RustyNailJustin
Supporting Vendor
The toughest 1 day off road race in the world is over for 2019 and man what a rid it was.
Here is our 2 week recap.
Christopher Bird, Andrew Walkup, Josh Brown and I were loading up the morning of January 26 when Kelly Adams Reece noticed her truck had been robbed the night before. We fanned out and found her wallet in a bush missing only the cash. Win #1.
We departed mid day and had a smooth trip with 3 tow rigs and trailers. We rolled into Johnson Valley at 4 am and decided to watch the sun come up. Then even after 17 hours of driving the desire to go explore the desert was to much and we took the 60 and 45 out on a desert lap.
The next day we started working with Charles Black at Robert Otwell shop in Lucerne Valley to help finish the 4602. Charles had a huge list of things to get done and it was a blast to come together as a team to help.
Robert is a very talented fabricator and always had an amazing attitude the whole time, even with a bunch of strangers in his shop. It was our pleasure.
After 4602 went out for it's wrap and exhaust we got back to work on our camp and shakedown of the 4619.
We had some hurtles to cross with Matthew Lowe not being able to make it due to an emergency. But our team stepped up big. Between Kelly, Audra Luther, Rob Tygart, Wendy Tygart. They handled it and our team was well fed the whole time. You guys are amazing.
We spent the next few days testing and tuning the suspension. The Carl and Tyler from ADS were amazing ant making my car even faster that it was. I basically had to learn how to drive it again.
We did find a bug in the new steering box and trail gear had someone drop one off at the lakebed.
We got that fixed and after about 70 miles on the 4619 we left it alone feeling it was ready to race.
We spent our free time prerunning the course, where I was detained by the Marines for a short time due to a miss communication on their part. I was let go and I will tell that story later
.
Tech and Contingency was a breeze and Tuesday night Moore McEvil our crew chief did a fantastic job of leading our pit crew plan and got everyone lined out.
Wednesday the 6th was cold and Amy Ryan Jordan was nice enough to pre stage my car so I could stay warm till it was time to gear up.
I could feel my angst and I was ready to get in the driver seat and get into the desert.
We started mid pack and took the green flag. Mat Carpentier and I tore into the desert, passing a couple cars early within the first few miles. Once we got into the flat lake bed a couple of the faster jeeps passed us but I had no worries. We made it to the first remote pit and kept moving. From here the next 40 ish miles were extremely rough desert cross grain. Lots of places to make mistakes but one of the places I feel real comfortable. We passed some many 4600, 4500,4800 cars here it was insane. I questioned if I was pushing to hard. Mat kept yelling "easy, easy!!!"
We were having a blast and our hands and feet were frozen we even saw a few places there was snow.
We made it to Cougar Buttes and there was a minor traffic jam with one car rolled into a hole and others getting around. We followed poor boy racing Brian McNamara through most of the challenging spots. These brothers are great competitors, I always love seeing and racing them. I felt on Pace when we saw them. We finished the first lap with no issue other than a check engine light on and a minor drive shaft vibration. We rolled into main pit for fuel a quick check and got Bird swapped into the codog seat. We were off into lap 2 and into the mixed lap of the race, filled with tough rock canyons and fast desert in between. We started chipping away at the tough rock canyons one at a time and passing a ton of other teams. We had to winch in Claw hammer and I appreciated the help from other teams that helped get us through there that were broken. We even gave a 4800 team some water that was over heating.
We made our way into wrecking ball. The top is a nasty off camber waterfall. If you hit it wrong you are in for a nasty tumble into the bottom. But we nailed it! Bird got real quite cause I am pretty sure he s*** his pants.
We continued to hammer away at the trails and the competition. We ran into a bottle neck in Jack North. Bird jumped out and started helping other teams to get them out of our way. This is the first time we saw 4688 the race leader and we were only a few cars behind him. We finally got clear of Jack North and the chase was on! We pushed hard to try and catch him but our team said he was still leading us by 10 min.
We cleared the last rock trail taking a few nasty lines in aftershock to get by other class rigs stuck or broke.
We were going fast headed for Emerson dry lake. We had a bad driveline vibration at this point with a dented driveshaft and bent pinion flange. We dipped into a deep ravine and 4688 was broke down in the bottom. I don't know what went wrong but they were out of the car and looked very sad to see us. We pushed on.
We crossed the lakebed as fast as we could with the bent driveshaft at about 75 mph. We took a slight wrong turn and got lost for a few mins. But we looked at a different map and got back on track. We were within 15 miles of the finish and I got ahold of Kurt Williams on the radio. It sounded like we had a good buffer in the people behind us. We kept pushing at a place to make sure we would not make a mistake but still pushing hard. We finished the last Sand Hill and desert cross grain with a couple drones following us in. We crossed the Jeep Arch and came back into the short course to take the checkered flag. The crowd was going crazy as they kept us in detention to check our tracker to confirm our win.
Dave Cole cane out and was all smiles and hugs to congratulate us. It was an amazing feeling. We pulled into the stage and told our store to the people watching. I think we inspired some people that day, winning a race in a car that is a true spirit of stock class.
Another huge thanks to my wife Kelly, friends and supporters. There is no way we could have touched this without you. I love you guys.
Please post up your pics and videos on this thread.
Here is our 2 week recap.
Christopher Bird, Andrew Walkup, Josh Brown and I were loading up the morning of January 26 when Kelly Adams Reece noticed her truck had been robbed the night before. We fanned out and found her wallet in a bush missing only the cash. Win #1.
We departed mid day and had a smooth trip with 3 tow rigs and trailers. We rolled into Johnson Valley at 4 am and decided to watch the sun come up. Then even after 17 hours of driving the desire to go explore the desert was to much and we took the 60 and 45 out on a desert lap.
The next day we started working with Charles Black at Robert Otwell shop in Lucerne Valley to help finish the 4602. Charles had a huge list of things to get done and it was a blast to come together as a team to help.
Robert is a very talented fabricator and always had an amazing attitude the whole time, even with a bunch of strangers in his shop. It was our pleasure.
After 4602 went out for it's wrap and exhaust we got back to work on our camp and shakedown of the 4619.
We had some hurtles to cross with Matthew Lowe not being able to make it due to an emergency. But our team stepped up big. Between Kelly, Audra Luther, Rob Tygart, Wendy Tygart. They handled it and our team was well fed the whole time. You guys are amazing.
We spent the next few days testing and tuning the suspension. The Carl and Tyler from ADS were amazing ant making my car even faster that it was. I basically had to learn how to drive it again.
We did find a bug in the new steering box and trail gear had someone drop one off at the lakebed.
We got that fixed and after about 70 miles on the 4619 we left it alone feeling it was ready to race.
We spent our free time prerunning the course, where I was detained by the Marines for a short time due to a miss communication on their part. I was let go and I will tell that story later
.Tech and Contingency was a breeze and Tuesday night Moore McEvil our crew chief did a fantastic job of leading our pit crew plan and got everyone lined out.
Wednesday the 6th was cold and Amy Ryan Jordan was nice enough to pre stage my car so I could stay warm till it was time to gear up.
I could feel my angst and I was ready to get in the driver seat and get into the desert.
We started mid pack and took the green flag. Mat Carpentier and I tore into the desert, passing a couple cars early within the first few miles. Once we got into the flat lake bed a couple of the faster jeeps passed us but I had no worries. We made it to the first remote pit and kept moving. From here the next 40 ish miles were extremely rough desert cross grain. Lots of places to make mistakes but one of the places I feel real comfortable. We passed some many 4600, 4500,4800 cars here it was insane. I questioned if I was pushing to hard. Mat kept yelling "easy, easy!!!"
We were having a blast and our hands and feet were frozen we even saw a few places there was snow.
We made it to Cougar Buttes and there was a minor traffic jam with one car rolled into a hole and others getting around. We followed poor boy racing Brian McNamara through most of the challenging spots. These brothers are great competitors, I always love seeing and racing them. I felt on Pace when we saw them. We finished the first lap with no issue other than a check engine light on and a minor drive shaft vibration. We rolled into main pit for fuel a quick check and got Bird swapped into the codog seat. We were off into lap 2 and into the mixed lap of the race, filled with tough rock canyons and fast desert in between. We started chipping away at the tough rock canyons one at a time and passing a ton of other teams. We had to winch in Claw hammer and I appreciated the help from other teams that helped get us through there that were broken. We even gave a 4800 team some water that was over heating.
We made our way into wrecking ball. The top is a nasty off camber waterfall. If you hit it wrong you are in for a nasty tumble into the bottom. But we nailed it! Bird got real quite cause I am pretty sure he s*** his pants.
We continued to hammer away at the trails and the competition. We ran into a bottle neck in Jack North. Bird jumped out and started helping other teams to get them out of our way. This is the first time we saw 4688 the race leader and we were only a few cars behind him. We finally got clear of Jack North and the chase was on! We pushed hard to try and catch him but our team said he was still leading us by 10 min.
We cleared the last rock trail taking a few nasty lines in aftershock to get by other class rigs stuck or broke.
We were going fast headed for Emerson dry lake. We had a bad driveline vibration at this point with a dented driveshaft and bent pinion flange. We dipped into a deep ravine and 4688 was broke down in the bottom. I don't know what went wrong but they were out of the car and looked very sad to see us. We pushed on.
We crossed the lakebed as fast as we could with the bent driveshaft at about 75 mph. We took a slight wrong turn and got lost for a few mins. But we looked at a different map and got back on track. We were within 15 miles of the finish and I got ahold of Kurt Williams on the radio. It sounded like we had a good buffer in the people behind us. We kept pushing at a place to make sure we would not make a mistake but still pushing hard. We finished the last Sand Hill and desert cross grain with a couple drones following us in. We crossed the Jeep Arch and came back into the short course to take the checkered flag. The crowd was going crazy as they kept us in detention to check our tracker to confirm our win.
Dave Cole cane out and was all smiles and hugs to congratulate us. It was an amazing feeling. We pulled into the stage and told our store to the people watching. I think we inspired some people that day, winning a race in a car that is a true spirit of stock class.
Another huge thanks to my wife Kelly, friends and supporters. There is no way we could have touched this without you. I love you guys.
Please post up your pics and videos on this thread.
