The evolution of the Central Tractorpull sledge
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With spring hitting the contractors’ workloads and farmers still cleaning up the tail-end of calving, Central Tractorpull had the month off. While things have been a bit quieter, I thought I’d use this month’s column to explain the evolution of the Central Tractorpull sledge.
If we cast our minds back about seven years ago, New Zealand was introduced to the concept of ‘weight-transfer’ tractor pulling, a version the rest of the world knew as tractor pull for decades.
Up until then, we’d been tractor racing, rather than tractor pulling. Tractors pulled concrete sledges in a race along a 100-metre track, the fastest obviously being the winner. We now refer to this as ‘weight-adjusted’ as the weight on the concrete sledge is ‘adjusted’ to the power of the entrants’ tractor.
Weight-transfer tractor pulling is quite different. With this technique, weight transfers from the wheels to the sledge as it is pulled down the track. A few of the vintage clubs around New Zealand also have versions of this and do a great job of challenging the ‘good old girls’ on club days. This method works perfectly fine, but the increasing horsepower saw this weight box getting heavier and heavier, and travelling faster and faster towards competitor’s tractors. The forces required to accelerate and then stop this weight were becoming an issue and accidents were starting to happen.
In 2008 New Zealand was the first country in the world to revolutionise this concept and its design by pushing weight up vertically. And so a prototype sledge was designed and backed by Mystery Creek. The initial plan was to use two existing sledge pans from the ‘weight-adjusted’ competition and simply make a frame to connect them and provide the lift. While this worked a treat, the limitations of the design soon became apparent – putting it together and transporting it around proved quite challenging and costly. The prototype sledge now lives permanently at Mystery Creek and is used every Fieldays for the ‘weight-transfer’ competition.
Although there are a number of sledges around New Zealand of varying designs, using the basic principal of lifting or dropping the weight vertically from wheels to a sledge, a few guys in the Waikato got together and felt it was time to build their own sledge in order to start holding events more frequently, easily and as cheaply as possible.
The new sledge had to be simple to set up, easily transported and able to generate cash in order to build the club and encourage competitions. The initial design was a one-piece sledge that easily hooked onto the sledge tractor. It also had a tow bar at one end and stub axles at the other so it became a trailer within minutes that could be transported between events at basically no cost.
Central Tractorpull has many supporters to thank for helping bring the project together including Steel and Tube for supplying the steel, Giltrap Agrizone for pins, parts and paint, Grasslandz Event for the hydraulic system and of course the WaiBop Young Farmers Club for the hours of welding and grinding required to build the Central Tractorpull sledge.
Central Tractorpull has now put together a sponsorship package with the WaiBop YFC club, where the sledge is supplied on a profit share basis. The YFC will use its network of members to host and support weekend Tractorpulls, which provide a great source of club funds. The first of these is Saturday 10 October in Ngarua.
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