AC 303 Square Baler... anyone with experience with them?

Picked up my new (to me) AC 303 today. Not my
preference for a square baler, but this one came
along way too cheap to pass on it, supposedly they
have had problems with the tying, only ties 2-3 out
of every five bales. This is my first owned square
baler, always do round bales and have a neighbor do
a few hundred squares for us, so all I ever have
done is just toss em on the trailer and in the barn.
Am I in for a mess getting this thing to tie right?
Gonna find and order a manual hopefully tonight.

my only experience with a AC baler was a old roto baler and i never got it to work right.
had to get a new holland baler to bale the hay.

Guess if i was going to buy a sq baler i would just belly up to the table and get a new holland or john Deere.

I remember the great sound of a big new holland sq baler being pulled by a AC wd45,

The governers on that old tractor would open up each time that old baler plunger hit, but back then they tried to made 100# bales.

Good luck,

My experience is jd makes one of the worst balers on the market watched and baled out my neighbors many times, I would look for a NH or and IH, I had a 435 IH and made great bales and hardly ever missed a bale.

Part availability may a problem,other than that,I see nothing wrong with it.The knotters look similar to new holland,try adjusting to NH spec. and see what happens.Good luck.

I have an old NH273 torn apart in my shop right now, working on the knotters. The Knotters on your baler look very very similar. Knotters get out of kelter pretty easily even on the best balers. Look at the number of knotter questions on this forum. If you can find a NH manual I bet the directions and trouble shooting section will be very similar. If it is tying 3 of every 5 you can't be that far from being right.

Search NH knotters on this forum.

When i first got my NH276 it missed, hung up or busted one of very 20 bales. It took a while but last night I baled 307 in a row without a miss.

Good luck, you probably made a good deal.

I had an Allis 302 baler a few years ago. I had a lot of success finding many, assumed, out of stock parts for my baler through my local & former Allis dealer. When it came to the knotters, no luck. Their baler mechanic thought they were the same as a NH 268 Hayliner (?). I ended up selling the baler for parts & bought an IH 47 baler with the #10 thrower, which is off at this time. Seldom misses a bale & is more prone to making a two or three bale "sausage" every great once & a while. The Allis would have been a good macine if the nearest Agco & NH dealers weren't an hour away & the parts weren't so pricey.

Mike

I have one , had some serious problems in the beginning but they were caused by the previous owner. I have found tying problems are caused by the crop condition more so than any thing else.
I pull mine with a 65hp tractor. Wife runs in 1st gear while I stack on the wagon. We baled some straw a little while back, missed the first several until I backed the tension off and then it tied every one. A manual is your best friend, contact an AGCO dealer and they should be able to get one for you.

I had one just like that. Same deal. Close by. Not much use. Stored inside.
The knotters are basically the same as others. As long as everything is in order they're not an issue.
I could never make much of a bale with the thing. I think it's the chamber design.
When I got it going, one day, something about the straw just wouldn't feed. I was about at the end of my rope when it occurred to me to change the timing of the outer forks to throw with the inner forks instead of being opposite, It worked!

I have used a AC 303 and after I adjusted it (had the manual), it baled perfect! Maybe miss one out of 500 bales in tying. It is a great baler and is the same as a NH 269 except for the feeder to the bale chamber. AC is better than the NH as the feeder is stronger. Always baled straight bales not bananas.
I sold it last year after someone offered me three times what I paid for it. Wish I still had it! But I had a NH269 that needed attention so I thought this would motivate me to fix the NH269. The NH is not as nice for baling as my AC303 -ground pickup is too slow on the NH269 with standard pickup. The NH269 would drive past some of the hay and not pick it up (pickup teeth were not slipping just slower rotation).
I also have a NH269 with the supersweep pickup -now that's nice! The supersweep will just keep feeding and the baler would just spit out nice straight bales. I still need to do some fine tuning to the knotters on both NH269s and they are good balers, but I do miss my AC303.
I am a fan of NH balers and will recomend them first as they are easy to work on and get parts. I never had trouble getting parts for the AC303. Knotters completely the same as the NH. The AC D17 tractor is also the best square baling tractor you can find. Again I prefer Farmall or Moline tractors, but the D17 can't be beat!

That brings back memories- they were not that common, we bought one believed to be a 1963 model at one of the many now defunct small impliment dealers in Albany MN back in 1982 or so. $200 bucks then I think, clean but well worn.

Armed with my meager patience and mechanical skill at age 14 with a crescent wrench and a hammer, I somehow kept it tying.

Still have the running gear from the wagon but that is it, left the hobby farm in "85 and dad sold it all off.

Here is a pic, the field in this pic has not been farmed in about 20 years and is growing up in 2" saplings.

I think you will need to do some major freeing up on that baler. If you look close someone has given it a DUPONT over haul. It has been very rusty. The chains need to be soaked in oil/diesel fuel so the rollers loosen up. The knotters will need brushed and polished. I am amazed it is tying at all. Do you know anyone with a bead blaster??? If you do it just takes a few bolts to remove the whole knotter assembly from the baler and then bead blast it. DO not sand blast it. That is too aggressive. I have a small bead blast cabinet and it works great in cleaning up knotter parts. When you get them cleaned up then use a manual and adjust them back to spec. You should have a good tying baler without a lot of money tied up.
!!!CAUTION!!! you want to make sure the plunger stop is free and working BEFORE trying to run this baler. The needles for these old Allis balers are hard to find used and cost major money new. Allis nut(my Uncle LOL) next to me broke one and it was almost four hundred dollars new.

i HAVE A 442 - the newer brother to your machine - I got it for free, had to fix a few things, should fix a few more, but that thing never misses a tie - a far cry from the IHs I was used to as a kid.....

(quoted from post at 16:34:41 08/09/10) Picked up my new (to me) AC 303 today. Not my
preference for a square baler, but this one came
along way too cheap to pass on it, supposedly they
have had problems with the tying, only ties 2-3 out
of every five bales. This is my first owned square
baler, always do round bales and have a neighbor do
a few hundred squares for us, so all I ever have
done is just toss em on the trailer and in the barn.
Am I in for a mess getting this thing to tie right?
Gonna find and order a manual hopefully tonight.

Click to expand...

I got one way to cheep once too! Mine only baled 1 in 5 bales and I learned alot from it. I already knew you get what you Pay for, but the lesson that time is of the essence when farming was especially important. Then there is the do and do again and do again once more, how many times can you try to Bale the same hay? I found a chump to give me what I paid for it and went out and used a real baler, a Heston in line 4590, I have used New Holland, John Deere and of coarse this allice but if I have any sense at all I will never buy any small baler other than a Heston. John Deere is my preference in big round balers.