In the past, we have featured a couple of stories on Greg Adler, CEO and President of 4 Wheel Parts (TransAmerican Auto Parts) and his CORR and SCORE racing efforts. Here's another member of the "TAP family" and her first person account of her off-roading passion, rock crawling. Showing again we don't just "talk the talk," we "walk the walk" too. - Denis Snow
THIS YEAR, 4Wheel Drive Hardware Team 311 has made the change from running UROC to running WeRock (World Extreme Rock Crawling Series) full time. I am Kelly Young, the driver of Team 311 and, along with a new run series, I also have a new spotter for the 2007 season - Aaron Selway. Aaron has been a part of my team for the last three years, filling in as an alternate spotter and runner, and has been into Jeeps and four wheeling for the last four years. This year, he took the plunge and decided to be my full time spotter.
The weekend of April 14 marked the first east coast rock crawling competition in Hannibal, MO. We left around 7 p.m. Thursday and drove straight through the night until we arrived in MO at 7 a.m. - a long 12 hour trip. We went through tech inspection with no problem so it was off to rest before the first day of competition for 2007.
Saturday morning, we woke up to sleet, rain, wind and a temperature in the mid 30s. We started second in line behind a Cherokee in group 1. There are 16 stock modified competitors running in the WeRock series. The first obstacle was pretty tough. No one from our class even made it past the first set of gates. So for us, a score of 39 is what we finished with.
Obstacle 2 had a start gate that was a 4 ft. tall rock we had to climb over. We were able to climb it, but as we headed for the second set of cones, we got high centered and that was as far as we went. We scored another 39 on this course as well, which was the same as most of the other stock competitors. You can imagine my frustration - the start of the season and we can't even finish a course! Our luck was about to change though.
We moved through the third obstacle with ease. We hit one gate in the middle and we finished with a score of 14. Finally, we were back on the scoreboard. The last obstacle was the same as the third but we ran it in the reverse direction. This was to be our obstacle! The Cherokee ahead of us didn't even make it up the first section to clear the first set of gates. Then it was our turn and you will not believe this one. We were able to finish the whole course in 45 seconds! It was a 10 minute course and we finished in less than one minute!! Believe me, it was the talk of the competition. I don't even know how we did it. I saw the line from where I was sitting and just literally ran with it. We finished that course with a score of seven. Day One was over and we have nothing to fix so we had a good day, put on a good show and it was a great way to end the day.
Sunday morning, we woke up to sunny skies. This was a huge change compared to what we went through the day before. When we arrived at the competition site, we saw we were in 11th place, out of 16 competitors. We also saw that from 6th place to where we were was only separated by 15 points - so we all pretty much had the same scores for day one.
On the first obstacle, I messed up and took the start gate too low that ended up with us taking two gates right off the bat. We were able to finish the course, but with a score of 30.
On we went to course two. We made it through the first two gates and as we came to the turn to the finish gates, we got sucked into a hole where we did not want to be. We worked with that spot for a bit - me turning the wheel and trying to work the jeep out and my spotter stacking rocks trying to get more bite. While he was stacking, he noticed my passenger side front tire was not spinning. He took a look at it and the center section of the lock out hub was blown out. We thought at the time it was a broken hub - but it actually was my passenger side axle shaft. We got the jeep off of the obstacle and headed to the pits. We had 45 minutes of breakdown time to get things fixed and head back up to finish the last two courses. As we were taking the axle apart, I realized this was the side I have no spare shafts for. So we decided to take out all of the broken pieces, button the Jeep back up and go back and three wheel the last two courses. What was the worst that could happen? We would break the driver side. Look out, it was show time.
We made it back to obstacle three with one minute to spare! We made it through the first set of gates and that was about it. With the position we were in on the course, the only tire that we needed to move to get us going again was the one that had no axle shaft - so we were sitting ducks. We timed out on that course and headed to the last course for the weekend.
The entry gate to the last course had a few big rocks right off the bat. I told my spotter to stack some rocks on the passenger side to give that side a little bit of ease and to look out. My plan was to use the gas pedal as much as possible. We launched (literally - I think we got two feet of air under the Jeep) through the first set of gates and made it about midway through the course. We had to take a few back ups to assist that broken side, but once we got moving, we were in the clear. We were able to actually finish the course (in three wheel drive) and score a 13. After that, our weekend was done. We loaded the Jeep back onto the trailer and made the 12 hour journey back to Ohio and started getting psyched up about the next competition
