Got back from competition

Jpshostr · June 4, 2002

Last night I finally got back from our ASAE quarter scale tractor competition in East Moline, IL. Got more sleep last night than the previous three nights combined, (I got five hours last night). Basically the premise of this contest is each team is given a 16hp Briggs Vangard engine and a set of tires, the engine must remain stock, and we build the rest of the tractor.

I was chair of the team that took last year's tractor and made small improvements to it, taking it back to competition. I was disapointed in its performance as my CVT kept backing off and not letting my motor lug down and pull. I lost a lot of ground that I should have had due to that and finished 11 out of 15 , don't know yet how I placed overall since the presentation results were not in. Here I am taking off on my last pull.

Now with our new tractor we did quite well, finishing 4th out of 34. This year they allowed four wheel drive, so there were many different designs. Below is ours which was named best appearance, best safety, 2nd in presentation, 3rd in design report, and 4th overall.

Here is the one that won the whole contest, it came from Universitat Lavel in Qubec. Everyone was happy to see this as Kansas State was dethroned after dominating for several years.

In all there were 34 colleges from all over the USA, Canada, and one team from Malaysia. I was pleasantly surprised to see how good every person there was, any team would do anything to help out another team, really a fun time. I met the girl of my dreams, hot as can be, knows how to work, and really know here tractors. How many hot girls do you know that can speak of how to set a CVT right off the top of their head?

All in all we were very pleased with how this year went. We all put many many many hours of work into the tractor and it paid off. Next year I have co-leader for the team, we really have our work cut out to top this year.