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Old 03-02-2007, 07:00 AM
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frederic
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Join Date: Oct 2003
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I don't off-road my current truck, as it's a 2wd crewcab. It gets dirty enough

Many moons ago several friends and I made an obsticle course "in the woods". There were four jumps, two were "natural" two we made with a bulldozer, there was a steep vertical climb up onto a ledge, then an equally steep drop on the other side that you had to drive down, lots of turns and twists, plowed out by the bulldozer. Some were banked correctly some were deliberately banked the wrong way so if you weren't careful, you'd roll over. And a couple of big rocks (a little bigger than a fully dressed big-block) put here and there. And of course the "mirror killer" which were two huge-**** oak trees that any full size pickup could "just fit" between, but if you were off even slightly your mirrors were gone if you didn't think to fold them in. The trees were towards the base of the vertical climb so to get to the top of the climb you had to be whipping between the trees.

Anyway, during one of my runs through this I was really, really whipping through as I've done this 200 times (i.e. a lot) so feeling comfortable and confident I'm pulling a good time. I get to the one jump that's across a ravine, and while screaming the rpms up the ramp my old 81 crewcab stalls and the front wheels which were in the air start to drop down abruptly as the rears which didn't leave yet are dragging and down I and the truck goes right onto the headlights/grill. WHAM! Then to make things worse, the *** of the truck kept going so WHAM again, onto the roof. I had a 5-pt harness and a driver's cage in the truck so I walked away with very minor injuries (sore this, sore that, bruises on my thighs from hitting the steering wheel when landing on the roof, bruises on my chest from the harness, etc). Took a while to upright the truck as the 48" tires resisted us rolling it over sideways. Went onto the side no problem, just not upright for a while.

Twisted like a pretzel. Once uprighted, after some futzing she started and I was able to drive the 2 miles home so I could go over the damage on another day.

Another friend was whipping through a different day, and approaching the two trees just before the climb at the required "quick pace" decided to correct just before the trees and wedged his bronco between the two trees at a slight angle. That took a while to clear out as well. It was really wedged.

Was a lot of fun, but unfortunately we went through a lot of trucks too. Ford, chevy, dodge, it was all good, all old trucks. The rules were simple - padded roll cage around the driver as a minimum, or the whole cab if you wanted, a helmet of any kind, and a 5-pt safety harness, a battery cut off switch and a fuel cut off switch easily accessable from outside, "just in case". I had an electric fuel pump so I used two battery switches side by side mounted in the passenger side wheel well.

A couple of guys quibbled about the rules, but it's private property so take it or leave it.