Whatever..........

Ohio M Puller

P.S. IH H PULLER, we are building Jimmey an M for next year, it should be entertaining evenings alot of Coors should be consumed, and a lot of laughs in the shop for a few months. Make sure you stop out.

Thanks in advance.

I realize I don't know much about all this stuff, but maybe somebody could explain this to me where it makes some sense. It just seems like this goes against everything I ever learned. So what IS the deal?

The reason that you want your front end weights as low as possible was explained very well on a post on the pulling board earlier. I'm sorry that I can't remember who did it, but he did a very good job. I'll try to give a condensed version of his explanation. If you draw an imaginary horizontal line through your tractor's rear axle (the pivot point of the fulcrum) to the front end, once the weight gets above this horizontal line, it gets easier to raise the weight the higher it gets, and the lower below the horizontal line, the harder it is to raise it. It's kind of like picking a 20# weight off of the floor with your straight arm, once you get it above your elbow, (pivot point), the easier it gets to lift it.

If at the end of the pull, the front end is just "lightly" touching the ground, that to me is a perfectly weighted tractor, and it kept your hitch from going down.

In this example lets say that you have 700# of weight that you can move on your tractor, front end, middle, back, where ever you want to put it. If 200# will keep the front end down on the ground at the end of the pull, then you have 500# for the rear end to help you from spinning out your tires. Putting 500# in front and 200# on the rear will be wasting 300#. (the front end can only be held so close to the ground)

Yes, I've heard of the physics theory of weight is multiplied once for every 1' from the pivot point (200#, 8' from the rear axle =1600#, and I'm sure that it is accurate. But, I know that on my antique puller, I've never had the front tires spin out and stop my pull! You need to keep as much weight on the rear end as possible and still keep the front end down. That is why you need as much movable weight as possible for the different track conditions. It is a good idea to keep a journal describing the pull, track conditions, where you had the weights placed on tractor and the results of pull. When you are winning or losing by an inch, 100# placed in the correct position will make the differance between winning and losing. Good luck!!

An example that makes this ring true unless I am overlooking something. Two similar tractors make two totally differant pulls in 4500 lbs. Winning tractor takes it out the gate in 5th running light while the loosing tractor comes up 20 ft short pulling 4500 in 4th. The day before in practice both tractors weighted the same and in the same gear has exactly opsite results. Is open class pulling actually friction pulling?

This is probably off topic but maybe you guys could straighten me out on this. Thanks

Ohio M Puller

Again, I appreciate some of you long-time pullers taking a few minutes to explain something to somebody new to the sport. Still trying to get the time-vs-money thing to work out on building my H...and when I do, I'll probably have a lot more questions. Right now, I'm just trying to understand what might benefit me and what might be money down a rathole...and please don't tell me to build a Deere, Case, Allis, Oliver, or Hart-Parr, 'cause I've already got the H...since it was Dad's, I'm not lookin to get rid of it anytime soon.

I pulled one weekend with it set like that and did better but still not great. everyone said to raise it up so I did . The next weekend I won1st and 2 nd and a friend of mine made the 4th longest pull of the day on it! (got beat by 2 G's and a hot rod allis) I didn't figure that was too bad for a stock 88. That 2 inches of height made 25-35 feet difference. Doesn't look like it would but it did! The only bad thing is that now some of the folks are wanting to know what else I did to it :) I just say nothing and walk on, and why not? I really didn't do anything else.