Here comes my report from this year's King Of the Hammers!!



This year we entered our same vehicle as last year, our team driver John Jame (desertoy)'s rig. The rig is for the most part the same as last year, keeping the Turbocharged 3RZ-FE 4-cyl engine (this time with proper fuel injectors -- last year we had an injector failure before the race and had to turn down the power and use stock 2RZ-FE injectors), although we did install new wheels and tires.

The main event was on Friday (2/8/2013) and we sent Brendan (freds40) ahead of the group to help the team with any finishing touches. The starting order for the main event on Friday was selected via a two day qualifying event, held Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a short course with finishing times ranging from the low 3 mins to the low 6 mins. Qualifying is optional for teams who are guaranteed a spot, such as teams who finished in the top 10 from last year, or by placing well in Ultra4 competitions. However for the Last Chance Qualifiers (LCQ), teams who were still trying to get in, it is essential. I believe only the top ten fastest LCQ's got into the main event.

Because we were part of the inaugural "Original Group of 13" (OG13), we are grandfathered into KOH and always guaranteed a spot. In years past we and a few other teams have decided to skip the qualifying event. Once the qualifying times are submitted and the starting grid computed, whichever teams chose to skip qualifying would simply draw numbers to figure out the remaining order. For instance, if 80 out of 100 rigs qualified, then the luckiest of the remaining 20 who skipped qualifying would have a best start of 81st position.

Side note: KOH has typically featured multiple trips through the same canyon/trail so even if you started in 1st place, you'd still get caught up with a bunch of slow traffic on your 2nd pass. Strategy nevertheless plays an important role, but simply starting towards the front of the pack has statistically not been a shoe-in for victory.

This year however we decided to qualify! It is a short course and maybe it would help us make sure everything is ready to go.

Most of us remained at the shop until Thurs, so we were watching our vehicle qualify from a live online feed. Here are some screen shots I was able to snag:











As you can see we did not finish qualifying. For us this wasn't a bad thing, since we didn't have to qualify, and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we discovered our passenger's side tie rod had become weak from all the racing of years past and finally let go.

Our driver felt the rig rolling to the right and as he countersteered nothing happened. Over they went. Here you can see our steering out of sync: 



Back at our pits we repaired the steering component and beefened up the other side for good measure. This would have happened during the main race so it was nice to catch it and get it fixed before then!

It was all business inside their Pit Tent

We then made our way over to our Team Marlin Crawler Pit Tent! Here is what desertoy's rig looked like when we got there Thurs afternoon:



The front end is partially torn apart because when the tie rod broke, it allowed the knuckle to turn sharper than designed and broke its outer axle shaft. We have spare axles, we were just waiting on a replacement bushing at this time.

Here is the repair to the tie rod



Various pics of the vehicle





Here is HT hard at work under a rig where he likes to be hahaha He is double checking bolts at the rear end

We then headed to the main section of Hammer Town. Here are some pics of various rigs we passed along the way

Rigs of all shapes and sizes were busy entering and leaving Hammer Town. 




Here is a Moon Buggy Chassis with partial drivetrain for sale. If I remember correctly they were asking $10k for what you see

Here is our good friend Wyatt and his popular Tacoma from RockSolidToys.com






He just finished reworking his suspension and beast looked great!

More pics from within the city gates (yes, they had a complete surround of temporary chain link fencing)

We headed back to our Pit Tent to see how things were going.



We passed a really nice Willy's along the way


 
And a few other cool rigs

When we got back to our Pit Tent we found the entire front axle torn apart.



It turns out that an inner seal was also damaged, and although we have a spare, we couldn't find it, and it took us a while to get a replacement.

Here is Marlin and Tim "TURBO" Collins looking at some different spare seals we had



Later the team put the rig back together, thanks to the very hard work of both HT and Brendan (freds40)

When you see this booth you know you are in for a great meal. This is a donations-based free Taco Dinner complete with salad and a bowl of soup put on by the Extreme Wheelers 4 Christ club.



GREAT group of people here!!



Many people were still up watching action from the week on the big screen


 

We finally made it back to our tent to find the rig back together and ready to kick some butt!



Nice work to the entire Marlin Crawler Race Team, you guys are awesome!!

Here is the only two time KOH Champion Shannon Campbell and his rig



One of the more uncommon single seaters, I'll let the pics do the talking

At around 6:30am all of the rigs proceeded onto the track making a large loop around to line up in their proper starting positions

Here we are with Eric "Mustard Dog" Anderson and fellow teammate Rob "Bender" Park. Both are members of the Tin Benders and are long time friends of ours!



Here is our good friend Jason "locktup" Stanley (standing at left) and a rig he helped build



Here is our good friend Tony Pellegrino's rig from GenRight

I took a mixture of video and pictures of all the rigs starting off and hiting this first jump. I still need to get my videos prepared and uploaded. Not sure when (or if) I'll get this done. So here come a ton of pics from various rigs kicking the 2013 KOH off!