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The Maiden Voyage

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.

Metal, Baby.

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.

Real bad, yall.

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.”

I totally stole this off the Gulches Facebook page.

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.

Lets get er done!

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!

 

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Chuck Meglio is My Hero

I’ll be honest. There have been times when we have questioned this car. We aren’t smart enough to really question our own abilities to do this… Just the car.

It is too low. 2 Inches of clearance from the ground. It won’t crawl mud. No way.

Well, that all changed this week.

At this point I have to give a shout out to MetalNerd.com . Chuck Meglio, and his wife Brenda are amazing.

Chuck ( I am assuming Chuck is doing all the fabrication there… Maybe that is sexist. Brenda, I’m Sorry!)

Anyway… Chuck… Is quite simply an amazing machinist. The lift kit we bought came with each piece lovingly wrapped in newspaper, cushioned gently inside the box.

When we unwrapped the first spacer, all of us just spent about 5 minutes examining the beautiful workmanship that went into these things… They were amazing.

I almost cried.

And to top it all off, when we went to lift… Everything fit. Perfectly. And the engineering is genius… Changing the strut alignment so it sits further back in the rear to reduce over-extension of the strut. Friggin. Genius.

Now… Chuck himself warned us that this lift is not made for off-roading. I get that. It is a spacer kit, so when the suspension drops out over a hole the strut is taking all that stress from the extension.

We signed a waiver to get this kit. We understand the danger. Chuck even offers a deposit return of $100 if you get an alignment after the lift install, but we aren’t going to ask for that. (We are getting the alignment, though.)

He didn’t intend it for what we are going to do with it.

But guys… This is the Gambler… And this is the lift… So ya’ll better hold my beer.

Our plan is to use some limiting straps (Reads chains we are going to weld in.) to prevent the suspension from taking damage. Hopefully, that is going to do the trick.

If you are wondering what that looks like… This is a picture I found of some limiting chains on a damn razer.

A Razer? Why?

BUT… Wall of text aside… THE FRIGGIN LIFT IS IN. THE TIRES ARE IN. WE GOT THEM INSTALLED.

It's Real!!!
So… Beautiful.

AND THEY ARE SMOKING! BEAUTIFUL! THEY WERE DANGEROUS TO INSTALL!

But really, it was pretty easy. Not nearly as hard as we thought it would be… And we easily got 5 inches out of the tires and lift. Here are some more pics

That ass!
CLEARANCE! SO MUCH CLEARANCE!

We had the seats out, so we took it for a drive with a cinder block for a seat. It’s awesome. I think we have a video somewhere I will try to post…

We still have a lot of work to do, but this really makes the whole thing seem possible. Everybody has been working really hard and this feels pretty good. We ain’t even raced yet.

Hold my beer, ya’ll… This shit is happening.