4 Wheel & Off Road – November 2019

Car-B-Que

W

E HAVEN’T HAD A

Whoops! issue in

a long time. That’s

mostly because

the reader-driven

columns are increas-

ingly difficult to get

submissions for. So here’s the par t of the

show when I get down on bended knee

with hat in hand and ask the audience for a

ducat or two in the form of your anecdotal

Whoops submission. Go ahead and email

them to [email protected] and don’t forget

to include a high-res jpeg image, a descrip-

tion of what happened, and your name,

city, state, and (if you want) contact infor-

mation just in case we have some swag

kicking around to send your way. Don’t

worry—nothing that’s sent to that email

address is shared with shady marketing

companies or sold off to mailing lists. It’s

just the inbox of the 4WOR staff, and we

hate that crap just as much as you.

Until we get some reader submissions

coming we’ll keep using the field fixes,

flops, and funnies we generate on Ultimate

Adventure every year. For now, enjoy a

couple stories from my personal files that

my staff and I have shot over the years.

BY Christian Hazel

[email protected]

STORIES OF FAILURE & GLORY

CAR-B-QUE

I was driving to Moab Easter Jeep

Safari in 2005 in a borrowed Volk swagen

Touareg with my 1953 DJ-3A on a trailer.

I had gotten a late start because the LED

VW taillights didn’t wanna play nicely with

my Carson trailer’s wiring. As I climbed the

grade on Interstate 15 North approaching

Cedar City, I spotted a pall of black smoke.

By the time traffic passed by, the square-

body Chevy Blazer had all but burned out

and the occupants were unloading their

stuff off the trailer. A Utah State Patrol

pulled up behind them right as I did , so I

continued on to EJS.

SINK-J-

I was the tech editor of Jp Magazine in

2005 when my then - boss, John Cappa ,

entered and was voted into Four Wheeler’s

Top Truck Challenge event. Back then

the state of Commiefornia didn’t impose

restrictions on how much water the event

could use, so the Four Wheeler staff

brought in load after load of water to cre-

ate the most awesome mud pits you’d

ever want to try your luck in. One of the

event sponsors and our wheeling buddy,

Mac McMillan, showed up in a very clean

borrowed CJ-7 and parked it precariously

on the lip of the mud bog pit. Somebody

(we ain’t saying who) disengaged the

e-brake and bought Mac a gooey extrac-

tion followed by a trip to the local coin-op

carwash.

RAMDOZER

It was sometime in either late 2000 or

early 2001 and I’d just slapped a set of big

’ol 42-inch Swamper TSLs under my 1985

Ramcharger. As the tech editor of 4-Wheel

& Off-Road, naturally what followed was a

hands-on test in Johnson Valley. I got a bit

carried away with the big truck’s ability to

go almost wherever I pointed it, and I got

cocky. Ignoring washing machine–sized

boulders right in front of me, I started

pushing rocks around like I was piloting a

dozer. It was all well and good until I used

the tie rod to shove one such boulder out

of my way and severely deformed my tie-

rod end. Without any welding rod, spare

tie-rod end, or trailer, I limped the Ram-

charger very slowly the 120 miles back

home, the whole time telling myself, “I am

not a heavy equipment operator.”

FLEXINATOR

At Tiera Del Sol’s Desert Safari around

2012 or so, Tech Editor Verne Simons hap -

pened upon one unlucky participant who

had failed Flex Test at the Ocotillo Well s

SVRA. Thankfully the Jeep suffered only a

flop onto its side and stopped before going

all the way over on the roof. The driver

emerged unharmed and, with the help of a

fellow 4x4er’s strap, had the Jeep back on

its tires and wheeling in short order.

DUDE-GUY-BRO(KEN)

Shortly after he left his stint as feature

editor at 4-Wheel & Off-Road, Jerrod Jones

landed in the editor’s chair at Off-Road

magazine. In doing so, he inherited the mag-

azine’s Super Duty project truck, less-than-

affectionately known as the STD. A bunch

of us magazine folk were heading from the

Vendor Area of the 2007 TDS Deser t Safari

over to the notches when the sector shaft

inside the STD’s steering box thought it was

a great time to snap. Somehow during the

ensuing “rescue” the STD broke an axle-

shaft trying to turn around in a tight wash.

Between my flatfender and John Cappa’s

FSJ pickup we got the STD down onto the

flat part of the wash and towed it back to

camp to be loaded on a trailer, the whole

time with the front steering flopping full

lock one way and then the other.

Dude-Guy-Bro(ken)

Sink-J-7 Flexinator

Ramdozer

4WHEELOFFROAD.COM 4-WHEEL & OFF-ROADNOVEMBER 2019 5