Pöttinger TOP 462/Farming Simulator 17

The Pöttinger TOP 462 is a type of Windrower in Farming Simulator 17. It is the smallest and cheapest Windrower in the game. Too small to effectively combine multiple trails together, the TOP 462 instead shifts the trails it passes over to the left. As it passes in the opposite direction, it shifts the next trail to the same place as the previous trail - effectively combining every two trails into one.

Advantages

• Cheapest: The TOP 462 is the cheapest Windrower in the game by a considerable amount - 3 times less expensive than the next largest Windrower (a difference of $19,000). This makes it affordable in the early game.
• Folding: When not in use, the TOP 462 can fold itself from a width of 4.0 meters to about 2.4 meters. This slightly improves maneuverability during transit or storage, although the width reduction is rather minimal.

Disadvantages

• Narrowest: The TOP 462 has the narrowest Working Width of all Windrowers in the base game - too narrow to merge multiple Grass or Straw trails, although it can rearrange Tedder trails more effectively. It makes up for the lack of width by using Side Unloading, as explained in the next section.

Side Unloading

The TOP 462 pulls materials to the left. In this example, on the forward pass (moving up) it's merging two trails of grass and dumping them in a single windrow. On the reverse pass (moving down), it merges one additional trail of grass into the same windrow. This pattern will repeat across the entire field, creating one windrow for every three grass trails.

Unlike larger models of Windrowers, the Pöttinger TOP 462 does not pull materials into the center point. Instead, it shifts the material to the left side of the Windrower.

Larger Windrowers work by pulling all of the materials they encounter on each pass into the windrower's centerline - creating the windrow exactly along the central axis of the machine. The TOP 462 is simply not wide enough to use this technique effectively. The trails left by Mowers or small Harvesters are often too far apart from one another, and the TOP 462 is only wide enough to process one trail at a time, or two at most.

Instead, what the TOP 462 does is to shift each trail a small distance to the left, creating a Windrow along the machine's left side. When the TOP 462 comes back on the reverse pass, the left side of the windrower is now in the same place as the windrow it has just created. As a result, it creates both windrows in the same place, causing them to merge into a single windrow (see image on the right).

In this way, even though it might pass over one trail at a time, the TOP 462 can still merge every two trails into a single Windrow. This can work when processing the trails left by Tedders, Mowers and small Harvesters. It does not work for the straw trails of larger harvesters, which are very far apart from one another - the TOP 462 will simply shift, not merge, such trails.

Unfortunately, this method of trail merging is not very efficient. At most (as seen in the image on the right), it might cut the number of trails that need to be picked up by 1/3, assuming the technique explained above is performed correctly. For this reason, a TOP 462 does not really reduce the effort and time taken to collect Grass or Straw - but it is still somewhat effective at cleaning up the mess left by a Tedder.

Specifications

• Price: $9,000
• Maintenance Cost: $10 / day
• Leasing Costs: $180 + $450/h + $90/d
• Valid Materials: Grass, Hay, Straw
• Working Width: 3.6 meters
• Material Drop Side: Left
• Max. Working Speed: 18 km/h / 11 mph
• Power Consumption: 10 kW / 14 hp
• Attachment Points: Three-point hitch
• Mass: 767 kg