Holy Cow Tractor Pulling Team

Monday, May 30, 2005

Loss of a Crew Member
Our friend and crew member, Edd Reeves, died yesterday of a sudden and unexpected heart attack near his home in Fenton, MI.

We first met Edd in 1998 or 1999 when we were pulling the single engine tractor. He struck up a conversation with us at several local pulls. He was really into pulling and wanted to buy a truck and was asking me questions as in impartial party. I had heard he bought a truck, but then he just kind of disappeared.

In 2004, again he showed up at Rochester. He said he had been following our progress on the National circuits in the Puller magazine. He said he nearly bought a truck when his Mom was diagnosed with cancer. He stopped plans to buy the truck and spent the next three years helping his mother. She died in January of 2004, and he was looking again to get into pulling. He asked if he could help us and he would follow us around and catch back up with the sport. We can always use the help, but also know that there is a lot of work, and sometimes boring tedious work, that those that want to help sometimes drift into the wind. Following a pull in Noblesville, I asked him to follow us back to our house and help fix things for a pull the next day. We worked until 2AM or so, and I knew he was serious at that point.

Later that year, we went to a pull and there was only 1 tow tractor. He said that wasn't right and new we needed our own tow vehicle. At the Lima, OH pull, he showed up towing a brand new Polaris. From that time one, he made most of the pulls and became our personal chauffeur. Since we have no room in our trailer to carry a tow vehicle, Edd always drove separate. This year he was planning on adding a camper to his truck, since going back to Grand National meant more overnight stays.

The last week, Edd came down and worked to put the finishing touches on the tractor, getting ready for Hillsboro next weekend. After arriving back home, he suffered a heart attack the next day.

He will be missed.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

New Computer
I have been a little out of touch lately. About a year ago, the fan in the case of our computer went out and the motherboard died, so I replaced the motherboard with a similar one. Both the microprocessor and the memory seemed to be OK. The new motherboard had a VIA chipset with a 266MHz Front Side Bus. The processor was an AMD 2000, which is like a 1.4GHz processor with some additional features that makes it run like a 2.0GHz Pentium. I had two complaints. One is randomly, I would get a blue screen of death. It was usually an "IRQ not less than or EQUAL" error, which from what I read on the net is usually an indication of a heat problem. The other issue is that, for Christmas, I got some DVD autoring Hardware/Software. That two would cause random quits or chashes. The DVD software is some high-horsepower stuff, and I suspect that it was never verified on a VIA/AMD combo and it was some chipset compatibility problem.

Well, the BSOD problem kept getting worse, and finally last week it was crashing 2 or more times a day. Now the PC has become unusable. So, I set out to order a new MoBo. My requirements were a genuine Intel chipset, to hopefully solve the DVD authoring problem. Second, the DVD software doesn't do a lot of hardcore math calculations, it is mainly moving data around. So, what I was looking for was a quick path from the Hard Drives, DVD-R drive, and RAM and a large Cache.

One of the new features out in Processor technology is hyper threading. With that, it makes your single processor appear like two processors, allowing the OS to partition tasks between the two instances of a CPU. What I think this means is that while the CPU is waiting for data to be clocked in from RAM, is use the other virtual processor to clock data out to the DVD.

So, the only processor available with HT, is the Prescott family, which is a socket 775 MoBo. Those MoBos come in either a 533 or 800MHz FSB, so I went with that one. I settled on a Foxconn board. It was an integraeted video and audio controllers, 8 USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, SATA ports, and the usual. I found a smokin hot deal on some RAM, $19 for 512Mb of DDR400 memory. I'll get more, but you were limited to 1 purchase with that rebate. I ended up with a 3.0GHz processor. Basically, each step in speed cost about $10, until you crossed the 3Gig boundry, then they really started to get expensive.

The other issue was that only Win XP supports HT, and I was currently on Win2000. When I went form Win 95 to 98, it just installed over 95 and left all your setting intact. When I went from 98 to 2000, I also reformatted the hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS, so that required a full install and a loss of all settings. I was hopeful that to go from 2000 to Xp would be as painless as the 95 to 98 transition.

That was not the case, so I reformatted and did a fresh install of Xp. So, I have been working all this week getting the Windows and McAfee updates back up to date and start reinstalling software. Finally last night, I got our Browser (FireFox) and e-mail client (Becky) installed and we had our first touch with the net in about 3 days. I had an e-mail waiting to update the HSTPA website, so tonight I got the tools recompiled to autocreate the schedules and web autoupdate client installed to update the sites.

This much I can say, I don't have much software installed yet, but what I do have, this thing really screams. I takes about 10 seconds to boot and any programs that does heavy data manipulation or calculations just flat our cranks.

So back out to the shop. I have 2 engines fresh and ready to fire. I motor was fresh for Louisville, but has the wrong alloy bearings. That won't take long to change. The last engine is the one I blew at Allegan. That engine is taking forever. It just seems nothing is fitting up or there is stuff I didn't find before, or I damaged something putting it together. Most of the stuff is just coincidence and not related to the explosion, but it is just frustrating. I also have the rear end apart and found a cracked side gear in the rear end. I am having problems locating a new one. Rockwell is out of stock and aren't schedued to make more until June. I have spares and if push came to shove, I could pull this weekend, but not put together the way I wanted. We'll see what all I can get done over the next 2 weeks for Hillsboro.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Tractor Updates
It has been a while since I have posted, due to long nights in the shop. Things are going nicely, but still a lot to do. I have 2 motors completely fresh and ready to pull. One motor that was fresh for Louisville needs a bearing change. I discovered that the alloy bearing I had been using probably was responsible for the explosion at Allegan last year, so I need to change bearings in that motor. The Allegan motor is all welded up and machined and just needs to be assembled. I discovered a chipped tooth on a planet gear in the planetaries and replaced it. I also found that one of the side gears in the rear end had cracks in nearly every tooth. I have been on a search for new gears for about 2 weeks.

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