when you come across this painted area it shuts those sections off so you aren't really seeding that ground, just covering up broadcast seed. Maybe fine in wet conditions, but not dry conditions like we had
-we had a lot of product hoses that got pinched either through folding or raising/lowering the openers
-secondary lines take on a pile of wear. I still had 75% original secondary hoses on the 10yr old 5710 that did around 45,000ac. The hoses on the XTC looked worse after 2000ac
-many many loose hydraulic fittings and broken fittings. Lost a lot of oil......
I wouldn't say I have been overly happy with the purchase. Some positives, some negatives, but overall for dollars invested it will be one of my worst financial returns on investment. I'm really not sure what all the rage is over these drills. I really had high hopes, especially for depth control, but it did not live up to my expecations at all. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but a well set 5810 BG or 5000 Flexi with a 6000 series BG tank would be the best dollars invested on a seeding machine for my farm.
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