straightaxle
11-29-2009, 04:07 PM
Here's the story from the 2009 Baja 1000. Might take me a while to get the pictures on here. This is the long version:
-------------------------------------
Moss Brothers Racing 2009 Baja 1000
The 2009 Baja 1000 was a 672 mile loop that started and finished at the Convention Center in downtown Ensenada. It was made up of the roughest roads and trails that Baja has to offer, and probably the longest and roughest version of this race I have ever seen. The race started on Friday, November 20, the week before Thanksgiving. There were 6 entries signed up this year, including the Dan Wright early Bronco, the Endeavor early Bronco, the Skilton Jeep and a brand new Toyota FJ. The sixth entry was listed as a Jeep from Canada, however they did not start the race and it is still unclear whether their entry counted towards the points or payout.
We had a crew of 16 this year along with 6 chase vehicles. All had been to Baja multiple times, with the exception of Luke Clark, the owner of FourTreks. Luke brought down some of his aluminum camera mounts that we attached to the Bronco, and he fit right in as a new crew member. Dave was not able to make it this year as his dad is fighting cancer and he needed to stay up north.
The preparations began many weeks prior with a great deal of work required on the Bronco after the spindle failure at the Primm 300 race. Essentially all of the internal parts of the front axle were replaced along with brand new spindles and steering rods. Many thanks to Cliff, Robert and of course River City Differential for helping out with that. Thanks to Chris for machining some custom pins for the rear brake calipers that were required because of the size of the new axle housing and spring plates. Thanks to Gary for cutting and bending solid 1 ¼” track bar ends to replace the 30 year old stock pieces that we had been using, and thanks to Dave for welding up the replacement track bars and the new spare radius arm. We also changed the rear springs thanks to Deaver. We added 4 new 70 watt HID carbon fiber POD light assemblies to the top light bar, and many thanks to KC HiLites for providing those. The Ruff Stuff Specialties rear axle had been installed prior to the Primm 300 and only required a quick visual inspection and was found to be in perfect condition. In addition to the work on the Bronco, Dan was busy putting together our maps and pit books and working out the logistics, while Dennis was setting us up with satellite phones. As I said, it takes a lot of hard work from a lot of people to pull these off.
Pete, Chris, Rick, Amber, Tom and Julie all arrived in Baja on Sunday before the race to do some pre-running, with Pete and Chris starting from Ensenada on motorcycles, and the rest on the San Felipe side. They have their own stories to tell about those trips, but they included running out of gas, camping on the trail, changing fuel pumps, a battery failure and banging up suspension. While those guys were already In Mexico, Ken was on his way back from working in Germany. The rest of us filtered in during the week with everyone there for the contingency and tech circus on Thursday, the day before the race.
On race day we were the first entry off the line in our class. For this race SCORE allowed us to start in front of the class 9 cars, the Stock Full Size and Stock Mini classes, all of which we typically have to pick off one at a time as our trucks are consistently faster than these vehicles. We were still behind the 7SX class, and we still had to chase those entries down and pass them. As always there is a tremendous amount of attrition in the first few miles of one of these races, and it is always surprising to me to see entries off to the side of the pavement before we even get out of Ensenada! The Skilton Jeep was last off the line in our class, and caught us in the dust and traffic around mile 15. I slowed and pulled to the left and pointed to the right for him to pass, but instead he darted into the dust and brush on the left! It took another 10 minutes for him to catch up again, and this time he took an alternate trail to pass us. We had talked to the crew beforehand that we needed to focus on staying on the trail and keeping the truck intact for the entire race, so there was certainly no reason to hold up the Jeep in the first 20 miles. We kept them in site for the first 40 miles and but lost them in the dusty and really nasty section right before the road crossing at Ojos Negros as they battled with the lead 7SX truck to get by. Our crew stationed in these sections never reported sighting any of the other entries in the class prior to Ojos Negros.
The races in Mexico are unique for the fact that the race course uses sections of the highway for the race. The highway is not closed off, and it is usually clogged with local traffic, spectators and race support traffic. Race speeds used to be unlimited on the highways, however we are now required to remain below 60 mph, and we are tracked by a GPS system and penalized if we do exceed the limit. The first of these sections was at about race mile (RM) 80. We got on the highway right behind a string of maybe 5 vehicles, all traveling about 25 mph. I could see the other lane was clear, so I pulled out to pass. The first vehicle in the string decided to pull off to the left, and we approached him carefully as he left the highway on that side. Just as we got to the rear of the second car in the line, he decided to follow the first car off the left side, right in front of us! I know, I have driven in the mountains for years, and when one deer jumps out across the road, you ALWAYS look for the second one following the first. So much for what I know! Dan had been blowing the horn the whole time, but likely the boom-boom music in the second car was too loud for him to hear, and since hitting him was not a good option in my mind, I got on the brakes hard and veered to the left. Unfortunately there was a 2 foot deep washout on that side, and I had to go far enough over to miss the first car that was already parked over there and we went into the washout. The left front tire hooked the bank on the other side and dug in, with the nose of the truck following. The truck stood up on the front bumper and the rear of the truck swung to the right. When it came down, it was pointing 90 degrees to the left of the direction we had originally been going. Pete and Chris had been waiting for us about 100 yards further down the road and had watched the whole thing. I put the truck in 4 wheel drive and was a little amazed to find out we could claw our way out of the ditch. The down side was that the steering was clearly messed up and I could not turn much to the right. Chris and Pete quickly took a look at the front end and confirmed that radius arm was bent. Our first scheduled stop was at the BFG pit at about RM 90, and all of our spare parts were already there. The truck seemed to be drivable, so we continued on.
West Coast Broncos supplies us with the extended length radius arms, and up until the week of this race, we had never carried a spare! Well we needed it now, and it was replaced along with the steering drag link at the BFG pit. It was very useful to have the air for tools at the pit, but we were still working with short jacks on a non level surface in the sand! We also found out that BFG uses a different air fitting then we do. Thanks to the Hall Hummer team that stood by and helped out with a few things as they waited for their vehicles. What we did not know at the time, and didn’t find out about until we got home was that the hit had buckled and broken the frame. Somehow we were able to finish with it in this condition.
From there we had The Summit to cross. I know that our crew that covered this part of the course prior to the race gained a lot of respect for it. The climb going east is steep and rocky, but nothing like the descent on the other side! We came across the Householder trophy truck team stuck on the outside of the trail, and since we were already an hour or so down to the Jeep, we stopped to see if we could help. They attached their tow strap, and we pulled them probably 30 feet, but the rear of their truck just slid further off the trail. We indicated that we really needed to go on, and they unhooked their strap. We later heard that they did eventually get moving again, and did finish the race. By the time we got to Cohubuzo junction and entered the dry lake known as Laguna Salada, it was dark and of course dusty. We are still looking for that magic combination of lights that will allow us to see through dust, and I can confirm that we have not found it yet. The air was really not moving, so the dust just hung there, and to top it off, numerous teams had set up their pits randomly on the dry lake! It was impossible to set out across the lake at maximum speed because of the risk of hitting one of these essentially unlit pits, so we carefully worked our way through there. Between race mile 160 and 165 there is some legendary silt and sand, and of course we still had the dust that would not settle, along with numerous cars that were already stuck in the area. The only thing we could do was inch our way through and try to avoid hitting anything. We eventually did make it through without any mishaps. From RM 180 to 200 is some of the roughest terrain I have ever raced in. It does not look that bad, but it just beats you and the truck to a pulp no matter what speed you use. This section was where we had our first flat, with a rock tearing a big hole in the sidewall of a tire. Dan and I changed it with no problems, the new jack mounts that Dave provided for us helped a great deal.
The pit area at Borrego, RM 206, is a full blown circus when we got there. The race course comes through here twice, and every race team has a pit there. There are taco stands set up and thousands of spectators. As we got there, the unlimited classes were coming around after completing their San Felipe loop. We pulled into the BFG pit 2 and they poured in a full load of Sunoco fuel while Ken and Cliff strapped in and took off. Dan and I eventually located the Locos Mocos taco stand and had the last of their fund raiser tacos and then we climbed in the chase trucks to get some sleep. Tom and Rick were covering the San Felipe loop, so we did not have to move from our location at Borrego. Ken and Cliff changed two tires before and in the Matomi area and then as they cleared San Felipe we began to hear on the radio that they were unable to shift to four wheel drive while the truck was moving. Normally the front axle is turning all the time as there no hubs to unlock on this race truck, and as long as the rear tires are not spinning, it will shift with no problem. I groaned because I knew that something was broken in the front axle. We began preparing the pit area behind the BFG semi just in case. When they pulled in, I took a look at the front axles and they were in perfect condition. I had the BFG guys jack up one wheel and I spun the tire. The axle turned freely, but the driveshaft did not move, the spider gears had likely broken and probably destroyed the ring and pinion. There was no way I was going to cover the next 270 or so miles without 4 wheel drive and I made the call to change the front axle. Note that this is about 2 in the morning, and all of us had already been going for probably 20 hours straight, so there were a few “are you sure?” comments made. I insisted (and still think it was the right move) and the crew jumped into the unpleasant task with a vengeance. We carry a complete front axle in the chase truck, but the thing weighs a good 300 pounds, and it is not trivial to replace in the sand. The crew had it done in less than an hour. We did have the use again of the BFG air tools and lights, which helped a great deal. Thanks to the guy who I believe was from Samco in Nevada and there with the Hall team, he jumped in and helped a ton without being asked. Dennis and I strapped in when the work was done and headed off to do the Mike’s loop. We did our share of the last of the San Felipe whoops, and then headed up the canyon at San Matias. We covered the fast Mike’s road fortunately with no dust and with the advantage of 10 KC HID lights. There is nothing worse than having a fast section of graded road to cover and have a slower vehicle somewhere in front of you dusting you out. Beyond Mike’s the trail becomes the infamous Simpson’s hill, the cause of a couple of our Baja 500 DNF’s years ago. Somewhere in this section I apparently caught a big rock with the left front wheel which gashed a big hole in the tire and bent the drag link. The truck would not do anything except turn left at that point, and the only thing I could do was get it up on the side of the road with the rear end hanging half way across the race course, and that’s where we went to work. We were many miles of bad road from our crew, so we had to come up with a fix on our own, since we did not have a spare drag link with us. We finally found a way we could wedge the u-shaped drag link into the front bumper and tie it in with a motorcycle strap and then jack against the front tire until it was somewhat straight. The Hi Lift jack was not cooperating since it had been exposed to the dirt and mud since our first flat tire a couple hundred miles back, but we eventually out lasted it. With the tire changed and the drag link repairs made, we were back on our way just as it began to get light again. At RM 472 we came across a small gathering of race vehicles trying to get through a water crossing. We had no idea that this had been a major road block all night, with dozens of racers hung up here for hours at a time. In fact there had been no traffic through here for a couple of hours at one point until one of the teams had sent a 4 wheel drive back in 20 miles on the course to pull vehicles through from the other side. This truck was still there doing recovery when we got there, and we waited for probably 15 minutes while a mini truck was pulled through. Since we had 4 wheel drive, we had no problem whatsoever.
As Dennis and I approached Valle de Trinidad we were just happy to still be moving and I had not given much thought to the Jeep for many hours. Radio communication is always poor on the approach to this area because of the terrain, but we had relayed ahead to Cliff and Dan that we wanted to strap on a spare set of tie rods and drag link. They responded back and mentioned something about the Jeep being sshhhhkkkksss minutes ahead. I figured there was X hours included in that static during that transmission and didn’t think much about it, but when we got there, they said “No, the Jeep is only 13 minutes ahead of you!”. Oh, well THAT makes a difference! Apparently the Jeep had lost 2 ½ hours at the water crossing and had broken a transfer case prior to that. They had changed it when they had reached the pit at Valle do Trinidad and had left only minutes before we got there! Dennis and I put our heads down and headed for the coast, making excellent time on the cross over road that is carved into the side of the mountain, with the mountain on one side of the trail and a couple thousand feet of drop off on the other. We caught and passed several chase vehicles in this section but could not get around a 5-1600 car because of the dust. Before we reached the end of this section, the steering started to become just a little vague, and as we rounded a right hand turn, it completely stopped steering as we drifted into the mountain on the right side of the road. Dennis was trying to understand what I was mumbling about, and was not amused at all when I demonstrated the ability to turn the steering wheel from lock to lock. We jumped out and had a look, and sure enough, the output shaft on the steering box had sheared off. We carry a spare steering box in each chase truck, but for whatever reason I had pulled the sector shaft from a spare box and stored it on the race truck for the first time this race. These steering boxes and parts are a minimum of 30 years old, with a completely unknown past, and with the abuse we put them through it does not surprise me when a part fails. We usually catch them before they fail, this time we did not. It was relatively easy to change the shaft, with oil running all over the place and parts and tools scattered around, while we were dodging race and chase traffic coming around the corner and squeezing by us on the outside of the hill.
We went on to the final BFG pit at Llano Colorado, where I got a snack (first food and water in many hours) while they fueled the truck, Dennis got out, and Craig got in. Typically we do the next section along the beach in the dark, cold and fog of the very early morning, and in fact Dave and Gary did this section last year. This time it was mid morning, clear, warm and absolutely spectacular. I was still trying to stay in a race, but couldn’t help but notice the size and color of the waves crashing on the coast line. This year they changed it up a little and bypassed the cannon ball rocks along the beach near Erindira for a climb up on the plateau above. The course wound around and around up in this area providing us with plenty opportunities to miss a turn and go off into a ravine. We brought the truck into Santo Tomas where Ken and Iowa Pete were to get in. We had to change a badly bubbled and deflated rear tire. (That’s number 5, if you are keeping track, we only brought 6 spares with us!) Ken and Pete took it on into the finish, and since we were driving by the house on the way to the finish line, I snuck in and had a shower. I guess Ken had eaten a nice breakfast while waiting for us at Santo Tomas. We ended finishing a little over an hour behind the Jeep, with a total time racing of 25:26:55 hours and an average speed of just over 26 mph. The Wright Bronco rolled over in the first 100 miles, the Endeavor Bronco had some kind of drive train failure, and the FJ made it several hundred miles before finally calling it. There were no other finishers. We came in second, but we came away with the SCORE Class 3 Championship for 2009, our 7th SCORE championship!
Once again I would like to thank the dozens of people and companies that make it all happen, not only the ones that spend the countless hours in the chase trucks, but also those that are supplying and making parts for us and those that sit at a computer all night tracking our progress and sending updates to the waiting crews. There are literally thousands of things that can go wrong during one of these races, and it is the combination of people that we have proudly collected together that makes us as successful as we are.
And finally, a thanks to Dave Grundman who has been our crew chief since we started this project back in 2000. He had planned on being at this race and in fact driving a leg to take some load off of Ken and I. He stayed in Elk Grove to be with his dad who is fighting his own battle with cancer. Dave had already lost his father-in-law earlier this year after a long fight with cancer. I know I thought of Dave and his family often during this race, and realized even with all the struggles we had, it was nothing like what they were going through.
-------------------------------------
Moss Brothers Racing 2009 Baja 1000
The 2009 Baja 1000 was a 672 mile loop that started and finished at the Convention Center in downtown Ensenada. It was made up of the roughest roads and trails that Baja has to offer, and probably the longest and roughest version of this race I have ever seen. The race started on Friday, November 20, the week before Thanksgiving. There were 6 entries signed up this year, including the Dan Wright early Bronco, the Endeavor early Bronco, the Skilton Jeep and a brand new Toyota FJ. The sixth entry was listed as a Jeep from Canada, however they did not start the race and it is still unclear whether their entry counted towards the points or payout.
We had a crew of 16 this year along with 6 chase vehicles. All had been to Baja multiple times, with the exception of Luke Clark, the owner of FourTreks. Luke brought down some of his aluminum camera mounts that we attached to the Bronco, and he fit right in as a new crew member. Dave was not able to make it this year as his dad is fighting cancer and he needed to stay up north.
The preparations began many weeks prior with a great deal of work required on the Bronco after the spindle failure at the Primm 300 race. Essentially all of the internal parts of the front axle were replaced along with brand new spindles and steering rods. Many thanks to Cliff, Robert and of course River City Differential for helping out with that. Thanks to Chris for machining some custom pins for the rear brake calipers that were required because of the size of the new axle housing and spring plates. Thanks to Gary for cutting and bending solid 1 ¼” track bar ends to replace the 30 year old stock pieces that we had been using, and thanks to Dave for welding up the replacement track bars and the new spare radius arm. We also changed the rear springs thanks to Deaver. We added 4 new 70 watt HID carbon fiber POD light assemblies to the top light bar, and many thanks to KC HiLites for providing those. The Ruff Stuff Specialties rear axle had been installed prior to the Primm 300 and only required a quick visual inspection and was found to be in perfect condition. In addition to the work on the Bronco, Dan was busy putting together our maps and pit books and working out the logistics, while Dennis was setting us up with satellite phones. As I said, it takes a lot of hard work from a lot of people to pull these off.
Pete, Chris, Rick, Amber, Tom and Julie all arrived in Baja on Sunday before the race to do some pre-running, with Pete and Chris starting from Ensenada on motorcycles, and the rest on the San Felipe side. They have their own stories to tell about those trips, but they included running out of gas, camping on the trail, changing fuel pumps, a battery failure and banging up suspension. While those guys were already In Mexico, Ken was on his way back from working in Germany. The rest of us filtered in during the week with everyone there for the contingency and tech circus on Thursday, the day before the race.
On race day we were the first entry off the line in our class. For this race SCORE allowed us to start in front of the class 9 cars, the Stock Full Size and Stock Mini classes, all of which we typically have to pick off one at a time as our trucks are consistently faster than these vehicles. We were still behind the 7SX class, and we still had to chase those entries down and pass them. As always there is a tremendous amount of attrition in the first few miles of one of these races, and it is always surprising to me to see entries off to the side of the pavement before we even get out of Ensenada! The Skilton Jeep was last off the line in our class, and caught us in the dust and traffic around mile 15. I slowed and pulled to the left and pointed to the right for him to pass, but instead he darted into the dust and brush on the left! It took another 10 minutes for him to catch up again, and this time he took an alternate trail to pass us. We had talked to the crew beforehand that we needed to focus on staying on the trail and keeping the truck intact for the entire race, so there was certainly no reason to hold up the Jeep in the first 20 miles. We kept them in site for the first 40 miles and but lost them in the dusty and really nasty section right before the road crossing at Ojos Negros as they battled with the lead 7SX truck to get by. Our crew stationed in these sections never reported sighting any of the other entries in the class prior to Ojos Negros.
The races in Mexico are unique for the fact that the race course uses sections of the highway for the race. The highway is not closed off, and it is usually clogged with local traffic, spectators and race support traffic. Race speeds used to be unlimited on the highways, however we are now required to remain below 60 mph, and we are tracked by a GPS system and penalized if we do exceed the limit. The first of these sections was at about race mile (RM) 80. We got on the highway right behind a string of maybe 5 vehicles, all traveling about 25 mph. I could see the other lane was clear, so I pulled out to pass. The first vehicle in the string decided to pull off to the left, and we approached him carefully as he left the highway on that side. Just as we got to the rear of the second car in the line, he decided to follow the first car off the left side, right in front of us! I know, I have driven in the mountains for years, and when one deer jumps out across the road, you ALWAYS look for the second one following the first. So much for what I know! Dan had been blowing the horn the whole time, but likely the boom-boom music in the second car was too loud for him to hear, and since hitting him was not a good option in my mind, I got on the brakes hard and veered to the left. Unfortunately there was a 2 foot deep washout on that side, and I had to go far enough over to miss the first car that was already parked over there and we went into the washout. The left front tire hooked the bank on the other side and dug in, with the nose of the truck following. The truck stood up on the front bumper and the rear of the truck swung to the right. When it came down, it was pointing 90 degrees to the left of the direction we had originally been going. Pete and Chris had been waiting for us about 100 yards further down the road and had watched the whole thing. I put the truck in 4 wheel drive and was a little amazed to find out we could claw our way out of the ditch. The down side was that the steering was clearly messed up and I could not turn much to the right. Chris and Pete quickly took a look at the front end and confirmed that radius arm was bent. Our first scheduled stop was at the BFG pit at about RM 90, and all of our spare parts were already there. The truck seemed to be drivable, so we continued on.
West Coast Broncos supplies us with the extended length radius arms, and up until the week of this race, we had never carried a spare! Well we needed it now, and it was replaced along with the steering drag link at the BFG pit. It was very useful to have the air for tools at the pit, but we were still working with short jacks on a non level surface in the sand! We also found out that BFG uses a different air fitting then we do. Thanks to the Hall Hummer team that stood by and helped out with a few things as they waited for their vehicles. What we did not know at the time, and didn’t find out about until we got home was that the hit had buckled and broken the frame. Somehow we were able to finish with it in this condition.
From there we had The Summit to cross. I know that our crew that covered this part of the course prior to the race gained a lot of respect for it. The climb going east is steep and rocky, but nothing like the descent on the other side! We came across the Householder trophy truck team stuck on the outside of the trail, and since we were already an hour or so down to the Jeep, we stopped to see if we could help. They attached their tow strap, and we pulled them probably 30 feet, but the rear of their truck just slid further off the trail. We indicated that we really needed to go on, and they unhooked their strap. We later heard that they did eventually get moving again, and did finish the race. By the time we got to Cohubuzo junction and entered the dry lake known as Laguna Salada, it was dark and of course dusty. We are still looking for that magic combination of lights that will allow us to see through dust, and I can confirm that we have not found it yet. The air was really not moving, so the dust just hung there, and to top it off, numerous teams had set up their pits randomly on the dry lake! It was impossible to set out across the lake at maximum speed because of the risk of hitting one of these essentially unlit pits, so we carefully worked our way through there. Between race mile 160 and 165 there is some legendary silt and sand, and of course we still had the dust that would not settle, along with numerous cars that were already stuck in the area. The only thing we could do was inch our way through and try to avoid hitting anything. We eventually did make it through without any mishaps. From RM 180 to 200 is some of the roughest terrain I have ever raced in. It does not look that bad, but it just beats you and the truck to a pulp no matter what speed you use. This section was where we had our first flat, with a rock tearing a big hole in the sidewall of a tire. Dan and I changed it with no problems, the new jack mounts that Dave provided for us helped a great deal.
The pit area at Borrego, RM 206, is a full blown circus when we got there. The race course comes through here twice, and every race team has a pit there. There are taco stands set up and thousands of spectators. As we got there, the unlimited classes were coming around after completing their San Felipe loop. We pulled into the BFG pit 2 and they poured in a full load of Sunoco fuel while Ken and Cliff strapped in and took off. Dan and I eventually located the Locos Mocos taco stand and had the last of their fund raiser tacos and then we climbed in the chase trucks to get some sleep. Tom and Rick were covering the San Felipe loop, so we did not have to move from our location at Borrego. Ken and Cliff changed two tires before and in the Matomi area and then as they cleared San Felipe we began to hear on the radio that they were unable to shift to four wheel drive while the truck was moving. Normally the front axle is turning all the time as there no hubs to unlock on this race truck, and as long as the rear tires are not spinning, it will shift with no problem. I groaned because I knew that something was broken in the front axle. We began preparing the pit area behind the BFG semi just in case. When they pulled in, I took a look at the front axles and they were in perfect condition. I had the BFG guys jack up one wheel and I spun the tire. The axle turned freely, but the driveshaft did not move, the spider gears had likely broken and probably destroyed the ring and pinion. There was no way I was going to cover the next 270 or so miles without 4 wheel drive and I made the call to change the front axle. Note that this is about 2 in the morning, and all of us had already been going for probably 20 hours straight, so there were a few “are you sure?” comments made. I insisted (and still think it was the right move) and the crew jumped into the unpleasant task with a vengeance. We carry a complete front axle in the chase truck, but the thing weighs a good 300 pounds, and it is not trivial to replace in the sand. The crew had it done in less than an hour. We did have the use again of the BFG air tools and lights, which helped a great deal. Thanks to the guy who I believe was from Samco in Nevada and there with the Hall team, he jumped in and helped a ton without being asked. Dennis and I strapped in when the work was done and headed off to do the Mike’s loop. We did our share of the last of the San Felipe whoops, and then headed up the canyon at San Matias. We covered the fast Mike’s road fortunately with no dust and with the advantage of 10 KC HID lights. There is nothing worse than having a fast section of graded road to cover and have a slower vehicle somewhere in front of you dusting you out. Beyond Mike’s the trail becomes the infamous Simpson’s hill, the cause of a couple of our Baja 500 DNF’s years ago. Somewhere in this section I apparently caught a big rock with the left front wheel which gashed a big hole in the tire and bent the drag link. The truck would not do anything except turn left at that point, and the only thing I could do was get it up on the side of the road with the rear end hanging half way across the race course, and that’s where we went to work. We were many miles of bad road from our crew, so we had to come up with a fix on our own, since we did not have a spare drag link with us. We finally found a way we could wedge the u-shaped drag link into the front bumper and tie it in with a motorcycle strap and then jack against the front tire until it was somewhat straight. The Hi Lift jack was not cooperating since it had been exposed to the dirt and mud since our first flat tire a couple hundred miles back, but we eventually out lasted it. With the tire changed and the drag link repairs made, we were back on our way just as it began to get light again. At RM 472 we came across a small gathering of race vehicles trying to get through a water crossing. We had no idea that this had been a major road block all night, with dozens of racers hung up here for hours at a time. In fact there had been no traffic through here for a couple of hours at one point until one of the teams had sent a 4 wheel drive back in 20 miles on the course to pull vehicles through from the other side. This truck was still there doing recovery when we got there, and we waited for probably 15 minutes while a mini truck was pulled through. Since we had 4 wheel drive, we had no problem whatsoever.
As Dennis and I approached Valle de Trinidad we were just happy to still be moving and I had not given much thought to the Jeep for many hours. Radio communication is always poor on the approach to this area because of the terrain, but we had relayed ahead to Cliff and Dan that we wanted to strap on a spare set of tie rods and drag link. They responded back and mentioned something about the Jeep being sshhhhkkkksss minutes ahead. I figured there was X hours included in that static during that transmission and didn’t think much about it, but when we got there, they said “No, the Jeep is only 13 minutes ahead of you!”. Oh, well THAT makes a difference! Apparently the Jeep had lost 2 ½ hours at the water crossing and had broken a transfer case prior to that. They had changed it when they had reached the pit at Valle do Trinidad and had left only minutes before we got there! Dennis and I put our heads down and headed for the coast, making excellent time on the cross over road that is carved into the side of the mountain, with the mountain on one side of the trail and a couple thousand feet of drop off on the other. We caught and passed several chase vehicles in this section but could not get around a 5-1600 car because of the dust. Before we reached the end of this section, the steering started to become just a little vague, and as we rounded a right hand turn, it completely stopped steering as we drifted into the mountain on the right side of the road. Dennis was trying to understand what I was mumbling about, and was not amused at all when I demonstrated the ability to turn the steering wheel from lock to lock. We jumped out and had a look, and sure enough, the output shaft on the steering box had sheared off. We carry a spare steering box in each chase truck, but for whatever reason I had pulled the sector shaft from a spare box and stored it on the race truck for the first time this race. These steering boxes and parts are a minimum of 30 years old, with a completely unknown past, and with the abuse we put them through it does not surprise me when a part fails. We usually catch them before they fail, this time we did not. It was relatively easy to change the shaft, with oil running all over the place and parts and tools scattered around, while we were dodging race and chase traffic coming around the corner and squeezing by us on the outside of the hill.
We went on to the final BFG pit at Llano Colorado, where I got a snack (first food and water in many hours) while they fueled the truck, Dennis got out, and Craig got in. Typically we do the next section along the beach in the dark, cold and fog of the very early morning, and in fact Dave and Gary did this section last year. This time it was mid morning, clear, warm and absolutely spectacular. I was still trying to stay in a race, but couldn’t help but notice the size and color of the waves crashing on the coast line. This year they changed it up a little and bypassed the cannon ball rocks along the beach near Erindira for a climb up on the plateau above. The course wound around and around up in this area providing us with plenty opportunities to miss a turn and go off into a ravine. We brought the truck into Santo Tomas where Ken and Iowa Pete were to get in. We had to change a badly bubbled and deflated rear tire. (That’s number 5, if you are keeping track, we only brought 6 spares with us!) Ken and Pete took it on into the finish, and since we were driving by the house on the way to the finish line, I snuck in and had a shower. I guess Ken had eaten a nice breakfast while waiting for us at Santo Tomas. We ended finishing a little over an hour behind the Jeep, with a total time racing of 25:26:55 hours and an average speed of just over 26 mph. The Wright Bronco rolled over in the first 100 miles, the Endeavor Bronco had some kind of drive train failure, and the FJ made it several hundred miles before finally calling it. There were no other finishers. We came in second, but we came away with the SCORE Class 3 Championship for 2009, our 7th SCORE championship!
Once again I would like to thank the dozens of people and companies that make it all happen, not only the ones that spend the countless hours in the chase trucks, but also those that are supplying and making parts for us and those that sit at a computer all night tracking our progress and sending updates to the waiting crews. There are literally thousands of things that can go wrong during one of these races, and it is the combination of people that we have proudly collected together that makes us as successful as we are.
And finally, a thanks to Dave Grundman who has been our crew chief since we started this project back in 2000. He had planned on being at this race and in fact driving a leg to take some load off of Ken and I. He stayed in Elk Grove to be with his dad who is fighting his own battle with cancer. Dave had already lost his father-in-law earlier this year after a long fight with cancer. I know I thought of Dave and his family often during this race, and realized even with all the struggles we had, it was nothing like what they were going through.