Engines
Apart from modified standard diesel tractors, a variety of high power engines are used in tractor pulling, which started in the late 1970s. In the early years, mainly single, double or multiple US-made big block dragster engines were used, but nowadays, a lot of parts from discarded military machinery are in use, like Klimov TV3-117 (Isotov) turboshafts from Russian helicopters, Soviet Zvezda M503 torpedo boat engines, Continental AV1790 tank engines, or World-War-2-era aircraft piston engines in V12-shape (e.g. Rolls-Royce Griffon) or as radial engines (e.g. Curtiss-Wright R-3350). In recent years a number of agricultural engines have been converted to run on methanol with multi-stage turbocharging.
Read more about this topic: Tractor Pulling
Famous quotes containing the word engines:
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)