Hesston 6610 Swather 

Slant six power and open door A/C! Classic and kudos to the farmer still running that old iron.

Love the history and the old school iron that still works

Stubborn old workhorse doesn't want to retire!...NICE!!!🐎🐎✅️💯💯💯💯💯⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️👍👍👍👍👍

The ol fashion a/c prop the door open! Haha I love it thanks for making these videos

Those were very popular when I grew up on our WI dairy farm in the 70's and 80's. Thanks for sharing.

Great to see these old machines still at work thanks for sharing!!

Owned one identical to that except it had a 14 foot head in mid to late 80's mowed a lot of hay with it was pretty big machine for its time ! Unfortunately lost it in a machine shed fire . The instant I saw this brought back a lot of memories . Thanks for the time travel back!!!!

love seeing that on point turning.

WOW !!! There is a machine that has been well looked after and maintained. The header runs as smooth as silk eh. Great video I really enjoyed that thank you.

just saw one of these in a field and glad to see the history of this machine

This was before my time. But I love hearing the history and seeing it work.

I really enjoy hearing about the history of these companies. Especially ones that has changed hands like Heston. Great video!

Great video and nice chopping machine! Thanks for sharing!

Alway enjoy watching the old equipment working out in the fields. As always, good information on the machine & the company. Stay safe.

That’s awesome to see that old swatter out there working away it sounds really good to the slant six engines those things and just run forever

My grandpa has an old HESSTON 6650 swather pretty similar to the one in the video. Still a pretty neat machine I think. Still get the job done for sure. Cool video!

Great to see some interesting old iron still at it in the fields!

Slant-six! My first car was an Aussie Chrysler Valiant with the Slant-six, we also had a couple of Dodge farm trucks fitted with the same engine (rebadged International Harvester trucks). Great video Jason, always learn something from you!

That is a sweet old school machine! Looks like it still does a great job!

Awesome vintage machine 70s-80s farm equipment is so cool

Thanks for the history. Very interesting. Iowa is beautiful. I have many hours in a hesston 8200 14' cutting alfalfa. It also had the double windrower attachment which saved alot of time before hay mergers became popular.

Another great of a classic AG implement.

I am not a farmer but somehow after watching this i want to hop in that machine and do the thing all day long :) Really like those videos and this narrative is awesome :)

Great video again was not sure about the history of hesston thank you

Great video featuring a cool little machine.

I put on a ton of hours in one of these swathers in the 1980's. Was really a good machine. It had the Chrysler slant 6 gas engine that he spoke about in this video. The one we ran also had a very good AC system that could run you out of there on the hottest day if it was working right.

Great video. The buying and selling and changing owner ships of the company’s got my head spinning

Awesome job on the video!!! And an even better job on the history!!!! Well done!!

I spent many hours in swathers but my allergies wouldn't let me run that machine with the door open. Nice video. Appreciate the history.

Drove one of these in Lincolnshire UK cutting peas for vining in 1974 and 1975 nice to drive and wonderful can. Fond memories

Wow what a clean survivor machine, i bet nothing made today will still be running in 41yrs.

Great old machines 👍

One sweet swather!

This one looks really good shape 👍

Getting pretty good with the drone footage!!!!

Great video thanks again.😎

nice video , thumps up

Always nice to see such machines at work, here in Germany we do not have such machines. We have the Krone Big M. Greetings from Germany

Nice video great too see good old equipment running in the field today. Hesston is a big name for dairy farms around central illinos. But I hope you make an ih swather video in the futur 😁

My first windrower was a Hesston 1010. It had a Wisconsin 4 cyl gas engine 2 levers to steer and 3 wheels. No cab so about July- August you would sweat out couple quarts of water because the engine was right behind you. But it was a good runnimg machine.

This machine is definitely bigger than any of the mowers (sickle or disk) that my relatives have owned over the years. For its time, it was a big improvement over other models and designs. My guess is that a modern discbine/mo-co would probably run circles around it, but that's a little bit of anachronistic contrast. As others have said, it's nice to see the older style machines at work, especially as so many of them have become obsolete and/or harder to find.

Lots of good info!

nice video we have a hesston 1120 or something like that but it is a pull behind that takes up the whole road where we are

oh the memories

Welcome to Iowa!

Génial!!!!!

41 year old machinery, fantastic. Self propelled to me means no driver/operator's in the cab as it follows the gps layout of the field. Nice seeing something different in the ag machinery library. 🚜👍

Those slant 6 motors was hard to beat back deen,,they was very reliable doing that time!!

old and small but very usefull👌

Pretty cool old style Iron...

Neat machine never seen one being used.

Nice video 👍👏

Yes finally a HESSTON video. I have a question did HESSTON sell out to Massey Ferguson before it went to Agco

The leaning tower of power aka the slant 6

nice

How is it that you're able to isolate the drone noise from the equipment noise while capturing drone footage? That's really interesting!

We had a 6610 up til about 6 years ago it had the Perkins diesel and a 14 ft header growing alfalfa in Nevada. I noticed they didn't have the conditioner rollers on; are they going to be chopping this?

I can’t find the full video of the fiat f110 on RU-vid

did the farmer ask why you what to video this old machine for. glad ya did

Did these swathers use a sickle bar cutting method? Did they have conditioning rolls? We cut hay right now with an old Hesston 1090. Wondered if this is the same cutting method, just self propelled and wider. The old 1090 just cut shoulder high first cutting hay very well- slow and steady.

Interesting power plant choice

Great video could you do a video on Hesston tractors

Rember the time that i work on the dry factory for gras and clover early 80s they had 1 brand new john deere zwad mower 1 of the first in Europe. The rest al hestons. But relplaced by the newer deers whit the sg2 cab.

We use to have one of these about 6 years ago and got rid of it because it was getting tired and ended up buying a new holland h8060

Our farm has an early Hesston swather (we called it a windrower). I think we bought the first one around 1960, maybe 1961. I do not recall the model number. It resembled the model #100 you showed. It was a mechanical ground drive, using two belts, one to drive each wheel. Handles on the open station either engaged the belts to a jackshaft to move forward, or engaged them to a reverse jackshaft to go backward. The right hand control also moved side to side. It controlled a variable sheave driver pulley - changing its driving diameter slightly to "fine tune" ground direction. A slight change in pulley diameter meant the right wheel was either speeded up, or slowed down slightly, adjusting the direction. It was an open station. It had one trailing wheel, on the left side. I found a pic from Hesston, Model 220 looked like it. It used drapers, not augers, with a tine pickup reel. And, in digging around, I found a pic of a Case 1150 that also looks similar - a pic posted by, ... wait for it, ... BigTractorPower. I do not recall the engine that was used, but it was less than 50hp, definitely gasoline. Our model was 10 ft, maybe 12 ft. We used it to swath grass seed crops - ryegrass, fescue. The swath would lay for drying from 1-5 weeks before a combine, with pickup attachment, would harvest the seed. A really good day, we could cover 80A. It replaced (3) New Idea 7ft sickle mowers, pulling tine swathers. We pulled each with tractors, Case VA, Case 400, Cockshutt 40, PTO driven. In a good day, we could cut down 80A with the three mowers, about the same as the Hesston windrower.

If you're ever in kansas you're more than welcome to film my 6550 which is the bigger newer brother/sister to the 6610

I always coveting this machine when I was cutting hay in the 80s 😬

Man missed this video but I am not complaining about this swather. Here in north Louisiana this is all we see are hesston forage equitment.

What brings you up too Northeast Iowa?

Didn't these machines have conditioning rollers like in a haybine?

Man, getting that history lesson only puts the spotlight on how sad it is that independent manufacturers just don't really exist today. There's a small handful out there, but it's just impossible to compete against these global conglomerates of today if you don't specialize your product line pretty heavily(and, if you do that successfully, then be prepared to get bought out by one of the conglomerates; not that I would EVER blame a business owner for selling should they choose to, that's an EARNED opportunity). You just can't help but be impressed with today's pretty incredible ag equipment, but there's certainly something to be said for the independents that today's global conglomerates are standing on the shoulders of. In fact, it's pretty impressive that Deere has remained, as a brand, independent; though I think we all know that they've only managed to do that by themselves turning into a conglomerate by buying up a lot of the real independents. Can't blame them though, gotta do what it takes to survive, and to Deere's credit they've stayed ahead of the curve. Awesome old machine! I can only imagine that the Perkins powered ones are somewhat rare given that it was another ~10% premium over the WAY too cool slant-6 that, frankly, is all the engine that this kind of machine really needs.

That field looks like it needs some over-seeding and fertilizer ? Is that the same engine that came in the Dodge Dart and similar cars ? Great vid and thumbs up BTP !

I suppose ac would be nice in that cab.

Why would one prefer a swather over a moco?

Hi

Did that old head have dreaps instead of an auger ? Could not really see

Commentator sounds like Joel Kinnaman.

Looks like that old boy has a lot of weeds in that crop.

Back when hesston was good. Then the 8100 came out and it was down hill from there

I admire MF for keeping their name despite all mergers, where-as Ford lost there their name in tractors through mergers, I love NH but is not a Ford, it's only the blue that give me the flash-backs of my beloved Ford range of tractors,

Yikes it's a UFO aaaaaaaaaaaaah lol