Sport_Pilot
Posts: 7652
Joined: 1/21/2002
From: Acworth,
GA, USA
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Flyboy Dave
The thrust rating in horsepower of our little engines is about as absurd as you can get. I
think not many know the actual power of a horse, unless you were raised on a farm and
experienced the actual power of a horse.
A friend of mine had some property up near Tehacapi Cal. We used to go up there about
once a month. Everyone had horse up there. Horses are a big business. We went over to
one of his neighbors house to pay a visit one afternoon. The guy was trying to remove a
tree stump from his front yard. He had already removed the tree. It was a good sized tree
stump, about 18 inches across. He had dug down about two and a half feet around the
stump, and had chopped the roots that he could get to around the stump.
He hooked his big bad V-8 powered pickup truck to the stump with a chain, and tried to drag
the stump out of the hole....no way. There still were plenty of roots going straight down into the
ground, and he could not even wiggle the stump. One of his neighbors that was there observing
with us said, wait a minute, I'll go get my horse.
Let's say the truck engine was rated at 300 HP....say there might have been 150 HP rated
horsepower at the rear wheels.
The guy returns with a nice horse with a pulling harness over its neck with chains on it. They
hook the chains to the chains on the stump. The guy gives the horse the command, and the
horse bears down....bears down again and yanks this big stump right out of the ground,
snapping all the still connected roots all at the same time. You should have been there
to hear those roots breaking, it was loud.
Pulling out a tree stump takes force not power. The 150 HP is a poor example because it would put 0 HP to the ground because it did not need to move much to pull the stump and the wheels would spin before putting out that much force. My grandad pulled out stumps all day long with a tractor, winch, and chain. Pull out the stump as much as you can with the tractor tie another chain to a larger tree or boulder, once he augered a hole and anchored a chain into that hole, put a winch on the chain and used the tractors PTO to power a winch which pulled the stump. The tractor only had a four cylinder engine so I am sure it had a lot less power than the pickup truck.
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“I Saw Elvis at 1000 Feet” John Force
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Printable Version
All Forums >> Glow Engines, Gas Engines, Fuel & Mfg Support Forums >> Glow Engines >> RE: 1 horsepower, really the power of a horse? 
RE: 1 horsepower, really the power of a horse? - 
This thread has turned into a real racket... I can't stop laughing 
