Fendt Puts Things Into 6-Wheel Drive
Way back when I was young, Disney made a movie called ‘Monsters, Inc.’ After the movie was over, there was an entertaining short film called ‘Mike’s New Car.’ Pixar made some history with this one, because it was the first Pixar short that included voices, among a few other things.
Have you ever seen ‘Mike’s New Car?’ It’s nearly 4 minutes long, and it showcases Mike Wazowski pulling up in a big, fancy, yellow car… with six wheels.
What a crazy idea, right?
Six wheels? No way!
About five years after that movie came out, German tractor company Fendt showcased their Fendt Trisix Vario at Agritechnica, a trade show that takes place every two years in Germany and usually garners international exhibitors.
The Fendt Trisix… Yes, it’s what it sounds like.
The Fendt Trisix… Has six wheels, just like Mike Wazowski’s new car.
Instead of a sunny yellow paint job, it has Fendt green paint with silver tracing and the designer’s signature on the driver’s side engine panel ( Robert Honzek, owner of 11 patents).
This tractor is a 540-hp, three-axled, six-wheeled green incredible piece of engineering. TractorData claims that the Fendt Trisix is the only tractor greater than 300-hp that can travel at approaching 40 miles per hour with a load.
The Trisix is nine feet wide, which is incredible when one considers that a tractor with duals (or eight tires, two on each axle) averages 14 and a half feet. A four-wheel- drive tractor with triples can average 17.3 feet, according to James Tuschner of AgTireTalk.
Nine feet in width would allow the driver to miss being cited for over-width requirements in Europe, which is not something we have to worry about quite as much here in America.
The Trisix has two transmissions, believe it or not. Those transmissions are both continuously variable transmissions, or CVTs. With CVTs, there are no ‘gears’ to shift, and there also are no gear levers in the cab. Goodbye synchro-mesh type shifting (my favorite John Deere transmission) or even Quad Range (also a John Deere) shifting, with two levers plus a forward/reverse lever.
A CVT has one lever, and the longer it is held forward, the faster it will travel in the direction that the operator is holding it.
Some CVTs (or IVTs) work a little differently, but Fendt tries to keep it simple. Even though getting into a Fendt cab may look like a spaceship at first, once the operation is learned, it really is simple.
The Fendt Trisix uses two axles to steer: The front axle and the rearmost axle. Remember, there’s three of them!
Now the real question is: What’s under the hood?
That’s a good question.
Fendt is keeping that information close to their chests. Some say that the Trisix has a 4- cylinder engine, some say it has 6 cylinders. However, larger Fendts can have up to 12 cylinders, and the Trisix is indeed a large tractor.
What we do know is that modern Fendt tractors have a few different types of engine. Small Fendts have Deutz engines, and larger models have MAN engines. Since Fendt was acquired by AGCO, it also could have a Sisu engine, which is what some AGCO tractors use.
Regardless of which engine it has, the Fendt Trisix is an incredible, eye- catching design in the world of tractorsize innovation.
The Fendt Trisix was not created for production, but instead is a prototype. Perhaps in the future, we’ll see a green six-wheeled tractor, Mike Wazowskistyle.