From time to time I do Marshaling at some local off-road comps. This was one held over the weekend. Basically all the cars are road registered. There was 11 stages spread over Friday Night, Saturday and Sunday. They are timed stages and most stages include a section that you are very unlikely to drive and you have to winch. As I was stuck on a couple of winch points for the weekend, the footage is a little limited, but you should get the idea.
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No telling what amuses Dan, but it looked pretty hardcore to me. Some only seem to have 2 throttle positions: Off & On. One dude looked like he uses shoelaces for winchline. So Ian, are you saying they use those trucks as daily drivers too?
No telling what amuses Dan, but it looked pretty hardcore to me. Some only seem to have 2 throttle positions: Off & On. One dude looked like he uses shoelaces for winchline. So Ian, are you saying they use those trucks as daily drivers too?
It might appear to have only two throttle positions, but it is more about knowing they will have to winch. They are timed events and there is often only a second or two between the top 10 finishes. The good drivers will know that they are only wasting time having multiple attempts, so they will just quickly try to position the vehicle in a good winching position and then stop. You will not getting many points if you don't finish the stage through breaking stuff and there are no points for attempting to drive something that is not drivable.
Who knows what goes through Dan's mind (beside a lot of air). He is never specific to stop him being shot right down.
I would doubt that too many would be daily drivers. Most would have cost more than $100,000 to set up. Most of the winches are worth over $10,000 by themselves. To stop the more radical stuff coming in, they just set the requirement that it must be road registered.
Just to give you an idea of the dangers involved, one car rolled 7 complete turns (some end to end, some side to side) down a hill and ended upside down in a creek. The required roll cage (built to required specs) did not even move and certainly saved the occupants lives.
There were more broken winch cables and stuck vehicles in the first 3 minutes of that video than the entire King Of The Hammers event.
Very telling.
It tells a lot about the difficulty of the two races. Shit, having no rules as the type of vehicle you can drive, no rules as to suspension or tyre sizes, and only goes for 5 hours, what an easy race. You can even drive the course before the race.
Comparing the two races is like saying that cricket is the same as tennis as they both use bat and balls.
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King of Hammers is pretty far from easy, but comparing the two is pointless.
$100K Aussie is $50K US and it's not hard at all to spend that much on any truck, but the trux used in KoH are more like $300K US and up.
Maybe those winches are $5KAU, but it still looks like a few were wound with spaghetti.
Uh, last time I checked, they use rackets in Tennis, bats in baseball. And don't go trying to compare baseball to cricket either
$300kUS is pretty far fetched. Nazir Adam lives just down the street from me. He's a KOH competitor (although he's never finished high up). His rig is about as badass as they get. 572 big block, NOS, 600hp+, and all the latest and greatest in axles/drive train. His new rig cost him about $120kUS. Money is no object for him, either. He has 4 rigs, all of which were over $100k. He drives a supercharged RRS daily...that's another $80kUS. So I think it would be very hard to have a $300kUS rig built.
Most guys build their own rigs, though. I'd bet many of the KOH competitors have less than $50kUS cash in their rigs.
And what are these "$10k" winches, lol? I saw a few Warn 8274's in there. Those brand new run $1,075US. Even if AU is double, that's far from "$10k".
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Originally Posted by sideview
P76, according to US stats, you're 98.3% dumbass & 1.7% wanker
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Originally Posted by 1hank1
$300kUS is pretty far fetched. Nazir Adam lives just down the street from me. He's a KOH competitor (although he's never finished high up). His rig is about as badass as they get. 572 big block, NOS, 600hp+, and all the latest and greatest in axles/drive train. His new rig cost him about $120kUS. Money is no object for him, either. He has 4 rigs, all of which were over $100k. He drives a supercharged RRS daily...that's another $80kUS. So I think it would be very hard to have a $300kUS rig built. ".
Just goes to show you can't get good info on cable TV (or the internet) Speed did a special about the Baja racers and I am pretty sure they were huge dollar trux, but in the same special they talked about KoH and one of the guys they interviewed 'claimed' to have over a quarter M tied up. Shit, what do I know anyway?
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Originally Posted by 1hank1
And what are these "$10k" winches, lol? I saw a few Warn 8274's in there. Those brand new run $1,075US. Even if AU is double, that's far from "$10k".
I did too. I wondered about that. I mean, what does a $10K winch even look like? Oh, yeah, twin motors? Ok, so wheres the rest of the $9K Must be those twin motors snapping that garage door wire rope.
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Ok, for my daily scenility check, I called my friend, at whose house we watched that program on SPEED. He also remembers the KoH trucks being quoted as ver 1/4M. He also said he recallsone of the BAJA teams (the red one with the fancy red rigs and Helos, spends over 1m on theirs. WTF, I get my ass chewed out for spending 4K on a motor.
King of Hammers is pretty far from easy, but comparing the two is pointless.
$100K Aussie is $50K US and it's not hard at all to spend that much on any truck, but the trux used in KoH are more like $300K US and up.
Maybe those winches are $5KAU, but it still looks like a few were wound with spaghetti.
Uh, last time I checked, they use rackets in Tennis, bats in baseball. And don't go trying to compare baseball to cricket either
You point about how much they spend on those KOH rigs is exactly my point. They have spent a lot of money to build a rig designed to do exactly the things in the race. So what appears difficult for our rigs is reasonably straight forward for theirs.
I think you may have the exchange rates a little out. $100kAus is around $80,000 to $90,000US. Those winches would have had at least 15,000lb rated rope, it is just that the winches put out a lot of power. This is often their base winch and then they modify the hell out of it further. Gigglepin 4X4
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ver 1/4M. He also said he recallsone of the BAJA teams (the red one with the fancy red rigs and Helos, spends over 1m on theirs. WTF, I get my ass chewed out for spending 4K on a motor.
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