TRACTOR PULLS: It's Not What You Think - Smarter Every Day 276

This is an absolutely preposterous tractor and it's pulling [Music]. Something; all these people are in these stands to watch what's called a tractor pull because it's awesome. The winner is whoever pulls this sled the farthest before getting bogged down in the dirt. Let's learn about this incredibly complex physics problem from people you wouldn't expect.

Let's go get smarter every day. Hey, it's me, Destin; welcome back to Smarter Every Day. This is my buddy Chris. I'm going to stop him and see what's going on.

So what are you doing? Just moving the barricades from one tractor pull to another. Is this where the tractor pull is going to be? No, this is where it used to be; this is the old Tanner tractor pull. Okay, where's it going to be? Molton, Alabama. So we're moving it from Tanner to Molton, essentially? Yes, you're literally building a tractor pull from the ground up using all the stuff they used to do, right? Correct.

All right, Chris is off the forklift now. What's a tractor pull? Different classes of tractors, so they're built to different specifications to pull a sled that's going to be set to the specifications for that class. Um, and the sled—like, it's just friction on the dirt, right? So like, the furthest distance wins? Yes. I mean, it's their hobby. They do this instead of bass fishing, really? Or deer hunting, or owning a deer camp? Really, that's what they do. They get out here and build a $100,000 tractor and let it go down the track, and then once you plow up the dirt, you got a whole crew that just fixes the dirt. There's a crew on-site that will put it back together between each pull.

So to learn about the sled part of a tractor pull, I drove 3 and a half hours to Gibson, Tennessee. Are you Brian? Yeah. Hey, I'm Destin; nice to meet you, man. You know where Jim is? Uh, it—R here some more. Is he? Yeah. All right, he got the tractor sled, huh? Does he have the tractor sled? Uh-uh, he doesn't. Who does that? I do.

You do that? He said I can come up and talk to somebody about how it works; is that you? You're the guy that I should talk to about that? What do you want to know? I want to know how it works. I came from Alabama y, going to do a tractor pull down in Molton on Saturday, and I want to come see how it works. He said I could come video about. See if I can figure it out. Figure it out? Yeah. What you want to figure it out for? 'Cause it looks complicated.

No, yeah, it ain't complicated. Is it out here? No, across through. Oh, okay. What you know, how when you meet a really smart person and they don't want you to think that they're smart? That's what just happened. And I know that because I'm from the South.

All right, so I'm going to go over here and see what's up. He says it's across the street. Are you Jim? H, are you Jim? Yeah. I'm Destin; I'm the guy that called you from Alabama. How are you doing? Well, I don't be telling people around here you're from Alabama. Why is that? What will they do to me? Well, they may not let you out of town. I like you already, Jim.

Jim, what's our carry piece today? Is that a .380? No, maybe a nine. .380? .380 single stack. Have you met Brian yet? I just met Brian, yeah. All right, so is this it? Yeah, that's awesome. Are you going to pull it out? You want to do Brian? We met briefly; I'm Destin. I'm still Brian. You still Brian? I'm still Brian. All right, they're being patient with me.

Yes, this is the sled. Yes, people hook up to that side. Yes, and they try to pull you. Yes, and you're in that cab right there. Yeah, and your job is to stop them. Yes, okay, you get ready to roll down the track. Whatever class you're going runs, how many weight you run in there; and then this box right here runs up to the front.

This box with the weights in it runs that way. All it run all the way up here. When the box hits this right here, it's going to flip them over. Hold on; that's a limit switch. Weights are up there? Yeah, and they run this way? Yeah. The bo—the whole box comes up forward, and then when it gets right here, it hits this limit switch. What does that do? That drops the back of the pan down on the ground.

Oh, okay. All right, when the box hits these arms right here, teeth go in this right here, pushes in, and then it hits these cylinders back here, and then them are put pressure down on to pick the back of the sled up off the ground. Really? Okay, so then you're putting more—you got wedges on this here? Okay, it pushes them wedges in the ground.

Oh, okay, it's like a plow? Yeah, and it's funneling? Yeah, it's actually capturing the dirt. Yeah, what controls how fast this weight moves forward? All right, I'll show you; here's the transmission. Okay, all right, that R in right there. Oh, okay, so I actually got a turning shaft coming up into this? Yep, this is your clutch. Oh, that's what you're controlling? Yeah, okay, and then go through the box through back to the back RAR in? Uhhuh, and that back rear in runs these chains.

Gotcha, that tells you how fast you want the box to go up and back. So that means this drive shaft right here is coupled with the wheels turning, right? So it's a direct correlation with how far the sled moves and the wheels turn to how far the box goes. So if you want to make it harder for somebody, do you go to a higher gear down here? Yeah. Yeah, so you'll go to five, and you'll make it run forward faster? Yes, okay.

Then when you get something like, uh, something with a weight a whole lot more than we do, we put the weights in the box on the back of the box with the pan right there. Right there? Okay, one on each side, you usually get them in? Yeah, so you always win? Yeah. On the run night down in Molton, will you be up in the cab? Yep. All night, you're going to be the guy? That's awesome.

Can I come up and visit you in Molton and see what you're doing? Yeah, okay, I'm in Molton, Alabama, where they're getting the track ready. They moved it over from Tanner. Let's see what's going on here.

This is the hottest piece of technology right here in the tractor pulling world right now. That right there, it's called the rator; basically, it's a heavy-duty garden rake that goes on the front of a skid steer, and it helps break the larger clots down so we can pack it back. It speeds up the time between pulls, yeah, but it also gets things finer than what that field cultivator is going to do.

I'm Destin. Mitch? Mitch, yeah. This is a cultivator, right? Yeah, well, it's a good one, man, look at that. The wood grows around it? Yeah, it's one of those that the wood comes extra. I like that a lot; the tree tried to suck on that thing.

Okay, so I'm learning that preparing the dirt is a big part of a tractor pull. So they ripped it up, he's packing it, and he's leveling it. So it's cutting the high spots, so it's shaving it down. I just got a bunch of weight in it; it's got wiggle wobble wheels on it, it's pretty firm.

Okay, they're about to start setting concrete, and the purpose of the concrete is if the tractors go crazy, they got to hit a barricade so they don't go into the stands.

What kind is it? Chili cheese? Chili cheese? Do I have too much? No, it's okay. How many do you want? Thank you, that's good, man. Have you ever been to a tractor pull? Yeah, yeah, thousands of times. You excited about this one? Mhm, yeah. Oh, is your daddy's about to fix that one? Thousands of times? You ain't that old.

What is the box of weights moving to the end of the sled? Why does that make it harder? 'Cause it makes them start to moor down and it's getting harder from, and they start getting slow going down the track. So there's more tire pressure, so like the weight goes on the tires and you have more pressure.

When you say moor down, what does that word mean? It means when they sit there and their wheels are spinning and, like, a real fast speed.

Oh, and so you're saying like the dirt, if you have more—if you have more pressure and you're turning? Mhm, then the shear will start to sit down, and if it goes down too much, it'll sit on the axle. So you're—the more weight is on top, the more you're sheer in the mud, and so the less weight on top, the more it can pull? Yes.

What's your name? Will. Another? Fredo. Yes, my sir. That was actually a really good explanation, Will. Mhm, so the more weight, the more—I'm not even joking right now—Will just explained to me why the weight box matters, right? Mhm, because the more weight's on top, the more the sheer stress on the mud.

This is like mud, right? Mhm. You've been to a lot of tractor pulls? Yes. This is how it works? Yes. What do I need to know before tomorrow night? So you need earplugs and then this is going to work? Yes, okay, what else do I need? And then you need a hamburger and a drink and sit down on a bleacher.

Appreciate you, buddy. Welcome. You know what? You got to shake my hand; that's what we do. That's how we—no, no, no, right hand, right hand, the chili cheese Frito hand. There we go. H, me in the eye. Thank you, Will. Appreciate you.

Okay, it's tractor pull day. There's Brian. How are you doing? Good. Is he pulling the weights out? Yeah! [Music] Okay, Jim wants me to see him drop the weight and unhook it without getting out of the [Music] cab. One? What? Mou! All right, all right, bring it back; I'll do it.

Mr. Engineer? Mr. Engineer? Yeah, Jim said he likes people to mess with him, so I'm trying to do that. [Music] How you doing, sir? Me? Rich. This is yours? Yes, sir. Back here on the back. Basically, you’ve got a drawbar assembly; this is your safety hitch down here. You have two hooking devices. This is the k he that actually plugs up to the sled.

Okay, so at any time we're going down the track, if there's anything that happens to me on the tractor, the sled operator can shut me down. This is hooked to the back of the pulling vehicle; also, it's a kill switch. No matter whether it's diesel, alcohol, gas, or whatever, this thing has to kill it.

What does that go to on the other side? Does it pull a fuel valve? That pull—that's the air intake. Air is what makes the diesel engine run, so when you pull this cable, it shuts my air off, so my engine stops. As the weight comes down, the sled, it's going to apply more weight to the tongue right here. On your drawbar, your drawbar is going to put more pressure on that, more resistance to pull.

Okay, so does that—does it—you start slipping? Is that the first thing that happens? The more weight that gets on the back end of the tractor, the more these bite. The more these bite, the more the tractor tries to come up, and you've got to have a balancing point. If you come up too tall, you're going to get on the bottom of these skid bars—wheelie bar kind of deal? Yes, sir! That's going to cause you to lose distance. If you stay stuck down, if your nose doesn't come up at all, you're too heavy on the front, so it's a balancing act.

So we'll go out there tonight and we'll look at that track, and we'll fill the dirt and we'll get an idea of what kind of weight we want, and then probably based on what I've already seen tonight, these four weights will go to the front and there'll be no weights on the back. Okay, so why is your drawbar not higher? Then we have a limit; we can only run 20 in. Okay, that's a rule. That's a rule? Okay, that makes sense.

And so if your axle was below that spot right there? Oh, it'd be crazy. Yeah, you—you would keep hooked? You'd stay hooked up. Would you? This is what regulates and keeps the class fair; everybody has to run a 20-inch drawbar.

Oh, there's so much physics here, man. How do you steer? 'Cause I—I noticed this is—well, most of the time once I leave the line, the front end's going to come up, and you drive it with the brakes. Okay, that's how you steer it from left to right, just skid steering, just like a normal tractor? These two brake pedals right here control it left and right.

All right, so I've got my right brake, my left brake? Yes, sir. Then I've got a computer that's telling me everything the engine's doing. It's monitoring all my pressures and temperatures, so when I get to the back to the trailer tonight, I'll plug my laptop up to it and I'll see how my engine was tuned and how it did. Really? Okay, so this ain't redneck stuff; this is like Nutty Professor stuff? Well, kind of? Is it really? Kind of; that's awesome. But that's kind of one and the same, isn't it? It is.

Hey, nice to meet you, buddy. Thank you, appreciate it.ate, thank you. So, I'm noticing on most of them they all have this one lever right here; that's the throttle. Does it have to be on the side for everybody? It does, and it has to be spring-loaded, and I'll show you what I mean by that. So it's a dead man switch; it's a safety feature.

If something happens and you have, you know, have a—something goes wrong, when you turn it loose, it automatically goes back to an idle. Your tread is shaved down a little tighter than most; yeah, why is that? Well, this just gets a good bite on the track.

Okay, you don't want too big or cleat on it because if you do, it gets too much and you can't get your motor up on the RPMs that you want because of rotational inertia, right? Absolutely. So you're balancing everything; you got to balance it all.

So one thing I'm noticing is that the radiator seems to be on the bottom; am I seeing that right? No, this tractor does not have a radiator. No? None at all? No, this is a dry block. How do you keep it from overheating? You just run it that 15-20 seconds down the track and cut it back off. Really? Yeah, we crank it; we crank it out.

We've done cranked it once, warm it up, shut it back off; it will not get cranked again until right before we pull. Really? Are you the driver? No; my daughter drives. Does she? Where's she at? Right there. Annabelle, baby! And she happened—in fact, she won last weekend! Really? This tractor won, and my son drove the silver one; he got second!

And you drive it; do you work on it as well? Not normally, no; a little bit, but not some; but no, I can't do a whole lot; I don't have a lot of strength in me. I got to ask, how old are you? I'm 22 now, but I started when I was 16.

So you started driving this when you got your license, right? Yeah, pretty much. So the throttle is up there on the right, correct? Yes, sir. So when you're pushing it forward? Mhm. Do you just slam it forward and hold it, or are you throttling it to kind of manage your traction? You're trying to manage your RPMs for the most part.

You are pushing it so far until you get it to a certain point in RPMs that you want to, and then you'll start letting out on the clutch. The key is to try to hold it at a certain amount, but once you get going, you kind of—you go full throttle once you get about what? 50? Well, I normally go full throttle as soon as I let out, quite honestly.

But yeah, these roll cages are welding works of art. Look at that! Once you start going down the track, there ain't a whole lot you can do. The only thing you can do once you start down the track is clutch and throttle. It's about the only two things you'll be able to control, and the steering wheel, obviously.

It's really about pre-going down the track. You can adjust tire pressure, hitch height. The closer the hitch point to the center of the axle, the better you'll be. And then you've got movable weight, so there's a very fine balance there as to where you've got to be, which is why everybody wants to try to get as much adjustable weight as you can.

With a big block John Deere like we've got, we're limited to that because it's so hard to get weight out of them. Where you've got like a small block like these guys, they start out with so much more movable weight than we do, so they don't really have to worry about that problem as much as we do, but it's just a constant battle with a big block.

Anybody that's got one would tell you that. So why do you have a big block? Big blocks is just kind of a personal preference thing; everybody's kind of like asking why you got an International or AGCO or a John Deere. You know, it's just kind of a personal preference; I always liked the 6030. It's what my father-in-law had, and that's kind of what I fell in love with; I think that's the best looking tractor out here.

So ideally you would be 8 in off the ground. You want ideally—in a theoretical world—you'd like your front tires to be about 8 in off the ground, and never—would he want that? That's where he wants to be. You're fixing to be a rich man, 'cause I'm betting. What do you think is going to happen? He’s going to come up about waist high before he settles.

How did I tell you the other day? I said he got to mess with people, said you don't like them if they don't mess with you. Remember he was talking to somebody and I told you he was our clown? Yeah, that's me. You're the clown? No, he's our clown. Oh, I got you. Oh, that was—I remember. I'm with you now; he's our clown. I love it, so financial mistake; that's a good name.

Uhhuh. Are you driving it tonight? I am. How do you feel about it? A lot better than what I did the first time. So tell me about the adrenaline; once you throw it down, the adrenaline right before you throw it down is about like when you have a buck in your sights and you're about to pull the trigger.

So you got that little KNE shake going; your body's just ready, and then as you come out of it, you take that deep breath and down, pull the clutch back, and you're good to go. So y'all got sticks? Yeah. What's going on here? What are you doing with that stick?

We're trying to see if it's hard or soft or what; trying to figure out what it is. If it's hard, if it's gummy, if it—how does it feel for us? We pull a truck. Uhhuh; it seems like it's a little soft right now. Let me see. So that's a little soft? That's soft?

Hey, your pants are down! This? Peter, I know him and you're the unhooker guy tonight! I'm the unhooker guy! There may be an official term for it. Have you ever done it? No; this is—they're going to let me practice three times, and then it's to the races! You look nervous! Oh, you have no idea!

That's awesome! So all the prep work was done on the track; the stands were completely packed and it was standing room only. We all said a prayer for safety, sang the national anthem, and it was time to start pulling!

All right; this is the gentleman we spoke to earlier out of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. The 6030 John Deere, called the Volunteer. [Music] It's hard to compute what just happened. Oh wow, and after this, the dance begins to repair the track and get the sled back into place and hooked up for another tractor. It was awesome!

Okay, this guy looks like he's been doing this for a long time; he looks like he knows exactly what's up. So let's look at that run again from another angle and slow it down. You can see here that the weight box is moving up the sled until it hits the first limit switch, which drops the pan.

So the grousers or the blades underneath are now dragging in the dirt. Then the weight box keeps moving until it reaches the end of the sled, which engages the hydraulics and pushes the pan down, putting all the sled's weight onto it and lifting the wheels off the ground.

When the sled is set up correctly, it repeats the same action for every tractor as a function of distance. On this one, you can really see the moment that the pan is pushed into the ground and the sled wheels come up off the [Music] ground.

Okay, so let's think about what's happening with the tire cleats as they interact with the dirt itself now. The thing that determines traction is you're trying to shear a little section of the dirt off the track, and so that right there is your sheer force. And that sheer force is what determines if you have traction or not. If you shear that dirt off, it's just going to rotate around with the tire, and you're going to dig in down to the axle.

So if you think about the height of the hitch on the back of the tractor in relation to the height of the axle off the ground, there's a torque that's going to be applied, and you're balancing that with the weight of the tractor. So if you get it just right, you'll be popping a wheelie. But you don't want to flip the tractor over.

So according to the drivers, there's an ideal wheel height above the ground that tells them they're perfectly balancing the torque, the engine speed, the weight, the friction—all of it. It's very complicated.

So when you see these crazy tractors going down the track, you might think it's about seeing how much muscle you can put in your tractor, but what it's really about is properly balancing the muscle that you have and getting that to translate into traction power at the wheels.

Okay, let's go back and look at the sled now. Now the sled, if we put the weights on here, it's got all the weight pushing against these grousers here on the bottom, and they also are going to shear the dirt down here. Now, if we look at the top view here, the contact patch of dirt that the wheels are touching on the ground looks like this right here, right?

But if we go back to the sled, those grousers are contacting way more dirt; they may even be going deeper. So if you compare the dirt shear area for certain tire geometries, the sled is always going to win. Now the next question is how do they measure the distance to see who wins?

And the answer to that is this person way over here who uses math and lasers to figure out that number. Let's go meet that person. We're surveying equipment, but that's how we take our measurements: pinpoint exactly where they start, exactly where they stop, and triangulate everything and get the exact measurement from start point to finish point.

Are you doing a reflection on there or where? Right over the hook point? Oh, the reflector? Yes, right over the top. That's what I'm shooting. Distance? 2, 68, 518.

So my wife is really pretty in cowboy hats. I'm going to show you how pretty she is. You ready? All right, here goes Annabelle; that's her dad. [Music] She did pretty good, didn't she? How'd she do? Got the lead right now, huh? She's got the lead? Yeah, uh, 302. I think you're happy with it? Oh, yeah.

Let's see if we get this other one right. Right? [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] All right, so you're frustrated? I'm beyond frustrated.

Okay, so that didn't go well, right? Not the way we planned. I am not happy at all. I noticed you went off to the left; what happened? So sometimes, depending on the track conditions and the pull, the motor, the how much torque you've got, it'll pull to one side or the other.

So we started pulling to the left, and I started tapping our right brake. We have two brakes, so you tap right and it'll pull you back to the right; you tap left, it pulls you to the left. So I tapped my right brake three times, and it didn't pull back the way I wanted it to, and I was right on top of the boundary line.

So if you go out of bounds, you get no points. If I come out of it, then at least we still get hook points. So I went ahead and came out of it and we went to go crank, and it won't crank. So did you get points, though? We get points; as far as I know, we get points; I didn't get disqualified.

It doesn't have compression, though; it doesn't know; it's turning over too easy. I don't know; it's just one of them things. It's mechanical, and it'll break, and it's made more power this year than it's ever made, and when you make more power, you tend to break more things.

It's worth it; it's worth it! It's all—we'll fix it up and we'll be back out. That's awesome! If you're watching this video, chances are you like freedom, and I love freedom and privacy. So that's why I use ExpressVPN; it's a virtual private network and that helps me obscure my data between me and the internet.

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All right, Chris, your first tractor pull; what do you think? I think it was a success. You like IT? Crowd turned out the tracks working right? Yes, I like it. Raising money for the community, exactly! What do you think about Chris's tractor pull?

I—All right, that's the first tractor pull in Molton, Alabama. We learned a lot. Oh, I'm falling! We learned a lot, and I hope you enjoyed it. You saw that, didn't you? Yeah, you saw that I almost fell. Y'all have a good night; I enjoyed it; I hope you did too.

I'm Destin; you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one; go enjoy a tractor pull somewhere. Oh, one last thing. When I was interviewing people with their tractors, those people are super geniuses. I did not want to throw away that footage 'cause I learned so, so much.

Smarter Every Day 2, I'll put that over on that channel; it's amazing; go check that out. Thank you for considering subscribing to Smarter Every Day. If you enjoyed this, there's also an email list. I'll notify you when I put out a new video. I'm just glad you watched, and I'm grateful that you're here.

I'm Destin; you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one. Bye!