King of the Hammers - More Pirate Goodness

[gwagensteve]

There's a new off road competition coming up this weekend, and it's being heavily covered on Pirate.

King of Hammers (KOH) is a new style of event that involves about 60 miles of flat out desert racing and 10 miles of hard core rockcrawling. (I think they do more than one lap)

There's about 43 entrants - everyhting from insane buggies to hilux type "truggies" to bolt on wranglers. This is more entrant support than lots of rock crawling stuff gets.

Apparently on race day there will be a live update as there's GPS trackers in the cars. The race should take around 6 hours

There's an amazing amout of enthusiasm on Pirate for this format of competition. It's only the second time it has run, and last year it was very low key. The rules are currently very "free" and it has a really fun atmosphere around it. It hasn't been ruined by sponsors/money yet.

Have a look in general tech in Pirate for "KOH entrants pics" "A really dumb idea" (A 2 week build for the event) "KOH race preparation" "Who's going to win KOH" and I think there's more on the desert race page too.

Steve.

[christover1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZk-oiRMN0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot7UJgPUWVk

[andrew_wale]

Post by christover1 on Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:26 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JZk-oiRMN0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot7UJgPUWVk

Looks like the internet NAZIS have blocked Youtube from work.
I will have to look at this from home.

[gwagensteve]

the real interesting part will be when someone’s rig breaks on the best "line" in the big rocks. then the impatient ones are going to have to drive some very CRAZY lines.

There's been a lot of discussion about this. the word is there's almost nowhere you can't pass.... if you try hard enough.

There's a really interesting debate about car setup/driver experience - will the rockcrawling guys loose time in the desert, or the desert guys struggle in the rocks.

If a desert guy can average 10mph quicker on the flat, he'll have gapped the rock guys by 11 miles in the desert. It's an interesting concept.

My money's on JR - he won the first one and has massively reworked his car since then.

Steve.

[gwagensteve]

Tin Bender Billed USD$30,000 on the chassis and interior panelwork alone. It's a lot more trick than it looks in that photo.

Steve.