Ross project takes first in state

Senior engineering design class will move on to national stage.

ROSS TWP. — At the SkillsUSA Competition held in Columbus on April 27 and 28, the Ross High School senior engineering design class placed first and won gold medals in the Tech Prep Manufacturing category for their Farm Boys Fantasy truck project the class designed and built.

The team competed against schools from across Ohio and will represent the state at the National SkillsUSA compeition in Kansas City, Mo., in June.

The Farm Boys Fantasy truck team created a unique truck by taking a diesel engine out of a John Deere tractor and placing it into a Dodge Ram 1500 truck. They also designed a new suspension and gave it a new custom paint job and interior. The truck is powered with environmentally friendly bio-diesel fuel.

The Farm Boy’s Fantasy truck will be used as a support vehicle at county fairs, tractor pulls and other events to tow the group’s 2010 national award-winning engineering design project, the Bleedin’ Green Pulling tractor.

For that project, the 2010 Ross engineering design team took a John Deere 4020 tractor and re-designed it into a V-8 hot rod pulling tractor, a project that not only took first place in the Skills USA regional and state competitions, but placed second in the national competition.

The Bleedin’ Green tractor continues to pull at county fairs and tractor pulls across Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

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