Hesston Belt Question(s)

My Hesston 946 silage special has 10500 +/- bales on the original "rough top" belts, though they are pretty smooth now. I've been experiencing increasing difficulty starting a bale in both high moisture and dry baling conditions. Flaps have been removed from the starting roll and replaced with the factory silage bars along with the scraper or knife used to skive the roll. Knife is set at about 0.020" which is closer than factory specs.

Hay will enter the bale chamber, ascend toward the top of the chamber, but has increasing difficulty beginning to tumble, turn, roll, etc. The stuffer tries to force more material into the chamber, but since the wad of hay isn't turning, the pin clutch that drives the pickup and the stuffer then begins to slip, hay starts to back feed over the starting roll, roll tries to wrap, things get ugly quickly. Today, trying to bale some high moisture rye, the pin clutch finally began slipping almost constantly and the baler pretty well quit feeding.

 

So now to my question(s): are my problems belt-related? are they too slick to grab the material and start the bale turning? I've tried starting the bale at rated rpm, half throttle, slipping the tractor clutch and giving it a tiny bit at a time, and letting out on the clutch like I know it's gonna start. Results are much the same.

Next question: If new belts are needed, oem or aftermarket? Aftermarkets like us baler belts, hay tools, usa belting, etc advertise oem quality, however, the belt style offered for my 946 is either a diamond top or chevron style, rather than the rough top that the baler  originally had. It makes sense that the more aggressive style of the diamond top or chevron might actually gain better results in my particular situation, but I wanted other opinions.

 

If I've missed a detail, feel free to ask questions.

Thanks

Hesston Belt Question(s)