Some machines are built. Others are forged—in backwoods shops, by calloused hands, with zero regard for warranty, EPA compliance, or common sense. This is the story of the latter category.
In the summer of 1990, a brand-new John Deere 8960 rolled off the Waterloo line with factory-fresh paint and corporate-approved horsepower. Sixty days later, it would leave a different kind of shop entirely with 625 horses under the hood, twin stacks that let the V12 engine breathe, and nearly 50,000 pounds of raw, re-engineered fury.
No, this isn’t a tall tale from some tractor-pulling Facebook group. This was real. It happened. And the madman behind it all was a brilliant gentleman by the name of Bill Dietrich.
For those unfamiliar, the John Deere 8960 was the top-dog four-wheel-drive tractor in…