So we did Bainloch in January and we had a blast. We heard about Mayhem which takes place on Dougie’s hill in Dalbeatie Scotland and decided to give it a go. I was in the driving seat for the first time with Mikey Riley co driving. I’d heard there was a few dodgy sections especially one called The View. Spoke to Wil when I got there and he confirmed it by telling me some horror stories and that the rocks were harder than a goats knee:)!
We all lined up Saturday morning for a team talk with Dougie where as usual we went thru safety procedures and risk assessment etc. “If you are injured….man the fuck up and carry on!” Great atmosphere same as Bainloch!
There was 20 odd sections and we all started off at different ones. We started in a boggy little section which I managed to drive thru then we realised our rear winch free spool was stuck on so we had no rear winch so I had to power thru and we got the 3 punches. If you don’t get all three punches in the section then you don’t get any of them which is a shit rule! We went onto the next section and flew in on the limiter and hit a log, bounced up in the air and the truck cut out when it landed. When It started it wouldn’t rev. We was like wtf! We had had the same issue the week before at The Essential and thought we had sorted it. So we managed to get that stage done too, nearly went over couple of times. Then our third section I had the truck vertical for the first punch but we couldn’t find the second punch then we realised we had to go super vertical and winch up over the top of a 30ft rock! So it started to hit home that this was a bit sketchy but all Mikey kept sayin was “be ok”… be ok for you watching me roll off a mountain:)!!! Managed to get the next punch then had to winch back down to get the third an im thinking to meself…if this ropes snaps i’m fkd?!
So we goes back to the pits to try and fix the cutting out issue and we fitted Karls spare Red Winch with Jacks new motors…nice one! We messed about for over an hour trying to sort the running issue out. One minute it would rev the next it wouldn’t. We changed the throttle pedal we put extra earths from the engine to the cage. We took the air filter out and we cleaned all the battery terminals. In the end we wiggled the red ECU plug and it came back to life! So we re routed the loom and jammed the ECU behind the seat and we didn’t have another running issue all weekend! We cracked on all Saturday doing quite well but we did snap a few ropes. The ropes we had weren’t the best they were ropes we had left on since Bainloch:) That jamie Dickie put the punches out so you could almost reach them but were like an inch short with no possible way of getting any closer!! Proper hard to get the truck in between the trees doing 3 point turns on the winch was a nightmare. Felt sorry for Mikey it was proper graft for him an I didn’t help doing the opposite of what he was saying half of the time:) I was watching a truck try to get up a 20ft vertical rock wall and they were struggling and I thought, if that rope snaps they’re in trouble. So I says to Mikey, we haven’t got to go up that have we an he said yeah in a minute “be ok” an my arse went. So I’m winching up this rock wall an I’m waiting for the truck to pop over the top then bang! Rope snaps and truck goes arse over tit. Proper hard roll but trucks built for it so we got it back on its wheels and after i’d got me breath back we was off again. I deffo weren’t in a rush to do any major winching tho:(
Fast lap was a blast and we did the biggest jump! It was at least 3ft of air:) Was great fun, Jack said to me your qualified to drive Ultra 4 now cos you did an overtake, a jump and you crashed into someone..lol I did actually hit another truck but seen them afterwards an it was all good. Loved that!
Sunday we decided to go and get muddy and I was hoping no big rocks! We lent a new rope of Oliver and we still had a new rope on the back and we had no more rope issues. The mud was great, still hard trying to get the truck thru the tree gaps, was taking a while. Got proper dirty, had a good laugh give the truck some stick. Mikey said to me “how big are ur balls” I said “big” so he said drive off that then an I did, give it a bit of throttle as I hit the bottom..no probs! Really enjoyed it. Was good that our whole team got to watch us getting stuck in the mud too! So then we decided to go try get a few more punches on the hill. We was struggling cos everything Mikey put the winch rope round we was ripping it out the floor! Had another good couple of hours but then rolled again on the easiest section of them all. Was funny! I give it too much beans! We got it on its wheels again and we decided to call it a day but then we ended up doing another section on the way back to the car park. Power steering pump was screaming an I was just hoping it didn’t pack up. Was a hard section an we struggled cos we couldn’t find any trees to winch off but we managed to get the section done and we went to the car park.
We started to pack up then we went down for the results and was surprised to find we came 9th out of 24 trucks, was well happy with that. Alan Sharp took the win, well in! Thanks to Dougie and all the staff, land owners and machine owners etc we all had a great wkd! Thanks to Kark, Reece & Jack too!
