Mud Racing

Today, we get to play in the mud without getting yelled at what the desert trucks and in the cars have in common the secrets in this trophy

riding shotgun. Like this isn't as easy as it looks

and to be national champion, you've got to take the,

we're crisscrossing the country in search of off road action.

Hey, everybody and welcome to off road action, whether it's on two wheels or four. We promise to bring you the most intense and exciting events across America

and today we're taking it off in central Pennsylvania for some high horsepower down and dirty mud racing

for those that don't mind getting their truck a little dirty then muddy run raceway in Pennsylvania is the place to race. This is down home racing. This is what we consider fun in central Pennsylvania

playing like pigs in mud.

So I does is racing but just make it wet.

It's pretty much the same thing. You know, you jump in here and there and through water holes pretty much a good time.

They have to deal with more than three very deep water holes, big rocks, mud, water

ruts, ditches.

And I don't wanna say you're hanging on for dear life, but you better be strapped in. It's an extreme ride.

It's so extreme that this track is considered the toughest, three quarters of a mile in mud racing

tracks are, uh, you know, going 5060 mile an hour around there jumping at 20 or 30 ft.

They're rough.

The number one key I would have to say

is no fear and you've got to hold balls of the wall.

What this whole thing's all about you to the edge.

That's the best part of the whole deal. You know, it's not only the trucks that are pushed to the edge.

Two of them holes are three or 4 ft deep. It's just like hitting a brick wall when you go into them.

It fr

your neck around and your shoulders.

This is a

quick flash.

It's fun.

Tears your body up when you get out of bed the next morning. You know, you was in that mud rage

and you've got five point harnesses holding you in, but

it don't matter, just hang on and drive it.

That's good advice. But sometimes the one lap, one on one time races are too much for these pigs on wheels to handle.

Who's your daddy?

That's a rush.

That's a rush. First time I ever rolled something over. So I had to roll cage. Hell, we're just backyard welders at my place.

They didn't have to roll it and fall victim to the merciless mud

pretty hard to handle your truck in 2 ft of mud, you know, keep away from people. There's always damage. You can see damage on this one from the hits in the streets. You know, it's not good to go out there and hit people on purpose or anything, but

we always have some accidental damage here and there. You know what I mean?

Anybody can have a fast track.

It

takes a man to drive around that track to

win on the cusp of clinching the super mod and open titles. Tim Holt has one philosophy on winning in the mud when in

doubt

and his 81 Bronco is built to handle this pig pen. A

big thing here, you get the horsepower to keep the wheel spinning and you can go pretty much where you want to go. This is a 351. Windsor stroked out to 408,

pushing about 600 horse gear drive. Timing. It's a screamer to keep the silver bullet screaming. He swears by the predator carb. It gets pounded pretty hard. We're up in the air. You know, I've had this up in the air 16 ft. The carburetor is getting a total pounding the whole time we're out there.

Yeah, you can take a carburetor off, turn it upside down, take out some island screws, set the float with a piece of cardboard and put it back together. You're ready to roll quicker than you can say.

The mud in the water can stop an engine. So under the hood, Tim keeps it simple. I just got it out. Got the necessities in it. I got three power wires I got for the windshield wipers for the ignition.

You know, you got to have your air coming from inside the cab

and that's about it. Even after six years of racing, this truck continues to be a work in progress. You're always working on them, you go out there and blow a rear end apart.

You know, that's a few hours of work.

I got seven of these things sitting at home just for first. You know,

I spend a lot of time in the garage.

The good thing, I have an understanding wife. She brings me supper in the garage.

Tim's long hours paid off as he wrapped up the super modern and open titles with 3rd and 1st place finishes.

The fun is why I do it.

You know,

I can't explain how fun it is. Somebody has to go for a ride or drive one of the trucks to understand what it's like to go around this track. 60 mile an hour, you know,

go in the air,

just have a blast.

Oh, man. You know, that's got to hurt

safe is number one, which means all competitors must wear a helmet, a five point harness

and a good suspension seat. Makes it a lot easier on the, you know what,

later on Bull

Tacos and make us live again at the Hollister vintage MX races.

But up next, the richest off road race on the planet.

Welcome back to off road action. About the only thing open wheel racing has in common with trophy trucks is the actual trophy. It's called the Borg Warner Cup.

And what's hoisted every year at the Indy 500 is also the name of America's richest off road race

for the past 10 years. Crandon Wisconsin has hosted off road racing's most prestigious closed course race.

The Borg Warner shoot out.

That's the race everyone wants to win. That's a big money.

Pay out. And it has a big status.

You know, there's a lot of teams that have struggled for years to try to get their name on that cup. The guys name is not on it. They're hungry.

You get to go out there and just see who's king of the hill that day. You know,

with four and two wheel drive trucks going for the $100,000 trophy. This is a winner. Take all slug fest.

We hold nothing back, you know, in the points races we're always thinking about, you know, ok, I gotta, gotta make sure I finish. That's important to get the points. But in this race it doesn't matter, it's all about winning. You know, there's nothing else there run this thing for everything it's got and if it doesn't have anything left, you just get out there and start peddling anything you can do to win that race. That's what you got to do because everybody is fighting just as hard and it's a dog fight as in all dogfights. There's casualties. Start out with 22 trucks and maybe 10 or 12 when we finish. It's really a race of survival, but you want to finish good because it's a lot of prestige carried along with that race

running the Toyota Tundra. Johnny Greaves qualified first for the one off race

and had his sights set on that cup.

We haven't got that one so we want it bad and,

you know, it just follows you around the guy who wins. We Goner

Cup is

the guy, the best guy on the track. We need that title.

He was going for that title with the smallest engine in the field.

In our case, we're dealing with a little less cubic inch. You know, we're 330 cubic inch.

Everybody else is up in the 460 cubic inch. So

we're definitely smaller in cubes allows us to be a little bit lighter, you know. So there's a trade off for that. His Toyota team came up with a way to make up for the engine disadvantage. It goes into a unique situation where we're running a five speed instead of an automatic

and therefore we can gear the transmission to use the power band

right where we have it

instead of using a torque converter and an automatic transmission.

The cockpit, it's not all roses and chocolates

got automatics. They put in gear, they can run multi track in one gear, maybe drop it a gear

and I'm running five years through the whole track. So one hands on a shift or one hands on the steering wheel. And, uh,

if you get a chance you can clean your vision for a minute. You know.

So

that's a little bit of a struggle, but

our plan is to get the whole shot and not worry about that end of it.

He did get the whole shot ahead of his four wheel drive brethren. He then set off to catch the two wheel drive guys and get a head start.

Grieves. Motored his Toyota to the head of the pack and went door to door with Scott Taylor before passing him for second.

Evan Evans was no match against the number 22 machine and fell on lap five. Johnny Grieves gas at home to win his first four Warner. Shoot out.

You survived the first lap. The war has just begun. You know, there's a whole another war out in front of you and, uh,

man, we made it through this Toyota hung tough and

I would have swore there was nothing left of it after a couple of those passes and

you know, it, it was unreal.

This is the best I told you before. The man who leaves here for

Warner champion. Is the man. So I guess for now we're the man

John and his Toyota to

over 63 wins including multiple championships and core and in the World series of off road

after the break, no key start on these classic bikes,

Hollister, vintage racing. When off road action continues,

the

X games helped turn Motocross into a huge phenomenon with high tech fights and the crazy boys unified gravity.

But there are still plenty of veterans out there on their bold and make us who paved the

way.

Thanks to Marlon Brando's movie Classic, The Wild One, Hollister, California and two Wheelers have been forever linked.

And for the past decade and a half, the annual Hollister vintage races have celebrated that motorcycle heritage.

That's what brings most of the guys out the vintage. Everybody's got some particular idea of what bike they want to ride,

not necessarily the most competitive, but what really turns them on

or

maybe something they wanted when they were younger that

they couldn't afford and how they buy it.

That's why you see so many different kinds of bikes and maybe one bike is in particular better for that class, but it doesn't matter because the guys just want to go out and have a blast.

They come for the spirit of the ride.

The riding is fair, not cut throat because there's no money on the line. It's just, it's a real good place and it's a good group to put it on

something just really special. These old motorcycles have a real soul. They're not sort of

non,

get me wrong. The modern bikes are just a technical marvel but they're sort of, they're all the same. You know, I tell people the racing is like third on my list of why I come down here. I like the bikes. The people hanging out. You get here early and sit around and tell stories for a day or so and

have a good barbecue center on the fire and the next day you race, it's all for fun. We're just getting trophies, but

it's still pretty competitive

when I was a kid. This was the bike I wanted, I couldn't afford it

now that I'm a little bit older, I'm over 40. I can afford it. So,

in a way, I'm kind of reliving my life and I love it.

I just live for it.

I saw the guys out here, old guys on old bikes and I said I got to do this again. Hey, buddy, some of those old guys are former champions and race legends, immersing themselves in times gone by.

I'm still in a time warp. These are the bikes I worked on when I was a teenager

and I'm still working on them. You know, we just come to hang out and reminisce about the old days when we raced for a living and made big money and,

and talk about all the new guys and what, how much money they're making and, you know, all this stuff like that, seeing these legends out here, Dick man,

Jim Pomeroy Brad Lackey,

you know, the guys who are my heroes now, I'm lined up on the line next to them. You know,

I imagine they're probably just saying, just don't hurt me, kid. You know,

the sound of the old bikes is something that, you know,

started up in the morning, smell the oil and the blends all. And it's like like coffee in the morning to the old racers, you know, take them a while to get up until they start smelling that. Then they, then they feel like they're awake.

You can almost tell what kind of a motorcycle it is just by the sound.

I couldn't do that with a modern bike. Maybe some people can but

that they're all the same to me.

Yeah, it's a beautiful sound like when you're racing it,

sometimes you're listening to the sound of it just thinking, man, it's

fun.

That's why I like my matchless. It's a 600 cc single with a

big exhaust pipe open. And even when you're racing, when you're doing good in the race, you still hear that pipe and it just sounds through

a

lot of guys shy away from racing any of the old English bikes because of the shifting patterns

because they do shift on the right

and

most of them shift up for low gear

and then down for 2nd, 3rd and 4th,

which I think is convenient because on the start,

once the gate drops, you can start pounding this thing down

wide open and it shifts almost like an automatic.

The transmission works so smoothly.

I had to go to the hospital once after starting to kick back so hard. And I thought I'd broken my leg, but

they said it was just internal bleeding. So that was a good thing.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Brad Lackey was known for having fun, but that didn't stop him from becoming the first and only American to win the world 500 cc Motocross title in 82.

Today, he can be found racing the expert class at a handful of vintage races a year.

Actually, the race gets in the way. We just come here for a party and hang out and swap stories and bulls, drink beer and, uh, you know, and then we got a ride, you know, to make it all look right. So we're just, uh, the partying is all done Friday and Saturday and now it's race day. So we're going to put in a couple of motos and then have some more fun. And on race day, Lackey was showing off his sweet new ride.

It's just a 74.5 GP 440 Mao,

uh

completely done right from the ground up real strong motor and all the refinements that you need to ride around the

track and make it work good. It was already way ahead of its time in 1974

and now it's even further ahead of this time because the other bikes are beat up and old and this one's like a brand new one. So it's a pretty good ride.

You wouldn't know. These races are just for fun. By the way, these guys went at it in the expert class like he did so many times in Europe in the 19 seventies, Jim Pomeroy pulled away from the field on his B

for the 11 moto sweep.

Meanwhile, Lackey had nothing but trouble with his mao

taking 1/4 and fifth place to end the day. Fifth overall.

We wouldn't want to get Palmer a run for his money. I had him in my sight. I was just ready to pass him the first motto and

I start acting up

and then the second motto, we never would clean out. So I couldn't even get anywhere near the front of the pack. But we still had a good day.

Nobody went home in the ambulance. We had fun. We're drinking beer now.

So it's a good overall vintage day.

Now, the halls of vintage races have been going on for about 20 years and one of the main attractions as crazy as it sounds is Sidecar. Who's your monkey

key with side car? Motocross is

two guys, one machine

on a regular Motocross.

Uh

It's totally different.

Now, you're 30 of these on the start

going for the first corner.

It's a pretty good Andre.

I

don't need a beer.

I played rugby and

men's league soccer and stuff.

This,

this is the toughest sport. They, they refer to us as the monkey

guys, the side riders

I've had that said to me a lot.

You have to be crazy. In fact, the truth of the matter is you have to be very sane.

Things happen extremely fast when you're on the side.

I don't look to see where my passion is.

I don't look, I'm not tired. I'm too busy. When you're in the race, you can't communicate. I might be able to point to a line to him.

Uh,

but you can't hear each other

talk. I don't even know what he's doing. He says that he's done things at the end of the race and I go

all right,

look intelligent and walk away. You know, because

I, it,

it really is a trust and I tell him you drive

and don't worry about me.

He will see a line that I can't see.

But you've got to trust him when he says go there, you just do it. You don't argue, you don't stop, you just do it because

you know that guy,

whoever he is,

he's making

this thing go forward really, really physical.

This thing is so lightweight. You see the wrong move but flip it up in the air real fast. It's hard plastic. A lot of guys use metal.

Same guard here,

protects your passenger from getting his

hands or feet and hung inside there. The pipe runs all the way through, back,

back out here

because you, you don't have enough room over there. Everything gets banged into.

That's what side cars are all about. Having a great time.

Anybody can get involved. And, uh, and it's, it's fun and it's not for everybody,

but we like to, everybody try it just to find out it's not more.

We're back on off road action for just about anything goes as long as off the pavement.

And sometimes the coolest stuff happens at just two

MPH. Right, guys,

which was definitely the case that the World extreme Grand National in Columbus, Ohio,

21 of this country's best Superman drivers came to Central Ohio for the first ever East West Grand National. This is the largest event in rock

period. It's a big deal. Drove 2000 some odd miles to get here to go toe to toe with the Eastern boys. And we don't get to

against as often as we'd like,

these men gave all they had in qualifying to earn one of six spots in the final big money. Shoot out.

Everybody wants to be in that top six. So it's dog eat dog today guys are going for the bigger lines the most crazy things because the money's there

since turning pro three years ago, one name has dominated extreme rock crawling competition.

Granny Tor

rarely. He's the man.

Yeah. Well, everybody is looking, you know, to beat us

this mild mannered family man from Sale Creek Tennessee doesn't need tattoos or nose rings to be hardcore. Just four wheels and some nasty rocks

like extreme sports. This is it

in rock crawling. The driver, either hammers the course or the chorus hammers. The driver Randy though, takes a more cerebral approach to get through an obstacle.

We really study the horse as best we can and,

and we usually

got a plan when we go in it don't always work out. But, you know, we usually got a plan. He's just a hard guy to, I think he, he picks a line that

after he does it. You think? Well, why didn't I do that? That, that was the most amazing line.

He's so laid back and cool. It's like he's doing a quaalude while he's in the car with his unique axles. He was considered anything but cool. When he showed up at his first,

even

the axles are out of a tracker. Three years ago, we, me and a buddy of mine decided to try them. So we, we went to a junk yard and got them and,

and refurbished them and put them in and they've been working real good. We've had real good luck out of them. They are a little heavy. But if, if you're gonna add weight, you add it at the wheels to the attraction is that

he doesn't hear any tractor jokes. Now, don't underestimate those tractor axles.

They seem to be the real deal

at Ohio Torbett had a new secret weapon that helped him dominate the qualifier. We've got a prototype transfer case that let us disengage or engage on the fly. Don't matter if we're spinning or not. And it's, and it's working real good. I'm really impressed about it. What we always try to do is if, uh,

if you're having a problem with something working on that problem

and, uh, a lot of the transfer

cases are hard to get in and out. If you're in a certain binds, it's almost impossible to get in and out.

I had to beat on the shifters and all that kind of stuff. That's why we come up with this idea.

And, uh, you know, because it's so easy

with the final six trucks set for the shootout, Randy knows it's not going to be easy.

I mean, there is pressure, we're gonna do the best we can

and just hope for the best. That's all we can do.

One obstacle littered with bonus lines and dangers would decide the national championship

with the qualifying scores carrying over all Torbit could do was watch the five drivers ahead of him try to knock him out

for the win. Randy didn't need bonus lines, just play it safe, cruise through the obstacle and he will be champion. We're not

going to take a

turn

in

the fog of war.

His trademark cool, melted

then

disaster.

Just a few feet from the finish. Randy and his spotter tried to push it across the line but time ran out. You just missed the finish of a lifetime on Randy Tor.

He crashed just like 4 ft short of the end gate. Went from

first to

fourth.

You can't win them all. You just want to,

I mean, we all want to win. You know what I mean?

That's just part of it.

His pain was Jessey

Glory. I still can't believe that

we ended up national champion.

Congratulations Jessi. Competition. Doesn't get any closer than that.

Well, that's it for off road action this week. Remember two wheels are four.

If it has a throttle,

we're on it.

I'm me

twice. Keeping it off road.