Should be an interesting weekend.......

The buggy is competing in CalRocs this weekend at Donner Ski Area, driven by Phil and Opie, and I'm flying out Wed to Missouri to race at the Southern Missouri Off Road Ranch (SMORR) KOH qualifying race. I'm co-driving again for Fred Hill from FL, and we need to finish in the top 10 on Sat to qualify for the 2011 King of the Hammers race in Feb. Looks like it will be 60-70 miles of rocks, hills, trees and mud. We want to be sure to finish the race this time, last month in PA we didn't do well and didn't finish. Fred made some upgrades to the car so hopefully we won't loose a wheel and break another rear axle shaft.

Hopefully, both Phil and Opie and Fred and I will do well. (crossing my fingers, toes, arms, legs.......)

They say there's no cell service at SMORR, so I won't have phone or internet to check on the guys or report how we're doing. Should be interesting.

Good luck.

Although I admit I'm more curious how Phil and Opie will do..

GL to both teams. Have fun.

Good luck guys!

Good luck to both teams keep the rubber side down

Good luck richard

If anyone pops onto Pirate to check out race coverage, we're car 17x, Fred Hill. The race is on Sat, and will start between 10-12:00.

Good luck Richard and team!

Good Luck Richard....
Hope to see you in Moab this October.

Phil an Opie finished 2nd in their class in Calrocs this weekend, driving my buggy. I hope that helps them in the point standings for the year.

We had mechanical problems again, at the SMORR KOH qualifier race. Broke a rear pinion yoke on the first lap, tied up the rear shaft and went back to the pits in front only, and it took 2 hours to fix it. Really buggered up the pinion nut and threads on the pinion and didn't have all the stuff we needed, but got it from other competitors. Got going again and finished the lap, so it was cool to go past our pit and let the crew see us running again. We were driving all the obstacles except the top of Adventure Hill, which is a pretty damn knarly spot, better than the day before when we had to winch 4 times on one lap pre-running. We ended up hitting a cut off tree stump sort of half buried in brush at 25 mph, or whatever speed 5000 rpm in 3rd gear low range is. It broke the shit out of a brand new 8 lug Raceline wheel and ruined a Creepy, but thankfully we hit it straight on and it didn't hurt the steering, and it didn't hurt any suspension mounts or wheel studs. We stopped kind of fast. While changing the flat we saw that tranny fluid was leaking, but we couldn't tell where from. Eventually we ran low enough on fluid that he trans wouldn't pull anymore, and when we ran out of fluid to put in it we had to get a tow back to camp from a nice spectator, who also gave us drinking water since we were out, and a couple beers each. Bummer that we didn't get Fred qualified for KOH again, but he's going to try again at Harlan KY in Aug and maybe at the Badlands in IN in Oct. We'll see.

well aside from the bad stuff that happend did you have fun?

Oh yeah, despite that we worked on the car quite a bit. There's an excitement about competition that brings it's own type of fun, along with enjoying the challenges. Plus I got to hang out with friends, and make more friends. Wed evening a few of us got to preview the 2010 KOH movie so that was kind of cool. Don't know how often I'll be able to keep doing this, but it's fun while it lasts.

Thanks for the report.
We all live gregariosly through your exploits!
If you say the top of the hill was a little knarly, I can only imagine!
Just when you think you got the rig bullet proof, along comes bigger bullets!
I'm sure your luck is going to improve with this experience.

Yep theres allways something to break. That what i call job security.

RobertF said:

We all live gregariosly through your exploits!

Click to expand...

Not to be a d!ck or anything but don't you mean " vicariously" ?

jeeperjohn said:

Not to be a d!ck

Click to expand...

Call it as you see it!

Seriously, long day and tired, but I enjoyed Richards report.

I appreciate the interest. Competition is it's own kind of fun, but a good balance between competing and just wheeling is definitely needed. Fred Hill has a good buggy, but the transition from being a rock solid rock crawler to a go fast KOH car has produced a few new bugs. It will get worked out, and the car can be pretty fast. I spent a lot of time on shock tuning for go fast, then we pre-ran the course and I changed the setup because the course needed something different. Fred is trying hard to make the car bullet proof. Last month in Rausch Creek PA we broke a wheel off, and broke a 35 spline semi-float axle shaft at the flange. He built a new full float D60 rear end with 300m shafts to replace the 9" and switched to 8 lug wheels. Now we still have a few bugs to work out of the suspension after switching to longer shocks all around last year, but we'll get there. I wish the car was out here, but it's in FL.