The time has come. Big Daddy finished up the basic fabrication of the skid plate and the roll cage, so we didn’t really have any choice… Time to take her for a ride.
As in all Hold My Beer adventures, it was go big or go home… So we drove out to Gulches ORV Park in Waterloo, SC to see if we could make it a few feet down the road.
Some of y’all might not be familiar with Gulches… So allow me to introduce you to some of the gnarliest off-roading in South Carolina! Fully 450 feet of elevation drop from the top of the trails to the bottom, over a distance of maybe 1/8 mile. Tons of technical offroading, even on the “easy” trails.
Bad things can happen at gulches… Rollovers, stuck in mud up to your roof… It is a real deal off-roading environment. Get lost and you find yourself in a 30 foot silt pond. Really… Bad, Bad things… We really recommend taking your truck and having a day of it… This place is a damn good time.
So when I told the owner Skip we had a VW Golf to take on the “easy” trails he told us no.
No…?
I stared for a minute, gathered my wits about me, and started the slow walk back to the truck as I prepared my best “Well, boys put your beers back we are going home.” speech.
But then… Skip came walking out and yelled “Hey, you got that Golf with you? Let me take a look at that thing!” After taking a look, and us explaining the following things:
- It is a FWD with independent suspension
- We would be REAL careful about messing up his trails
- We wouldn’t call him for a tow but would handle it ourselves
- We had been working REALLY hard on this thing…
He said “Aw hell, take it for a ride.”
You were awesome, Skip! You and that awesome mustache have a place on the HMB Customs team any day.
So, with permission to ride granted Big Daddy Austin saddled up for the ride!
I was driving my new Tacoma (read two weeks old), so of course everybody voluntold me to be the trailblazer…
She’s real purty! I had to sneak a picture of my truck in. I know I am going to catch shit for this.The Golf rode the middle, and James followed up in Alex’s Jeep.
Alright… To the reason for the season, the video.
I just want to be clear about some noises in the video here… The squeaking is the Jeep.
The crackling and popping you hear is either my stress levels peaking about my truck getting scratched or the lower control arms on the Golf.
The LCA’s on the Golf are really bad… We are replacing them. We probably shouldn’t have attempted this without doing that first, but you know what?
Hold my beer and watch this, Y’all.
No seriously… Watch this!
Well, while it seems to have made it through the course unscathed… you’ll never win a race that way! If you’re gonna drive that slowly, everyone needs to wear matching skirts! Oh well, hold my Gin and tonic y’all, 2 limes please…