After returning from a recent week-long trip to the East coast I thought I should share a few things about my trip. It all started the week before last, on Thursday, when I left the San Francisco Bay Area via Southwest Airlines...
Once on the ground in Virginia's Dulles International Airport, I picked up a '09 Dodge Challenger RT that the gracious folks at Chrysler arranged for me to drive-evaluate, for the week.
I'm not much of a car guy, but this classic recreation has some serious muscle under the hood, plus who would complain about the awesome-looking retro body styling. I had and awesome drive towards northwestern Virginia.
I pointed the Challenger west and headed towards Gore, Virginia, where I would cover the Big Dogs main Jambo.
After an action-packed weekend of wheeling and camping with members of the KGB Off-Road club, I set out towards Maryland to hook up with Terry Porter and shoot his magnificently-clean and well-built rock buggy in the terrain of a new friend, Harry Physioc's property near Hagerstown, Maryland.
As you can see, this rig is a stunning example of attention to detail. Every part is powder-coated and nothing is without a purpose.
After the shoot I headed up to the Philadelphia area to take a shop tour at Quadratec, the industries leading Jeep-related mail order catalog. The Quadratec facility was massive, and it gave me a unique understanding of how a well-organized mail-order catalog company operates. Stay tuned to Four Wheeler.com for an exclusive behind the scenes story about it.
After Quadratec, I drove up to the middle part of New York, to see Rock Krawler Suspension and Pure Performance. I caught some spy photos of some very interesting new suspension kits that are soon to be in production. The first of which is a 08-09 Chevy HD coilover conversion that utilizes two coilovers up front. This kit looks very cool and uses a whole new style of joint for the upper control arm. This kit will be on display at the Off Road Expo show next weekend in case you want to see it for yourself.
The second kit from Pure Performance is the 03-08 Dodge Ram 2500 front and rear coilover conversion system. This looks to be a new hot-setup for anyone who wants to run a 40-inch tire and still tow with a Dodge Ram pickup. In the rear, the kit will require load-leveling assistance from a set of airbags. I can't wait to test this one out.
After a day with the guys from Pure Performance, I was invited to an old-fashion drag race run-what-you-brung event. Seeing as I had a sweet RT Challenger to run, I accepted. I pitted the Challenger against the RT Charger owned by Jeremy, the owner of Pure Performance. I won with a 1/4-mile time of 14.01@99.02 mph. The night was cut short due to rain, but we still had a blast. The next morning I high-tailed it to Washington to catch a plane home to California. What a trip!