did not walk into the race aera so these are the photos I got rock race

Nice pictures

That race was pretty awesome to watch. I only got a couple of pics from the day. Dean from Heavymetal has a ton of great pics on the Rausch Creek forum.

Bill - were you able to cool down and drive it back to the trailer? It was way past somebody's naptime so I had to get on the road before you all made it back to the pits.

so whats the story, how did it all work out?

long story short.
Test drive CJ thursday and lost oil pressure. ordered crank and bearing kit overnight. spent all day friday, til midnight, rebuilding the bottom end of the motor. Motor ran great, very strong! Dinner at 1 a.m. slept some, woke at 5 am for 7 am tech. passed tech with no issues. started race at 9. Ran very strong but suspension coils were too stiff but body roll was too much. Need lighter tender coils and a rear sway bar. After half a lap the temp gauge was pegged. stopped fixed grounded wire on header, was still hot though so waited for it to cool a little. ran strong again but overheated again, waited, ran again. down devils den lost a coil retainer so front right coil dropped 3" down to frame. Couldnt find it so ran without it. ran strong through high speed area and took a left turn too sharp and went up on 2 wheels. saved it from a roll and ran strong again. lost brakes, pedal flopped to floor, ran an extra mile and decided to stop and fix it. duct tape on the linkage and moved on. finished the lap. damage: busted front 2 piece drive shaft carrier bearing(removed front shaft), lost front caliper(strapped it to the frame), adjusted coil stop to level vehicle and taped the other retainers on so they don't get lost, overheated in pits, topped off with water. Nick started second lap and ran very strong in 2wd, finished 1/4 lap and threw a belt causing the water pump to stop spinning and overheated instantly and blew off the lower radiator hose loosing all 5 gallons of coolant. Game over.

bill, sounds like a fantastic race, what kind of speeds were you seeing on the course? I heard that the koh racers were seeing 80 on the speed sections. what a rush.

willing to bet that bigelow and miller were probably doing about that. our top speed was likely about 50 and very brief. the room was there for the speed but we didn't know the course and couldn't push hard because of overheating.

Nick takes over for lap 2 in 2wd and never drove the vehicle before, kickn ass.

Sorry about breaking it down like this but youtube limits the file duration to 15 minutes and there is about 1 1/2 hours of drive time plus the stops for break downs. I removed the stops from overheating to get the files online in as few files as possible. I have a cd of all the files combined and also have raw video for you Nick. It is in HD so there is about 8GB of video. Need to find a site that doesn't limit video duration or size. disappointing thing about the video is you can't tell very well when there is steep grade up or down, can't see the large rocks on the course(just looks like a small bump on the camera) and really don't have a full appreciation for how tippy some sections were. somewhere in there is the point when we took a hard left and went up on 2 wheels and hit the gas to save it, jeep snaps back to level again. also the hit from behind is on there from lucas murphy. his jeep took a lot of damage from it.