Motorama Feb 21-23

This is at the Farm Show Building in Harrisburg. Rausch Creek 4x4 Off-Road Vehicle Park will have a booth set up, showing videos and pictures. I went to this a few years ago, they had radio-controlled truck racing, dirt bike, quad and other types of motorsports.

Did anybody catch a show this past weekend on Outdoor Life Network, they showed a rally car race from Nevada from last March, in the snow and packed ice? There was one Jeepspeed Cherokee entered. I only caught the last fourth of the show, but they mentioned how the XJ had rolled in one of the early stages but was still racing on. The best sequence was when they showed three vehicles as they went around this one hairpin turn. Two of them swerved off the road, but the XJ hung ten around it, it was cool. I can't wait to see Jeepspeed in person at Rausch next year.

Sounds like fun! I have to mark it on my calendar and try to get down there to check it out. Thanks Lynn

So JeepSpeed is heading east?! We (NAC) definitely need to build a racer and get involved. I'm tired of trying to justify beating up my XJ for little more reason than "it's fun." I think a competetive edge would make the sport that much more enjoyable, for me anyway.

There was a thread on this earlier, but yeah, 3 races at Rausch's rally course next year are scheduled. Anybody wants to find out more about it, there's www.jeepspeed.com and www.wastedtrails.com. Doug at wastedtrails is the promoter who has created JeepspeedEast and is bringing the race series to PA next year.

here's a link to motorama's site.

http://www.trail-wayspeedway.com/indexmt.html

click on Schedule of Events, there's a list of everything that goes on the three days.

Mark, it doesen't seem like there's much intrest in Jeepspeed here other then You, Lynn, and myself. I'd love to build an XJ for it but can't afford all the required race stuff.

It represents a serious commitment to the sport, and I would say it "ratchets up" your financial investment several notches if you even want to jojn the action. Being competitive may require serious infusions of both time and cash.

My brother and I crewed on a friend's stock car for a number of years, plus we did both autocross and hillclimbs. I also went to pro drivers' school and ran time trials at some of the big road courses in the northeast. The results were interesting.

The car that easily won the state championship in autocross wasn't competitive in either time trials or hillclimbs. I found that the handling far exceeded the available power. At the hillclimbs I mostly didn't have to even back off on the sweepers -- just put a brick on the skinny peddle, sit back, and watch the scenery go by. Mind you, this was running full tilt up the access roads for ski mountains, so the inclines were steep.

At the time trials, I was again simply outpowered. I did turn in one FTD, on a day when it rained and the guys with big motors couldn't put any more power on the pavement than I could. In the dry, I really belonged in a lower class. I was running a Javelin with a 343 engine that I built. It ran very well, but to compete against the others in my class a home-built engine wasn't going to do the job. I needed about a $3000 to $5000 engine just to be in the same league.

If you guys want to run this series, I'd be interested in watching and rooting for you, and to the extent that time and distance permits I'll be happy to assist in design and wrench-turning. But I'm not in any position to think about entering.