Warn National Rock Crawling Championship

11/18/99

by

Steve Friend

 

How did this all begin? 

8 months ago, while visiting at Tri-County, Jason Bunch and I talked about another Rock Crawling Challenge being held at the Hammers, just Northwest of Yucca Valley, Calif.  I mentioned that I would sure like to compete in this event but decided right then and there that I did not want to suffer the damage that it (I) might cause. 

 

Several weeks later, the discussion came up again on the internet.  One of my “friends” sent me the info again.  My interest was again spurred.  This time, I read the rules through and decided to give Bob Hazel a call to see just what was involved.  Bob has put on a few of these challenges and was very informative.  Then, a friend of mine from out of state suggested that he would like to do the challenge and the rest is history.  Bob Hazel let both of us know that we had both been selected along with Jason.   Now what were we to do?  We both had several opportunities to back out, until the first sponsor money came in, that is.  Then we felt committed.

 

6 months went by quickly, and all of a sudden I had to get ready.  Lots of friends had made suggestions about equipment, things to build, things to take off, or just things.  I listened, again thinking, what the heck am I doing?  Heck, Jason was competing and building a whole new Jeep.  I should be able to modify mine a bit, no problem!

 

After a few calls to suppliers and with friends supporting my efforts (standing behind me, I might add), I obtained a few sponsors to help with the expenses.   I started to look at the Jeep to see what needed to be done to be a competitor.  I decided I needed to get the Jeep lighter, I had some exhaust work to do (things were beginning to rub after all the 4x4 trips),  and some new tires.  The Super Swampers were fine for everyday runs, but if I was going to compete, I felt I needed to gain the maximum traction and that meant new tires.  In addition, my rock sliders were the worse for wear and they should be replaced.  Heck, I had time to build new ones, and I had the steel.  My wife was beginning to hate me.  To make matters worse,  every time I started to think about the event, I got butterfly’s in my stomach.   I have never done anything like this before and had not a clue what to expect.  I poured through photographs from Las Cruces and Farmington to see what they did.  I talked to a lot of folks.  I guess I was ready to start.

 

First thing was pick a spotter.  The rules state that it was advisable to have a spotter and I was going to take advantage of that rule.  My choice was pretty easy, and that  was Paul Beckman, if he would do it.  Paul and I have wheel’d together for years. He knows me and how I drive and I know him.  We totally trust one another, an important item in this event.  With Paul’s background, he stays in good shape, and I figured that he would be doing a lot of running, pushing, pulling, and rock moving.   Of course, just picking a spotter is the easy part, we needed to practice.  In the past, neither one of us actually had used a spotter as a regular thing. So, off we went to the Hammers for some practice.  Coincidently, the weekend that we picked was the same weekend as the 7.2 earthquake centered 30 miles away from our camp.  An interesting way to start a weekend.   Paul and I found that the spotter/driver coordination was not as easy as it sounded and by the end of the weekend, we felt we made a fine team. 

 

Now for the Jeep modifications:  First, off came the spare tire and jerry can rack that I had designed and fabricated.  I removed my custom fabricated storage box with its spare parts, welding equipment, tools, tool box, etc.  Next off came the tail gate and I purchased a prerunner type of spare tire mount and mounted it into the bed of the Jeep.  A 35" tire just fits in between the  fender wells by the way.  I emptied out the MasterRac boxes of the spare stuff and then had to figure out what kind of spare stuff and tools I needed to stuff in them. 

 

Tools?  I selected the necessary sockets in case I busted an axle,  a wrench for the drivelines, Allen wrench, pliers, snap ring pliers, picks, spindle nut, and ½" drive ratchet for hub removal, ½" impact wrench for tire removal, welding cables, goggles, and welding rod, and of course a hammer.

 

Spare Parts:  A pair of front axles, drivelines and universal joints.  

 

A few months earlier I had replaced all the axles and hubs with the new Warn Full Floaters in the rear and the new hubs and axles in the front.  These things are outstanding and I felt I had bought the best and did not have to worry about them.  The likely hood of breaking an axle was pretty minimum.  I talked non stop with Warn about their hubs, and they were confident that I would not have a problem with exploding hubs.  I decided to take extra hubs and my old axles anyway and stored them under the tire mount. 

 

Rock sliders:  Trying to gain as much ground clearance as possible, I decided to contact Sun Performance instead of making my own.  These things are beefy.  I liked the way they tied into the body, fit around and under the rocker panel, and were supported on the underside.  I really liked the rounded feature at the base of the rocker panel that stood out from the body some to insure the rocks stay at bay, away from the body. 

 

Tires:  The tires I bought from 4 Wheel Parts Wholesalers.  I decided to stay with the Super Swamper TSL SX’s.  I have used these tires for a couple of years now and I think they work well for me.  I did head off to America’s Tire for sipping though.  I decided I needed all the extra traction advantage I could get. 

 

Exhaust:  My exhaust problems were handled and moved a little closer to the floor for ground clearance.  I was done. 

 

Support equipment:   My friend Phil DeMarco volunteered to bring his enclosed trailer out to Means Dry Lake, with a welder, tool roll-a-way, press, and drill press installed and leave his Jeep at home.  Man, what a sacrifice.  I had other friends that would lend a hand if I needed it at the end of the day.  I decided to take my F250 4x4 pickup for Phil to use to travel to the events, and of course, the motorhome had to be packed, and the trailer readied. 

Thursday, November 18th arrived quickly and we headed out for Yucca Valley for registration.  My wife had taken the days off as did my daughter from both work and college.  Registration was handled smoothly by Bob Hazel and some volunteers.  I looked on in horror as a volunteer started plastering sponsor stickers all over my Jeep.  Good thing I had a gazillon coats of wax on that Ferrari Red Jeep!.  When we were done, I sported a true looking race Jeep.  Kind of neat actually.  My number in the event was #25.   That evening we had a drivers meeting to lay out the rules of the competition and try to answer all of our silly questions.  When we arrived back at camp, we found most of the club members had arrived and so had most of my internet friends.  Bart Jacobs and Mike Garner were there as well, competing in the event along with me.  Oh, there was this great big banner up 15 feet in the air, in red and black letters on a white background, lit up with lights that read:

 

“1999 Warn National Rock Crawling Championship,

STEVE FRIEND,

Sponsored by West Coast 4Wheel Drive Club and Friends”. 

 Man, that was great.  I was a bit embarrassed and now really nervous.  Paul looked calm as could be. 

 

Friday morning at 7am, we were heading out for our first event.  The even numbered rigs were heading for Wrecking Ball, while the odd number rigs were heading for Claw Hammer.  We were told that although the conventional trails would be used, they had laid out a few new obstacles for us, just to make it interesting. 

 

Here is a bit of the type of trail obstacles and some scoring:

 

Each trail had a series of Stages. Claw Hammer had 7 and Wrecking Ball had 6. Each Stage had 3-7 “Gates”.  Each team received 20 points at each Stage.  Penalties would occur in the following manor. 

 

-1pt     - Ceasing forward progress for 5 seconds

-2pt     - Intentional reversing

-6pt     - Knocking down a gate

-10 pt  - Under Penalty (breaking down and not maintaining your place in line)

-14pt   - Using a winch or other “tool” to assist in progress

-20 pt  - Exceeding the time limit for a stage

-20pt   - Driving over the top of a gate

-20pt   - Not wearing a seat belt

-10 pt to total disqualification  - Blocking the course

-10pt   to total disqualification - Interfering with another team

Immediate disqualification - Use of any alcohol or drug just prior to or during the official event.  Possession of any alcohol beverage container during the competition. 

 

A contestant could not get worse than -20 points or 0, but you could get more than that as each gate you successfully passed through, you received 2 points.  Doesn’t seem too hard does it?  Oh, one more small thing, the contestants could not walk the course before hand. 

 

After watching 11 rigs in front of us, most of which had a very hard time at the first gate, even to seeing a couple of rollovers at the 3rd gate,  a busted universal joint at the 1st gate, and several flat tires, we had our strategy ready.  Slow and easy.  We almost aced this Stage, with the exception of one reverse.   Not a bad start. 

 

The second, third and forth were pretty much the same with a couple of perfect scores and one 15 pt. score.  Then a bit of a problem with the 5th stage. I broke my passenger side axle. I have no idea why it busted, even reviewing the video later did not tell me a thing.  I had 20 minutes to fix or replace the axle without penalty.  We finished in 19.999 minutes.  I lost my position, and ended up behind Jason Bunch.  He wanted to know what happened.  When I told him the front axle busted, he asked if any of the bystanders had a cell phone.  He ordered the darn thing right then and there.  It was in camp, as a spare the next morning. Now I call that service.  I pointed out (0) points at the next Stage and my day was over.  115 points on this trail. 

 

Saturday AM found us at the beginning of Wrecking Ball. They had reversed the order of contestants with the last person going first this time.  I watched some fine driving, but some were hitting the first gate, losing some points.  Paul and I aced it.  Man, I was feeling good.  The next Stage had some interesting parts to it.  We could see in the distance, rigs having to climb a sheer wall, and what looked like falling over to the drivers side to miss what we could only guess.  There was a couple of gates I had to get through first, but we did not see them as a problem. When our turn was up, we made the first gate, headed for the next gate, when I high centered, and I could not get off the darn rock.  I jumped out of the Jeep to help Paul stack rocks,  but the Jeep was too well hung up. Paul and realized the mistake and I timed out, damn. 

 

Out came the winch and we got the heck out of there.  The next obstacle was immediately after this one, like 10 feet or so it seemed.  I was still thinking about the last stage, getting hung up where I should have walked over the trail with ease.  The judges were insisting on me getting going, so we lined up and started. This spot looked too easy and we should have suspected otherwise.  I started climbing up with my left tire, the right rear hit the gate, and I was declared out of bounds.  It was over and I zeroed again.  We were both depressed and had to regroup.  We needed to get our heads back on again.  I found out later that 48 others had zeroed out on this same site so I should not have been so hard on myself.

 

Paul and I crawled to the next site and waited.  Apparently this one was pretty tough and there had already been a roll over, broken axles, bent sheet metal, etc.  Great, I was thinking.  Paul and I discussed it as the rigs in front of us tackled the spot.  We decided on our strategy and then it was our turn.  The little Samari in front of me did a pretty good job of getting over the rocks, and in a good time.  There was a part of the trail that Paul and I could not see, and that was a spot where everyone was really having trouble.  As we were getting ready to start, a spectator accidently stepped on a rock above the course and it toppled right into our path.  I mean a big rock.  We decided to stay with our plan and started.  2:41 minutes later, we were through.  We did not hang up, break anything,  hit anything, or turn the Jeep over.  The crowd was going wild.  Paul and I were very happy and back in the running.  We maxed out our points.  We found out later, that we had the maximum points and the fastest time of any of the contestants, at least that is what the judge said.   Nice change.

 

The next and final obstacle was much different than the rest.  It looked like a power hill at the beginning but we could not see the rest of the trail.  We heard other rigs in front of us, we heard power, grinding, scrapes, etc.  I powered up the hill as Paul made a bee line to see what we were in for.  We found ourselves looking at a long (100 yards) trail in a large rock garden.  We started out pretty good, until I made a mistake, I moved to the left, instead of to the right around a rock and that was it, stuck again.  I was able to back up and start again, but alas, time had run out.

 

We finished up the trail without any other incidents, but of course there were no more gates to cross either.  We were back in camp by 2:00pm.  That evening, the points were tallied and I came in 24th out of the 60.  Not bad considering I have never done anything like this before.  I was disappointed about making the mistakes, but that’s the way it goes. 

 

Sunday we watched the 12 finalists.  Jason Bunch from Tri County Gear made it and did pretty good, 5th place overall.  The winners were the two rock buggies from Avalanche Engineering, from back East. 

 

 

What won?  Good driving of course, large (r) tires, lots of ground clearance, power (but Jason was driving a 4 cylinder), and no breaks.  I was impressed with the Judges.  I understand that they were solicited as volunteers.  They did a great job and I believe unbiased.  Bob Hazel and his help from Victor Valley 4x4 club did a great job in presenting the trail, obstacles, and keeping the event organized. 

 

Would I do it again?  No, probably not.  I am not too sure why I did it in the first place, other than it being another challenge that I could never do again, this close to home.  But, like I said earlier, I had a great time.  I have a few sponsors that I want to thank.  They helped make the event easier and worth while.  I met some great people and had friends from all over the country show up to watch and cheer us and my friend Bart Jacobs on. 

 

You know that I had to have some carnage:  Absolutely no body damage.  I did not want to scrape my paint, so I added lots of wax to better slip around the rocks (joke, this is a joke).  This was important to me.  I had made up my mind that if it happened, then so be it.  But it was nice that I was able to do this challenging event and just have to dust the rig off afterwards.  I scrapped up the Sun Performance Rock Sliders.  Eric from Sun Performance was there watching the event and happy with the way they performed and so was I.  I broke the Warn axle and Warn is looking into that at this writing.  I damaged both drivelines.  Both are being repaired by Tri County Gear.  

 

 

Steve Friend and Paul Beckman

 

 

 

Sponsors

 

Anchor Muffler

C&M Enterprises

Kilby Enterprises (Custom Air Compressor Systems)       

Parker Aerospace

Parker Seal (Rod Chambers)

Private Internet Jeep Site Members Cash Donations

Pull Pal and Premier Welder

Sun Performance

Short Fuse Racing (Brian Chapman)       

Tri- County Gear           

Truck-Lite         

West Coast 4x4 Club

West Coast 4x4 Club Members (Individual Cash Donations) and out and out physical help.

4x4 Doctor

4 Wheel Parts Wholesalers