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Tractor pull....
ltcdoty
Member Posts: 4,185 ✭✭✭
Went to my first tractor pull yesterday on a beautiful day....way up here in New York State on the Vermont border. Very impressive, lots of powerful smoke belching beast. The twelve year old boy that cuts my grass was competing in the garden tractor class. I think that impressed me more, lots of pre teens and teens, both boys and girls , kind a like soap box derby on steroids. Very well attended, lots of social distancing and masks, but I'm sure Andy Cuomo would have a fit if he saw it. Even the State Troopers seemed to be enjoying themselves. All money raised went to cancer research. From coast to coast, these are the folks that keep the Lefties awake at night.
Comments
Anyway the tractor pulled a steel plate along on the ground behind it. On both sides of the track people stood at preset intervals (maybe 10 feet?). I can't remember for sure. When the plate passed your position, you would step onto the plate and ride. When the tractors got bigger, you would bring a bale of hay with you. When the tractor could not pull the plate anymore, he was done.
You had to reset the track and start all over with another tractor. Of course, you had to stay on the track - at your position - until that weight class was done to make it fair for all of the pullers.
Hey! I told you it was a very long time ago.
Later, the seed corn company dad worked for sponsored the tractor pull at the Missouri State Fair. That was a really big thing to be able to be inside the "Pit Area" instead of the grandstands. The very first time I saw a tractor with six (three on each side sitting behind and above the one in front of it) engines on it. All of the engines were blown 426 Hemis. Yes, you wanted your hands over your ears when that thing passed by.
The craziest ones I ever saw were the "Hot Rod Garden Tractors". They had automobile engines on custom built frames (cuz you could not get those kinds of engines on a regular lawn mower frame). Many of them were blown and you just learned to love the sound of the blowers. Most of them were really pushing the line on the "garden tractor" part, but relatively speaking they were tiny compared to the real tractors. Absolutely insane sport. You DID NOT stand anywhere close to the track when those guys were pulling. Also the first time I ever saw "Dead Man" kill switches. Your hand was "hooked" to the steering wheel with a cord (and switch). When your hand came off the steering wheel, it immediately killed the engine. Generally, that would immediately stop the movement of the tractor (except for the forward momentum and unless they broke the pull chain). I don't think I ever saw a chain break - or the tractor come unhooked from the sled. That would have been a very dangerous event.
Speaking of pulling, here’s the Little River that Could
RE: steam vs diesel
It's more about weight and traction than horsepower. Modern farm tractor weighs 20,000 # while the steam tractor weighs 2x that.
In time, Tesla will come out with a quiet one, victoryj19, that will outpull them all.
Brad Steele