Yeah you can see some of the big name rigs we were in front of in that video, and we passed most of them in outer limits in that log jam. We were charging hard, we started 51st and Pickett took us off the line, so 52nd and we only got passed by some fast rigs like Shannon, DSI, Torchmate, Wayes, etc in the desert, by our 5th CP we were 28, so 24 spots. We came out of outer limits and were following JR letting it eat, passed the pits told them we would see them at 41. We ran Wrecking Ball in 10 minutes top to bottom, ran choclate thunder by ourselves and came up behind Currie in Jack and took the hard line to pass. We ran that line in pre-running, I spanked it. But I didn't on race day, and all rock trails had a recovery crew, or so I was told. We were there forever trying to get recovered, finally a jeep came after 30 minutes or more and losing 10 or so spots. Jamie and I had to roll it on its roof for them to roll it over, it was dumb. The whole time spectators were yelling they would come help like last year, but couldn't. It was awesome we got going and belted up and cut off a line of rigs coming up Jack. Crowd went nuts, thought it was badass. We immediately noticed the Atlas shifters moving all over, and hitting the belly and making loud noises. So we were kinda limping along, Jab and Travis came around us past Sledge and right after we lost steering. Line was split so jamie went to hiking and I started fixing what I could. Passenger net was gone, winch line and winch were broken and I could not find anything lose with the trans or atlas. It took a few hours for Jamie to get back, but he did and I got it fixed and we limped to pits. I told them what was going on and the motor mount was quickly found. It had literally put a hole in the inner frame rail, and there was no way to keep going that late. It was fun, we were running very hard and my rig works like a champ in the rocks. We are almost positive that he mount was damaged in our pre-run roll, we just never found it. After that day it was a handfull at speed and we were popping out of high range at speed. We think the weight transfer was making the rig loose in turns and hard to control, it just finally broke all the way through when we rolled on Jack.
We have some awesome GoPro vids of the first 28 miles of the race, I will get them up soon. It really gives you an idea on the speed and how hard it was to see. Overall it was a great time and a learning experience. I was encouraged that I can be competitive in a race like this, and we had a great team. As for the rig, I will fix the motor mount and re-skin it, but the Jeep body is done. No more fixing that ****, just put some AL on it. I plan to take the parts off and have a new chassis built later this year and hopefully make another run at this.
