While the focus of late for many manufacturers has been on large rotary combines as they advance in design and capacity, New Holland has been quietly updating its conventional straw walker models for the 2026 season.
The company has been improving its CX and TC combine ranges, along with the associated headers, to improve the ease of setting them up and making their operation more productive.
This holistic approach to improving the crop flow starts with the Varifeed headers, which now offer 57.5cm fore and aft knife travel to allow for high volume crops such as rapeseed. Knife speed has also been increased by 11%.
Bye bye, belts
New Holland engineers have also replaced the previous belt drive design with a mechanical transmission and telescopic shaft.
This reduces the need to check and adjust belt tension, which is becoming something of an archaic practice in the machinery world generally.
A new auger height adjustment assembly provides two pre-set positions: high for rapeseed and low for small grains, which New Holland claims will reduce adjustment time to just five minutes.
The position of the gauge wheels can be selected from the cab, alleviating the need to raise the wheels manually before the header is loaded on the trailer.
Combine drum options
Within the combine itself, the UltraFlow drum is now available as an option on the CX5 models. According to the manufacturer, this improves threshing performance while reducing noise levels and fuel consumption.
The CX5, CX6, and CH7 hybrid combines – which feature both drum-and-concave and Twin Rotor separation – benefit from a revised sieve adjustment system which sets the pre-sieve and upper sieve concurrently.
On Hillside versions of the CX5.90 and CX6.90 combines, an additional sensor now controls the powered rear axle, while another on the rear lift system detects slope changes and automatically disengages the rear axle drive.
Rear axle addition
New Holland’s TC combine, now produced in Plock (Poland) and Curitiba (Brazil), has been around for 33 years and has sold 75,000 units throughout the world.
Recent upgrades include hinged right-hand cab glass, an air-suspended seat, a compressed air line, and Bluetooth DAB+ radio. New standard features include a rear safety camera in line with the larger models.
The Smart Sieve option will also be available for TC5 models for European markets, as will the powered rear axle update.
