New Holland 54A Thrower

Hi Everybody,

I'm new to the forum but have been getting advice here as an onlooker for quite some time.

We bought a New Holland 273 baler with a 54A kicker attached last year, but didn't have hay wagons. We took the kicker off and baled all last year with it (great older baler, much better than the Case 200 we had been baling with before). Well anyway, this year we got kicker wagons, put the kicker back on, and have been putting up hay with much less labor. We have, as some people with New Holland kickers have, been having issues with burning twine. So far we have already adjusted the bale length to ~32" so they are definitely out of the bale chamber, tightened the bales, and switched to a heavy (9000ft) sisal twine, but we are still burning twine on about 1/50 of all our bales.

We have very good belts on the kicker so I don't think it is slipping on the bale. One thing I know about the kicker is that it has some welds on it and the top belt and lower belt are not aligned properly. What I'm wondering is if it's possible that the lower belt assembly is spaced too far back (after all the welding that was done to it) and thus it is engaging the top belt but not the lower belt at some point. I would say the center of the top belt pulley is about 4" in front of the center of the lower belt pulley. Is this normal? Should I plan on spacing that top belt assembly back? If anyone has a 54A or a similar NH kicker and could post a picture of the location of their belt pulleys relative to each other that would be very helpful!

Thank you,
Asa

New Holland 54A Thrower