So my baja club has been planning a fun day for awhile. Basically everyone takes all of their toys and gets to drive the baja car around since not everyone got to run it during testing and at the competitions. This past week I have been working my butt off after school in order to put together the car and make sure the car is safe and fun enough to take out to the desert. Anyways, I was having trouble with the baja car quite a bit. One of the shocks lost all of it's air pressure, my spring in the CVT was on its last straw, and I didn't realize it till later but the throttle cable wasn't adjusted properly. I got all of those fixed (except I had to replace the spring with an inferior one. It was 80% as fast as before, but that was good enough.
So we packed up the car and sent it to an alumni's house where he packed it into his 24ft trailer. When I got to his house last night he was out getting gas and his mom told me he has never driven the 24ft trailer before and they were hesitant to let him take it alone. :shock: His dad ended up coming with us and guiding him then taking his bike back. Well, we get to the desert and it was nice and cool. We mostly just sat outside talking and looking at the stars, a sight rarely seen in smoggy California.
So morning arises and we wake up bright and early. It was really nice and cool. Around 60 degrees which was a relief since it's been over 100 degrees and humid for the past week or two. I got the car prepped again and took it for a short test drive to make sure nothing was going to malfunction. It rode quite well and I left the seat open for people to have fun. Others also brought their bikes to have fun. The guy who trailered our car brought his 250cc and 2 80cc bikes. Those little things were death traps. :laugh: Here's various people driving the car around our campsite.
After adjusting the CVT and eating a snack, we decided to head a couple miles away to really test the car. This is a place with plenty of whoops and rocks to test the vehicle and put it too its limits. Plus it's fun!
Also, some of the guys brought their "wands" and were casting "magical spells" towards a hillside. Well, everyone was taking turns through the test area and the car was truly taking a beating. Right after I really put the car to its limits we let a new guy take his chance at the car. Before you know it, 15 minutes go by and I start to worry as we haven't seen him. 5 minutes after that we get a phone call saying the car won't move, but it won't shut off. We were perplexed and went through a 30 minute search and rescue through the desert to get him. He drove off way too far.
Well, once we finally tow the baja car to a main road we were quite perplexed. The lower part of the car split in half behind the firewall. We had no idea how it could tear out a 4 inch section of both sides of the car off.
After that we were pretty much done and were about to load the baja car behind a pick up. Right as we load the car up, the fire safety patrol came by saying he heard some magical wands casting spells in our area. Basically they came over to us to check our magical wands and to give us a lecture on fire safety. Well, as they were checking our magical wands it started to rain. Once they left they finally allowed us to pack up our stuff. The rain kept on getting harsher and harsher and we just through everything in the two pickups to go rush to camp to pack up our stuff and go. As we're driving to our camp hail starts falling. A few minutes after that the roads were filled with water... FLASH FLOOD!!! We were rushing back to camp to make sure the guy with the trailer was good to go since it was his first time towing it. The water was at least 6" deep on and almost all of our vehicles were 2wd. Once we get to camp, we saw the rest of our crew packing up the trailer and we all agreed to get out as fast as we could. The one guy with trailering experience and a modified 4wd diesel decided it would be fun to do donuts in the flood. After about 10 minutes of fighting the rivers trying to get out of the flood, we finally get to the paved road. We do a quick, one off check and keep on going before the rain catches up to us.
Let's just say I was glad to be out of the flash flood!
We stopped at a gas station real quick to tie everything down and make sure nothing was damaged and then we were off.
Here's some videos from our trip:
[ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0475_zpsaf546ee2.mp4"][/ame][ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0475_zpsaf546ee2.mp4"]
[/ame]
[ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0488_zps05ca7334.mp4"][/ame][ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0488_zps05ca7334.mp4"]
[/ame]
And here's a link to all my photo bucket pictures:
http://s1127.photobucket.com/user/muumuu101/library/Baja Fun Day 9-7-13
Not going to lie, as crazy and poopy it was at time, I really enjoyed myself. Driving the baja car is awesome as it just floats. You just have this sense of confidence you can take on different challenges. I love it! It's days like these that remind me why I enjoy engineering. Yeah, the car broke, but that tells you so much about the loads that go into the car as well as how you can improve it. It was totally worth it. I'm definitely going to remember today for a long while. It will definitely be a good story to tell my kids some day.
After that flash flood, I'm not going to lie, I kind of want to get a Jeep. A nice, used, manual Wrangler, XJ Cherokee, or Grand Cherokee would be a good replacement for my Scion daily driver, don't you think? ;) Too bad they don't get that great of mpg.
So we packed up the car and sent it to an alumni's house where he packed it into his 24ft trailer. When I got to his house last night he was out getting gas and his mom told me he has never driven the 24ft trailer before and they were hesitant to let him take it alone. :shock: His dad ended up coming with us and guiding him then taking his bike back. Well, we get to the desert and it was nice and cool. We mostly just sat outside talking and looking at the stars, a sight rarely seen in smoggy California.
So morning arises and we wake up bright and early. It was really nice and cool. Around 60 degrees which was a relief since it's been over 100 degrees and humid for the past week or two. I got the car prepped again and took it for a short test drive to make sure nothing was going to malfunction. It rode quite well and I left the seat open for people to have fun. Others also brought their bikes to have fun. The guy who trailered our car brought his 250cc and 2 80cc bikes. Those little things were death traps. :laugh: Here's various people driving the car around our campsite.
After adjusting the CVT and eating a snack, we decided to head a couple miles away to really test the car. This is a place with plenty of whoops and rocks to test the vehicle and put it too its limits. Plus it's fun!
Also, some of the guys brought their "wands" and were casting "magical spells" towards a hillside. Well, everyone was taking turns through the test area and the car was truly taking a beating. Right after I really put the car to its limits we let a new guy take his chance at the car. Before you know it, 15 minutes go by and I start to worry as we haven't seen him. 5 minutes after that we get a phone call saying the car won't move, but it won't shut off. We were perplexed and went through a 30 minute search and rescue through the desert to get him. He drove off way too far.
Well, once we finally tow the baja car to a main road we were quite perplexed. The lower part of the car split in half behind the firewall. We had no idea how it could tear out a 4 inch section of both sides of the car off.
After that we were pretty much done and were about to load the baja car behind a pick up. Right as we load the car up, the fire safety patrol came by saying he heard some magical wands casting spells in our area. Basically they came over to us to check our magical wands and to give us a lecture on fire safety. Well, as they were checking our magical wands it started to rain. Once they left they finally allowed us to pack up our stuff. The rain kept on getting harsher and harsher and we just through everything in the two pickups to go rush to camp to pack up our stuff and go. As we're driving to our camp hail starts falling. A few minutes after that the roads were filled with water... FLASH FLOOD!!! We were rushing back to camp to make sure the guy with the trailer was good to go since it was his first time towing it. The water was at least 6" deep on and almost all of our vehicles were 2wd. Once we get to camp, we saw the rest of our crew packing up the trailer and we all agreed to get out as fast as we could. The one guy with trailering experience and a modified 4wd diesel decided it would be fun to do donuts in the flood. After about 10 minutes of fighting the rivers trying to get out of the flood, we finally get to the paved road. We do a quick, one off check and keep on going before the rain catches up to us.
Let's just say I was glad to be out of the flash flood!
We stopped at a gas station real quick to tie everything down and make sure nothing was damaged and then we were off.
Here's some videos from our trip:
[ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0475_zpsaf546ee2.mp4"][/ame][ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0475_zpsaf546ee2.mp4"]
[ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0488_zps05ca7334.mp4"][/ame][ame="http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/l637/muumuu101/Baja%20Fun%20Day%209-7-13/101_0488_zps05ca7334.mp4"]
And here's a link to all my photo bucket pictures:
http://s1127.photobucket.com/user/muumuu101/library/Baja Fun Day 9-7-13
Not going to lie, as crazy and poopy it was at time, I really enjoyed myself. Driving the baja car is awesome as it just floats. You just have this sense of confidence you can take on different challenges. I love it! It's days like these that remind me why I enjoy engineering. Yeah, the car broke, but that tells you so much about the loads that go into the car as well as how you can improve it. It was totally worth it. I'm definitely going to remember today for a long while. It will definitely be a good story to tell my kids some day.
After that flash flood, I'm not going to lie, I kind of want to get a Jeep. A nice, used, manual Wrangler, XJ Cherokee, or Grand Cherokee would be a good replacement for my Scion daily driver, don't you think? ;) Too bad they don't get that great of mpg.
