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<div> <font size="2">Good story Dean, thank you!!!!</font><br>
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<div style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:10pt;color:black">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Dean VP <deanvp@att.net><br>
To: 'Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group' <at@lists.antique-tractor.com><br>
Sent: Fri, Sep 25, 2020 9:39 pm<br>
Subject: Re: [AT] Tractor Pulling<br>
<br>
<div dir="ltr">My wife and I were into pulling for a while. Not in a serious way but for<br clear="none">fun without spending anything to hop them up etc. Stock. We first started<br clear="none">pulling my 1941 JD H which is a long ways from a monster puller. Fit into<br clear="none">the 2500 lb class real well and did reasonably well. Then I gained enough<br clear="none">weight that I could no longer keep it in the 2500 lb class so I suggested my<br clear="none">wife try pulling. She took to that like fish to water. She was a farm girl.<br clear="none">She really got a kick out of it and won more often than I did which only fed<br clear="none">here like of the activity. The H was bone factory stock. The only think I<br clear="none">did was played with rear tire pressures, hitch height and length within the<br clear="none">pulling rules based on track conditions. Through a lot of experimentation I<br clear="none">got pretty good at making changes based on whatever the track conditions<br clear="none">were at a given pull. One pull where I didn't get things set quite right<br clear="none">she still won. The track was very sandy with loose small rocks etc. on top<br clear="none">of hard clay. Traction was going to be difficult to get. So I raised the<br clear="none">hitch up to the highest I had ever set it and she started off down the<br clear="none">track. Well... I had made a mistake the front wheels came off the ground<br clear="none">about 6" almost immediately. That is a no no in pulling for several reasons<br clear="none">including the loss of hitch height and loss of steering capability. But...<br clear="none">that didn't bother my wife, whenever the tractor drifted off in the wrong<br clear="none">direction she would feather the correct brake and get it back on the<br clear="none">straight and narrow. Usually when one starts using brakes it is all over.<br clear="none">But she had the feathering down to science. Still don't know where she<br clear="none">learned that other than possibly watching other pullers. But to make a long<br clear="none">story short she did a complete and full pull. No other tractor in that<br clear="none">weight class did a full pull so she won. So it took me messing up and her<br clear="none">good driving skills and she won. If she wasn't hooked on pulling before<br clear="none">now she really was. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">So since the H became her pulling tractor I had to find something different.<br clear="none">My only candidate at the time was a 1953 JD 60, which are not known as good<br clear="none">pullers, but what the heck it will give me another tractor to learn how to<br clear="none">set up. The 60 was the very first antique tractor I had ever purchased back<br clear="none">in 1998, had been setting out in a field for 20 years and was stuck. We<br clear="none">also moved to our retirement acreage the same year so it did not get a lot<br clear="none">of attention the first year because there was so much work required on the<br clear="none">place but I did get it soaking. I had a bar on the flywheel and every time<br clear="none">I went anywhere close to the barn I would pull on the bar to see if it had<br clear="none">come loose. Well almost a year later one day the flywheel moved a 1/4", I<br clear="none">was stunned, it wasn't long before I was able to get a full revolution. But<br clear="none">the noise coming from inside the cylinder and pistons was not a happy sound.<br clear="none">So eventually I took the head off and pistons out to see how bad things<br clear="none">really were. To mu surprise things were not as bad as I expected so I did<br clear="none">nothing more than hand hone the cylinder walls, put new rings on the pistons<br clear="none">and ground the valves which really wasn't needed. But in the process learned<br clear="none">that this tractor did not have very many hours on it. Got it running and it<br clear="none">ran really well. Took it to an antique tractor show and had the opportunity<br clear="none">to put it on a Dyno and was very disappointed. I was getting less than 30HP<br clear="none">on a tractor rated new at around 39HP or so. SUM Ting Wong! Again to make<br clear="none">a long story short I found out the linkage between the governor and the<br clear="none">carburetor was set wrong. Boom instantly, I had 40 HP on the dyno the next<br clear="none">time I checked. The PO had told me he never like the tractor because it was<br clear="none">so gutless and didn't use it much. Now I knew why. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">So now I thought it was time to pull and surprisingly did way better than I<br clear="none">or anyone else expected. I had installed 13.9 x 38" Firestone 22 degree rib<br clear="none">tires on it and they were a perfect match for the tractor. I could maybe<br clear="none">have done even better off I could have kept the front end down more but that<br clear="none">was possible to be solved with hitch adjustment. Wow, My wife has a decent<br clear="none">pulling tractor and so do I. We had fun pulling for a few years, never did<br clear="none">anything to enhance the results other than mess with tire pressure, hitch<br clear="none">height/length and weight location. All within the rules and what was<br clear="none">standard JD offering. Butt... all good things must come to an end. Then we<br clear="none">made a mistake by beating the shows pulling chairman in our respective<br clear="none">weight classes on a Saturday. The next day of the show the pulling chairman<br clear="none">started cheating to win and made a complete ass out of himself and upset my<br clear="none">wife so much she was totally turned off on pulling. We didn't have to win,<br clear="none">in fact we didn't win that often but often enough to make it fun. But in<br clear="none">one foul swoop winning became so important for the pulling chairman that he<br clear="none">was going to do anything to win. That was all it took for both of us. We<br clear="none">never pulled again. It was no longer fun for either one of us. We didn't<br clear="none">want to be part of that kind of organization and in fact resigned from the<br clear="none">club over it. We are now still interested spectators at tractor pulls but<br clear="none">don't participate. There is no such thing as a stock antique tractor pull<br clear="none">any more. Most if not all have been hopped up or modified extensively and<br clear="none">whoever has the deepest pocket usually wins. Interestingly, I have pulled<br clear="none">again in AZ recently only to find out if the tractor was producing adequate<br clear="none">HP, it wasn't. Still trying to figure that one out. In AZ they do pulls way<br clear="none">different. They do a percentage pull. The compare the weight of the tractor<br clear="none">vs the weight of the progressive sled at the time the pull comes to an end.<br clear="none">I've seen the sled vs tractor weight approach 190% on some extreme cases but<br clear="none">usually much less. The smaller tractors seem to get a higher percentage than<br clear="none">the bigger ones unless they are all hopped up. Seems to create less<br clear="none">friction amongst the drivers and less unfriendly competition which is good. <br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">Dean VP<br clear="none">Snohomish, WA 98290<br clear="none">"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and gospel of<br clear="none">envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."<br clear="none">..Winston Churchill...<br clear="none"><br clear="none">-----Original Message-----<br clear="none">From: AT <<a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:at-bounces@lists.antique-tractor.com" href="mailto:at-bounces@lists.antique-tractor.com">at-bounces@lists.antique-tractor.com</a>> On Behalf Of STEVE ALLEN<br clear="none">Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2020 11:52 AM<br clear="none">To: <a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:at@lists.antique-tractor.com" href="mailto:at@lists.antique-tractor.com">at@lists.antique-tractor.com</a><br clear="none">Subject: [AT] Tractor Pulling<br clear="none"><br clear="none">In my reply to Dean, I might have come across as harsh on tractor pulling.<br clear="none">I thought I should clarify my thoughts.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">First of all, if it's your tractor, do what you want with it.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Second, I sort of enjoy watching pulling IF the tractors are antique/classic<br clear="none">and not modified. It can be fun watching the various marks vie for the<br clear="none">title. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">But the fun is instantly lost if the tractors are modified. The question<br clear="none">then is no longer which brand or which style of tractor can win the day but<br clear="none">rather how much money the owner has to create a Frankenstein's monster. I<br clear="none">just have no interest in them personally. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">There are only so many antiques and classics left. I prefer to see them<br clear="none">preserved. I don't mean put on a shelf--I like to see them used but not<br clear="none">abused. Preserved means stock, or nearly so (if original parts aren't<br clear="none">available), not hot-rodded or morphed into something else. <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Just my two cents, long after the end of the gold standard ;-)<br clear="none"><br clear="none">The "original" Steve Allen<br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">AT mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:AT@lists.antique-tractor.com" href="mailto:AT@lists.antique-tractor.com">AT@lists.antique-tractor.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com" target="_blank">http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com</a>
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