Here I am Wednesday finishing up the lettering Ann made using her Cricut machine. We’ll see if they hold up!

On Thursday we loaded up for our six-hour drive to the west side of the state for Summer Convention. This weekend was very much a test weekend, for the motorhome, for the race jeep, for the trailer carrying the race jeep, etc. And, it didn’t take long for us to run into a problem. When I attempted to hook the trailer to the back of the motorhome, I discovered the hitch and ball did not sit low enough, so when I hooked up the trailer, it was sitting at too much of an angle. Arghhhh! Since we planned to take the truck anyway (just in case we had a problem), we just hooked the trailer to the truck, which Ann drove.

Race jeep loaded and ready for the road.

We arrived early to get a good camping spot and to get through the tech inspection. An old jeep friend Mike Julsrud was manning the clipboard, so it was great to catch up with him. Many ears ago we raced against each other in the 20 and under class, called the “Under the Hill Gang”; these days, we are “way over the Hill Gang”, lol.

On Friday morning, following the 8am driver’s meeting, Ann accompanied me and other racers on a parade lap of the obstacle and cross country courses. It’s a nice way for folks to tour the courses together, get a sense of where to drive, and a great community event. One concern bubbled up during our drive, the engine got a little hotter than it should have. One suggestion was that the timing might need to shift slightly, so I’ll give that a try. The good news is that, during my first run, the temp stayed where it should.

Me at the driver’s meeting with Betty Page and Lizzy in tow. The dogs came with us this weekend and, to our surprise and relief, were really well behaved!

As we waited for the parade lap to begin, Diana Stafford photo bombed us in the Stafford’s race jeep.

Here we are starting the parade lap on the obstacle course. This course was more wide open than the cross country course, which is where the jeeps went next. That truck in front of us wasn’t racing; it was just taking the opportunity to tour the track.

In this first video that Ann took, we were on the obstacle course, I was puttering along in 2nd gear, low range, but the video makes it seem like I was going faster:

Here’s a second video Ann shot just a few seconds later:

A short while later, Tim and Steve Carter arrived with Tim’s new-to-him drag jeep. It’s a beautiful build, but, unfortunately, it stayed parked over the weekend due to the discovery of a broken injector. I’ve know Tim and Steve my whole life, as it was their parents who named me; we all grew up jeeping together.

Here’s Tim pointing at me when he saw us as he was getting pulled back to camp:

Around noon on Friday I attempted my first event, the cross country course, a tight course woven through the trees shown above. It wasn’t hard to follow the course, because if you were off course, you’d hit trees (as the videos above show).

Here I am in staging, waiting to drive into the course, get lined up with the barrels at the start and begin my run. You can see my tech number on the rear quaterpanel. The “9” indicates I’m an independent member of the PNW4WDA and the 462 was my choice, a nod to Ann’s Air Force unit. 

When I started my run it didn’t take me long to run into a steering issue: my 2:1 ratio quick steer device between my steering wheel and the power steering appeared to slow my ability to react and turn the wheel fast. Because I couldn’t turn fast enough, I had to slow way down to complete a couple turns, sometimes causing me to hit some deeper dirt, which bogged me down. What I thought wouldn’t be a big deal quickly turned into a big deal. So, I ended with probably a mediocre time (not sure where my time fell within my bracket), but that was okay, because this weekend was all about testing things.

After the run, I ran into Mike again and he had the same complaint about a quick-steer he’d installed, that it had complicated his life, so he uninstalled his, which is exactly what I’m going to do. Being able to turn the wheel 1.5 times isn’t an advantage if you can’t do it fast enough, so going back to a three wheel spin should work just fine (it did in the old days). I only installed the quick steer because I have two of them left over from the old race jeeps.

After my first run, I had plenty of help looking over the jeep. These folks are always ready to help a fellow racer. On the left is Tim, with me in the blue shirt. Sitting in the driver’s seat is Gary, who wanted to test out the Beard seat. Gary’s wife Sharon is standing next to him. In front of him is long time keeper/racer Don Williams, who is Tim’s father-in-law. I went to high school with Don’s two girls, so I have known the Wililam’s family quite a while, too.

Here I am talking with Jim Mueller. He wanted to remind me that eWillys is the cause of multiple jeep purchases he’s made.

Later on Friday I got in line to run the obstacle course, but a water truck beat me onto the course, so I elected to let the water dry up (It would have made it more slippery). When I did return to the event, it was after the 3:30 close (my fault). In the “God works in mysterious ways” department, this turned out to be a good thing, because while checking something else out on Saturday morning I discovered that my rear axle had shifted back about 2″ on the driver’s side.

I realized the transfercase was a little low on oil. Shortly after filling the oil I realized the problem with the rear axle.

Now, I could have pulled the rear axle off the springs, put a new center pin in, and I expect things would have been fine, but given the steering issue, I concluded it was best just to load it up and try again in two weeks. In addition, a storm was approaching on Saturday evening that promised lightening and rain. Having yet to test the motorhome in the rain, we figured an all out storm hours away from home might not be the best time to test it (given it’s been a desert vehicle that was stored undercover for years, so hard to know how rain-tested it has been recently).

It turned out to be a good thing we left on Saturday, because I discovered when we reached home on Saturday night that a branch had fallen on our fence, breaking the Hotwire, and causing it to ground out. The cows could have caused some mayhem had they discovered that!

Anyway, it was a good weekend to see friends and test our vehicles. We try again in two weeks!