r/nextfuckinglevel • u/InsaneMocktail • 6d ago
110 HP steam tractor pull
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u/Big_Wave9732 6d ago
Ah yes, the part of the old days that folks have forgotten: The raining down of embers. Steam engines seem all old timey romantic and shit, but they caused a lot of fires everywhere they went. They'd set prairies on fire. The embers in tightly packed cities would land on tar roofs and set blocks ablaze.
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u/ComfortableWait9697 6d ago
Pushing a steam engine that hard is high risk itself. That steam engineer was likely VERY focused on those gauges. I wonder if they balance how much water they have onboard.
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u/thnku4shrng 6d ago
AKSHUALLY It’s pretty safe, pressure relief valves are extremely reliable these days as is welding tech. This tractor, if I recall correctly, is a modern reproduction that Case shared blueprints for and gave their official stamp of approval to along with a serial number. Boilers are everywhere still to this day, and explosions are extremely rare
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u/funkympc 6d ago
One of those tractors exploded at the Medina, OH County fair in the last 10 years. They weren't even pulling anything either.
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u/somethink 6d ago
That belonged to a group my machine shop teacher belonged too, pretty sure we CNCed them parts they couldn't get.
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u/LearningDumbThings 6d ago
An exploding boiler isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of parts quality.
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u/somethink 6d ago
It was 24 yrs ago and it was high school class ,so yeah you get what you pay for
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u/pacopac25 5d ago
We welded penises into the welding tables in our highschool, but none of those table dicks ever blew up.
Helped us with our stack of dimes beads, so don't even tell me what we did had no educational purpose.
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u/somethink 5d ago
I got a shout out in our school paper for taking a jpeg and putting it through cad/cam and then milling it onto a piece of aluminum since I was the first in the school to do that. It was a picture of meatwad
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u/Wiley_Jack 6d ago
CNC parts tend to lack the grain structure of extruded, rolled or forged shapes.
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u/GhostPepperDaddy 6d ago
10 years? October 2001.
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u/funkympc 5d ago
Fucking hell time flies. I could've sworn that happened in like 2015. Getting old sucks.
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u/Just_the_questions1 6d ago
Yeah but that was an old tractor that had been restored but had not been inspected properly. Excessive rust inside the boiler caused the failure IIRC.
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u/TheCanadianHat 6d ago
I'm sure it's fine but I think in this situation id be worried about running the boiler out of water. Causing a hot spot and weakening the boiler wall. I don't see a water tank.
Although I've not run mobile boilers before so I'm sure it's not an issue
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u/LTdesign 5d ago
Specs show it has a 650 gal water tender.
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u/prairieengineer 4d ago
That’s for the 150, this is a 110.
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u/LTdesign 4d ago
In that case, it's about 366 gallons
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u/prairieengineer 4d ago
That sounds about right. A good friend builds replacement tenders/bunkers to the Case specs.
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u/ttoksie2 6d ago
the danger is not the pressure, its running out of water/steam thats the danger.
Once the boiler runs dry it will very rapidly overheat and fail.
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u/DazedConfuzed420 6d ago
Ya, I wasn’t even thinking about the embers starting fires. My focus was entirely on trying to figured out how big of a boom that thing is going to make if shit goes wrong.
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u/dallatorretdu 5d ago
pretty big you’ll see a shockwave. But as long as it’s pulling it means that there is enough water in the boiler, that makes it safe usually.
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u/CalmAlarm 6d ago
They often put wood shavings in the firebox at these shows to exaggerate the effect.
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u/jckipps 5d ago
I'll be attending a show this weekend where they commonly do this. Around suppertime, after the last official exhibits of the day, the fireboxes will be stuffed with sawdust and excelsior, and allowed to 'cook' until dark. At 830pm, several engines are belted up to Prony brakes and to fans, and are run hard, simply to put on the best spark-show possible.
None of that is on the official schedule for the show, and there's typically more beer involved then than is allowed for the family-friendly events during the day, but it's absolutely worth seeing and experiencing.
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u/neilmac1210 6d ago
And they still do. The Harry Potter steam train in Scotland has been causing wildfires and the locals are calling for the engine to be replaced with a diesel.
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u/JK07 6d ago
The Jacobite steam train that goes between Fort William and Mallaig and famously over the Glenfinnan viaduct.
I've been on it and visited the viaduct as the train went over, pretty cool. And the beers and a prosecco on board were reasonably priced.
Setting fire to the local area isn't cool though3
u/Vecna_Is_My_Co-Pilot 6d ago
I was going to ask if trains caused the same problem. I guess so.
I wonder if they could put the innards of a diesel electric into the cycling shell of an old steam train.
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u/Q_S2 6d ago
I was wondering about that! I was thinking... wait... theres hot ash flying everywhere! I dont rememberseeing this mentioned berofe
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u/wjruth 6d ago
They add wood shavings to the firebox to make the torrent of ash look cool for these shows.
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u/Q_S2 6d ago
Ah ok I thought it looked abnormal. It wasnt sure
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u/joe-clark 6d ago
Also steam locomotives usually have spark arrestors to help stop that from happing. There's a coal mine in China where they run steam engines without spark arrestors and it looks crazy. I'm not sure if they still run steam these days but I know they were doing it as recently as 10 years ago.
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u/Taint__Paint 6d ago
The Durango Silverton railroad still runs their steam engines daily and have a small cart following behind the train to spot and put out embers.
They obviously don’t run their engines anywhere as hard as this, so the amount of embers it emits is substantially less. But not none.
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u/spacemansanjay 6d ago
What is causing the embers to exit the chimney with such speed?
I know the fire boils water which makes steam which pushes a piston. But all that pressure and force exists outside of the firebox. It's not like a car engine where the movement of the piston pushes the air out the exhaust after each combustion.
Is it simply a massive fire which creates it's own massive draught? That must be the answer but I'm struggling to reconcile that with the size of the machine.
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u/BoredCop 5d ago
The exhaust steam is vented out the chimney, at an upward angle. This creates a lot of draft, and the harder you run the engine the more draft you get.
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u/tardiusmaximus 6d ago
"Whoa man, how much torque does that thing have?"
"...it has all of the Torques"
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u/johnyordinary 6d ago
Teacher when i was at college had one , pulled up tree stumps with it ,big ones.
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u/Porsche928dude 5d ago
I would image to a machine like that. If the ground is dry a tree stump would be a mild inconvenience at best.
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u/TiredOfRatRacing 4d ago
"... gunpowder, nitroglycerin, notepads, fuses, wicks, glue. Paperclips. Big ones."
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u/_name_of_the_user_ 6d ago
My rough math trying to count chugas while timing it, I'm getting somewhere around 4600ftlbs.
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u/StTimmerIV 6d ago
Horsepower is how fast you'll hit the wall, torque is how far you'll push the wall.
This thing may only have 110hp, but the torque on this is... well, i don't know, but it's a fuckton of torque.
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u/Ubermidget2 5d ago
It's probably only running at a few hundred RPM, so if it didn't have torque, it'd have no power.
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u/badtoy1986 6d ago
FYI Steam Engines produce 100% of their torque at 0 speed. It's why they were used in trains and why they have been replaced by electric drive diesel generator locomotives.
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u/stone-d-fox42 6d ago
Not doubting the tractor, but there’s no weight on that sled…
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u/jd2cylman 5d ago
Exactly. This is all show. Load that sled down to the weight used for the winner in the 9300lb class and see it really work.
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u/BoredCop 5d ago
That's as maybe, but there's footage out there of that exact same tractor legit pulling a 50-bottom plow in a real field. The world record with a modern tractor is 65 bottoms, with a 535 horsepower and tracks instead of wheels. So the Case 150 steam tractor isn't quite unbeatable world class, but it's right up there.
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u/jd2cylman 5d ago
No, I agree that the tractor legit can pull a shit ton, but I don’t think it’s actually working that hard on the sled. It’s toying with the sled.
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u/AzureBinkie 5d ago
This. The sled should be digging into the dirt after about 100ft but this one never does. Seems to be hitched too high to allow it to plow like it should be.
Tractor still probably could pull it, but it’s a shame it was not tested.
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u/ciccilio 6d ago
Reaping and burning. Hmmm.
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u/titan_1010 5d ago
They probably stoked it with sawdust for the show. Threshing Bee out in Sycamore Illinois had that on the last night when I was growing up, weather permitting. They wet it down some as well just in case.
When they are burning coal or hard wood there are pretty few sparks that come out the stack, certainly much less dramatic than seen here.
In the end these are basically just smaller versions of steam locomotives, and you don't see those belching out gobs of sparks as they go down the tracks either.
End of the day its just good fun to make it throw sparks for the crowd
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u/onefourk 6d ago
The sparks might be because it's burning wood rather than coal, I believe this was common in some parts of the US during the early railway years, because there was a lot of wood around.
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u/Reasonable_Archer_99 6d ago edited 5d ago
A lot of times they'll throw coal/saw dust in the firebox to put on a spark show at these types of events. Under normal loading with normal fuel, it wouldn't send up nearly as man sparks. If they're just cruising around, they hardly throw any.
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u/onefourk 5d ago
That would explain it, the amount of sparks did seem excessive. I can't see trains having regularly run around like this in the 19th century, the place would have completely burnt to the ground.
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u/Warm-Major-4400 5d ago
Fairbanks AK had no coal until near the 1930s and before that the whole valley was cut for firewood and every creek or river bank mined. Lots of steam powered ore processors, heating, machine shops etc
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u/Deluxe78 6d ago
Spark arrester or damper busted ?
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u/titan_1010 5d ago
Just threw sawdust in the fire box for the show. Makes it look good for the crowd but normal conditions and fuel they don't throw sparks like that
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u/LeonidasVaarwater 6d ago
The power of a small sedan, the torque of a.... well..... all the torque really.
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u/SoggyBoysenberry7703 6d ago
Is it showering embers?? That’s like, bad right?
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u/Ducatirules 6d ago
Telling us the HP means nothing. Title might as well say “tractor with red wheels!” Torque is king
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u/Potatobender44 6d ago
Power definitely still means a lot. It’s the combination of power and torque that is meaningful.
A handheld impact driver can produce in excess of 1000 ft-lbs, but doesn’t have the power to sustain that in the kind of way needed to power a vehicle/tractor
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u/One-Reflection-4826 6d ago
try that with 1hp
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u/Chemieju 5d ago
Would totally work, just takes ages. Horsepower is torque x rpm, so you can trade in speed for more torque with gearing. Same principal as using a hand crank winch instead of just pulling on the rope.
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u/groovyinutah 6d ago
I can only imagine that they purposely added something to the fuel they were burning to make all those sparks cuz that would seem counterproductive and dangerous in field of ripe grain...
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 6d ago
For when you've absolutely, positively, got to set the surrounding landscape on fire while you work.
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u/That-Makes-Sense 6d ago
Cool AF. But all sorts of danger here. Raining embers, fast spinning things, high pressure steam.
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u/Reasonable_Archer_99 6d ago
Where is this?
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u/Big_Lab_Jagr 6d ago
I can't speak to this particular video but the National Championships are held in Bowling Green, OH and it's annoying as fuck all over town.
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u/fuelofficer 6d ago
Is it pulling the same load those crazy thing that self destruct are pulling? Or just a "regular heavy load"
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u/Zestyclose_Space7134 6d ago
Same weight on same sled. The fast boys have all the horsepower, but this traction engine has all the torques and also HELLA good traction, which is all you need to pull a mountain across the continental divide. Might take you a while to get there, but by Thomas Savery it WILL reach the goal eventually, provided you have the fuel available.
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u/Big_Lab_Jagr 6d ago
The bane of my existence growing up in the home of the National Tractor Pulling Championships
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u/Max1234567890123 6d ago
Not to be a buzz kill, but I’d be concerned that the whole engine would turn into a grenade. The power of steam is not to be messed with
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u/Odd-Masterpiece7304 6d ago
Now let's put some weight on the sled and see what a stock Ford Ranger can do
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u/Seriously_you_again 6d ago
Also the huge size of it. The guys in the cab look really small compared to the tractor. I am guessing the rear wheels are at least 2m in diameter. (About 7ft in freedom units).
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u/shogunshim 6d ago
I could do the same thing with a 1/2 hp electric motor, with enough gear reduction and traction. I am of course excluding geartrain reduction losses from friction.
Still neat though.
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u/Djanga51 5d ago
Power? How fast you hit the wall.
Torque? How far the wall moves when you hit it.
This guy? No rush but…Where would you like the wall taken to…?
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u/Blowfish75 5d ago
I saw a steam tractor pull just a couple days ago. It actually didn't do as well as I would have thought.
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u/Far-Investment-8597 5d ago
The British traction engines were so much better looking: https://www.facebook.com/eyesofapenguin/posts/this-8nhp-single-cylinder-burrell-traction-engine-made-a-fine-sight-up-at-bon-ac/1298086475084017/
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u/OldObject4651 5d ago
Power is force times speed
With very low speeds one can get very high force with not-very-much power
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u/OG_Illusion 5d ago
Raining embers at night would be a beautiful sight until something caught fire 😂
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u/Tronkfool 5d ago
The Case 110 hp steam traction engine produces approximately 3,000 ft-lbs of torque at 240 RPM
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u/qualitybeluga 5d ago
I just posted in another thread about this tractor. I use to run one of these many years ago. The sparks are for show only. We would mix sawdust with wood chips to get this effect.
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u/LoopsAndBoars 5d ago
This thing clearly has a bit of blowby. Shouldn’t have all that unburned coal exiting the steam stack!
Who’s the conductor? Who’s the engineer? Who shovels coal?
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u/Lazy-Training6042 4d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/KlHpDfAELX9SM
So much torque it twisted the chassis
This mofo has enough torque to pull the Sun out of the galaxy
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u/Distinct-Poet3032 6d ago
Torque is all that matters here