imagineer
02-23-2010, 10:03 AM
My name is Lucas Murphy, and I am from Easton, Massachusetts. I'm the driver for Murphy’s Law Motorsports car number 816, the 23rd finisher for the 2010 Griffin King of the Hammers. Jon Hastie is my co-driver, and here is our story:
Back in the fall of 2008, Jon and I decided to take a stab at competitive rock crawling. It didn’t take us long to realize that my home-built trail rig was going to take a ton of work to be competitive in W.E.ROCK (like scrap it and start over). As we were getting discouraged figuring out how we would be competitive it was announced that there would be a qualifying event for the King of the Hammers held at Rausch Creek Off-road park in PA. Jon and I didn’t really like cone dodging anyways and we had raced off-road vehicles in college in a competition called SAE Baja. Competitive endurance rock-racing was our calling.
With tons of blood, sweat and tears, along with an enormous amount of help from our friends, families and sponsors, we were the last team to complete the Rausch Creek Qualifier within the time limit of the race. From May 7, 2009 till the green flag drop at the KOH 2010 we upgraded almost every component on the rig, with every focus on speed and endurance. In 2009 we finished every event we started and that was the plan for KOH - get it done!
Our team arrived at Means Dry Lake on Saturday, February 6th. We towed our car 3,200 miles to get to the race. We arrived early to familiarize ourselves with the terrain and test a whole slew of changes made to the car since our last race in November (at which we took second place). We pre-ran both in the car and on my utility quad. When race day rolled around we were ready to go. We had 2 full days of race prep on the car and our pit strategy all laid out. With help from our newest team sponsor: Fox Racing Shox and friends Ramsey El Wardini and Michael Catrini, we got the car to really fly through the rough sections.
Green flag drops! Hammer down. We peeled out starting 85th and blew away the car starting next to us. It wasn’t long before we caught up to other cars on course. The first few miles we dodged thousands of dollars worth of tool bags, cordless impact wrenches and CO2 tanks. I think the teams that lost the tools really needed them. We quickly found ourselves behind a car who ignored our horn and was blocking our pass attempts through the weeds. I've been a generally aggressive driver my entire life and I survived as an EMT driving ambulances in and around the city of Boston. One little nerf was all it took. It was awesome, and very effective! It blew my mind to see so many cars having trouble right off the bat. We tried hard to just take it easy and run our own race. We knew if we could keep the car together we could do well.
We rolled into the main pit to take just a few gallons of gas. In the past we had gotten an even 4 MPG which with our 22 gallon fuel system would have gotten us to Masterpull pit with plenty of fuel to spare, but took a few gallons just to be safe. We had done no pre-running from mile 37 to mile 74, but we made great time in this section. We hit a small traffic jam on Aftershock which made it hard to see the line. Luckily my co-driver Jon had heard the stories from last year's race and had Googled a picture of Walker Evans. He found him in the crowd and with a timely "Don't hit Walker Evans" and a quick point, I knew who to watch. Walker pointed us up Aftershock and soon after we took Kevin Yoder and Nicole Johnson in the rocks. Kevin was right on us, matching our speed after that point. We came upon our first course sabotage where someone moved a wrong way sign. Both Kevin and I fell for it, but soon corrected.
We hit the Masterpull pit, and took on a full load of fuel as the pit crew looked over the car. Perfect! Nothing wrong and we hit our goal of 4 MPG. We were now on our own. We saw the 4435 car in the rocks for a few minutes, but they left us in the dust. Not for long. We rolled up on Mile 65 and saw the co-driver of the 4435 standing next to a skull and cross bones sign. Bad news: Big Ugly was turtled about 60 feet from a pretty nasty drop-off. The driver, Kevin, had a strap hooked up and said what he needed to say to get us to stop. He hooked up the strap, and we yarded on the car pretty hard, and got him to his side, but we didn’t have the angle or traction to get him to his wheels. In hindsight I should have stayed back to get the car back to its wheels, but the Yellow PSC car blew right by us and stuff just stopped making sense.
We un-hooked and peeled out after them. It was a long smooth section and I floored it until we caught up and passed them. We hit just over 80mph, then I looked down and saw the transmission temp at 250° F and lifted. The PSC car took us again, and I said to Jon "maybe the gauge is wrong, everything is working fine." I dropped the hammer down again. We caught up to them, passed and stayed ahead through the next checkpoint around mile 74. Our next target was the Trail Ready Gear buggy. They were fast, and we ate a ton of dust. Then suddenly, just shy of RM 90, we realized that the tranny gauge was right. The gauge was on pinned way above 250° F and then we could smell boiling transmission fluid. We lifted once again and slowed down to about 20 mph.
At mile 92 or so was the rock trail Elvis, which was a snap. Three days prior a few of us found our selves half way down Elvis on our quads, so I was intimate with the trail. We took it easy for the next few miles to let the tranny cool. Kevin Yoder was back in our mirror. Once again we fell for course sabotage, right behind Resolution. Kevin got out in front, which was fine by me. I never even looked at Resolution during pre-running, so I was happy to let him show me the way down. We went off the tiniest little stair step and my brake pedal went right to the floor. No sooner did I look to my passenger-side to see my tire lying on the ground next to the car. What the hell?
We jumped out to find that the passenger side steering knuckle failed right above the spindle. Jon took off on foot down Resolution, helmet, neck brace, kidney belt and all, to get our spare knuckle in the main pit. It was about 1.5 miles each way to the pit. I looked in the back and found all of our tools just how they were when we started the race. The broken knuckle came apart pretty easily and I laid all the parts out in preparation for the new knuckle. Our car was off to the side, blocking the easier line of the trail so I frequently stopped working on the car to spot for other teams. When I got it all apart I started on foot down Resolution to meet Jon. He was on the way back up with the spare knuckle in a back pack. I found him just a few hundred yards out of the main pit and he was spent. I took the knuckle and hoofed it back up to the rig. One of the volunteers gave me a water just before Backdoor (thank you). By the time I got to the rig I was pretty tired myself, but I started wrenching. I was running custom-machined arms with keys, but I never got around to machining my spare knuckles to accept the keys. We threw it together knowing we would soon be at the pits to take on fuel and I could grind off the key. With the passenger-side caliper hose vise gripped off, we peeled out down Resolution and Backdoor. Our pit crew was ready and waiting for us in the main pit. We pulled the passenger side arm back off ground off the key, swapped out king pin bushing and spring, and took on a full load of fuel. Now we just had to finish.
Chocolate Thunder was a pretty easy trail during pre-running, but it was a different story now. I hammered it up the first rock and got all crossed up at the top. We found ourselves on our side. After two or three attempts at trying to drive out of it we won! We were on our wheels, but totally hung up on the rocks. Jon and I got out to stack some rocks. After lots of stacking and some help from the co-driver of Dave Schneider's car we were off. It wasn't pretty. We made good time through the rest of the rock trails.
Coming down I believe wrecking ball we came up on the 4435 car, Hobie in his F-toy, and Cottin Rodd’s Jimmy’s 4x4 car which was flopped over on its side. I saw what needed to be done so we decided to lend a hand. Well actually I shouted like a pirate from the drivers seat of my rig. After some strange looks Cottin’s co-driver hooked up my rope to the axle tube. I hauled the rig sideways to get it onto a more reasonable position to get it back onto its wheels. The Kevin in 4435 car finished the job and we took off down the trail to Sledge Hammer.
With plenty of spectator spotting/heckling we made it to the plaque line. I have to give a shout out to Bronco Lou Levy's spotter Jason and who we later came to learn was Marlin Czajkowski, the owner of Marlin Crawler, at the time all we knew is he seemed to know what he was doing (and he proved that he definately did.) They pointed us trouble free all the way to the plaque. We made one attempt at the plaque line, which we had driven up twice during pre-running, but had no luck this time. After one short pull from the Warn 8274, we were up.
We conquered the last of the rock trails smoothly as night fell. As we rolled up to the finish line, a somewhat surprised Dave Cole gave us our final checkpoint sticker. We had done it, 135miles and one Chevy Dana 60 steering knuckle later, we had finished the 2010 Griffin King of the Hammers.
I was psyched and exhausted. 135 miles at toughest single day off-road race in the world and we had pulled off a 23rd place finish even after losing 90 minutes due to a component failure. It doesn't sound that impressive until you look at the list that did not finish. The car drove awesome in the rough and aside from having a transmission heat problem we didn't have one other problem on course. We owe that fact to a huge effort in the pits from our friends who came all the away across the country to support our team.
It was a long 3,200 mile ride home to Massachusetts. We drove over 1,500 miles of the trip in the snow almost 800 of which were with the tow rig in four wheel drive. We are still un-packing and getting back into the swing of things. It was one hell of an experience! We'll be back at again next year for sure.
As you can imagine a no-name rock-racer from New England has little to to sell to sponsors. Still there are a few of companies and individuals that stepped up to help support Murphy’s Law Motorsports along the way. I couldn't have done it with out all the help and I would like to thank those who make this all happen.
My wife Tricia and my 2-1/2 year old son TJ have made huge sacrifices to support the racing effort. I love them very much and need their support. I would be lost with out them.
My co-driver and long time friend Jon Hastie and his fiancée Kate Bosecker have gone above and beyond over and over again. Jon has been run over, knocked off rock ledges, burned, pinched and yet he still gladly hops in the seat next to me ready for the next adventure. Kate puts up with Jon's absences, and steps up to help out when ever she can. I am deeply in debt to these four people and this team would be nothing with out them.
Michael Catrini
Tom and Julie Harney
Jon Marking
Todd Tenbroek
Ramsey El Wardani
Aaron Turcotte
Chris Dacamara
Travis Bergmiller
Jim Lambert
Andy Vega
Adam Bates
Nate Archer
Scott Dollard
Scott Kreutzberg
Evert Gawendo
Cory Ashe
T.J. Florence
Todd Dunn
Susan and Lynn Murphy
Chilmark Fire Department
Chris Hebb.
Geoff Stophard
Chris Mickiewicz
Kessler Machine & Fabrication
NEZR2 off-road club
Warn
T.F. Contracting
Ciotti Racing Products
Yukon Gear
Longfield super axles
Mitchell Differential
Fox Racing Shox
Flexcon Industries
Spiegel South Shore Scrap Metal
Amsoil - SLS Associates
Irion Lumber Company
North East Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs.
Bay State Offroad
B.F. Goodrich Tires
Howe Performance
Domenics Auto and Jeep
Deep Woods Extreme
Optima Batteries
Northeast Online Wheelers - NEOW
SK Marine Electronics
East Coast Gear Supply
Inner Air Lock
Thank you for reading.
Regards,
Lucas Murphy
Murphy's Law Motorsports #816
If you have any pictures or movie clips from the race please post them in this thread. For more info about our team check out www.murphyslawmotorsports.com and become a fan on face book. Just search Murphy's Law Motorsports
Back in the fall of 2008, Jon and I decided to take a stab at competitive rock crawling. It didn’t take us long to realize that my home-built trail rig was going to take a ton of work to be competitive in W.E.ROCK (like scrap it and start over). As we were getting discouraged figuring out how we would be competitive it was announced that there would be a qualifying event for the King of the Hammers held at Rausch Creek Off-road park in PA. Jon and I didn’t really like cone dodging anyways and we had raced off-road vehicles in college in a competition called SAE Baja. Competitive endurance rock-racing was our calling.
With tons of blood, sweat and tears, along with an enormous amount of help from our friends, families and sponsors, we were the last team to complete the Rausch Creek Qualifier within the time limit of the race. From May 7, 2009 till the green flag drop at the KOH 2010 we upgraded almost every component on the rig, with every focus on speed and endurance. In 2009 we finished every event we started and that was the plan for KOH - get it done!
Our team arrived at Means Dry Lake on Saturday, February 6th. We towed our car 3,200 miles to get to the race. We arrived early to familiarize ourselves with the terrain and test a whole slew of changes made to the car since our last race in November (at which we took second place). We pre-ran both in the car and on my utility quad. When race day rolled around we were ready to go. We had 2 full days of race prep on the car and our pit strategy all laid out. With help from our newest team sponsor: Fox Racing Shox and friends Ramsey El Wardini and Michael Catrini, we got the car to really fly through the rough sections.
Green flag drops! Hammer down. We peeled out starting 85th and blew away the car starting next to us. It wasn’t long before we caught up to other cars on course. The first few miles we dodged thousands of dollars worth of tool bags, cordless impact wrenches and CO2 tanks. I think the teams that lost the tools really needed them. We quickly found ourselves behind a car who ignored our horn and was blocking our pass attempts through the weeds. I've been a generally aggressive driver my entire life and I survived as an EMT driving ambulances in and around the city of Boston. One little nerf was all it took. It was awesome, and very effective! It blew my mind to see so many cars having trouble right off the bat. We tried hard to just take it easy and run our own race. We knew if we could keep the car together we could do well.
We rolled into the main pit to take just a few gallons of gas. In the past we had gotten an even 4 MPG which with our 22 gallon fuel system would have gotten us to Masterpull pit with plenty of fuel to spare, but took a few gallons just to be safe. We had done no pre-running from mile 37 to mile 74, but we made great time in this section. We hit a small traffic jam on Aftershock which made it hard to see the line. Luckily my co-driver Jon had heard the stories from last year's race and had Googled a picture of Walker Evans. He found him in the crowd and with a timely "Don't hit Walker Evans" and a quick point, I knew who to watch. Walker pointed us up Aftershock and soon after we took Kevin Yoder and Nicole Johnson in the rocks. Kevin was right on us, matching our speed after that point. We came upon our first course sabotage where someone moved a wrong way sign. Both Kevin and I fell for it, but soon corrected.
We hit the Masterpull pit, and took on a full load of fuel as the pit crew looked over the car. Perfect! Nothing wrong and we hit our goal of 4 MPG. We were now on our own. We saw the 4435 car in the rocks for a few minutes, but they left us in the dust. Not for long. We rolled up on Mile 65 and saw the co-driver of the 4435 standing next to a skull and cross bones sign. Bad news: Big Ugly was turtled about 60 feet from a pretty nasty drop-off. The driver, Kevin, had a strap hooked up and said what he needed to say to get us to stop. He hooked up the strap, and we yarded on the car pretty hard, and got him to his side, but we didn’t have the angle or traction to get him to his wheels. In hindsight I should have stayed back to get the car back to its wheels, but the Yellow PSC car blew right by us and stuff just stopped making sense.
We un-hooked and peeled out after them. It was a long smooth section and I floored it until we caught up and passed them. We hit just over 80mph, then I looked down and saw the transmission temp at 250° F and lifted. The PSC car took us again, and I said to Jon "maybe the gauge is wrong, everything is working fine." I dropped the hammer down again. We caught up to them, passed and stayed ahead through the next checkpoint around mile 74. Our next target was the Trail Ready Gear buggy. They were fast, and we ate a ton of dust. Then suddenly, just shy of RM 90, we realized that the tranny gauge was right. The gauge was on pinned way above 250° F and then we could smell boiling transmission fluid. We lifted once again and slowed down to about 20 mph.
At mile 92 or so was the rock trail Elvis, which was a snap. Three days prior a few of us found our selves half way down Elvis on our quads, so I was intimate with the trail. We took it easy for the next few miles to let the tranny cool. Kevin Yoder was back in our mirror. Once again we fell for course sabotage, right behind Resolution. Kevin got out in front, which was fine by me. I never even looked at Resolution during pre-running, so I was happy to let him show me the way down. We went off the tiniest little stair step and my brake pedal went right to the floor. No sooner did I look to my passenger-side to see my tire lying on the ground next to the car. What the hell?
We jumped out to find that the passenger side steering knuckle failed right above the spindle. Jon took off on foot down Resolution, helmet, neck brace, kidney belt and all, to get our spare knuckle in the main pit. It was about 1.5 miles each way to the pit. I looked in the back and found all of our tools just how they were when we started the race. The broken knuckle came apart pretty easily and I laid all the parts out in preparation for the new knuckle. Our car was off to the side, blocking the easier line of the trail so I frequently stopped working on the car to spot for other teams. When I got it all apart I started on foot down Resolution to meet Jon. He was on the way back up with the spare knuckle in a back pack. I found him just a few hundred yards out of the main pit and he was spent. I took the knuckle and hoofed it back up to the rig. One of the volunteers gave me a water just before Backdoor (thank you). By the time I got to the rig I was pretty tired myself, but I started wrenching. I was running custom-machined arms with keys, but I never got around to machining my spare knuckles to accept the keys. We threw it together knowing we would soon be at the pits to take on fuel and I could grind off the key. With the passenger-side caliper hose vise gripped off, we peeled out down Resolution and Backdoor. Our pit crew was ready and waiting for us in the main pit. We pulled the passenger side arm back off ground off the key, swapped out king pin bushing and spring, and took on a full load of fuel. Now we just had to finish.
Chocolate Thunder was a pretty easy trail during pre-running, but it was a different story now. I hammered it up the first rock and got all crossed up at the top. We found ourselves on our side. After two or three attempts at trying to drive out of it we won! We were on our wheels, but totally hung up on the rocks. Jon and I got out to stack some rocks. After lots of stacking and some help from the co-driver of Dave Schneider's car we were off. It wasn't pretty. We made good time through the rest of the rock trails.
Coming down I believe wrecking ball we came up on the 4435 car, Hobie in his F-toy, and Cottin Rodd’s Jimmy’s 4x4 car which was flopped over on its side. I saw what needed to be done so we decided to lend a hand. Well actually I shouted like a pirate from the drivers seat of my rig. After some strange looks Cottin’s co-driver hooked up my rope to the axle tube. I hauled the rig sideways to get it onto a more reasonable position to get it back onto its wheels. The Kevin in 4435 car finished the job and we took off down the trail to Sledge Hammer.
With plenty of spectator spotting/heckling we made it to the plaque line. I have to give a shout out to Bronco Lou Levy's spotter Jason and who we later came to learn was Marlin Czajkowski, the owner of Marlin Crawler, at the time all we knew is he seemed to know what he was doing (and he proved that he definately did.) They pointed us trouble free all the way to the plaque. We made one attempt at the plaque line, which we had driven up twice during pre-running, but had no luck this time. After one short pull from the Warn 8274, we were up.
We conquered the last of the rock trails smoothly as night fell. As we rolled up to the finish line, a somewhat surprised Dave Cole gave us our final checkpoint sticker. We had done it, 135miles and one Chevy Dana 60 steering knuckle later, we had finished the 2010 Griffin King of the Hammers.
I was psyched and exhausted. 135 miles at toughest single day off-road race in the world and we had pulled off a 23rd place finish even after losing 90 minutes due to a component failure. It doesn't sound that impressive until you look at the list that did not finish. The car drove awesome in the rough and aside from having a transmission heat problem we didn't have one other problem on course. We owe that fact to a huge effort in the pits from our friends who came all the away across the country to support our team.
It was a long 3,200 mile ride home to Massachusetts. We drove over 1,500 miles of the trip in the snow almost 800 of which were with the tow rig in four wheel drive. We are still un-packing and getting back into the swing of things. It was one hell of an experience! We'll be back at again next year for sure.
As you can imagine a no-name rock-racer from New England has little to to sell to sponsors. Still there are a few of companies and individuals that stepped up to help support Murphy’s Law Motorsports along the way. I couldn't have done it with out all the help and I would like to thank those who make this all happen.
My wife Tricia and my 2-1/2 year old son TJ have made huge sacrifices to support the racing effort. I love them very much and need their support. I would be lost with out them.
My co-driver and long time friend Jon Hastie and his fiancée Kate Bosecker have gone above and beyond over and over again. Jon has been run over, knocked off rock ledges, burned, pinched and yet he still gladly hops in the seat next to me ready for the next adventure. Kate puts up with Jon's absences, and steps up to help out when ever she can. I am deeply in debt to these four people and this team would be nothing with out them.
Michael Catrini
Tom and Julie Harney
Jon Marking
Todd Tenbroek
Ramsey El Wardani
Aaron Turcotte
Chris Dacamara
Travis Bergmiller
Jim Lambert
Andy Vega
Adam Bates
Nate Archer
Scott Dollard
Scott Kreutzberg
Evert Gawendo
Cory Ashe
T.J. Florence
Todd Dunn
Susan and Lynn Murphy
Chilmark Fire Department
Chris Hebb.
Geoff Stophard
Chris Mickiewicz
Kessler Machine & Fabrication
NEZR2 off-road club
Warn
T.F. Contracting
Ciotti Racing Products
Yukon Gear
Longfield super axles
Mitchell Differential
Fox Racing Shox
Flexcon Industries
Spiegel South Shore Scrap Metal
Amsoil - SLS Associates
Irion Lumber Company
North East Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs.
Bay State Offroad
B.F. Goodrich Tires
Howe Performance
Domenics Auto and Jeep
Deep Woods Extreme
Optima Batteries
Northeast Online Wheelers - NEOW
SK Marine Electronics
East Coast Gear Supply
Inner Air Lock
Thank you for reading.
Regards,
Lucas Murphy
Murphy's Law Motorsports #816
If you have any pictures or movie clips from the race please post them in this thread. For more info about our team check out www.murphyslawmotorsports.com and become a fan on face book. Just search Murphy's Law Motorsports