I called the tractor Gone Ballistic, my other hobby is long range shooting.

 

In the last run on the clip, once I get past the announcers stand you hear the engine loose a cylinder and drop 1000 rpm or more.  I had the side panel off getting tech inspected and managed to hit a plug wire on the distributer cap, came off at about 200 feet.  I have no idea why but I rember winning the class with some M's and 88's that spun out pretty good.

 

THe engine isn't a real torque monster, but it makes it's torque at a high speed, get to a higher speed and mainntain that speed longer than the large engines will and it doesn't matter if you can spin the tires or not, you'll be ahead of the pack.  If the track is soft and it's a draging match, or the boat pulls hard off the line and drags hard the whole way than it's anyones game, or I was at a disadvantage but as long as I had a good hard track I could usually come out on top. Our sleds typically pull easy for the first 3/4 of a run. It's more of a drag race than a pull.  It was more or less a joke to see how short of stroke one could get away with or how cheap of junkyard parts one could scrap into a shortblock and make go. 

 

I have not ran it for a couple years now, in the videos it's running with an up draft carb and on gas.  I bought an injection system to corn feed it but have not ran it with it.  I got an itch to get it going again and I also started on a new engine a while back, we are makeing a solid cylinder head, it's at the foundry being cast now, a friend has a large machine shop, one of his engineers is writing the program to cut the ports in.  THe head dosn't have to be right, it just needs to look right.  I'm makeing main caps, working on the block, probably end up makeing a billet cam etc. 

 

It's an old WD block, 3" head in the tractor in the videos, just an old 4" crank and set of Ebay pistons. Really the crank, work, pistons and rods only cost $400 total.  It did have a good head, cam,carb and header though.

 

Someone better with the computer than I can post a link

 

Sure brings back memories of some of the fun we used to have, good people and friends met allong the way.  I ran out of time to pull tractors, got busy expanding and takeing on new ventures in life.  I got married and now have a newborn boy, born on my birthday, getting the tractor back togather hopeing that it will give me an excuse to take some nights off and take the wife out to a few events.

 

where were you at the 2nd and 4th pull?

 

been going to pulls for almost 18 years, dont ever remember seeing that one, i only remember "wild child"

 

I'd like to see one of these monster motors turn hard and roach the tires, all the big ones I've seen were for Div 4 and 5 tractors and make awesome power at 2000 rpm.  A couple times I had pulled with some fellas that were around 382 inches in a Allis 4 cyl, it would run well in 3rd gear with WC gears and spin with authority, flywheel dyno was supposed to be around 170 hp when they had tuned it.  I just ran WC gears also, figured that to run 3rd gear the RPM on a big engine would maybe only make 4000 and give up a good share of it to do the work, and all I have to do is turn it 700-800 harder to be at the same speed but in 2nd gear, and down a gear it would maintain it for longer, but when it gives up it gives up fast.  I usually hooked in 2nd, and now and then 3rd, which in the WC is faster than the 45 and D17 chassis with a slower ring and pinion.  A lot of those guys could alwayse run a full gear faster but it equated to less ground speed. 

 

In Northwood Iowa one night there was a good running Ollie 88 with a 540 inch Gengrich engine.  I managed to get by it by 18 feet, mine snuffed out and the big one spun the tires.

 

I don't know what the rules are for some of the Dekalb super pull tractors, I've seen some of them run and they make some impressive power in the 6000 pound naturally aspirated tractors.  I'd have to think that they are not running on gas and don't have to mess with a carb or siamesed intake heads

 

I set it at 7 deg. in the mill, so the intake charge has a slight downward angle to the valve.  I bored the intake runners out well into the water jackets, cut some tubeing, bored it and profiled it to fit, capped part of the end and sealed it into the head.  Before this though I had welded the spark plug pockets a bit and re shaped them, a friend sonic tested the valve bowl areas to make sure we could do what we wanted without haveing to offset the guides.  It's not quite so simple to do it in person, and it's a lot of work.  Countelss hours doing the work, and then testing, changeing some shapes and re testing.   I'll have to dig out some of my old information on it.

When we ran this we were limeted to a single barrel updraft carb.  The carb is a large zenith like a John Deere 7700 gas combine.  There were a few made for I beleve a Continental engine in an army application that had a larger top half where the combine one could be bored to just over 2" these could take a little more.  I bought a bunch of them years agoe.  The one on this engine is bored to 2.25" throttle bore, home made venturi.  THe exhaust manifold is 1 5/8 tubeing a little over 40" inlength for primary runners.  Put into a parallel merge collecter in rotational fireing order. The intake is also fabricated, I did some work on the intake plenum volume and shape of the tubes inside it.  Right, wrong or otherwise it worked pretty well.  I had a different fabricated manifold on for a while as I was waiting on the collector and some parts to build this one, all things the same on the engine, it picked up noticable mid range torque and 1000 rpm on the top when I changed manifolds.

 

Look in another thread "a few engine pics" and some of it is pictured there.

 

Insurance is the biggest issue here, saftey equipment is manditory. I wish there was some manditory flywheel and clutch inspection, there's still a few people running stock flywheels to fast.