Thomas Schönmann from Niederbipp in Switzerland has built a brand new alcohol fired Ford Commander 6000 limited super stock tractor called “The Sonic” on component base. At the end of last month, after almost 2 years of development and building the new tractor was finally ready for the first roll out in front of his workshop.
But first, we are looking back how everything started with him in the tractor pulling sport. Thomas Schönmann started with the sport in 2012 at the age of 19. At the building of his first tractor, he was 16 years old, a 500kg modified garden puller with a 4 cylinder motorcycle engine. He competed with the 500kg modified in the Swiss Championship only for 2 years and stopped at the end of 2014 with the garden pulling sport.
Whereby his girlfriend drove the modified garden puller for another 2 years until the end of 2016. After his garden pulling experience, he started to build a new IH 844 tractor for the very popular 2.5t/5500lbs sport class in Switzerland. With the IH 844 tractor, Thomas competed in the 2014 Swiss Championship, to get his first experience in the sport class.
In 2015, Thomas switched the tractor and the brand. He switched to a blue tractor, an Ford 5000 with a 4 cylinder Ford Powerstar engine, which was built in 4 months with the help and support of Patrick Krähenbühl and Reto Meier. Thomas competed with the Ford 5000 until 2016. During the winter of 2016/2017, the little Ford received a lot of changes and much more power compared to the season before. The Ford tractor was completely new rebuilt and got a new Ford 7000 hood.
With the bigger hood, there also was more space for a bigger power plant. The small 4 cylinder engine was replaced by a more powerful turbocharged 6 cylinder Ford BSD666 power plant with a capacity of 6.6l on Diesel fuel. But that was not all, the tractor was renamed into ''Idefix Evolution''. He debuted with the rebuilt Ford at the first round of the 2017 Swiss Championship.
After all those changes and the bigger power plant, the tractor was now competitive and he also won his first events during the season. Better was the year of 2018, In that season he really started to harvest the fruits of his hard work during the last years and also won at the end of the year his first and now only Swiss Championship title in the 2.5t/5500lbs sport class.
During the 2018 season came the considerations to built a new tractor for a bigger class. So he sold his ''Idefix Evolution'' tractor to a new owner in Switzerland. The new owner is still competing with the Ford 7000 successful in the Swiss Championship of the 2.5t/5500lbs sport class. After Thomas had sold his old tractor, he started with the planning and parts sourcing for the new project.
He always wanted to build something bigger and he had been thought for a long time and when it became clear that the limited super stock class was introduced in the ETPC regulations, he definitely wanted to build a new tractor for this new class on alcohol base. Before Thomas started to build the new machine he had to decide on which base he wanted to build the new limited super stock.For that, he had two possibilities a limited super stock with a modified stock rearend and gearbox or a component tractor with a much lighter modified truck planetaries rearend and a small lighter gearbox/reverser. In the beginning, he didn't want to build the limited super stock on component base and actually already had a donor vehicle a Ford 9700 but after long considerations, Thomas decided to build on component base anyway. He saw advantages on the component base that he can make a better weight distribution and can keep the center of gravity low and he possibly still has the potential for improvement for the future.
The new The Sonic got a completely new homemade steel tube frame with a newly built homemade steel 2 bar roll cage, homemade steel wheelie bars, a JGES Racing aluminum racing driver seat with a 4 point safety harness, a newly developed front axle with a air ride front axle suspension, new front wheels with aluminum rims, a homemade hydraulic steering from a boat and a machined Rockwell SQHD steel semi truck rearend with a newly built hitch and drawbar.
The machined Rockwell steel rearend is shortened and comes out of the former single Rolls Royce Griffon V12 powered 2.5t/5500lbs light mod tractor called ''The Rebel'' from the Netherlands. Thomas purchased for his component project the old The Rebel chassis from Jesper Madsen in Denmark and cut the rearend out of the old tube chassis from the light modified ride.
But before he welded the old Rockwell rearend into the tube chassis, Thomas optimized the rearend a little bit and welded new brackets for the drawbar on the housing.
The Rockwell rearend got a stock steel Rockwell SQHD center section with an optimized Rockwell SQHD differential, a Rockwell stock ring and pinion gear, custom built steel half shafts and machined MAN steel planetary carrier housing with stock MAN planetaries. To keep the tractor between the white lines, the Ford also got a homemade single wheel brake system with billet aluminum calipers and laser cut brake discs.After all those changes on the former light mod rearend, he should have a reliable and good working rear axle in the limited super stock.
For a good grip on the pulling tracks in Europe, Thomas purchased a set of used polished aluminum Midwest rims with brand new uncut 24.5x32 Firestone Puller 2000HP tires. The Midwest aluminum rims were bought from the Dschinni Pulling Team in Albersloh, Germany. The rims were mounted on the Deutz Allis component super stock called ''Dschinni Evolution'' in the past.
Also completely new constructed is the driveline in the machine. He put into the chassis a new aluminum SCS reverser with a custom built steel driveshaft between the clutch and the reverser, a 11inch crower centrifugal clutch with 4 discs and a homemade steel clutch bell housing.
The hood and the fenders of the limited super stock are really old school. First, he wanted to use for his project an old Ford 9700 sheet metal hood, but then he decided to use a much older hood compared to the old 9700. The decision was made on a Ford Commander 6000 hood from the 60s.
The original row crop tractor for the fields was mainly built for the US market between 1965 and 1967 in the Ford tractor factory in Highland Park, Michigan in the USA. It was a 2WD tractor without a driver's cab and had a Ford Select-O-Speed full powershift transmission with 10 forward and 2 reverse gears.The most interesting stuff about that tractor are the different available engines for this tractor. The 6 cylinder power plant was in 3 different versions available. The version with 4l capacity ran on diesel fuel and the 3.7l version ran on gasoline or LP-gas. The engine produced a maximum power of 65hp in all those 3 different versions. But the original Commander hood was too small and not wide enough for the new pulling tractor project, due to the too big engine and the rest all around. So the only possibility was to build a replica of the original Ford Commander 6000 hood. The hood is completely homemade.
First, he started to build a complete hood out off wood and then he polyesterized a negative hood. After the negative hood was ready then the right hood was polyesterized. He had a lot of help from his colleague Florian Wälti, who was familiar with polyester work. The radiator grilles on the hood are homemade too. Overall, the replica of the hood took more than 3 months of work. For checks on the engine or on the clutch, the hood can easily electrical opened to the front. It's currently not the only pulling tractor in the world which has a Ford Commander hood on the chassis. A further one is the 6200lbs component light super stock machine called ''Commander'' of Jason Hootman from Corfu, New York in the USA.
The whole paint job on the hood and the rest of the tractor were also done by Florian Wälti. The nicest thing on the tractor is the airbrush paint job on the hood with the ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' on it. Sonic the Hedgehog is a computer game series of the Japanese publisher Sega. The game existed since 1991 of the same name and Sega has been continuously bringing out new offshoots for all video game systems ever since. The only thing which is original of a Ford Commander 6000 are the sheet metal fenders.
The new Swiss Ford component limited super stock of Thomas Schönmann is powered by a newly built up turbocharged 6 cylinder Ford Powerstar engine with a displacement of 8.3l on alcohol fuel.
The basic parts for the engine were purchased from Edward Beukeveld, owner and driver of the Ford-New Holland Limited super stock called ''Snoopy'' from the Netherlands. But all adjustments and the assembly of the newly built Ford engine were done by Thomas himself in his workshop in Niederbipp.
The Powerstar engine has a bored up Ford Powerstar cast iron block with billet steel Darton sleeves, a new billet steel crankshaft with new CNC-milled rods made of SSAB Toolox steel and billet modified aluminum pistons, a newly modified and flowed Ford Powerstar stock cylinder head, new better and bigger valves and valve springs, a custom built camshaft, a homemade stainless steel exhaust and steel intake manifold, a billet Holset HX82 turbocharger with a bigger intake impeller wheel, an aluminum air intake funnel, a homemade stainless steel oil pan, an Aviaid oil pump, a homemade stainless steel fuel tank, a Veldhuizen Special Products (VSP) alcohol fuel injection system with a Waterman fuel pump and an RPM data logger.
The cylinder head for the engine was purchased from the Silver Bullet Pulling Team from Houten in the Netherlands. The head was modified to alcohol by Martin and Justin van Echtelt and later flowed by Thomas Mathmann of the Dschinni Pulling Team. Due to the many contacts with Thomas Mathmann and the friendship that resulted, he invited Thomas Schönmann to a ''flow weekend'' into his workshop in Albersloh, Germany, where they then machined his pistons for the engine and then measured the cylinder head on his flow bench. They were still able to get a lot out of it with processing as far as the flow was concerned. That made both very happy after measuring the reworked channels.
After that, Thomas took many new impressions home with him, where he then worked on the remaining channels.
The power of the Ford powerplant under the Commander hood is unknown and Thomas does not want to give any information because he has never stood in front of the sled with his Ford Commander. But from experience from other teams, 2000hp should be possible.
The plans for the coming years are quite clear. Thomas Schönmann hopes the newly built tractor will not flies around his ears at the first pull and that he can collect experience, which is very important for the later future. He has planned currently to compete with his new The Sonic at pulling events in Germany and the Netherlands, which those tractors already drive for years to gather more experience.
Switzerland has currently no championship for this class and nobody has experience with these limited super stock machines because the Ford Commander is the first built limited super stock in Switzerland. What was important for him: Right from the start Thomas Schönmann wanted to build everything that was possible completely himself because that's basically what the hobby is all about. The tractor was built without sponsors.
Thomas also would like to thank Thomas Mathmann of the Dschinni Pulling Team, Willem Veldhuizen of Veldhuizen Special Products and Florian Wälti for their help during the building of this new Ford Commander limited super stock!
"It was time to go to the next level to keep making bigger, better stuff happen."
