Monday, December 28, 2015

Sled Pulling rules discussion from PRI Show!

As some of you know we had a sled pulling rules discussion during the PRI Show on Saturday morning. A few pullers and diesel shops attended who were interested in pulling. We first heard from our panel which consisted of some long time pullers and younger pullers, all of them own diesel shops who work on customer's pulling trucks.

Some other organizations are going to smooth bore turbos which are no big deal since they are already legal within our rules and according to the experts on the panels actually rob your truck's engine of 40-200 hp at the wheels depending on who you ask. Turbos should not be a problem unless you want to spend more dollars on a higher price turbo.

However, they did point out if you go to smooth bore turbo then you would not have to worry about breaking your rear-end gears because of the lower horsepower.



The major expense is going to not just a fixed rear drivetrain but the gearing for the trucks. Cost estimates were from $20,000 low end to $40,000 if you have a shop do it for you. This is some serious money for the pulling hobbyist who just likes to pull for fun.

It was a consensus of the panel that the new rule moves will lessen the number of trucks competing and more trucks will go up for sale. The diesel shops said they are already seeing less rebuilds for the winter teardown season.

This is a concern for Diesel Motorsports since we are trying to increase the numbers for competition instead of less numbers. The ruleset for Diesel Motorsports has always been liberal in order to allow as many trucks as possible and many state groups use our rules for theirs under our affiliate program.

As the meeting wound down it was pretty much decided to keep the ruleset as they are except allowing the new rules under larger regional events since most of the panel felt only a small amount of trucks will be making the $30-50,000 upgrade during the winter months.

Most felt they will leave their trucks as is and compete in local sate groups and come to a few regional events to compete. By doing this the number of trucks should be larger at local events and smaller at some regional events for those organizations.

DIESEL Motorsports will allow all trucks to compete at the Regional events and have classes for all trucks attending. A discussion about opening up the Work Stock class more with a standard wheel size was talked about for some time. The diesel shops wants an effort to encourage street trucks to compete to replace some of the higher end trucks who have decided to sell.

Very interesting how the diesel truck pulling market has changed year to year with a consensus of too much change in such a small amount of time. The tractor pulling leagues tend to keep changes to every three years because of the costs affiliated with changes thus keeping their numbers steady for competition.


More to come during the season and a report of what people are doing with their trucks!

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