Several years ago, Deere announced the development of a new 18-litre, six-cylinder motor that would span 700-900hp. The new 9500 and 9600 choppers are the first machines to get the big block powerplant.
What is the ideal horsepower jump between forager models, should it be 50hp, 75hp, 100hp…? For Deere the 145hp hop between the 8600 and 9600 that share the same 625hp, 13.5-litre motor, and the 770hp 9700 with the Liebherr V12 was seen as too big. Enter the 18-litre, inline-six DPS JD18X engine which will be used in the new 9500 and 9600. With 700hp and 750hp, these are deemed by Deere as the ideal gap filler. Essentially these are pretty much the same as the other ‘wide-body’ 9000 series models with the 850mm chopping drum, but dig down on the details with the engineering team and you realise it wasn’t just a matter of dropping out the big V12 block and popping in the new JD18X.
The new motor has spent several years in development to get the software on point for foraging a range of crops around the world. Deere usually makes around 700-800 per year for its share of a worldwide market that tends to hover around 3,500 units. Klaus Kellner, Deere’s global business manager for SPFH, says that this has been a particularly good year with north of 800 choppers leaving Zweibrücken with a more or less 50:50 split of 8000 and 9000 series machines with the 9700i proving the most popular in Europe.
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