Mall Crawling Racer...... #4410

[REDLYNER]

Pit crew has the death wobble corrected. They are cutting away getting the rear sway bar system in place now, hope to be 100% by tonight minus shock tune and tech....

 

[Will Carter]

End up putting more caster in it?

 

[REDLYNER]

End up putting more caster in it?

Yep, and tighten track bar. Had it up 50mph so far just looking for squeaks and rattles. Flexing out tonight and will open it up some more.

 

[rockcity]

Can't wait! I'll see you all on Wed. Look for the lowered honda accord rental with ECORS all over it!!

 

[rockcity]

Oh, and I'll have radios with me. Freq 154.1875 tone code 100 if you want to talk to us!

 

[95yjjeep]

good luck jay! represent the east coast well! If nothing else, that all white is going to slow people down because it has got to blind the hell out of everyone in the sun. Great race tactic! Try to get some shots of the pit areas for all of us who are watching KOH from our 14" laptops instead of being able to be there.

 

[StretchASU]

This came across the book of faces yesterday...looks like a little mall crawler got lost and ended up in the desert in the first few seconds of this clip.

 

[ncsutj]

Anybody know how Jay did today?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

 

[snappy]

Anybody know how Jay did today?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

Broke a ball joint from what i have been told

 

[jankoid]

He broke a ball joint and possibly a front shaft on Aftershock.

 

[biggoofy]

Dnf gave it a good go though.

 

[ncsutj]

Well damn. I'm sure he gave it a hell of a run.

Did that happen first lap?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

 

[biggoofy]

Yea only 6 people finished lol

 

[95yjjeep]

It was on lap two. He started the race in 2nd place next to the poll sitter. He was past mile marker 120 when he broke.

 

[DSM Turbos]

From the co-driver on Jeepforum

Well guys, what an awesome day. Seriously, even though we didn't finish we had an amazing run up until aftershock where we just had too many things happen all at once. The belly pan skid bolts either stripped or fell out and the trans dropped, we ratched it back up, moved about 10 ft and broke a u-joint and then took out the ball joints driving another 100 ft over rocks with a broken u-joint.

Man, we had a great first lap though, really moving in the desert and was able to stay out in clean air for the majority of our run which was a huge help. We also one-shot a steep sand hill and past 4-5 guys that were all stuck/broke which was pretty cool.

And yes, we did top out at 77mph, that is accurate according to the gps in front of me

 

[DSM Turbos]

Some more updates from the pit crew - http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f22/project-redlyner-rock-crawler-driven-daily-1046789/index231.html

 

[levellinebrad]

Awesome run Jay. You were looking very stylish and fast. I personally think you looked the fastest and we have built a podium at North Lake for ya. I hear that advance auto has donated some of those bullet hole stickers and AE has donated some sweaters as a prize. Make sure you wear those white sunglasses and race suit when you get back. Good job.

 

[Kamel]

Congrats man, on just being in the big show! You gave it a helluva go. I would love to have half the discipline to put myself in the position to make it.

 

[REDLYNER]

Thanks guys! It was awesome, I couldn't believe how fast the car was. I've never experienced anything like it. Pictures and details to come! Still in California.

 

[rockcity]

This is the only pic I have of Jay on my phone. Staged and ready to head to the start line.

 

[REDLYNER]

All dressed up and no where to race.....

Racing my daily driver mall crawler in the 2013 King of the Hammers EMC.

No great feeling of accomplishment comes without an enormous amount stress and obstacles to overcome. My obstacles started well in advance of arriving in Hammertown, just because my jeep arrived there before the green flag, do not assume anything was easy about it. The first individual to commit to driving my rig out canceled, but that was ok, I anticipated that would happen. He was plan A, but I had a Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, Plan E, and Plan F. Nothing was going to keep me from KOH. So I make a call to Plan B and iron out the details- we are good to go. Well, 4 weeks from race day Plan B cancels on me too. Which brings me to Plan C, it's getting scary close to go time, but plan C commits and says he's "all in."

I guess we all have different definitions of "all in." So 13 days before race day, Plan C bails and will no longer haul the jeep out. Now panic is starting to set in...... I'm way low on options and since I'm flying out with my family (and my trailer was stolen), the jeep must be shipped. It's now too close to leaving for Plan D, so he is out. Plan F is paying a pro shipping company, but they are so unpredictable, it would be a miracle that the jeep arrived on time. So this meant everything was riding on Plan E.

I begged. I bribed. I begged some more. Plan E, Car #4580 in Alabama, commits. I don't have a second thought, this is a true man of his word. Now I have just days to get the rig tightened up enough to do the 18 hour round trip to AL. I make the trip to AL, Jordan loads it up with his race rig, and the mall crawler is now en route to the 2013 King of the Hammers.

Perfect strangers, unforgetable friends.....

The jeep arrives to KOH ahead of me and not a moment too soon, there is work that needs to be done. A lot of work. I was ordering parts to be delivered on the lakebed where my crew: Mike, Art, and Josh would do several days worth of labor in a matter of hours. When I say Mike, Art, and Josh, let me be a little more specific: Mike, my co- driver is from Maryland. I'm out of North Carolina (moved from Colorado) and Mike and I had met one time, 2 years ago at a wheeling event in Virginia. Josh, my wheeling buddy from Colorado, hadn't seen each other in over 5 years, and Art- my local JV expert, I had never met. None of these guys had spoken to each other in person before, yet together on the lakebed, worked like an F1 race team. Once they got their hands on my jeep they cut, grinded, burned, welded, trimmed, tightened, shifted, wired, tuned, tweaked, sweat, bled, swore, tested, and then did it all again to get a car ready for this race...... And I hadn't even arrived yet.

The green flag drops..... but not at KOH....

The family arrives at the airport and I discover the rental car is not what we reserved. I needed an all wheel drive SUV, there are four adults with checked luggage and a baby with a large stroller. No, that 4 door sedan will not do. After an hour of negotiating, we get an SUV. Finally, let's just go get the RV and get to Johnson Valley. I call the RV place to confirm and they say we can't get it today..... WHAT???? It's 3:55pm and if we are not there by 4:15pm they wil not lease it today and they say it's a 30 minute drive.

Gentlemen, start your engines. We fly down the side roads, we nearly two wheel it on the entrance ramps. I swear I nerfed 3 mini-vans in the fast lane. We squeel the tires off the exit and peg the needle down the final straight away. 4:14pm, I burst into their door, their jaws drop and proudly say it was a new record from the Airport to the RV rental. REDLYNER Racing: packed up and rolling heavy, next stop the Mojave Desert.



Jay, if you wouldn't mind, we are trying to work here....

At sun up Tuesday morning, 2 days before race day, the crew was again, wrenching away. My biggest priorities were getting teched and tuned. I take the rig over to King Shocks and have their experts go over the jeep: Pre-load changes up front and spring changes in the rear. Off to the desert for some high speed testing. Better, but still a pretty wild ride. Now Art, Josh, Mike (and Fred) combine their decades of knowledge and start tuning. This wasn't a "Wayne tune", it was better. It was 4 total strangers working their skin off to give me a competitive race car. There was no money in it for them, no seat time, no trophies, just the absolute best of human nature to see this team succeed. There was hope with each wrench turn that maybe we just might have something here.

Tech inspection: check. Passed on the first time through- I lost sleep over it the night before. Now it's time to hit the rocks. This is where we had an unexpected experience, every where I walked, I heard people whispering "that's the mall crawler guy", "Dude, it's the mall crawler". I mean every where. My team would go into Hammertown for parts with the logo on and would be stopped for questions on mall shopping. Random wheelers and racers would ask me for hair product advice. I was asked to show off the Monster fistpump Green shoes multiple times a day. It was hilarious and my group loved every minute of it. Well, most of the group loved it. Hahaha.

Off to Chocolate Thunder, I've never wheeled JV rocks before, but how much different can it be? Totally different. We crept, we crawled, we struggled. Even though we crawled our way through the gate keeper, I could tell my struggles at pivot rock broke some of the confidence of my team. It was going to be a long night of prepping, and without the positive motivation of having just owned the rocks.

I've braved the crowds of Black Friday shopping malls in my jeep, how bad could the desert section be? Let's go prerunning.......

Wednesday shows up as early as every other day and my crew is once again working away. As everything seems to be coming together, I decide that I want to just do like 8 to 10 miles of desert, turn around, head back, and just relax the rest of the day, maybe catch the big boys qualify in the LCQ. Food? Nah. Water? Nope. Tools? Of course not, we'll be right back. We were off. 3 miles down, 8 miles down, 10 miles d............ WHOA!!!!! The jeep starts to slide sideways in the soft sand around 55mph. We're on two wheels with what feels like an unavoidable barrel roll. I floor it and turn into the roll, the jeep corrects, then over corrects and we're on the other two wheels deep into another roll. I floor it again and turn back into this roll and the jeep corrects, landing on all four tires, but now completely sideways and sliding through sand. We must have slid 100', the rig never flopped, I still can't believe it. Mike and I conclude that maaaybe it should have been in 4WD.

The adrenaline is up, so we push on (cutting over to lap 2 course markers): Mile 15, Mile 18..... here come some rocks. A very steep rocky hill climb actually. The comm system starts to crackle, the GPS blinks, then goes out. We're at the top of the climb and the jeep shuts off. Ummmmm.... that's not good. It restarts, then shuts off again 20' later. Now there is zero power. It's 2:00pm in the desert, no clouds. And remember, no water, no food, and you guessed it: NO tools. No need to point out how stupid we were, we know. We are basically at the absolute farthest spot on the track from Hammertown, and there is not a rig in sight. After awhile of walking in circles around the car looking for rocks that could double as socket wrenches (we didn't find any), we hear some voices. As absolute blind, crazy, divine, luck would have it, a group of wheelers from Michigan were just out for a day of rock crawling and parked on the other side of the hill for lunch, having no idea we were broke down just 100 yards away. Mike and I ran up the hill and recruited their help. They were awesome! We went through everything and finally found the burned out ground causing our problems.

Back to Hammertown for parts and wrenching. Green flag drops in 12 hours and we have tons of work to do.

 

[REDLYNER]

Front row tickets to the gun show....

6:30am, the jeep is washed, waxed and lined ready for the parade lap. John and Gerald of SAVVY stop by the mall crawler, Larry and John of CRAWL stop by, the anxiety is starting to build.

We get lined up and Dave Cole starts the count down..... 60 seconds...... 30 seconds....... 3.... 2......1..... GO!!!!!!

Matzell, also on row 1, gets the jump on us. We fall in and chase him to the first big hill climb. We grip the rocks and ride his bumper down to the bottom of the back side. He pulls over and we floor it! We are leading this thing, no one in front of us. I didn't tell my co-driver at the time, but the world went into slow motion for me. I could see everything, every whoop, every grain of sand. We were blasting through the desert. Then, about 4 miles in...... John and Gerald in the Savvy rig showed us what "blasting through the desert" really meant. Hahaha. They passed us at what looked like 100mph. Gerald looked over and flashed a smile. Now we were driving the blind, the dust was like a wall right in front of your face. The good news for us was that Team SAVVY was so fast that we were only in his dust for a few seconds. Hahaha.

We carried on, I pushed the jeep. Mike called out the turns like a seasoned pro. I pushed the jeep harder. My goal was to drive the jeep on the brink of out of control, it was the only way we could be competitive with the talent out there. Everytime the ride felt smooth or out of danger, I floored it.
The miles started to click off, the whoops became flatter. My teams coilover tune was working, I could predict the jeeps lean, sway, and bounce. Over the next 20 to 30 miles, we were passed by 5 or 6 very well built race cars, but to my surprise, that was it. We roll into Pit 1 where Josh has water bottles with straws waiting for us. A quick splash of gas was the the plan..... until it was pointed out that were were running on a flat front tire! While Josh was filling up the gas, another Pit team ran over, lifted the car, and changed my tire as fast as the gas went in. I can't thank those guys enough!!! Josh was awesome: we were in and out and it could not have been faster. I counted 4 cars blow through the pits, opting not to stop. This put us in 10th place...... we would not fall any farther behind the rest of the race.

My confidence was pushing through our aluminum roof, I drove faster. Mike called the course sharper, 38 miles in and we knew the daily driver belonged with these other racers. We get to Mile 48 1/2 (the first major obstacle) and there are two lines up this gnarly, 3' deep sand hill climb. Rigs are stuck or broken everywhere. We patiently waited our turn..... then one shot it up the hill! We get through the rocks and sand having passed around 4 racers in the process. It was clean air from there! We blasted through the whoops and finally to Main Pit. Aside from obliterating a hay bail, it was another smooth stop. 4 gallons of gas and we were gone.

Back into the desert..... it opens up. The dry lakebed is now being pounded by our tires. I floor it. 65mph..... 70mph...... 75mph...... 76mph...... 76.5.... 76.8.......77mph!!!!!! We peg out at 77mph and hold it to the end of the salty flats.

Now the helicoptor is on us..... and stays on us. I swear I drove 10mph faster when the Heli was around. The coptor circled us, paced us- it was like a Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot to the heart.


Mile 73 passes....Then comes Aftershock. We catch up to more racers and again, wait our turn. Mike jumps out and we winch through the first wall..... only to lose our transfer case mount bolts. The fan is in the shroud and we have to pull over. We ratchet strap the skid back on and see a clean line around a bottle neck. We go about 10' then POW! The little Rubi 44 axle driver front U-joint explodes. Day ender..... maybe. To avoid being in the way, I try to limp the jeep off the trail...... but then the busted ears of the drive shaft grab each other and the jeep starts to go! I yell to Mike "we are back in the game!!!" We crawl through another 100' of rocks then KA BLOOIE! Axle shaft and ball joints go. The wheel and tire are now hanging off the axle and we are literally plowing sand and rocks. We winch off to the side and Mike tells me we are done. Like, done done.


I get out of the car smiling ear to ear, and see Mike grinning too. We were around 6th or 7th place getting to Aftershock. To be doing that well, that far into the race, was way more than any of us could have hoped for. That was our victory. We were not driving "to just finish", we were racing, so we went for it. And while our day was cut short, I have no regrets. We pushed a Rubi 44 on 37"s (with 27 spline chromoly outers) way past it limits. We took my daily driver and ran with some incredibly built race cars. This race was so much more than I could have hoped for.

My weakest links were exposed, I'll correct those, and we'll be back for another go at it. Next time, with even more armor all on the dash. And speaking of next time, I won't want to do it without the enormous support of my family, my Charlotte NC crew (Will, Bill), and Mike, Art, and Josh.

 

[rockcity]

Awesome!


I was at pit 2 on Thursday anxiously awaiting you guys to come through. I heard all the breakage on the radio chatter. That was a bummer! Hope you all had a great time!

 

[REDLYNER]

All kidding aside, my heart was pounding out of my chest when you came up to me. To see an NC face right before the flag dropped actually brought my nerves down.




Biggest let down of the entire week: We went to go rescue my jeep off of Aftershock after the race and I left the keys to it in the RV. It took 2 hours to make the round trip again, killing my whole evening of hanging out with all of the other race teams. I'm still frustrated with about that.

 

[AX(J)15_tudor]

Awesome adventure. Loved reading the thread.