The one where the tire is off the ground doesn't tell the whole story.....that was a vertical drop of a couple feet, to a real steep slope after it. So, where that wheel is in the air was a very tense moment that only got worse a second later....at one point I only had one wheel on the ground! I was literally standing up and pushing back to shift the weight to the back of the buggy to keep from rolling over! It was my short wheelbase that caused the wheel to go up, not the suspension.

Also, see the pics of the hill where Jim was stuck? That was a HUGE, steep hill that wrapped around with sheer rock sections and loose gravel. Usually you would go real slow over rocky sections, right? Not on that hill, because right below the rock face was loose gravel and if you went over THAT slow, you'd end up digging in trying to get over the rock..that's what happened to Jim, I think.

Where the long travel would have come in handy for me was the rock crawling... I blew the bead on a tire and was bottoming out a few times. There's another picture of me going down an embankment with the REAR wheel in the air...I almost flipped on that one! It was fun. I love a challenge.

With the engine Jim is running in his SandViper, I am surprised he hasn't upgraded to 12" rims and 25" tires. He could get much better bite with more rubber on the ground.

It's on the list. Couple other things to do first.

If jim goes to 12" rims and 27" tires like says devilville need lower gearing for rock crawling. Wish you would have been on that run geek you would have to clean the seat of your buggy ha ha The best crawling buggy was the ridge runner, cvt and 800cc polaris worked pretty good,but even rick said he was doing pucker time on some of these climbs. Thank jim and melisa you always seem to pull it off,great adventure!

Yeah, the ridgerunner looked like it was just cruising right over most of that stuff.

i would have loved to be there and use my low gear against all you ownage