The Green Monster!!!

Click here to watch the Green Monster in action!!!

During the 2004 European Championships we received a request from Claas America to bring one of our tractors over to the World Ag Expo in California.
Shipping the tractor over for an exhibition, so it’s gone for at least two months and miss pulls at home, just so it is on exhibition? Of course it’s quite an honour to be invited, but there is plenty of tractors out in the US that could be put on exhibition. So we refused this.
Just a little later we were contacted by the Promoters of the World Ag Expo that they had actually wanted us for a tractor pull!!!
Shoot – that would have been it. Pulling in California. Was this to be another flop for us like the Indy Super Pull in 88 or the World Championships in 2004 that we were supposed to go to but then couldn’t because the political powers in the sport couldn’t get it figured out?
But we received another request for 2005 from the World Ag Expo.
And this time we said of course we’ll show up, if the financial site of the story is taken care of.
Claas of America and the World Ag Expro folks got it all worked out and we also got Exel on board to support this so it looked like it was really going to happen.
A few weeks before we were supposed to leave, everything was put in ink, contact with the Pacific Tractor Pullers Association was made and we could load the Green Monster into a container on the 27th of December to be shipped to Oakland.
On the 9th of February, Tobias Hörstkamp, Daniel Frische, Frank Bartholomé and myself flew from Hannover to Frankfurt, where we got on board a 747 and flew over to San Francisco. After another short flight from San Francisco to Bakersfield and 23 hours later we arrived at Bakersfield, where Donnie Fagundes, president of the PTPA, his brother Robby and Bryan Wood picked us up and guided us to our hotel room. Deadly tired we fell into bed to finally get some sleep and be fit to unload the Green Monster at Linder’s Equipment, a big Ag Dealer in Tulare, the next morning.
Donnie picked us up at the Hotel the next morning and introduced us to Jason Martella, treasure of the PTPA and Eddie Dutra, who runs a Dozing business and at who’s place we’d store the Tractor and who also carried the tractor around with his flatbed.
After a good American breakfast we went over Donnies workshop, where we could have the first close up look on California tractors. One thing became christal clear within a second: Pacific Tractor Pulling is mainly about Mini rods. Donnie, Robby, Jason, Eddie and Bryan sure have the equipment for at least 2 big modified tractors there and even the truck to haul them, but instead campaign SEVEN Mini Rods in one trailer on the West Coast circuit.
Donnies Mini Mouse Mini Rod was not loaded yet so we could have a closer look on it. Tube frame chassis, fabricated rearend with Rockwell 106 internals, one big ass KB Hemi with a 14-71 Blower on front: Up to date stuff that you could run in the top of any competition around the planet. We just found it surprising, it had Cepec tires mounted.
After seeing some rather interesting vehicles at Donnies shop (they are into body works and painting there), we went on to Linders to unloaded the tractor.
The container was not there yet, so we took the chance and went to the other site of town to visit the Correiras, who run a 4 blown Chevy modified called Chelsea's Toy and another KB Hemi powered mini called C-4, to pick up fuel.
The mod looked a little strange to us: Pretty front end light and uncut HP tires – heck, we can’t even get them to work having them cut not round enough and over here everybody tries to cut them as round as possible with all kinds of tricks) but the Mini again had all the latest stuff on it. KB Hemi with billet heads, big ass Supercharger and 44 Amp MSD Pro Mag – and again Cepec tires. Some guys from the East coast had told us, the California tracks would be pretty sandy and we would need a super fast gear ratio. Looking at all those Cepec tires and the uncut HPs on Chelsea’s Toy I already started to be worried what kind of dirt we’d get on.
Behind the shop Clarence stored an Engler Chassis that he wants to put five KB engines on for the next season. Talking about a high dollar project there!
While loading the fuel, we got the call the container would have arrived at Linders, so we left their shop and drove back to Linders.
When we opened the container we figured the tractor was almost undamaged. A little dent in the left hand fender and a little flat front tire was all that happened to it. Well... could have been worse!
Loaded the tractor up upon Eddie’s flatbed and hauled it back to Donnies shop, as there Donnie and Eddie still had to fix a little bit on the Mini Mouse Chassis.
Then we were taken over to the Expo Grounds, where we got to meet all the important people that were part of making this all happen, especially Rob Fletcher and Stacy Beachy. They showed us around and gave us all kinds of nice little gifts. Within the official West Coast Nationals T-Shirt, that had the Green Monster on the back and looked better than any T-Shirt that we could ever get done here.
The evening we spent at Eddie’s house, where we had American Pizza and tried to get some of the DVDs to work that I had brought over from here. Figured we couldn’t get them to work on the DVD Players and then watched US Pulling instead. In the meanwhile I tried to upload some pictures to this website. Dial up connection and no server response from Germany. Hmm….
At least Eddie had anew Lap Top with DVD burner, so I could store the pictures I had taken so far to a DVD-RW.
The next morning we left early to get to Bakersfield, as Donnie and the other PTPA guys still had to prepare the track. Time for us to check out some more West Coast iron in the pits!
It didn’t take more than half an hour for me to run into people I know there.
Looking at the Mini Rods of the Cornett brothers (ah – finally somebody on Firestones!), a guy walks up to me and says: “Hi Sascha – you remember me? Fred Tjoelker - we met at Claas a few years back”! Of course I did! Fred had a TWD for sale a few years back and I called him for a team here and during the call he told me they were going to germany in a week. “where exactly” – “oh – just a little town in the north, we gonna tour the Claas plant” – “Perfect – that’s the town I live in”.
So a week later I walked over to the Claas plant and had lunch with Fred and his wife.
Now – the next funny thing about Fred is, he is actually Dutch but moved from Groningen to the USA with his parents when he was ten years old. He still comes over to the Netherlands very often and also still speaks Dutch fluently. No matter where you go pulling – the Dutch are everywhere!
He still didn’t have the chance to see a Tractor Pull in the Netherlands yet. Time to change this, don’t you think? Maybe he should bring his TWD with him. His Arias powered Anxiety Attack Chevy sure looks nice!
Going on in the pits another TWD caught my attention: Special Delivery of Frank Woelk. What a nice set up – and what a nice powerplant. KB Hemi with Kobelco Blower, MSD Pro Mag, Veney injector, ….
It won’t get much better than this!
I first thought this machine would have to be brand new but when he told me the tractor was actually built in 91 I was thinking to myself that he either takes very good care of his equipment or repaints it every year.
On the other site of the pits I ran into LaDon Peterson from Utah and thought he must have been taken right out of a western movie. And of course this guy runs a nice looking IH Super Farm tractor called Desert Storm. His buddy had a old 66 series IH called Walking Tall and I doubt it will get any more classy than that. Tricycle front end, chrome wheels and polished to the maximum. Nice nice nice!!!!
Back at our trailer I found our boys sitting in a trailer, watching videos, eating beef and drinking Pepsi out of the cooler, enjoying themselves in the sunny 70°F weather.
Bryan came up to me and said, “Ah - there you are – hey there is a guy at the other site of our trailer who said he came from Wisconsin to see you”…”Wisconsin???... just a sec, that must be Perry Butson!”
And there he stood being all smiles. What a nice surprise!! “Perry you are NUTS!!!!”.
Big hello and chit chat about things. Unfortunately he had to go back to his hotel but came back for the evening.
In the meanwhile our tractor gathered more and more people around it and we had to answer all kinds of questions. For luck I brought a photo album with about 100 shots from home to show them what pulling in Europe is like.
We got introduced to all kinds of people, and by then I started to loose track on all the names.
One guy I won’t forget shortly was Dale Filkins. This guy is full of ideas and is tractor is a machine you must have seen: A Chevy engine with turbochargers and full of little electronic tricks and gizmos. In fact that was the first tractor I have seen with an electronic steering. A little knob is all it has to steer. Wonder how our tech officials at home would think about this?
Just a few feet further I was welcomed in German. One of the guys of the guys of the IH 300 tractor spent a lot of time in Germany and spoke the language fluently.
At the Cal Poly Student Tractor Pulling Team Mark Zohns who I was in Email contact with before, introduced me to Gregory Sullivan. 84 years old and still taking turns with Mark, driving a single Allison tractor !!!
The other three tractors that were built at Calpoly, the Mustang Fever single Allison (new driver every time), Poly Thunder twin Chevy (their “go for it” machine) and White Lightning with a T 57 (RR Gnome) turbine all looked very clean and well built.
After weighting in all the tractors (Tobias and Daniel both draw number one hook in each class) it was time for the drivers meeting, held by Donnie Fagundes. Now, I have probably attended a couple hundred driver meetings in the past, but this was for sure one that made clear how things are run on the West Coast! Driver strapped into the seat, Helmet on and ready to run, two tractors before you hook. “You’re ain’t ready be the time we call you – you’re out”.
We were introduced at the drivers meeting and received a very warm welcome from all the pullers. Feels good to be welcomed!!
After the drivers meeting I got to talk to Linda Lusetto, who’s son Greg I had talked to on the internet before.
But now it was finally time to get on the track and pull!!!
First check of the track, and the dirt sure looked different than home. Not as sticky and more dry. After a few runs the moisture came up though and it turned into a really good track that was easy to work on for the scraper and roller guys, too.
Still, we were totally in doubt as to what our balance would have to be like as we were running 500 lbs less on the tractor than at home.
The event had a close to sell out crowd, and half of the people cheered, when the announcer asked, for how many of them this was their first tractor pull. Promoter must have done a good job advertising this event!
I had a new camera with me as my good old little Canon broke down the week before and it turned out to be a complete new ballgame. It actually took me until the finals in Tulare to get if half way figured out at night, but it never did any satisfying results.
Now – to the track action:
The 5800 single engine modified class and the N/A Minis were the first classes to run and wow did this show run fast!
For my European understanding of Pulling the sleds were set awfully heavy so the tractors ran rather slow and nobody got even close to a Full Pull. They also seemed to have a bunch of rear-end problems and a lot of them were all over the track.
My camera gave me all kinds of problems with the Auto focus not liking the darkness and moving objects, so I concentrated on taking shots around the track.
Robbie won the injected mini class and Fred Tjoelker came in second on his son’s mini rod called Lil’ Thunder.
Leroy Viera on the Wild Thing, a single engine mod with one heck of an expensive KB power plant, won the 5800 lbs ahead of Green Extrem, another nice single V8 engine machine. Dale Filkins laid down a pretty strong pass with his turbo V8, but blew the engine apart.
Lusettos popped the water caps out of one engine and were having fuel problems on both of their machines. We were close to sea level and it took lots of fuel that night.
After the light mods it was smoker time on one track and the other track changed from N/A minis to blown minis.
Donnie Fagundes could win the blown Minis with the Mini Mouse, just one inch ahead of Mike Cornett on the Happy Days: One running on Cepecs and the other one on Firestones.
Jeff Perry on the Power Trip IH from CA managed to stay ahead of the rest of the bunch in Super Farm and sure got the crowd up on its feet and making lots of noise!
The TWD class on “our” track was next and we paid close attention on how they did. Few could get a hold of the track and seemed to be totally under geared.
I then talked to one of the boys of the Swiss Power Team that runs three KB Hemis (and unfortunately blew up one engine at Santa Maria) which should be somewhat close to the performance of our tractor. Figured they spin the tires 25 mph faster than we do – but run about 900 lbs less front end weight. Now – that didn’t sound like lots of traction to me.
7200 lbs mod next and first hook for the Green Monster! 250 lbs of moveable weight and with what we saw in the TWD and that info from the Swiss Power team we thought we better move the weights to the center of the tractor to at least get the nose up.
Tobias hooked the tractor to the sled and stood it up right off the line, backed out of it a little to keep it under control and then ran down the track with part throttle. Full Pull, crowd on it’s feet – but geeze that was close with the balance and could as well have ended up in a wrecked front end.
Ok – refuel it, check spark plugs (for luck rich) and wait for some of the others to make it to the Pull Off.
There was several tractors who would have had the potential to make it past the Full Pull – but unfortunately nobody made it.
Leroy Vierra on the White Lighning Turbine actually came the closest, but he was all over the track and had to back out a couple of times to not run out of bounds.
Hmm – the others had big time troubles keeping their machines on a straight line, too. Looked like a good market for needle bearings set up in differentials to us.
The Super Stock trucks were next on the other track and Brandon Riddle took the sled out of the gate to the only Full Pull in the class and thus won the class ahead of Mike Steinbert on the Iron Maiden truck. The FWD class was won by Larry Lopes on the beautiful Young Guns machine ahead of Lethal Injection of Larry Carrol.
8000 lbs mod and again we had first hook. We left the engine set up alone and went back to a weight balance that we would also run on a good track at home.
This time it was Daniels time in the drivers seat and he did a picture perfect Full Pull, having to back out of it early to not run off the Pull track and get over that steep part down to the circle track and bend the chassis. Crowd again up on its feet and having fun. Now – come’on Western guys, hammer it, let’s give them a Pull Off and get them really excited! But again the sled was too heavy for the other competitors and the crowd left the stands.
Larry Pfenning on the very nicely built Annual Income twin Chevy mod made it to 224 ft and took home runner up honours.
Jeremy Correira’s Chelsea's Toy with the four blown Chevy’s had at least one blower belt broke and burned a couple layers of clutch material down the track, too.
Poly Thunder with  Warren Vos made a good run into third place and “Big Daddy” Frank del Poppa, who brought a pretty tough Allison / V8 combination out came in fourth, running the Allison engine way lean and having a little bit too much gear for the power the two engines produced under these circumstances. Was told the tractor was new and still needed to get dialled in.
Short look on the watch – 2 hours and 47 min since the pull had started and it was all over?!
Spectators had left by now, too. Things are sure different in the USA…

The next day it was easy going for us.
Sleep in and then they took us out for riding Dune Buggies in an old River Bed in Hanford.
Who would now expect a modified VW Bug with 34 hp is dead wrong. If Eddie builds stuff he builds it right: 454 Chevy with app. 500 hp!
Everybody got to take a ride in it, but we quickly figured running such an Animal through an old River bed sure is like beating up yourself. If it wasn’t for the 4 point seat belts some of us would probably have flown out of that thing.
In the evening we had good BBQ at Donnie’s house and after a short trip to Wal-Mart, where we bought a DVD player for 33 bucks, we could finally also watch some EU DVDs.
In the morning it was getting up early again: Getting the tractor to the Expo grounds for a press conference and photo shooting.
The Claas people had finally arrived, too congratulated us for our success at Bakersfield and invited us for dinner on the evening.
So after we had the tractor back in Eddie’s shop and an oil change done, it was time to dress up nicely and enjoy a meal in what must have been the most expensive restaurant in town. Excellent food!
But no rest – the next morning we had to have the tractor at the Expo grounds again to put it in the Claas booth.
The tractor was constantly surrounded by a lot of Farmers, who were very surprised to see a Pulling Tractor from Germany in between the Claas equipment. In fact a lot of them knew what Tractor Pulling is all about, but had little idea about Claas. Time to get them in the know!!!
At 2.30 pm the tractor was hauled over to the Tulare Fairgrounds for the next Tractor Pull.
What a nice facility they had built up there. Big VIP area filled with people from one of the many sponsors (Budweiser, JCB, Claas, …), big screen opposite site of the main grandstand with replays and driver interviews that were taken the day before to keep the crowd informed.
Again the N/A minis and single engine mods were the first classes on the track
Same as in Bakersfield, there was no way past Robbie Fagundes and his “Agent” machine. The Temper Tantrum with Chad Barns behind the wheel came in second and the front seated We be bad of Dennis Weber finished up the top 3.
Now – the Tjoelkers had a bad day. Junior got the nose of his Mini a little bit too high and backed out of it to stay in bounds. Unfortunatly the sled hit him hard, bend the skids away and smacked the mini into the concrete wall. The mini was toast but for luck nobody hurt. Took a while to get the leftovers off the track which spoiled the quick show a little.
Greg Lusetto finally had the fuel figured out and laid down one hell of a pass with the “Lil’Bitty” Alky IH in the light mod class. His distance could only be beaten by David Leinfelder on the White Lightning turbine.
The TWD guys had finally found the right gear for the CA tracks (they told me they were not used to a track as good as these out west and then over judged it at Bakersfield) and Frank Woelk laid down one very nice pass to a Full Pull with the Special Delivery Truck.
Brad Russel on the Touch to much managed a fine runner up, ahead Lack of Common sense of Daniel Davis, who had two dead cylinders, but still stayed ahead of Brad Campbell who came all the way from Canada.
Fred Tjoelker was on a nice run, too but ran out of bounds at about third place position.
Pull time for us again. Tobias had the third hook this time and with the weights all right this time just blew it out the end, even putting the sled sideways in the end. Crowd went wild again…
The rest of the competition played “all over the track” again, except for Frank del Popa who actually managed to get his Allison / Chevy combo past the 300 ft mark, too.
We now awaited a Pull Off, but the powers in charge decided we ran further than “Big Daddy” – so no Pull Off.
In the blown Minis Donnie Fagundes and Mike Cornett battled it out for first place and this time Mike got a better hold of the track and put 5 feet on the Mini Mouse.
Bryan Wood on the Udder Puller also had a good run and finished third with the old Hemi.
Jeff Perry again won the smoker class with Ladon Peterson coming in second this time on the Desert Storm IH.
In the FWD truck class the Young Guns truck of Larry Lopes again was too much for the competition and won the class by 13 ft ahead of the Lethal Injection and Still Wild.
Mike Camera won the SS 4x4s and it was time for the 8000 lbs unlimited mod and for Daniel Frische to drive the Monster. He celebrated his 28th birthday that evening and was sure eager to to do well!
Larry Pfennig missed the Full Pull by only one foot and came in second, some distance ahead of Frank del Popa who again ran out of gear.
Daniel hammered it through the gate and won the class.
What followed afterwards was super nice of the PTPA guys.
Cheryl Dutra had prepared a birthday cake for Daniel with a nice picture of the Green Monster and with all the pullers singing happy birthday for Daniel they sure made his day!!!

The next morning it was back to the Expo grounds, putting the Monster on display. After we had it all cleaned up we had the choice of staying at the Expo with the tractor or go back to the pit area at the fairgrounds with Donnie and Eddie. Easy choice… pack our stuff and off to the fairgrounds, and finally having time talking to the Pullers! We didn’t come here to show off but have fun!!!
Back at the fairgrounds we got invited to have breakfast with Lusettos and some folks of the Lack of common sense TWD team. Linda prepared loads of bacon & eggs, sausage for all of us and we got to talk about Tractor Pulling, life in general, freezing temperatures at home while enjoying sitting in the sun. Life can be fun!
Later on I went over to Fred Tjoelker and the Cornett guys from Wyoming, looking at Tjoelker’s damaged Mini Rod. What an ugly sight it was! Well, life goes on and Fred was already asking Jerry Cornet to build him a new chassis to have the tractor back on the track soon.
Over at the Thumper team I was invited over to have lunch (my buddies had in the meanwhile left for town without me…). I must say, the Americans sure have a great sense for hospitality!
Back at Donnies trailer I found our guys help working on one of the minis. It ain’t tractor pulling if you don’t get your fingers dirty!
After the mini was fixed it was time for weighting in, drivers meeting and pulling again!
Injected minis and light mods first. Leroy Vierra left no doubt who had the strongest light mod on the circuit and with a picture perfect Full Pull won the class ahead of White Lightning and X-treme Green. Greg Lusetto this time could only manage a 4th place. They were running tough tonight!
Also the minis laid down a good show, with Chad Barnes on the Temper Tatum coming out on top of it. The front seated We be bad, driven by Dennis Weber managed a fine runner up ahead of Lisa Morton on the Playin’ Hookie. It was announced that Lisa’s son is crewing on one of John Force’s Drag cars. Who ever said you don’t learn anything useful in Tractor Pulling?
Frank Woelk had it all figured out again this night and put the Special Delivery out the gate, but it was Daniel Davis on the Lack of common sense winning the 1000 $ check for points by coming in second! This sure helped the fuel expense, coming all the way from Colorado!
Mike Camera was top of the pack in the Super Stock 4x4 with the Farmers Nightmare. Not only tonight, but in the points also, which made him another happy guy receiving 1000 bucks for winning the points.
I was about to throw my Fuji camera away now. What good is an auto focus if it takes more than a second to focus – and then is still not taking sharp pictures?
After JCB provided a little tractor show (hey – if you want to get your name out, sponsor the sled?!) it was time for the blown minis and the 7200 lbs modifieds.
Donnie Fagundes and Mike Cornett had to battle it out for the 1000$ check tonight. For Mike a runner up finish would be enough to win the points, while Donnie had to win it with the Mini Mouse and hope for another tractor to beat on the Happy Days machine of Mike.
They both gave their machines hell, laying down spectacular Full Pulls and Donnie really managed to get both of his tractors into the Pull Off and this way kept his chances up.
In the Pull Off Donnie and Mike again went Full Pull, but the Mighty Mouse got stuck at 289.6 – and Mike could await the big check!
In the mods it actually looked like we would finally get a Pull Off, too. The Poly Thunder machine got it’s clutch fixed during the day and ran very well: Warren Vos took it out the gate!!! Since Tobias went flying through the gate with the Green Monster, we could have a Pull Off!
A sad moment was when Frank del Poppa finished what first looked like a ver nice run of the Alkali III tractor: The Allison spit parts onto the track…
He still had enough distance covered to come in third tonight and win the points check.
Now… we prepared the Monster for the Pull (and where sorta glad we could finally get some temperature in that thing to get some of the methanol boiling out of the oil). But again, they didn’t like Pull Offs in the USA. “We battle it out in the 8000 lbs. Whoever goes further in the heavy class wins the 72 also”. Hmm… ok?
Maybe somebody should have informed the announcer about this, too as he was still telling the people we would come back. The crowd was just a little bit confused.
Super Farm time and my personal favourite LaDon Peterson had it all set up right and put the black International out the gate! Didn’t help him in the points though, as Jeff Perry had it all set already and took the check to Hilmar / Ca with the Power Trip IH.
The FWD class started with a little light sled: Brian Kinney on the Wild Hare drove it out way past the end, put the sled sideways and almost hit the left hand barrier.
With a little heavier sled things looked different though and Brian got stopped just shy of the 200 ft mark and even though Eric Cabrel won it tonight with a distance of 237.8, the points check went to Larry Lopes and the Young Guns!
Ok.. last class of the day and our last run on US soil! Daniel hammered it out the gate again and we waited on Poly Thunder to follow. The poor guys broke the transmission though and it was over and out for them. For luck this tractor still has an original Fuller Transmisson and those are easy to get and rather cheap at the truck salvage yards.
So what about the other tough guy in this class, Larry Pfennig? Could we now finally have our German Pull Off? Nope, 242.5 was all Larry could manage tonight. Chelsy’s Toy provided a nice smoke show to the crowd and also didn’t get anywhere near the finish line. He even got beaten by the Mustang Fever single Allison driven by Brett Davis. Sure a good result for that rookie driver!
Well.. and then it was all over. Spectators left, we loaded the tractor and from now on it was all about preparing to go home.
The next morning we brought the Green Monster back to the show grounds, helped the PTPA guys moving all the equipment from the show grounds and on Thursday loaded the tractor into it’s container to go on the long trip back home to Germany, where it would arrive on the 1st of April.
On the last evening we invited them all for Dinner and we had a great steak meal in a big steak house.
The next morning it was time to say good bye at the little airport of Bakersfield and I was not the only one having a tear or two running down.
MAN, did we have a great time!!!

Every Puller in the US or Canada, who wants to spend some winter time in good weather next year anyways, should consider bringing his (or her) tractor, too. They are increasing the purse year after year and you will meet a lot of first class people, pull on good tracks in front of a very enthusiastic crowd and get to see the worlds biggest farm show, too!

Sascha