Baja story

This is a post from a guy on a pilot forum. Thought it was a good story:


Well, I'm back, we got second place averaging a hair under 30mph. We definitely had the fastest truck in our class but hit a few snags.

I was in the right seat for the start with my friend Rudy driving, he grew up in Mexico and knows all the trails, shortcuts etc and is a fast driving mofo. Around mile 20 or so we took a shortcut through a little draw that we had prerun, but due to zero vis at the bottom we hit a tree that had been knocked sideways by another truck. It made a loud bang, and about a second later our 4 eight inch HID lights on the upper light rack fell onto the hood and started bouncing around. We pulled over a short time later and with the help of some locals I was able to break the light rack free of the one support brace that was holding it still and we stowed it behind the seats and took off. Everyone in our class passed us.

A short time later we came up on a huge logjam of trucks and buggies stuck trying to get up a silt hill. After getting out and assessing the fact that it was going to be impassable I ran through the bushes surrounding the trail to make sure there were no showstoppers while Rudy banged his way through the brush in the truck. We bypassed the stuck vehicles and I jumped back in.

We got to a mudhole and there were four cars in front of us waiting on a stuck buggie who was trying to climb up the hill leading out of the mud. They tried to get everyone to back out of the hole so they could un-stick the buggy, but we rammed the truck in front of us forward, then went around him to the right, through the mud and blasted almost straight up a five foot wall of dirt next to the mud hole. The nose of the truck must have been about ten feet in the air before it came back down and we rode away to the cheers of all the drunken Mexican gawkers.

Up we went through a big pine forest, weaving like madmen through the trees and boulders, passing numerous cars and trucks up to an elevation of over 5 thousand feet. Then it was down La Rumerosa grade, a narrow rocky road along a cliff that goes straight down for thousands of feet. The switchbacks were so tight we had to make numerous three and even five point turns along the way. By this time we had worked our way back to third place.

Down into the desert floor into the sand washes and a huge dry lakebed as the sun set. Rudy drove like an animal and we put a pounding on that truck and our bodies like you've never felt. Imagine driving straight into a square-edged six inch curb at 40 mph, then do it again and again every second for 8 hours. It really is like being in a plane crash that lasts all day. Hands down the most violent thing I've ever done, in fact I was almost praying for a flat tire so I could get out of the truck for a few minutes.

We came into an area of heavy silt and had to come to a complete stop because we couldn't even see the front of our truck. After a few minutes the silt cleared a little and we could see a buggy stuck in deep silt just a few feet in front of us. The co-driver was out of the car and told us there were dozens of stuck vehicles in the silt bed in front of us and if we pulled them out he would walk in front of us with his flashlight and guide us through the cacti and get us around the carnage, which is exactly what we did. It was like a scene from a war movie, crazy noises, shouts and screams, beams of light moving through the dust, shadows walking around, sirens and horns blaring, etc we followed this guy through the mayhem with our 4wd. All of a sudden we were clear and on our way.

We passed another truck in our class around mile 250 or so, he was on the side with his hood up. We had closed to within a few miles of the leader and were gaining fast we we came to our scheduled driver swap at mile 285. The front diff was pissing fluid like crazy so we patched it up as best we could and they took off. The next part of the course was a 120 mile loop down to San Felipe and back. Kent Kroeker was driving and he was able to relay back to us that he was sick. He had been under the wx for the last few days and I guess he was throwing up, so Rudy was going to have to drive again when they got back. The diff was leaking even worse so we took one off another Dodge and had it ready so we could replace it at the next pit. This may have resulted in a minor hazmat spill, I can't confirm.

Rudy jumped in and took off again and the rest up us raced 60 miles ahead to gas him up before starting a 130 mile loop out to the pacific ocean and back. He was complaining about a driveline vibration and we took a look but couldn't figure it out, best guess was some gear damage in the front diff due to the leak. We had almost caught the leader when we pitted earlier but lost time again due to the diff repair. Rudy was gaining fast though, making up ten minutes in a 60 mile stretch. It was looking like the race was setting up to be another dogfight (we had won our last race by 14 seconds!).

Two hours later Rudy is closing in on the leader and the driveline problem goes from a vibration to a racket. The front driveshaft had come loose from the transfer case. They removed the driveshaft from the front axle and threw it in the truck and took off, but eventually got stuck without 4wd. One of our chase trucks headed out to the course while Frank our other co-driver was digging the truck out. They took the driveshaft bolts out of the chase truck and used them to hook up the race truck's front driveshaft again and they took off, but we were now way behind and needed the leader to break down in order to win, which he didn't. We rolled uneventfully across the finish at 9ish in the morning for second place with a time of 21 hours, 9 minutes and 18 seconds for the 635 mile loop.

A quick look under the truck showed the the vibration from the loose driveshaft had broken the transfer case completely loose from the transmission, a couple of the studs were just long enough to keep the assembly from rotating. As it was the whole unit was flopping around under the truck, just laying on top of the skidplate with the two driveshafts holding it close enough to the tranny for the splines to engage.

Tough, tough grueling race. My back, arms, and neck are completely f'ed up but somehow I have a grin on my face. Too many stories to tell 'em all here but I can't explain how much of an adventure these races are even for the guys who are just along to help chase and pit. Look forward to seeing guys like Diz and Happy who couldn't make it this time come out again.