The big red racing team [shane gerrish driving and chris brame navigating] arrived on Friday morning with great expectation due to their excellent performance in the last round.

These expectations were pretty much shattered in the first couple of minutes on our first track , and what a doozy of a track it was…………….

Glen Zipf and his team had been hard at work making the tracks a lot harder than the last round and had designed two tracks in the “MUDZILLA GORGE” that were in easy view of the spectators on the banks above the gorge.

Track one was at the top of the gorge near the dam wall while track two was further down the gorge, Craig Bowen was elected to start first on track one while we were elected to start first on track two

TRACK 2:

To start we dropped off the top bank at an angle onto a dozed track and then had to drive with two wheels over the full length of a large log before turning right off the track and straight over the edge, this had us at quite an angle but as the bunting was close we had to reverse up again to get another bite at the corner.

In front of us was “glen’s revenge”, a large log in the middle of some large rocks followed by a rock stack.
We were the first ones to try this obstacle and ran the left wheel up the left bank to keep the right wheel beside the log….the mud on the tyres caused the front to slide to the right and we hit the log head on and got stuck in the rocks.

We tried the same line again with the same result even after some rock stacking so the next time we went even further to the left which had the truck on a very steep side angle but we got the front wheels beside the log and kept moving up beside the log until the rear left wheel came down off the bank and onto the rocks…the only problem was the rocks sunk with the weight of the truck on them and the 38” swamper disappeared under the ground level.

Chris stacked several logs in front of the wheel and after several tries and lots more rock stacking we finally got out of the bog hole and lined up for the rocks.

We started up the rock stack but the gaps were a lot bigger than they looked and we grounded out, several more tries and much stacking later and we were stuck worse than ever with the tie rod bent, the tailshaft damaged, two mudguards broken, the side steps bent up into the sills and the left taillight broken. We decided to take the points and winch the truck off the rocks.

Finally we had all four wheels back on the ground and turned sharp right and drove up the dirt wall as far as we could to finish with a bucket load of points after an hour of struggling.

We didn’t feel so bad after the next two vehicles spent ¾ hour each trying to get through the same track but gave up after damage…they then cancelled track two as it would have taken far to long to get people through [or out] and made track two the same as track one but in the reverse direction.

TRACK 1:

After tying up the broken bits and bending the tie rod almost straight again we lined up for track one.

We first had to drop over the steep bank and do a “U” turn before driving back up the bank on a different track, then we took yet another track to the bottom and did a three point turn and lined up at the bottom of “nugget hill” .

This is the hill where I broke the rear axle [which then broke the locker] in the ASCC round 3 but this time they had dug a ledge in front of it to make it harder.

I got Chris to stack heaps of rocks in front of the ledge and log to take the strain off the damaged tailshaft and we made it up without breaking the tailshaft or the new airlocker I got from ARB southside so I was pretty happy about that !!

We did a 3 point turn and dropped back over the edge via some diagonal logs and onto the “idles” with their diagonal ruts which doesn’t faze the Wizard suspension at all.

We dropped over the edge and crossed the gorge and up the other side before dropping into the “dogs Bowl” and climbed out with no problems, we then dropped over the bank again but paralleled the track which put us on a side angle before turning back up the bank and straight into the “log climb”, the truck slammed on the logs with a load bang and I thought the tailshaft had broken but it was only the side steps hitting the sills again, we continued on through “glen’s rocks” and exited via the same steep bank we had entered first.

A quick check showed that the tailshaft had twisted 1/8th of a turn !!

THE NEW TRACK 2:

Due to the cancellation of the original track 2 they decided to run track 1 in reverse and call it track 2.

We started from the same place and dropped down the bank , drove across to the other side and then up and over “glens rocks” with the side steps scraping badly.

We drove to the top of the log climb and dropped off the logs with a loud crunch as the side steps again took a pounding, the rear bar was next to crunch as the rear cleared the logs and we dropped over the bank on a severe side angle and paralleled the track for a few metres.

We tried to turn back up the bank but the front wheels kept sliding along so we had to reverse back to get lined up for the climb up the bank.

Next up we tackled the “dogs bowl” and scraped the bullbar and rear bar at the same time in the bottom but got through ok, we continued on and made the left turn ok. [this is where les rolled his ute]

We crossed to the other side of the gorge and drove up the bank, back down the bank and then up the bank again to the idles, we crossed to the logs and drove up the bank again but drove back to the bottom on the track beside nugget hill before doing a sharp “U” turn and exiting the course.

I checked the tailshaft again and it had not twisted any further so we were right for the drive home.


RESULTS
1ST: jeff schnieder white 80 series V8 ute
2nd:paul staib/dave christensen white GQ 4.2 itd ute
3rd: brett Thorpe black GQ 4.2 ute
4th: shane gerrish/chris brame red GU 4.2 td ute
5th: brett huxtep white GQ V8 ute


VERTICAL ASSAULT:
We gave this a miss as it is not part of the comp but several others had a go as glen waved a bottle of your favourite spirits as an incentive.

No one made it up the last hill so glen saved himself a few bucks !!

Shane Gerrish (AKA Big Red)

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