Holy Cow Tractor Pulling Team

Monday, August 25, 2003

Enderle Pull-Off
We hooked 3rd of 4 tractors. I don't have the hillside track figured out, or do I have Hagar's patriot sled figured out. I missed my weight and was nose heavy. The track was poor and didn't bite consistently, but I think I could have made a better showing a little lighter on the nose. Anyway, picked the front end, then dropped it and that upset the rear and started bouncing. So, by 150' I already knew it was going to be a poor pull. Then, the valve cover gasket on the right rear motor blew out and covered me and my helmet with oil, making it a little hard to see. I looked at the smoke coming from the engine and was paying attention to that, and ended up driving right out of bounds.

So, I finished in 4th with an official distance of DQ. But, that really didn't matter since I didn't really have a good run going anyway, I probably would have only made another 10' if I hadn't DQ's, so I finished where I should have finished anyway. It is still an honor just to be selected to go. Maybe next year...

That being the case, I am really disappointed at the Region III/V support for this event. Jack Kielmeyer won Enderle bids from both regions, but could only attend once. They called the next 8 qualifiers and no one wanted to run. Finally, Bollenger put Top Gun in as the #13 qualifier from Region III. Ken Veney joined us from region IV as well. Jack Kielmeyer showed the crowd how he won both region III and V by wining the Enderle Pull-Off as well.

Friday, August 22, 2003

Enderle Pull-Off
We won the bid for Region II for the RN Mod Enderle Pull-Off. Joining me will be Ken Veney, Jack Keilmeyer, and Richard Ziegler. Come see us Saturday night at Ft Recovery.

Hicksville, OH
14 tractors showed at this Tri-Sanctioned Event. The track was probably not as good as I have seen in the past. The TWD class really had trouble hooking to it, but our big tires did better. There was a soft spot about 200 or so and it either seemed to cause the tractors to bounce or hook left. Barga and Diekman both had early pulls and either had enough ground speed to make it through the bad spot or it hadn't developed yet. When it was my turn, I misread the track and was a tad nose heavy. I just skimmed the front tires, never actually picking up the front end, but still had nearly 100% weight transfer to the rear tires. While this was not my intent, I think it may have worked to my advantage. Overall, I probably lost a little ground speed, but was able to just drive down the track and never touched the brakes. The many of the other tractors, while having better looking pulls, and perhaps more speed, lost it all when they had to get on the brakes hard. The top five were Barga, Diekman, us, Stahl, Jerew.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

History Changes
In the past, I wrote a year summary of our pulling history. Now that I have this blog, the summary kind of writes itself. So, at the bottom of the blog and also on the history page are links to blog archives. Due to the way the blog used to be handled, all of the posts up to June were lost, but with the exception of the NFMS, nothing really happens then anyway.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Greenville, OH
Grabbed my blower from Gerardot and stuck it back on. Fired all for engines for the first time in June and everything ran great. Set the timing on the front right motor and changed gears and we were ready to pull.

This was a Class A pull, which means Grand National Limits, commonly referred to as a "4 motor pull". There were only 3 GN tractors there, us and both turbines of Dave Snyder. Ron Barga pulled first at went 255 and they lighted the sled and reset the class. Dave Snyder on the Legend went 276 and took the lead. Barga came back on the Judge, classified by NTPA as a 3 motor tractor, and went 280. Chad Schultheis made a nice pass with his triple Sassy tractor out to 275. Next up was us and I made a nice straight pass out to 277, putting me in second. Dave Snyder made a fantastic pass on Space Invader and got it out the gate for the only Full Pull in the Class. Scott Tedder was the top triple Chevy at 247 and the class fell off from there.

Lima.
Again, a very hard and loose track. We did all we could but could only manage 262. I was way nose heavy, but I don't know if weight off would have mattered. It seemed that Puller 2000's just wouldn't work on the track. I really was at a loss on what to do for nose weight since I was missing a blower up front anyway. Anyway, there were 14 tractors. There was a group of 6 between 293 and 300, then another group of 6 from 225 to 265. Basically, you either got a hold of the track and did well, or didn't and went 250. There were no tractors between 265 and 293.

4 Days Off.
I had all my parts for the 4th motor, plus needed to see what the valve problem was with the left rear and the wrist pins on the right front. The right rear was fresh (the one I blew at Hartford) and the front left had a hole in it. Here was the plan. Pull the heads on the left rear and see what needed to be done. Pull the right front and replace the wrist pins. Then build a motor from scratch and put it in place of the front left. I had 4 days and we had already bought tickets for the Kiss/Aerosmith concert Sunday night. Lima was Monday (3 motor) and Greenville was Tuesday (4 motor).

Left rear. I pull the heads and they were warped about .010". I had the heads surfaced and the offending cylinder valves and seats ground. Luckily there was no "real" damage to that motor.

Next I pulled the front right and took it apart. Edd Reeves, a man I met years ago when I ran my single engine, hook up with me again this year at Rochester and wanted to help out. He agreed to help over the next few days building engines. We changed wrist pins in that motor and started putting it back together. The next morning, we got the both of those motors assembled and back on the tractor.

New Motor. Finally, we assembled a new motor, the one we blew at Ft Wayne. By Sunday afternoon, we fired the three motors we were going to run at Lima and loaded it in the trailer in time to see Kiss.

We discovered a problem the blower that sat on the engine that exploded at Shiawassee Co. It appreared the rotors were bent and I could head a metallic klunk in side. I took the blower apart but couldn't find anything and time to call in the Experts. I left early in the morning for Lima and took the blower to Gerardot. He could get it finished while I waited, but that was OK since I didn't need it for Lima anyway. I would swing by and get it on the way to Greenville.

Marshall, MI
Again, a Wolverine only hook. So, we only bump the sled and take a last place 8th finish. Just like before, Wayne also bounced real bad and finished 7th at 111' feet. So, when it was all said and done, I kept all the motors together and still only lost 2 points in the Wolverine points race. My strong run at Berrien moved me into first place.

Painesville, OH
This was the final pull for the 2003 Enderle Pull Off. I basically needed to bump the sled to qualify, but wanted to try and make some points up on Diekman, so we would run this one hard as well. The front right motor had the same wrist pins as the back two that blew up and I saw that as a ticking time bomb. The left rear motor (the one with the fire at Berrien) seemed to have either and exhaust valve or head gasket problem. I verified that the valve itself was OK and that is wouldn't drop into the motor, but didn't know if we would do other damage or not. Only 3 tractor showed for this regional national event. Don Deane was first and chose the right side of the track. The track was hard and somewhat dry. It seemed like Mt Vernon to me and we ran light on the nose there and did well. Deane hooked up and the track started to pull him left. He rode the right brake for 150' and finished at 280. He seemed a little nose heavy, which supported my theory of a poor track. Diekman wanted none of Don's run and set the sled on the left side. The also seemed a little nose heavy and drifted left and rode the right brake for 150' out to 277. So, I am smiling. I got my nose weight right and know that neither sideline was working. Spot the sled in the middle and I should just be able to drive to an easy victory. Came our of the hole and my tractor hooked hard and just skied the nose. The tractor started to bounce and rock from side to side. At this point, my thoughts change from winning to just staying alive. I never could fully open the throttle and ended up a very poor 236. Somehow, my Puller 2000's really seemed to like that track. Like I said below, you never know what will happened in this sport.

In any case, probably my worst run of the season qualified me for the Enderle. I dropped from 2nd to 3rd in RN II points, now trailing Diekman and Deane, but there is a lot of pulling left this season.

Berrien Springs. MI
This is a co-sanctioned Michigan and Indiana pull, so I chose to run this one hard. Berrien is a unique pull. The first 200' are indoors in what looks like a pole barn without ends. There is a grandstand and stage inside. The last 100' is outdoors with bleachers on each side.

This year, there was three different tracks, each about 100' in length and placed end to end. This first 100' was dry and hard and had no bite at all. All we did was spin the tires and move dirt around. The second 100' was also dry and hard with no bite, but for some reason caused the tractors to bounce. The last 100', the outdoors part, was actually pretty good track. Allen Childs was an early hook and made a nice straight pass with now bouncing and made it out the gate. We followed and got bouncing pretty hard for the middle 100' (about 2g's), but rode it out and when we got out side, picked the nose up and shot off like a rocket. We full pulled as well. As we drove off the track, I saw fire coming from one of the exhaust pipes, indicating either a timing or exhaust valve problem. Since the pits were far away, I wouldn't have time to fix it and scratched from the pull off. Ed Stahl made a pass similar to ours, but had to touch the brake at the end and finished just shy of 300'. Scott Tedder on new tires also made a similar pass and made it onto the good track, but broke a belt, and finished back quite a bit. No one else in the class made it thought the bad sports. Zippy came back in the pull off and that put us in second. Wayne bounced so hard on his first attempt, he was unable to come back.

Adrian, MI
As this was a Wolverine only pull, we only ran one motor and just bumped the sled. We went 10' and finished last. Oddly enough, Wayne Krider got bouncing really bad and only went 44', finished seventh. So, despite a last place finish, I only lost one point.

Shiawassee Co (Corunna), MI
Not a real good track. The track was perhaps a little sandy, but really seemed to lack bite. We were middle class and the early tractors really seemed to have a problem going anywhere. We pulled about 4th and so far the tractors ahead of me either tried the center or left of the track and just couldn't get a hold of it. I tried the right. I really didn't think it was any better, but I knew the center and left sucked and it couldn't be worse. I simply overpowered the track and just spun the tires. Near the end of the run, something let go in the front left motor and it blew apart. Both Wayne Krider and Muffy found a road and full pulled, but overall most of the class did poor. We finished 6th.

At this point, we needed to do some real thinking. We were down to 3 running motors. One had a hole in it (from a few minutes earlier) and one was at the machine shop getting welded. We still had 4 hooks before we went home and I didn't know at that point the status on parts to put one at the shop back together. So, we needed to see what was import to us, since we realized that if the motors kept failing, we could win any points races because we would be out of order. So, first of all, we decided to skip all non-points pulls, at least until we got the failures under control. Second we decided that races ranked in importance to us in the following order, 2003 Enderle, 2003 NTPA RN II championship, HSTPA championship, and Wolverine championship. Currently we were running neck and neck with Wayne Krider in the Enderle, HSTPA, and Wolverine and neck and neck with Gary Diekman in RN II. We decided just to give the Wolverine championship to Wayne and concentrate on NTPA and HSTPA.

Wolverines awards bonus points for making every pull and we enjoy the Wolverine circuit, so we would hit all the pulls but only bump the sled at Wolverine only pulls, just for points. This would conserve motors, and possibly keep us on the points races, just in case something happened.

Updates
Ok, we have been on the road and busy (as will be noted later) and I haven't been keeping this update. So, here goes, results from our last 7 pulls.

Friday, August 08, 2003

Kalamazoo
It was a beautiful day and we spent the day checking out the tractor. Late in the afternoon, the skies darkened and it rained hard for a little bit and then cleared. The evening news said the weather had cleared the area and looked good for that night. The water actually helped the track which was a little on the dry side. The pull got started a little late, but the track was outstanding. Hard well packed stickly clay. This night was going to take a lot of power.

Super farm was first and as the class neared the end, the skies darkened once again. Most of the way through the FWD class, the a few rain drops fell and then it just cut loose. The rest of the show was rained out. As has become the norm for this year, we got rained out. Too bad, because that seemed to be an excellent track. Hopefully next year.

Coldwater
As has become the norm, we watched the skies and the lightening, but lucked out and got the pull in with only a few rain drops. 11 Tractors were there with all the usual Michigan and Indiana tractors as well as BArga, Diekman, and Miller from Ohio. Jostock was out east at an ATPA pull. We pulled late in the class and picked a different track position and made an outstanding pull, easily taking it out that gate. We were joined by Diekman and Miller for the pull off.

By my mistake, I asked one of my crewmen a question as we were being towed back to the starting line and he hopped up on the frame rail. The tow vehicle pulled away and we were DQ'd for having a rider on the vehicle. We all new the rules and the official was correct in doing what he did. It just all happened so fast, I had no idea what was even going on until it was too late. So, as a result, we were not allowed to return for the pull off and had to take 3rd place. Too bad, but we learned an important lesson and still gained points to take the lead in HSTPA and tie for 1st in Wolverine.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Motor Update
We got the motor we blew at Hartford completed and is hanging back on the tractor. It will make it's first pass tonight at Coldwater. Because we needed the motor we blew at Ft Wayne for weight and balance, we hadn't had the chance to tear it down, until yesterday. Here is a picture of the inside of it. Again, it was a wrist pin failure, just like the last one. After several calls to JE Pistons, they did admit that they sent me the a wrong part with the order both of these motors were built from. They didn't feel their error caused the problems, but then again those are the only two engines that have failed. They want the parts back for analysis.

This motor is now at the machine shop and the parts are on order. We have an 8-day run coming up and possibly this will be done when we return.

Special thanks go out to Keith Black Racing Engines and Howards Cams who worked quickly to get us parts for the last motor and Edd Reeves who helped in the assembly.

Friday, August 01, 2003

Eaton, OH
15 showed up in this large class. This was probably the best track I have seen at Eaton and everyone carried their front end high. We hooked towards the bottom of the class. The sled was a little light at 7 made it out the gate. In order, they were Miller, Barga, Jerew, Stahl, Schultheis, Piekarski, and Deane. Both Miller and Jerew fueled up and appeared ready to run again, but both claimed breakage and didn't come back for the pull off. Barga had a little trouble getting out of the hole, but made an otherwise nice pass out to 314. Schultheis just edged by, by about 6" for the win. Piekarski won the Hoosier State tractors, beating Deane. Stahl rounds out the top 5.

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