When the Tru-Vee type planters were first introduced, the opener discs were designed to make a V-shaped furrow in loose, tilled soil to create a prime environment for proper seed placement. As time progressed, farming practices began to move away from total tillage to minimum-till and today’s highly popular no-till.

Over the past 40 years, the John Deere Tru-Vee type planter hasn’t changed a great deal. Yet in recent years, numerous attachments have been developed for use with these basic planter units under no-till conditions.

If you read what the planter guides were suggesting 40 years ago for setting the Tru-Vee opener blade contact, they would be very close to the recommended settings still found in today’s planter manuals.

Short Bearing Life.

Last year, I worked on a 12-row Tru-Vee planter on which new discs and wear guards were installed prior to planting. The blade contact on the discs was set at 2 inches at the four o’clock position. After planting 360 acres of corn (only 30 acres per row unit), one of the disc blade bearings already needed to be replaced.

When the disc was removed to replace the bearing, the wear guard was already worn down to 5/8 inches. By comparison, the wear guard had measured 7/8 inches when first installed.

Since it was felt that this might have been caused by the bearing going out, we pulled several other discs on the planter units while waiting for a new bearing assembly and disc to arrive. They also…