Powerweekend in Made - if you are looking for having a good time and plenty of pulling action combined with fair prices, Made is really the place to go to.I had already figured that out in the past and I was actually really happy Erik van Oosterhout wanted me to be there all the time to take pictures and write a report on this website afterwards.
Of course - now I have quite some writing ahead of me...
After spending the afternoon at my team's workshop (some don't seem to know, I am actually a member of the Green Monster Team who thought the sport needs a better presentation on the web if we want to get anywhere. For that reason I started Pullingworld.com a few years ago) I got my little Seat Arosa loaded with my tent, food and a grill and hit the road to the southern part of the Netherlands.
After making it to the event location and having it all build up, I was invited over to the VIP area, where all the helpers were still having a little get together, testing whether the beer was good to be served to the VIPs the next day.
Later on the british group around Tony Bruger and Rob Uphill arrived, who actually went directly to Made after their show in Bernay. They brought some english cider to the VIP area and it's quality was also found to be excellent.
During the night and the next morning we got some rain and things went rather slow for those who were not involved with the preperations of the event.
Time for some british breakfast they kindly inveted me to and afterwards have a look at the track preperations.
They actually had a machine to roll the plastic covers of the track with mounted to one of the Deutz of Erik's collection of green, aircolled tractors from Cologne.
As time passed, the competitors arrived to fill both pits and soon after, the madness began: Pulling on three tracks!
The first to start were the dutch car pullers, a club that pulls stock cars and some small TWDs.
The level in their competiton and professionalism seems to increase drastically and I spotted several blown machines.
Their sled looks a little different than most, which is because of the group doing a lot of pulling on asphalt, too.
For me the most impressive machine still is the BMW of Team Admiraal, which is powered by a blown BB Ford. Man did that short thing put on a show!
But also the stock cars were nice and the crowd had fun. I think I need to check those guys out on asphalt once!
On the center track the NTTO S-Division started the 7700 lbs "Sport Klasse". Those are limited to 4 cylinders, 4.5 liters, 2700 rpm, one charger and an A pump.
The class was finally won by Albert Ruyten on a Ford 7000:
Meanwhile the A Division got started on the right hand track and it showed, the track was a little wet and too loose.
This caused some trouble for those guys who were a little eager on the throttle or for the Simply Irresistible, which had some new tires mounted and one-wheeled badly.
Of course all this also caused pretty high rpms. On Bandit that ended up with trouble on the valve train of one engine and the triple KBs came to an early stop:
In the end we had four Full Pulls: The twin Griffon Judge, which had a broken water pump and ended up in a cloud of steam after it's run and couldn't come back for the Pull Off.
The Beverol Eager Beaver, which got a second attempt to qualify for the Pull Off, after the scraper crew simply didn't fix the whole track for him (and the difference in the outcome of those two hooks was a drastic!), along with Intertechno Lambada and the new MPM Seaside Affair (typing all these sponsornames, I think we'll have to call our tractor the the "Claas Fertigungstechnik und Höner Antriebstechnik Green Monster" next year...).
The new Sea Sidea Affair was first to hook, and you could see the track had gotten a little better. While in the first run the nose was more or less glued to the track, it now came up and the 4 blown Fords layed down a nice distance.
Lambada made it out the gate again in the Pull Off and the Eager Beaver with the 4 blown Chevy's just didn't stand a chance.
During that modified pull off, I became pretty fascinated with the 2.5t sport klasse running on the center track. Just little 4-bangers, but they sure make some horses!
Winner in the end was Wilco van Brandhof.
After the mod pull off and the 2.5t sports and car pullers all having determinated their winners, it was time for a big change on the track:
The left hand track was taken over by the "Hypro Pullers", a group of Hot Farm pullers who run with a hydraulical sled that lowers itsself instead of having a weight transfer box. As odd as it sounds - the show they put on is excellent.
On the center track they started the "sport trucks" - rpm limited, single rear axle semis and on the right hand track the TWDs got started.
I was most interested in how Tony would do with his Pro Stock Peterbilt "Mean old Pete" that he had imported from the US and now got to run within the dutch trucks.
Let's put it nicely... the Peterbilt sure looks the best. Powerwise the Scanias and DAFs had him well under control though.
Back to Two Wheel Drive, the top 3 guys were within 10 cm (4 inch), with the Screaming Bobcat sticking out on top, and Heart 2 Beat and Sledge Hammer following!
The central track started the garden pullers, on the other side they were still busy pulling hot stock tractors - and behind the grandstand it was BBQ time at my teams trailer!!!
Time for a bratwurst and some potato salad - as well as taking the chance to take a few shots from ontop of our trailer.
Little did I expect to become a target for the other photographers!!
Can you tell I hate height?Anyhow.. after some food I felt well enough to go back to the track and shoot pictures, where the Compact Diesel machines were just having their show. As usual, the Brother's Toy machine was a class of it's own.
Mini rods to start on the right track and the center was still pulling hot farm stuff - but it was hard to take pictures of them with all the rolling material going up and down the two tracks in between me and the Hypropullers.
Anyhow - I got to shoot an excellent picture in the mini rod class, when Rene Geerts put his Allison Mini on the side:
By the way - the helmet strap was put on, but Rene just seems to need a bigger chin.
Of course no success for Rene running the mini this style and it was the Groenheide bros. to take home the victory with the Little Rascal.
Runner up for the Lambada mini and a SENSATIONAL 3rd place finish for the Dirty Herrie (Herrie is dutch for "noise"). The blown Ford tank engine performed well and I am actually not really sure if this isn't the first trophy for the team in years. By the way - if anybody still has any Ford GAA 8 for sale. They are looking for spares!
On the other track it became more and more powerful competition with the "Super Sport and Meg Sport Klassen", where there is no pump limit and the even the machines in the 3,5t (77) are in the 800 hp range which puts on quite a show at that weight.
Super Stocks up next on the 1st track and even more power.
The sled was set rather heavy and the only one to make a Full Pull was Willem Veldhuizen on the Hoover Track Bits'n Pieces.
Much to the pleasure of the local fans, Geert Jan Pauly on the Aerdvruter came in second, putting his non component IH in front of last pulls winner, the New Holland component Zapo.
The Super Sport 4,5t, by now running on the center track, had a John Deere driven by Ronald Bruynzeel, coming out on first place, which was news to me, as this class was under "red" control in the last two years.
Anyhow - these guys are totally nuts. Turbochargers with 3 1/2 inch inlet, big intercoolers, electronical or 12 cyl P Pumps feeding 550 cui engines limited to 2700 rpm. No need to tell you - that's over a 1000 hp.
There is only one class that can top it, and that's the Pro Stocks, who pulled right afterwards!
On track one it was modified time again though and it became a tough battle making it down the track in one piece!
Green Spirit and Whispering Giant had laid down two nice full pulls already, when Ad Boot came onto the track with hin twin turbo Allison Alley Cat. The Alley Cat maybe isn't the strongest in the class, but the engines are beginning to run better and better - and there is room for a third engine, too. Trouble is - it takes more than motors to make it to the top of the heavy mod class. One of those "other things" are tires and the right internals in the rearend to handle them. Appereantly Ad has big time trouble making the Alley Cat go down the track in a straight line and this time he lost a front wheel in the process of getting the Cat back into the right direction.
To make it even worse, the tire ended up under the right hand rear wheel, shot upwards and fell down onto the tractor.
It Kypmantsje, finally ready for some good pulling with no sled failure or old tires mounted blew one planetary. Simply Irresistible ... another tragidy: Too much throttle on the start, one wheeling, driver backed out of it, hit the throttle again - and then the connection for the butterflies of the top engine came loose. With only four engines there was no good distance to cover.
To make it a really expensive day, the Judge shot a rod bolt out of one Griffon and left plenty of oil on the track. But it wasn't over with breakage yet!
Anyhow - the pull off had Whispering Giant, Lambada, Seaside Affair and Green Spirit competing for the podium places.
The Green Spirit came a little close to the left hand boundary line and by having to back out of the throttle, Dany Dekker came short of a distance that would have been enough for a victory, still enough to keep the MPM Seaside Affair with the 5 blown Fords behind though.
Baas Liefting did a lot better and went down the track 10m farther.
The final run was for Intertechno Lambada and by really having the four Hemis hammered, it got close to the distance of the Whispering Giant - but in the process lost one block and bend all 8 rods in another engine.
The modified pulling was over with, but the Pro Stocks were still going on the center track, putting on a hell of a show.
Unfortunatly a little too far away for my flash to reach, so I changed positions and took some shots on the line.
It was REALLY close competition and the top 8 tractors all came to a hold within a few meters, but since in between was a little sign saying "FP", we had five of them qualified for the final.
Very unlucky was the Rocky Team, having a bent valve in the IH engine which made it impossible to come back to pull off, but in fact made them load the tractor and take it home to their workshop, to have a night wrenching.
In the end it was Runaway Deer to take home the victory ahead of a very happy Edward Beukeveld, who really has his Ford running well and overall reliable this season. Also absolutely happy were the Bad Boy's Toys folks. Karin keeps showing the boys what girl and MF Power combined can do and finished third, ahead of the best IH in the class, the Extreme Temptation.
In the meanwhile it was dark, I was totally shot and dragged my poor butt and camera belongings over to the team's trailer, where they had already started with beer and music, telling me I was late and have to sit down and get a beer.
Then our girls decided they wanted to go dancing in the party-tent and somebody, who is half way able to communicate in dutch had to come with them. Boiled down to be me, so we went to check out the beer tent. Arriving there we had to figure:
A) To get beer you have to buy special coins
B) They play dutch music only
C) They are all WAYS ahead of us in terms of alcohol consumption.
We figured that doing point A) helps a lot to adopt to point B) and then after a while the combintion of the two takes care of problem C).
And now it started to become fun! Ended up I lost the girls by getting stuck at the Simply Irresistible team who had a very handy "Horst" who was bringing beer and in the end getting kicked out of the tent by 2 am.
On the way back to the pits ran into the girls again, who must have been fed with beer by the DeJong Special guys pretty well. They decided to go to bed now though.
I ended up BS with Egbert Dros until he decided to go to bed, too.
I heard some noise still coming from the Extreme Temptation trailer and right - they were still partying - big time. First guy I ran into was Danoo Guggisberg from Switzerland, standing next to our girls who actually had left for bed half an hour ago. Turning around, it showed Egbert ended up in the same spot. Oh well... mer wi hebbe Dommelsch...!
The next thing I clearly remember was me lying in my tent hearing Farm Stock tractors roaring down the track... time to get moving!
In fact - I know have to move, too. Le Coiffeurs said I have to come to their shop and take some pics of the mess.
to part 2
1 comment:
Great article!!
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