Nothing Special Posted 6 hours ago Share Posted 6 hours ago (edited) I talked about this a little in Pluto's thread, but a couple weeks ago we made another trip to Southern Missouri Off-Road Ranch (aka SMORR) to meet up with the same group of old Jeepers I've been meeting there for the last several years. And it's the Jeeps that are old, not necessarily the Jeepers themselves! These are mostly Jeeps from the '40s and early '50s, although there were a couple that were newer than Pluto, my '71 Bronco (one of the newer ones didn't make it into any of the videos). In 2020 I went down alone, but Lesley accompanied me in 2022, 2023 and again this year. So we took the motorhome, towing Pluto. Curly Wolf is a trail I'd watched others tackle in 2022 and 2023, and I had decided that I wanted to try to take Pluto up the right side (I had taken the easier left side before), so we started that way first. Unfortunately my starter Bendix left the chat on the way there. Not-so-long story short, I ended up only being able to start Pluto by rolling him and popping the clutch. I made a half-hearted attempt on Curly Wolf, but after stalling on the first ledge and needing to be towed back to get restarted I decided that trying that with no starter wasn't a good idea. I hung around for a while and watched some of the others climb the hill. Here's a video of that (Pluto makes his brief appearance). As with other years, some of the people were more... adventurous than others. In past years I've hung with the adventurous group as much as I dared, and ran with the trail riding group when I didn't feel we were up to the higher challenge. Before everyone else got up Curly Wolf the trail riding group swung by to say "hi!" We were a long way from camp, and while we didn't have to take difficult trails to get back, it wasn't just dirt roads either. So to avoid getting stranded if I stalled again we took off with the trail riding group who escorted us back to camp. Thanks guys! They headed back to the trails while I tracked down a new starter (which would be available at 7:30 the next morning). Eventually they returned with JW's Jeep on a strap behind Jerrod. JW was done driving for the weekend, and Jerrod and Kris were heading out that night to get to a wedding the next day. Which meant there'd only be the adventurous group on Saturday! Gulp! Well, meanwhile the adventurous group was running a trail called V-notch and a hill climb I don't know the name of. Thanks to Brian and Jeff for the video! And for those of you who have kept up on these trips before, this isn't the same Jeff who drives Bam Bam. That Jeff provides some of the best video (as a driver, that is!) but he wasn't on this trip. Alan (green flat-fender Jeep), Wade (yellow Jeep), Fuzz (red Jeep) and Dale (newer green Jeep) are the regulars who were driving on this trip. Alan's dad, Jeff, was along, as well as Fuzz's son Brian (who has driven his well-built blue flat-fender on 37's in other years) and Brian's 7 year old son, Blake. With JW (riding since his Jeep was down) and Lesley, on Saturday there was a passenger for each vehicle. Well, that was Friday. I did get the starter changed Saturday morning and have a lot more video coming from the trails we ran that day. So more to come! Edited 6 hours ago by Nothing Special Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Lewis Posted 5 hours ago Share Posted 5 hours ago Curly Wolf looks like some serious rock crawling. Those guys made V-Notch look easy, but I think it would be easy to get in serious trouble on it. And I'm not sure what "And, there we are" meant at 3:41. I'm guessing that the video right after that is of the same Jeep but from a different perspective? And then we go back to the in-vehicle view at 4:50? Man, that looks hard on wheels. As for Hill Climb, "backup and roll through it" and "bump that a little bit" seems to be the order of the day. But big tires appear to make a huge difference. Looks like lots of fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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