Hartford Fair 2004
Last year at the Centerburg Old Time Farm Festival, I messed around with the W-9 on a simple drag sled. Although I had a great time, that was not a real good test of the W-9's pulling ability. However, the Big Cow hinted around that it might be somewhat special. For a quite some time I wanted to enter the W-9 in a genuine weight transfer sled tractor pull just to see how it would perform--just wanted to have fun with it. The Fair Schedule had an antique pull listed for Sunday, but we had not heard any official word about it. When we were moving in on Saturday, I noticed a pulling sled getting parked at the pulling track. Hot dog! That's where I'm going to be tomorrow!
I arrived at the Fairgrounds on Sunday at 9 AM. Bill, Mike and Fred were already there and greeted me at our Club’s display area with an announcement that I had better get over to the pulling track el pronto as they were registering entrants at that very moment. I built a fire in the W-9 and proceeded to jog it out of its parking slot. I was really looking forward to this. In my haste to get with the program, I forgot to turn on the W-9’s fuel and embarrassingly stalled out the motor. After receiving a friendly, fatherly-type scolding about my absent-mindedness from the Club’s mechanical guru, Willie Prushing, I made my way over to the track.
The Antique Pull was conducted by Bob Waller and his wife, Sherri. Both are local rabid antique tractor pullers. Bob has pulled for years as well as Sherri, and she has done a number of announcing gigs at numerous pulls as well. Bob is so involved in this that he built his own transfer sled. It is a great piece of machinery: I don’t know, but the Wallers must have tens of thousands of dollars in building that rig let alone the labor hours. State of the art it is—the pull distance is automatically measured and beamed to a receiver in the announcer’s booth.
Not really knowing puller protocol, it seemed logical to first weigh in so I would know what weight class to enter. Norm Gwinn, fellow Club member and one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever met, was helping the Wallers by manning the scales and the hitch height checker thingy. Well, Norm will guide me through this. The W-9 scaled 6,870# with me aboard. I was pretty confident hitch height was supposed to be 18 inches and had measured the W-9’s hitch the week before the Fair. Norm nosed the height gauge against the W-9’s clevis and boldly declared "CLOSE ENOUGH!" The W-9 was 'good to go'.
Proceeding to the sign-up table, I judged my slot to be the 7500# Classic Division—no non-stock weights or weight brackets, no cut tires, and speed limited to 2.5 MPH max. That's what I like: box stock. I paid for two hooks at $10 a pop.
After all the official entry stuff was done, I parked the W-9 amongst a gaggle of John Deeres just for spite. Talk about a something sticking out like a sore thumb! There was a lot of entrants, most pulling in multiple weight classes. This experience was all new to me, so when the pulling got underway at around 10 AM, I hung around the track thinking the classes and divisions would go through their progressions rapidly. NOT! The pull lasted all day with my chance at the sled not occurring until 6:15 or so. Good thing (daughter) Andi didn’t come to the Fair with me on this day—she would’ve been bored out of her gourd and driven me nuts. Earlier in the day, Bill came over to the track. I goaded him into entering the pull which he did. His newly restored Farmall 400 weighed enough to put us both head-to-head in the same class. That would have been interesting. But as the pull drug out, and with Bill edgy about working his non-broken-in engine too hard, he opted out of the pull. He did the right thing. Bill had duties at the Soil Conservation Tent at 4 PM and really wanted to put the 400 on the Baker Fan for a nice engine run-in before giving it such a harsh test.
The pull went on forever. I spent a good deal of time studying what gear the Classic guys were using, but at a 2.5 MPH speed limit there really wasn’t much studying to do—first gear was pretty much the game plan! I was really impressed with how well the JD Ms, MTs, and 40s pulled. Norm did real well with his little JD, and another Clubber, Dixie Cayton, won his Class on his JD A, aka "Dixie's Deere". Taking all this in just made me doubt how well I'd do in the pull. Everyone it seemed had the maximum amount of weights on their tractor for their respective weight class, and all that shiny new rubber with the nice, square-edged lugs just made me shake my head in resignation. All the 9 had was one set of rear wheel weights and woefully worn and weather-checked rear tires. I also weighed in at 500# or so below the limit. Oh well, I'm here to have fun and not give myself an ulcer. In hindsight, in order to help pass the time, I should’ve helped out with the track leveling gig. That would’ve been easy to do—Waller would have OK’d it, and I’m good friends with the Mahindra dealer that loaned the tractor for this duty, Al McDougal. Getting to run a new piece of iron is just something I truly detest.
Finally the W-9’s shot at the sled came up. I had paid for two hooks and opted to use second gear for the first pull. I was trying to remember the MPH chart in the W-9’s manual: was 2nd too fast and get me horned out of the pull for exceeding 2.5 MPH? Didn’t matter as I had another pull coming.
As I motored past the sled’s operator cab, Waller yelled out, "HEY, DON’T HURT MY TRACTOR!" (The reference to MY TRACTOR is another story for another day).
"I DON’T THINK YOU CAN HURT THIS BEAST, BOB. JUST DON’T BE RIDIN’ THE SLED’S BRAKES! OK?"
Don Smith, another pull participant, was helping out with the hooks. I kinda goofed in front of all the spectators here. Pulling up ahead of the sled, I knuckled the W-9 into reverse (or so I thought). The 9’s gearbox is stiff, and the clutch feel is nil. I mistakenly had the tractor in second and jerked forward like a dillhole when the clutch hooked up. Gee, this got me in trouble a year ago when I trashed the manifold! No wonder Don was skittish when I got backed up to the sled to hook on!
With a nod from Don and Waller, down the track we went with the W-9’s straight stack loudly declaring the contest was underway. Going easy on the throttle to keep Waller from beeping us, I kept listening for a horn, didn’t hear any, so I fed the Big Tub more and more fuel. We went down the track a good distance with the W-9 finally running out of steam in 2nd gear. The sound of that 335 pulling down to about 100 RPM is nothing but a testosterone rush! All in all, a right respectable pull from the Old Gal.
Now, there were several John Deeres in my Class, one of them being a massive JD720 Diesel Wheatland. I had no delusions of beating that tractor—it had new rubber and scaled 500# more than me. All the other tractors pulled first. After my first run, I pulled around to the staging area and awaited my second hook. Mike, Fred, Brad Fraley, and George and Deb Pound were all watching me from a distance. It’s fun to show off, ain’t it? Anyway, Mike held up his index finger, and I took this to mean "were you using first gear?"
I yelled over, "I USED SECOND!"
Fred walked over to me and said, "Hey, you’re in first place! Mike’s tryin’ to tell you you’re in first place!"
"WHAT? No kiddin’? GET OUT OF HERE!"
Man, that was just too cool! All I really wanted to do was to see how the W-9 would perform and maybe just place well. How in the hell did I out-pull that big green Wheatland? JDs may stink up the place when doing belt work, but one thing they do very well is PULL! Turns out the 720 was disqualified due to engine misfiring, or it had slung off its clutch cover sending it wheeling down the track. The story varies. Anyway after a little confusion, I, with the newly-acquired big head and the W-9 wanting to flex its muscles again, got hooked for the second go. This was a pure freebie—no one else had a second hook, and I was sitting on the lead. Using 1st gear this time and confident there would be no horn, I whacked the thottle on the 9 WFO and leaned back for the ride. Running out of power was not the issue for this hook; it was traction. When she finally spun-out, I’m very confident the Fat Cow took us quite a bit farther than the first pull, but I never found out. My second pull was not allowed. I was succinctly told that the same driver on the same tractor in the same class is a no-no. Guess I didn’t read the fine print when signing up. At that point I really didn’t care. The W-9 is the champ! The long wait during that day was certainly worth it. By the way, an old-timer told me that I had an 'edge' that I was totally unaware of. On dry, dusty, hard-packed pulling tracks he told me, new rubber isn't the hot set up. According to him, he's seen many a good pull done with old, cracked and real flexy side wall tires. Seems like all those surface cracks allow the tires to bite like deer flies at a cook out. I guess I can't argue with that.
I
got my trophy at the announcer’s stand, mounted up my trusty red steed again,
and idled over to where all my new groupies were gathered. On the way, a
couple of pullers gave me smiling nods of approval. Man, it just
doesn’t get much better than this. Believe me, I really tried to be
low-key about all of this, well…you know, humble in victory and all that jazz?
Well…Mike has a certain look on his face when he’s proud of something, but
doesn’t really come right out and say it. He had that look, and I burst
into a possum-eatin’-a-cow-pie grin, held up the trophy and said, "RED POWER,
BABY!"
Call it beginner's luck or whatever. We all reveled in the victory at Fred’s camper. Yeah, it was an antique pull for no money in one of two dozen weight classes with a handful of tractors at some podunk fair. But.. I HAD A BLAST! The one unfortunate thing about it all was that Dad was not there to see it happen. He would have been positively insufferable bragging all during Fair week about the W-9’s win. And you know what? That would’ve been fine with me.. --Joe