[carwash]

kirby's recap copy/pasted from pirte...

checking in from El Paso tonight. We are beat and decided to grab a hotel. Everything went as well as I could have hoped for during the week. We ended up pre-running the first 35 miles of the course on Monday and bent the Rock Equipment sway bar arms as we entered chocolate thunder. I had torchmate cut some new arms out of 3/16" and Dan and the guys at Ruffstuff pit were more than happy to let me use their space and welder to build the new arms.

During the week I was getting some cavitation in the steering system and talked to Tom at PSC where I learned the dual pump setup is very difficult to accomplish, so we deleted one of the pumps for the race. Got to thank Tom for the advice on that.

The guys at KING shocks happened to be out past hammertown when we were testing shocks and saw us do a few passes. The front end was packing up and they immediately told us to come by their trailer and pull the front shocks so they could re-valve them. Can't thank them enough for their support. Carwash and I were pretty beat up and soar after the first 35 miles of pre-running, and needless to say we ran harder and faster during the 62 miles of race we completed and we are not even sore. We were able to sustain about 50 mph in the rough which I felt was pretty successful for being on 175 lb, 43" tires with a big scrub radius.

As for race day, we were doing decent off the start and maintained a steady pace up until outer limits. We got held up for an hour and a half due to roll overs, broken cars and bottle necks. We picked up the pace once again and then lost the clutch after first pass on the remote pit. I had to drive about 10-12 miles with no clutch through aftershock, jackhammer and a few other rock sections until we could get some more clutch fluid at remote pit pass 2. We kept rolling through and by our checkpoint before main pit we were car #45 to go through. We started #66.

Then backdoor happened.

We waited for a good while at the bottom while a few cars winched up the ledge. When it was our turn, I figured we would give it a couple shots and pull cable if it did not want to go. At that point in the race our rear driveshaft was dented, bent and scarred up pretty bad, so I didnt want to beat on it too hard and risk breaking (our spare shaft was about killed when we pre-ran outer limits) We came off the ledge for the last time and the rear tire would not pull. Detroit was gone in the 14bolt. As we winched up, I fought the steering and had absolutely no steering. At one point Carwash was helping me try to keep the wheels pointed left as we winched up but it was no hope. Finally we got to the top of the first ledge and pulled over to the side. The steering pump shaft had sheered right off, so we swapped in the spare. with no rear wheel pulling, I decided it would be easier to back out the top of backdoor instead of going forward. We barely made it to sand hill with Carwash pushing the front bumper as we creeped through the sand. At that point it was about 4 or 4:30. We had a spare detroit at main pit about 2 miles away, so it would be approx 1 hour or so before we could huff it to get the parts needed for the rear axle fix. We had to call the race.

All in all I think we were doing pretty well, but as many other racers out there, we ran into some bad luck.

Carwash, you were awesome out there, thanks for all your support and sorry we could not push further and make it across the finish line. Tandi and Scott and the rest of the Dust Junkies crew and Bomber Crew, you were too generous in all you did for us. We truly could not have done it without you. Gotta give thanks to my Dad, Ryan, Jason and everyone else who came out to support us. We had an absolute blast. To all of you who I spoke with during the week, thanks for your support as well. See you next year.
__________________