All the Torquems

David -Drew- Andrews - Member and avid Offroader for GTM

Contact: David -Drew- Andrews at N/A

    

• First offroader was a Jeep Commander – let’s talk about the build and what happened to that car (flood in Ellicott City, killed it, iirc). 
• Now you offroad with a Mercedes G-wagon, known as “Gretchen” – let’s unpack that. 
• Where do you take your truck (regularly) for offroading? Where are some of the best places to Offroad? 
• What would you say is your biggest OOPS moment?
• What would you recommend to someone just starting out in Offroading?
• What are some essentials you “must have” for an offroading weekend.
• Is there a “good starter” offroader? Is there any to stay away from?
• Do you recommend any books, forums, websites for getting into the sport of Offroading? Any recommendations on parts or mods?
• Do you watch any of the offroading shows like Truck Night in America, Alaskan Offroad Warriors? Anything like that.

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

Boulders, trees, mud, ruts, and sleeping under the stars. That’s right. That’s the recipe for off roading. And tonight we return to the road less traveled with our special guest and former GTM member David Drew Andrews. And as always, I’m your host, Brad, and I’m Eric. So let’s roll. Welcome to the show, Drew.

Hey,

Crew Chief Eric: so Drew, back when we met, you know, back in the before times, you had a Pontiac GTO. We used to sport around that thing and you were big into sports cars, drag racing and all sorts of stuff. But how did you end up in off roading?

David Andrews: I’m from North Carolina and North Carolina has a massive [00:01:00] zoo. Off road community down there.

And I’m from Western North Carolina and a little town called Black Mountain, which is a suburb of Asheville. My dad had me in that bad boy in a, in a baby seat going off road in the woods on 6, 000 foot mountains. Yeah. Yeah. So I’d say I got into it at a really young age,

Crew Chief Eric: but you were driving around in sports cars for the longest time.

So how did you make the transition back to off roading?

David Andrews: Well. I tell people I never really left off roading. I still had a love for it. I just didn’t have the money for it. And it was either one or the other sports car or off road. You can never do both. Well, When you get older, that credit score get up.

I always had a love for off roading and also it was the company I kept at the time we all [00:02:00] were into like. One upping each other. So started out with like little Honda civics and then upgraded to Integra. Now that was the early fast and furious days. So those imports were extremely popular in the early two thousands.

I bucked the mold. I was all about American muscle, but a different kind of muscle. So I had a Pontiac GTP. Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: the three, eight.

David Andrews: Yeah. Supercharged three, eight. And I mean, it, it kind of ripped out of the factory, but once you started like upgrading the supercharger pulley, cold air intake, MSD, ignition, all that good stuff, uh, I surprised the hell out of some of these Eclipse GSX owners.

They’re like, Whoa, this thing is fast.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I think it was fun wheel drive too. Fun wheel drive.

Crew Chief Eric: All I heard, all I heard that description was cha [00:03:00] ching, cha ching, cha ching.

David Andrews: A little bit, you know, put pennies here and there into it and slow and steady wins the race. But then you jump to the goat,

Crew Chief Eric: right? And I, I remember riding in that car and that thing was awesome.

And the goat was still new back then too. So

David Andrews: yeah. Yeah. It’s a shame that that platform didn’t get the love it deserved. That was a extremely well built car. The GTO was not an American car, but it had American horsepower. The generation I had, had the LS two, but the 2004 model had the, uh, LS one, which to this day has so many directions you can go with the upgrades.

But yeah, my GTO had a LS two. I really liked my generation because it was less boring looking, less jelly beanie. Uh, . , that’s a good way to put it. I ain’t gonna lie, that thing looked like a jelly bean. [00:04:00] laughs But it was, it was my sexy jelly bean. But yeah, Eric, you’re right. Cause I remember I bought that and I brought it to the, uh, office brand spankin new.

Crew Chief Eric: Back

David Andrews: in the day cafe. But anyways We had that thing

Crew Chief Eric: sideways more than once, man. laughs

Crew Chief Brad: It had some soft suspension. I know those cars were not, were not very, uh, stiff.

David Andrews: Actually, believe it or not, I mean, compared to what you guys are used to it, it was soft, but out the factory, it had a very competent suspension and it was a very basic suspension.

It wasn’t like, I don’t think the rear had a double wishbone in the rear or anything like that. It was just,

Crew Chief Brad: no, but it was, it was IRS though.

David Andrews: Yeah, it was IRS. Yeah. And I

Crew Chief Brad: test drove one. I test drove an Oh five. I was looking to buy,

Crew Chief Eric: but you know what it did have? It had an exhaust. It would rip your ears off.

And it had 400 horsepower.

David Andrews: 10 years ago. That’s like, that was. Some serious horsepower. Now you ain’t even, you ain’t sneezing on that [00:05:00] unless you have anything less than five 30 now.

Crew Chief Brad: Now Camry’s come to 400.

Crew Chief Eric: So from there, you had a couple of eight eights. I know that. And you have one now. I know that as well.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Sorry. Essays. My apologies.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you got an S8 too?

David Andrews: Yeah, I have a couple S8s.

Crew Chief Brad: Your car history sounds very similar to mine. I had a 01 S8, I had a fourth gen Camaro, two fourth gen Camaros. I started with a Honda Civic. I mean, come on now.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Maybe it’s a big

Crew Chief Brad: guy thing.

Crew Chief Eric: So from there, I know you went, you know, kind of left the sports car world, went back to off roading, and you ended up with a Jeep Commander.

Yeah. Which is Different because most guys that are into Jeeps either do Wranglers or Grand Cherokees or stuff like that. So you ended up with the Commander and I know you had a big love for that car. And I don’t remember its nickname or its name, but you’ll, you’ll fill me in there.

David Andrews: Her name was USS Black Axe.[00:06:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about what drew you to the commander, how you had that thing built out, what you did with it, and then what inevitably ended up happening to it, which was tragic, but we’ll get to that point. So let’s let’s talk about the beginning there.

David Andrews: Before the commander, actually, my dad gave me his Jeep XJ.

It was a Cherokee. It’d been in my family since I was 14 years old. I grew up learning how to drive. It was a, it was not the four Oh, it was like the 2. 8 liter with a five speed. And it didn’t have the horsepower to get out of its own way. But when you put that thing in four low, I was crawling up stuff that, you know, these guys would, I love them.

The Toyota guys, Oh, the FJ is the only vehicle that can go throughout Moab. Stop, shut up. That thing is crawling up hills and you breaking axles. So ultimately. I’m 6’3 [00:07:00] and at the time I was banging on like 280 pounds. I did not fit in the Diagon XJ. It was a joke. Like, people would like clown me at my office before I met you, Eric, and would be like, you ain’t got no business being in that little thing.

So, I was like, okay. I agree. So I did some research and I started looking around other vehicles and good old fashioned me, everybody and their mother has either a Toyota four runner or a Jeep Wrangler. And I didn’t like. The whole, you’re either part of this faction or you’re a part of that faction. So I said, I’m going to up in this crap.

I’m gonna go against the trend here. I’m a, I’m a do something illegal. I’m gonna get an I F S on a SUV. And I was scared cause I was looking up under it and I’m like, I went [00:08:00] to go look at it and I was like, wow, this thing actually has legit hardware up under here. And then I started doing research on the different four wheel drive systems.

And just because you have four wheel drive, they are not all created equal. As you know, in the all wheel drive, Industry with the sports cars. So my must haves was it needed to have a heavy duty transfer case, a heavy duty rear end and a hopefully a decent front end. If it’s IFS, you’re going to blow stuff up.

Anyways, I started reading the different four wheel drive systems. And so Jeep has these really cool. Systems that I believe are the best in the world, all the way from rock track, which is what the Wranglers have to the quadrature track systems that the, uh, and WK twos, the, the grand Cherokees and the commander at the time.

And then they had like. An [00:09:00] extreme version called quadra drive two and they had quadra drive one. So quadra drive one was basically quadra track, but it had a low gear in the transfer case. Quadra track has no low gear. It’s just legit all wheel drive with traction control. Very stressful on the transmission transmission.

If you try to off road it and you have the quadra drive two system. Which builds on quadra drive one, but adds in trick differential. So it has the ability to lock. Now the misconception is people don’t understand quadra drive too. So they’re like, Oh, it’s not a real locking differential. The thing is it is a real locking differential because when you open a differential that has lockers on them, there is a solenoid that literally locks.

Both have shafts together and they rotate at the same time and they can’t deviate. So the QuadraDrive [00:10:00] 2 system has that, except instead of it being like air actuated or electronic actuated, it’s clutch pack actuated.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

David Andrews: So you get pressure in the fluid and those plates stick together in the differential locks.

So that’s how QuadraDrive does its trickery. Now, what’s really nice about QuadraDrive is it’s a point and shoot system. I never had to say, Oh, let me lock the center. Let me lock the rear. Let me lock the front. The system would detect wheel slip and engage each differential individually. That was what was really nice about it.

So anybody who’s off roaded knows it’s a bear to turn. your SUV or your Jeep when all differentials are locked. With the quadra drive, it could detect that you were turning and it would unlock the front differential even if you were in the middle of a climb. I looked into that and I was like, okay, that’s really cool.

I might be able to do something with this. [00:11:00] Cause people are going to lose their shit when they see what this thing can do. And that’s how I ended up landing on the Jeep commander overland.

Crew Chief Eric: So what did you end up doing to it after you got it? Cause obviously you can only run it stock for so long when you’re off roading.

So what kind of upgrades did you end up doing to the commander?

David Andrews: I started out with two and a half inch, what you call a puck lift. So basically, uh, the spacer fits in between. The body and the spring and functionally lifts the vehicle up,

Crew Chief Eric: but

David Andrews: you’re still on stock springs and shocks and stuff like that.

Now, when you lift the vehicle, we lift the body higher. You are then allowed to put larger tires on, and you want the larger tires because that’s an added. Lift as well. So you go from having a 28, 29 inch tire, which is like a two to 65, 65 or something like that, and then you upgrade it [00:12:00] to a two, I want to say 275 70 or something like that.

I can’t remember. No, two 65 70, which is I think 30 inch tire. Of course you go off road, you test your upgrades and you realize you want more. And so, so I realized my approach and departure angles were crap. And my bumpers are plastic . So next thing I had to upgrade was my bumpers. You know me, I’m mean all out.

I bought both bumpers at the same damn time. Two grand a pop. .

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say, you only need to have one really bad, uh, departure angle, and then it’s fixed. .

David Andrews: Yep. It, there you go. The bumper’s gone. Yeah, not, not a problem. I started realizing that even though the commander had like legit hardware to make it a decent off roader, I can see where the bean counters kicked in, in the development of this vehicle, because they were, [00:13:00] they would put stuff that had no business being exposed.

On an off road vehicle. So the commander, my particular version had rear AC and guess where they ran the AC lines directly under the passenger door exposed, not covered. And then up through the wheel well into the engine bay. And so when I started digging things out, taking the liner inside the wheel well, I was like, how did they get a plastic trash bag in here?

I’m not kidding. It was like a trash bag full of styrofoam. And I’m. I’m like, Oh man, this thing is, Oh. So I ended up having a guy devise me a bash plate for the rear AC line. So if I ever banged on a rock, I don’t crush my AC because if that rear AC goes out, it goes out for the entire thing. That’s how they were interconnected.

They weren’t separate units, but anyways, got the bumper on there. That was an all day, [00:14:00] uh, job. Because of course, for whatever reason, they’re not good. Like design wise, like the Wranglers are like the Wranglers are designed to, you know, um, bullshit bullshit back on there. Whereas my big old hands was reaching behind and under the, the body to, to start the bolt.

And it was just, it was a nightmare. I took that time to get a winch. So winch is very important for recovery recommend that people don’t go out. Without a proper recovery plan. And there are different recovery tools, but I’m sure we’ll get into that later. But anyways, I took that time to bolt on a 12, 000 pound winch.

I upgraded my lift to a four inch super lift. So that then required some real surgery on the vehicle. And it took about a week for them to install everything. Cause they were like, dude, why are you always bringing us the weirdest platforms to work on? And [00:15:00] it’s like, I’ve never seen a commander lifted before.

That’s literally what my shop guy told me. And he was like, but we’re going to make it work, you know? So. So at that point, the vehicle was substantially higher when I got the four inch lift on it and put the 35s on. So I had 35, 12 and a half 17s. Eric, have you seen any of my videos? Cause I’m literally the only guy in the world that offroads a commander.

So I have a ton of YouTube videos.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll link some in the show notes so people can check it out.

David Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. It’s literally hilarious because people are videotaping and they’re talking mad shit. They’re like, Oh, he has no business being out here. His it’s, it’s funny. And then he’s like, Oh, he doesn’t have to flex to get up that thing.

And she just walks right up. Some of the steepest, most difficult obstacles. And my whole point of that was to prove that IFS is out the box, might not have [00:16:00] the same articulation as a straight axle, but when you have the right setup and you know what you’re doing and you have to change your driving style, it is just as capable, it’s not as sexy looking, but.

It gets the job done. And that was, that was the point of that. So I put the 35s on there, had the rear bumper winch, and then I started blowing up half shafts in the front. And that’s when I was like, Oh, this is going to be a problem. If I got to do surgery on the trail, every time I do a difficult job. So I ended up going online and started meeting a lot of people from around the world, talking to them like, uh, the Australians, man, they are.

Amazing group of people to reference for off road ideas and, uh, best practices and stuff like that, that those guys they’re on another level. But anyways, there was a guy who had a really popular grand Cherokee that was having the same problems. [00:17:00] And he found a company called RCV, which is an American company that literally makes bulletproof half shafts.

And they’re like a Burfield axle. I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Burfield, but Burfields, uh, if you look at like in cars, the CV is like what three or four balls in a ring and that’s how, and they’re interconnected through the splines that allow it to be like a continuously variable.

Joint.

Crew Chief Eric: Joint.

David Andrews: There we go. And, um, but Burfields are different in the sense that they have those same parts, but instead of a soft, rubbery, oily cover to protect it, it’s a massive steel cage that contains the outward pressure that happens when the axle is under load and you try to turn the steering wheel.

So that steel, that steel cage. Is literally holding those [00:18:00] balls in place as you’re turning. And I’d never blew up another axle ever again. And I did even crazier stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s almost like a reinforced CV joint.

David Andrews: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Well, that

Crew Chief Brad: sounds

David Andrews: similar to the axles that

Crew Chief Brad: we have on our cars.

Like they’ve got those steel cages too. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: we’re, we’re, we run drag axles for road racing because they’re a lot stronger and they can, but they, they do that by using a combination of beefier parts from other vehicles and all that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s, but I’d be really curious to look into the stuff you’re talking about because I could see an application for that.

And I got some ideas. Gears are always turning. Let me ask you a

Crew Chief Brad: question real quick though. Yeah, sure. So I’m assuming that the front suspension and the front componentry of the commander is similar to. The W. K. Ones. Has anybody tried to retrofit a solid axle under one of those?

David Andrews: Actually, the W. K. Ones and the X.

K. S are [00:19:00] actually sister and brother. They’re twins. There’s no difference between the two platforms other than the body was longer than the W. K. And a little bit wider and it weighed more, but the underpinnings, the drivetrain, they’re both the same. So yes, parts are totally interchangeable powertrain wise.

And yes, people do monster retrofits. So I know a couple of guys that have put Dana 44 in the front and a Dana 60 in the rear. I didn’t think there was a need to build it. Do a Dana 60 in a rear, but always bigger means stronger though. Right. But does it come with

Crew Chief Brad: a 44 stock in the rear?

David Andrews: I’m glad you asked that.

So it depended, it depends on the platform. So if you had the quadra track, it had a soft Dana 44, but we know there’s all kinds of parts for Dana 44 is that you could build on it, but you don’t want the quadra track because it didn’t have a low. [00:20:00] a transfer case for a low gearing and then you had uh, the quadra drive systems.

You had a, I believe it was an eight pin or, and then there was a 10 pin Chrysler eight and a quarter was the one I had, which is the equivalent to a Dana 44. I would think, uh, in toughness, the reason why they did the 10 pin like that was that was the only differential that was big enough to house.

Clutch packs and the locking and all that stuff. And so that’s how that works. So I didn’t see a point in getting rid of the rear, but I’ve heard people doing it. And yes, you can do a Dana 44 or Dana 30 upfront. I’ve, I’ve seen a few guys do that as well, but that was going to be a pretty big job because they literally have to cut into the frame and cut the subframe out, uh, for the IFS.

And now it’s all open. So they have to reinforce, it’s not a body on frame. It’s, it’s a. Unibody [00:21:00] uni frame, and I tell people there’s a difference between a unibody and a uni frame. A uni frame is where it is a unibody, but they sandwich a ladder frame to it, which makes it extremely rigid. You could have that truck in full tilt and you could still open all the doors.

It was completely amazing. I was amazed at how strong that frame was, but a lot of people don’t like unibody cause, Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s flexy and all that. So it was, no, we’ve come a long way since the nineties and eighties aired XJs. So. They got to cut all that stuff out and then retrofit, you know, radius arms and longer springs because you know, those, the IFS inherently has shorter springs because it doesn’t have all that room for travel, but the trade off is.

IFS gives you a little bit more ground clearance because you don’t have anything [00:22:00] dangling up under the front. I didn’t see it necessary for what the style of off roading that I do to need to go straight axle up front.

Crew Chief Brad: Now, when you say the style of off roading that you do, a lot of people don’t understand that There’s different styles to off roading.

There’s rock crawling. You need specific rock crawler, you know, vehicles, a rock crawler is going to be different than a mudding vehicle. So why don’t you, uh, tell us a little bit about the different kinds of sub disciplines within off roading.

David Andrews: You’re correct. There are definite lanes to off roading. You have.

What I did is called overlanding, where it’s more of a adventure style of off roading. The idea of overlanding is to be able to survive with only the things that you bring. The idea is to, you know, Go to old ghost towns and, you know, try to dig up buried treasure. No, no, that’s not it, but it’s like a, it’s an [00:23:00] adventure.

You’re, you’re learning about the landscape. It’s a different style of off roading because the lands tend to be a little bit wetter and looser and stuff like that. So there’s not a whole lot of, uh, Rock crawling involved in it. There are situations where you have to climb over a tree or big old boulders or drop down into a river and drive across the river that’s overlanding.

And the term overlanding came around, uh, Range Rover coined it back in the eighties with the, uh, Land Rover discovery, not quite back to the Range Rover classics, but when the discovery came out. In the late 80s, I believe it was. I think that’s when the Disco One came around. It’s Discovery One. They called it overlanding.

And overland vehicles tend to have what you call stadium seating. And the idea of stadium seating is pretty cool. You want the people in the back to have the same experience as the people in the front. [00:24:00] So typical overland vehicles have a step up in the rear and sometimes they have a, if it’s a third row, it has another step up there.

And that’s when you start getting into like skylights in the rear and stuff like that. The Jeep commander actually had that step up. It was called commander view and it was. Pretty cool. You’d be in the back and there’s like these two open moon roofs that had like little shades on them and stuff like that, that, you know, you can look out and look around and see over the driver.

And it sucks if you have a little old lady trying to get in there, cause she’s got to like, you know, reincarnate her, uh, jumping days. My grandmother hated getting in my commander. You have, uh, rock crawling and that’s where a lot of people like to go to parks like Roush Creek, Gore, West Virginia, Flagpole in Virginia.

There’s all kinds of cool off road networks that people like to test their [00:25:00] flex. You got to get the flex, bro. And those are the guys who literally do some of the craziest stuff. Like they’re, they’re literally driving over boulders, the size of small cars. And getting in between them and just extreme articulation.

And this is where lockers are very important for, uh, rock crawling, because you’ll see guys blow their stuff up because they have open differentials and they’re trying to crawl through a quarry and they get stuck. And they have no winch. And then they got to pay somebody hundreds of maybe thousands of dollars to come get them out because they broke or blew up something you have that style of off roading and then you have mudding.

That’s a different breed of people. They, uh,

Crew Chief Brad: Daniel’s people,

David Andrews: mud people, mud and people. Boy, I ain’t never seen anybody [00:26:00] purposely get into a vehicle with no top on driving to the most dankiest, stankiest ass. Prehistoric looking water mud and get skadoosh. Oh, I’m like, oh my God, you know, uh, those people are very special.

Like look at me, bro. I’m muddy, bro. Yeah, where’d you get some mud at? I went over there. I’m like, Oh God, let me get away.

Mountain Man Dan: And you’re not lying about the stankness of that mud because there’s a lot of places that I ride at and go out four wheeling on with ATVs. And there’s always those. It’s that the water’s been sitting for like a month and a half straight. It’s stagnant. It’s got all kinds of like mosquito larva and everything.

And it just has that nasty, wretched smell to it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, you end up eating a little bit of it. I

David Andrews: mean, come on now. [00:27:00] They go into it. Like I got slow mo videos of people just. And they’re like at the buffet

Crew Chief Eric: as they go and corral, man.

David Andrews: And then it’s just like this wave of

Crew Chief Eric: Nutella.

David Andrews: He is not lying.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s why they say a little dirt never hurt.

Crew Chief Eric: A little dirt never hurt. So let’s kind of circle back and let’s talk about what ended up happening to the commander. I mean, you ran that thing for years.

David Andrews: Yeah, so I don’t know if you guys remember a couple of years ago, but we were getting hammered with some freaky storms up here in Ellicott city and Columbia.

And, and, uh, we had some flash floods. I’m going to Clobey’s to go get me some ribs from the barbecue place. And I’m coming back the back way and I mean it just starts coming down. So I’m going down the hill and I’m like, damn, this is like [00:28:00] the matrix. And I see a car sitting at the bridge. It’s a single lane bridge of where I need to go.

At the time the water was Maybe foot deep, like barely pressing over my foot. So I go to see if anybody’s in the car. Cause the hazard lights are on all of a sudden I’m looking, my Jeep is like right behind him. And I just feel like this energy you like, you can feel it. And then all of a sudden water is now in seconds, ankle deep, knee deep, hip deep.

I was caught in a flash flood and I was down in the Valley when this water was coming through. I was like, I need to get the fuck out of here, dude. I started hauling ass. I look like a Clydesdale running up the hill trying to save myself. You know, I’m just trying to get out of there. And as I got into the [00:29:00] commander and I go to turn around, the water is coming down in there and it’s like rolling.

Up my hood as I’m trying to turn around and then it hydro locks. It sucks in water. As I turn around, I should have just backed out. So now it’s hydro locking. Now the water is when I had to lift, I think I measured it right at seven foot and the water is reaching up to the window

Crew Chief Eric: and you’re inside it still.

David Andrews: Yeah. And I had to run and I had to walk like four miles home, lost my cell phone in the flood, lost my clobies. Lost your jeep, too. I was so mad, man. I was like, I ain’t got no food. I’m fat and wet. I gotta walk home and it’s thundering and lightning. And then nobody’s gonna stop and save me.

Crew Chief Brad: Wait, so you didn’t get the ribs?

David Andrews: I did not get the ribs. They, they went down with USS black ass.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s a travesty right there.

David Andrews: You know what’s a travesty is I named it USS black ass and [00:30:00] it went down in a water.

Crew Chief Eric: So that, you know, obviously, you know, uh, active nature and all that and insurance gets involved. Sometime goes by a little, you know, if you have a proper burial at sea there and all that, And then you decide to get another off roader.

David Andrews: Yeah, buddy. But

Crew Chief Eric: you can’t have anything normal. You already said that.

David Andrews: So I went back to my roots and I got a new vehicle and it has a straight axle on it now.

It’s a Mercedes G, G wagon, G 500.

Crew Chief Eric: Excuse me, what?

David Andrews: It’s a Mercedes G 500. The Galinda wagon. The Galinda wagon, aka.

Crew Chief Eric: Because you see a lot of those off roading too, right?

David Andrews: Well, not in the U. S., no. But around the world, yes.

Crew Chief Eric: So what drew you to the Mercedes? I mean, talk about another oddball, right?

David Andrews: The 3000 Star, [00:31:00] bro.

I’ve been wanting a G Wagon since I was 10 years old, 12 years old. That’s when my love for it came out. I just thought they were super cool. Boxy. You see like these guys bouncing around and jumping over stuff. And, and people are like, why would you do that? Why would you take a G class, a luxury vehicle off road?

And I’m like, ease all that. This thing is a military vehicle first. And people, when they get in it, they’re all excited to get in it. And they’re like, this is it. I’m like, well, what did you expect? It’s a legit truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Making it the same way for like 60 years.

David Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. So they just changed the formula last year.

They are no longer solid front and rear. They have an IFS now.

Crew Chief Brad: So they ruined it

David Andrews: and a solid rear now. So this is the first time that they went straight to the drawing board. And literally redesigned it, but kept [00:32:00] the look. They said they wanted to keep the spirit and the essence, but it’s, it still has the three lockers.

And personally, now that I know how good IFSs are, once you do the right things with them. It’s not a bad setup.

Crew Chief Eric: So I remember when you got Gretchen and you went out like right away, you were out in the woods playing to see what it does stock. So what did you think compared to the commander after all the mods and all the time you spent with it, how did it compare, um, pound for pound?

David Andrews: That is a great question. And I’m going to tell you right now, the G class is on another level from the commander. And it’s stock. I haven’t done anything. If I did the stuff in the commander, when it was stock that I did in the G class at Roush Creek, Oh, she would have broke 20 minutes into the trail. No way the commander would be able to keep up traction wise.

The commander has the same ability as the G wagon. The G wagon is [00:33:00] literally made of tougher stuff. They’re not control arms. They’re called radius arms. The radius arms are different in the sense that in a Jeep you have a upper control arm and a lower control arm. Double wishbones. Yeah, they work like that.

A radius arm is this big honking chunk of steel, right? And it operates as a upper and lower control arm, but it’s just one arm. And what it does is it hooks around the axle itself in a, like a C clamp. It holds the pinion and it holds the position of the axle, just like a upper or lower control arm would.

Then you have leaf spring suspensions, like YJs, YJs. Yeah. Yeah. Had leaf springs and

Crew Chief Brad: the

David Andrews: actual, huh?

Crew Chief Brad: And Corvettes and Land Rovers

David Andrews: and Corvettes. Oh my gosh. The thing that people used to anyways, but, um, [00:34:00] those are the different styles of suspensions, but the Mercedes suspension and overall build is just, it’s a tank.

It’s salt. Like I can literally run that thing into a wall and it will still keep running. So we pick on these soccer moms who got G wagons. The fact of the matter is their G wagon will outlast your Jeep more than likely. And I am a jeep guy through and through, I’ve driven CJs, I’ve driven TJs, I’ve driven YJs, I’ve even driven the JK, and I had the privilege of driving the new JL.

Now that’s an interesting topic right there. Out the factory, none of those vehicles will be able to withstand what the G Wagon can. And the other thing is, the G Wagon is actually super simple to work on. Super duper simple to work on. Like it’s literally three bolts holding one radius arm in place to change the oil.

It’s literally like you just reach in there and you just [00:35:00] pull the daggone thing out and drain during the oil. It’s it’s everything on there is super simple. So I have not had to take it to Mercedes. I’ve been able to do all the work on it myself, change lights, change oil, jack it up, take the wheels off.

You know, it’s super simple to work on.

Crew Chief Eric: So you said so far no mods, you haven’t done any tire mods, no

David Andrews: lift, no nothing. The only mod I’ve done is I’ve put on an aggressive all terrain tire thus far, and it’s got, it’s on 31 inch tires. Now, when I wanted to do 31s on the Commander, I already had to lift it two inches just to get 31.

I didn’t have to do anything on this. And it’s got plenty of room. The wheel well, it’s just really nicely designed. It’s very similar to a Jeep where there’s like no thrills. It’s just an open space with like a little protection to protect the body from like rocks and stuff like that. But like you get [00:36:00] to use the entire wheel well space.

Just like in a jeep

Crew Chief Eric: and power wise. The commander was a Hemi and the, the G wagons of V8. So dollar for dollar, they’re pretty similar there too. Right?

David Andrews: Yeah. They’re dollar for dollar. They’re pretty similar. I’m actually liking the Mercedes V8 better. Because the commander had, I don’t know if y’all have had experience with the Hemmings, but they had that displacement on demand.

And if that thing decides not to work while you’re on the highway, you’re stuck in four cylinder mode. And I had that happen to me a couple of times. I’m like giving it the goose and she will not go into V8 mode. And also I had to replace the motor because it dropped the valve. You know, those motors are like damn near 10 grand.

We know someone who’s had to

Crew Chief Brad: replace a couple of them.

David Andrews: And I was like, why is this motor? It’s a push rod, put an LS in there, you know, or something like that. But it [00:37:00] wouldn’t work because the Hemi has a throttle or engine position sensor that has to made up with another sensor on the transmission. And that’s when I started falling out of love with the commander, because I was like, unless you’ve got like beat pockets to understand this stuff and keep up with it, this thing is going to cost so much money.

If any of these sensors go out and, and that includes the quadra drive system as well. If one of the, there, there are four individual sensors that you got to make sure are healthy in order for the quadra drive to work, because if one sensor goes out,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s it.

David Andrews: You got nothing. If you got a wheel speed sensor that is reading incorrectly, QuadraDrive don’t want to work.

And I hated leaving that up to the system. And now, fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones that never had a situation where it went out on me, but there are lots of stories of people being like, It just stopped working and I don’t know why. [00:38:00] You need to have to do a diagnostic and all that stuff.

Gretchen was a blessing in disguise.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the Mercedes 4×4 like compared to the Jeep system?

David Andrews: They’re very similar. Think the transfer cases in like the Jeeps. I think it’s the NV gearing. I think they’re belt driven transfer cases in the Jeep. And I think the transfer case in the Mercedes is gear driven and those tend to be tougher.

And, but, uh, you have to keep up with the fluid maintenance on, well, you got to keep up with the fluid maintenance on all of them. Don’t get me wrong. The, the belt driven transfer cases are mad tough. Like. I’m seeing people with Rubicons doing all kinds of crazy stuff, even beyond what I’m willing to do with the G Wagon and their belt driven transfer cases.

It just so happens the gear driven transfer cases are inherently stronger, and it’s just a different solution.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve been off roading all this [00:39:00] time. Where do you, so you mentioned a couple places, Roush Creek and, and Gore and, and et cetera. Is that where you go the most often, or are there some bucket list places you’d like to go to as well?

David Andrews: Yeah, so Maryland sucks. Off roading is illegal in Maryland. I’ve been pulled over for it.

Crew Chief Brad: Had to do community

David Andrews: service. Oh yeah. I think in some places, like if you off roading like a watershed or something like that where people’s drinking water or some endangered mushroom is at, uh, you’re gonna have a hefty fine and up into jail time.

I tell people the best off roading is legal off roading. There are trail network maps that you can take your vehicle on fire roads. That’s a good way to start, you know, reserve roads that are kind of off the beaten path, but they’re like legit highways. Even though they’re off road, [00:40:00] there’s maps of like scenic off road highways.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that like the transcontinental map or something like that?

David Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. I have to, I have to look it up. That’s a good way to start also sometimes. You can find properties where off road companies used to use the land as proving ground. So like near me, it’s off of 295 Coca Cola drive.

Coca Cola drive. Yeah. Land Rover used to have proving grounds back there and the tenants now. have no problem with people continuing to use those lands to off road just as long as they stay within the bounds of the proving ground and they don’t be going driving over the train tracks and stuff like that.

Then you have like the off road parts, which would be like a next step up to Roush Creeks, the gores, the wind havens, the big bears and stuff like that. And then there’s some, there’s a park down [00:41:00] in North Carolina, uh, Uwari. That’s going to be a little bit more advanced and also off roading up a mountain is a little bit more different because you got to have cojones to be okay with your vehicle.

You see nothing but trees and sky. And then you look down and you see the Valley thousands of feet below you. So you’re looking at this thing. It’s like one wrong move and I’m going to die. I want to die. So, further out west is the more of the rock crawling stuff like Moab and Rubicon Trail. Those are like, you asked me what’s my bucket list, Rubicon Trail, by far.

Crew Chief Eric: Energy wagon,

David Andrews: energy wagon.

Crew Chief Eric: So you have some very unique vehicles that you off road with humble beginnings with the Jeeps and whatnot. What would you recommend for somebody that’s just starting out in this discipline of motorsport?

David Andrews: I would recommend starting out first off, what is your budget looking like?

[00:42:00] Second, be okay with the fact that sometimes, you know, these Wranglers are expensive. So. You don’t have to start out with a Wrangler. Me personally, I love like the, the late seventies. To mid to late eighties vehicles. So you got like Suzuki Samurais, Isuzu troopers, Jeep XJs. But if your pockets are a little bit deeper, you can start looking at like the Wranglers and you don’t have to get a Rubicon start out with like a Wrangler Sahara or sport, the Toyota, uh.

Hilux or Tacoma, and these platforms have such a following that it’s cheap, like you don’t have to spend a whole lot of money on upgrading, just figure out what is your priorities, so I learned through my mistakes, I wouldn’t say mistakes, as I’ve gone along the way, I’ve learned that before the Lyft You need to [00:43:00] think about recovery.

So you need to figure out does your vehicle have good strong recovery points? If not, where can you fabricate something strong enough to withstand a nasty tug or work on looking at winches and bumpers? Because those are the first things to go. But some people, you know, find that they want to get right into the nasty and they put a two inch lift and a tire on.

So I would say those older vehicles on a budget, depending on which one it is, I think the Samurais are actually going for a decent amount of money nowadays. If you can get your hands on a Land Cruiser, LC80, an XJ, of course, any kind of Wrangler that’s not rusted, got to make sure it’s not rusted out because you’re going to be chasing that forever.

Yeah, you’re done. And then they become unsafe. Don’t take a vehicle that smells funny or and is or are [00:44:00] rusting. If you can find a vehicle out west, go for it. And if, and you can afford to get it here because those vehicles are always going to be in better shape than northeast. Or just East Coast vehicles, period, because all the street seasoning we put on the roads during the wintertime.

Crew Chief Eric: So would you say that there’s a vehicle or a brand or just to stay away from, like, don’t even waste your time?

Crew Chief Brad: Mercedes.

David Andrews: Actually, I think that’s a fair statement. I think that’s, that’s a very fair statement because honestly, you might not have a choice but to stay away from it because those vehicles are not cheap.

My particular model is a 2007 and I purposely picked the 2007 because that was before they started adding all the electric gizmos and radar and all that crap that can go out on you. But even though it’s a 2007, it still costs me like Right at 60 grand. So I think you can get a 2004 [00:45:00] for like 40 something, like in the mid to high forties,

Mountain Man Dan: some of the vehicles you were mentioning for people starting out, you’re mentioning a lot of the more like SUV type vehicles.

What are your thoughts on the trails with guys in trucks? Do you see a lot of them out there or is it more SUV, Jeep type vehicles?

David Andrews: Well, no matter where you go, it’s going to be Jeep heavy. Wrangler is King. And then after the Wrangler, the Cherokees. And then. On the opposite side of that, you have your Toyota guys.

Now those guys tend to be the ones with the trucks, the Tacoma, the Hilux, the

Crew Chief Eric: forerunners

David Andrews: I’ve seen where people take a super duty, bob it and turn it into like, A rig like a legit, like you just bypass all the work you needed to do to make a buggy because you chopped your F two 50 down. It’s got massive axles, front and rear, and cut the body a little bit and put like 40 twos [00:46:00] on it and you got a buggy truggy.

Um, and then I’ve seen where guys have four wheel steering. How about that? That’s pretty cool, huh? You can go in there and be a, uh, just starting out type off roader to like the extreme, extreme. And they all are there helping each other out. Uh, the people, the community is really cool community. Yeah, there’s some ball busting going on between the Jeep guys and the, uh, Toyota guys, but it’s all in good fun.

But the jeeping community, there’s

Mountain Man Dan: some Interesting characters in that.

David Andrews: Interesting characters there. I’ve literally, when I showed up with my commander, I’m like, hey, how you doing? And I had a guy literally stand there and, I don’t know, like IFS, and walked off. I was like, well, peanut butter sandwich to you too.

Bitch.[00:47:00]

And then you got the guys that just you know, All they want to do is drinking off road. I think that’s the like, if you’re going to do that, do that on your own property and your own farm or whatever, but don’t go to a certified place and endanger other people’s lives and endanger the facility’s ability to carry insurance.

Because you want to go out there and drink alcohol and set fire to the forest because you did something stupid

Crew Chief Brad: and never, never drink and get behind the wheel of anything, a sports car, road car, off roader, nothing. Just leave the alcohol at home.

Mountain Man Dan: Leave it out. Well, and the great thing that you mentioned that is I’ve noticed not just with the off road community where that tends to be a common thing where everybody has a cooler, but Brad and I are both familiar with 75 It’s been open and closed multiple times.

And one of the most recent times it was open, in my opinion, one of the downfalls that [00:48:00] had is because spectators can come and drink, bring their own beer. But the problem is they didn’t put any stipulations of it being only in cans. And a lot of the guys that used to go there to run that track, stopped going because of broken glass in the paddock area, like nobody wants to go in there with an expensive brand new set of slits and run over glass and toy brand new tire.

It’s the same thing out in the woods.

David Andrews: Yeah, I tell people it’s like when you get there at like you’re going to someone’s house, don’t go disrespecting their property and they’re ignoring their rules because what’s ultimately going to happen and I’ve seen this on a lot of trails lately, they’re shutting them down because people are completely disrespectful to people’s property because A lot of these trail networks literally go in people’s backyard and they give you permission to go back there and enjoy yourself.

But when you’re littering, you’re just drunk, doing whatever, loud, [00:49:00] one bad person. Person one spoiled individual can ruin it for the rest of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And, and, you know, it was something I was going to bring up and I’m, and I’m not as close to it as you guys are with the experience and whatnot, but I’ve seen it on a lot of shows that I watch about off roading to kind of, you know, educate myself on other disciplines.

And I know one of the big things in your guys community is also the environment. And I understand full disclaimer. You know, we are still burning dinosaur blood here. We’re not off roading EVs yet. So let’s put that aside. Let’s take that out of the equation. There’s still a deep respect for the environment itself, where I’ve seen where guys are like, yeah, we’ll cut down a tree dead.

We’ll knock stuff out. We’ll pull stuff off the way while we’re on the trail. But something that’s alive, we’re not going to kill a living tree. We’re not going to try to damage the forest or whatever. So I found that to be really interesting, you know, and when something does go wrong and sometimes somebody does something they shouldn’t, man, there, there’s some serious backlash from that.

So,

David Andrews: uh, yeah. And they’ll shut you down. Like a lot of [00:50:00] people do not use the appropriate recovery strat when they wrap their winch around a tree. You’re dead wrong. If you’re. Putting raw cable up against the tree. Cause that’s literally. slitting the throat of the tree. I think it’s important to know that you need to have proper equipment.

Don’t drink, don’t be taking weapons out there if you’re not authorized because a lot of these places are on federal land. So you get caught with a weapon, you’re done. Yeah, that’s basically it. You’re right. Eric is like, there’s a way to have fun, but respect the area.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. So let’s switch gears a little here, pun intended.

Let’s talk about your biggest oops moment while you’re out on the trail. Well, I

Crew Chief Brad: thought we already heard it. It was getting ribs.

David Andrews: No, that’s not an oops. That’s a odd hail. I got one. So my buddy owns an off road park. His name is AK. Y’all might’ve [00:51:00] heard, uh, of, of his company is, uh, chaos off road. They’re a massive fabrication shop that does all kinds of crazy things for people’s vehicles.

My buddy. Took his TJ to, uh, chaos. And this dude did a one fell swoop upgrade, pretty much turned his Wrangler into a buggy, but it still looks like a Wrangler. 25, 000. Now that I said that, let me get to my oops. So I’m off roading with this guy and he’s got like 20, Something inches of travel front and rear and jumping down off of stuff.

And I’m like, you guys are going to kill me. My airbags are going to go off and I’m going to die today. Anyways, we get to this thing called V notch and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a vehicle with a 42 degree lean listing [00:52:00] over most people when they, when they get up on a, like an embankment, they feel like the car’s going to roll over.

You’re. 40 something degrees. Your, your, the vehicle’s weight is literally all pressing on the other ax. You’re holding yourself up to, uh, be able to control the vehicle. So we’re going through V notch, and these little buggies have no problem getting by this tree. Now the commander has a horrible viewing angle when it comes to being able to see your surroundings.

So I noticed there was a kick out of the tree at 40 degrees. I’m up there like looking down and I’m like, is that a boulder? No, no, buddy. You’re good. You’re good. Come on. Am I going to clear it? Yeah, you’re going to clear it. You’re going to clear it. And I’m like, okay, you’re my spotter. I trust you.

Passenger door. It looked like. It looked like I hit an iceberg. [00:53:00] The door and I start seeing my door from the inside going like quivering, like, and I’m looking, I’m like, I know they didn’t. So if you look at a video on my YouTube, it’s got like 60, 000 views. I got a crease from the front passenger door to the rear passenger door from that boulder that I had an oops moment on, you know, it’s bad.

They were like, don’t even drive up and they’re just looking at it like this. And I’m looking back at them, like, and they’re not saying anything. I was like, how bad is it? Oh, it’s not that bad. I’m gonna get out and see. No, no, no, no, no. Just, just no stay in the car. And I’m like, Oh heck no. I get out and I’m like.

I’m going to fight somebody. You’re spotter. You got to fight your spotter. Okay. So my spotter is a preacher. He’s a man of God. I can’t beat up a preacher.

Crew Chief Eric: He forgave him. [00:54:00]

David Andrews: I had to forgive him. No, he’s supposed to forgive you. I cussed the hell out of his ass though. Did

Crew Chief Brad: you do confession right after?

David Andrews: I’m not, no.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. Oh,

David Andrews: I’m still mad at that to this day. That happened like five years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, you mentioned earlier about, you know, recovery gear, a lot of things about guys starting out and all that. What are some essentials for folks that are, you know, getting into this, you know, outside of, you know, just leave it alone, learn to drive.

I mean, that seems to be a common across all our disciplines, right? Leave the car alone until you can out drive the vehicle. Don’t mess with it. Right. But you mentioned there’s some essentials that a person should have when they’re doing this. What would you recommend people put in their trunk when they’re out there?

David Andrews: First and foremost, I would say, never go off into the woods by [00:55:00] yourself. Always have someone with you. That’s the most important thing I’ve made the mistake of going off by myself. And I’ve had a very close situation. Where my vehicle might still be out there. I got lucky. Number two, if you can’t afford a winch, have a come along, a come along with a high tensile strength cable, have the tree protection strap to wrap around a tree.

A winch. I can’t tell you how important a winch is. Like that should have been for me. That should have been one of the first things I got from myself. Because. At the end of the day, if you get high centered, which I have done, and I had no winch up at pots mountain in Virginia with my boy, and I was learning how to reacquaint myself to off roading.

What you should never do is straddle a sand mountain [00:56:00] and the belly of my vehicle sat down on the top of that mountain. And I was stuck for six hours. And you know what people just drove right on by on their motorcycles. They didn’t help me. You’re not going to be able to budget 6, 000 pound vehicle. If you get high centered on something.

So winch recovery, strap recovery gear, you’ll need a shovel. Oh, and the socket set. Those to me are the essentials.

Mountain Man Dan: So to go along with the winch, would you recommend snatch blocks for guys?

David Andrews: Yeah. So snatch blocks essentially double the pulling power of the winch. So in certain cases, like when you’re really stuck, like wedged in between rocks, that’s when a snatch block is a really good power multiplier.

Uh, for your winch. So I don’t think it’s necessary, but it’s a nice to have. They’re super cheap. You might as well get it, but you’re rarely going to use it.

Mountain Man Dan: I tend to use them more and [00:57:00] not when I’m needing to be pulled straight.

David Andrews: I’ll do it

Mountain Man Dan: to where if the only good anchor point is a tree straight ahead of me, but I need to go to, I’ll hook the two trees and use that slash block.

Only the angle I need

David Andrews: to.

Mountain Man Dan: So I’ve never used them for amplifying the power, but I’ve definitely used it for pulling me a different direction than I’m.

David Andrews: Oh yeah. Yeah. You’re right. That’s a really good way. Like if you, if you have a horrible angle and you got the straps for it, yeah, you can put, you can, you can spider web, a couple of trees or.

And, and just pull that short distance and then readjust and whatever. But the real purpose of the snatch block is power amplifier. So what, what happens is you use the snatch block and tie it off onto someone’s truck or something that’s solidly anchored down, right? And then you return the power back to your bumper.

So essentially you have doubled the pulling power of the winch because you, um, It’s a return back.

Crew Chief Brad: All right. So another question for you, which is a debate in the winching [00:58:00] world, is a steel line versus synthetic.

David Andrews: That’s a good question. A lot of people, it depends on who you’re talking to, but I’m gonna tell you right now, the Spydra cable is literally stronger than the steel cable.

And it’s Totally safer than the, than the steel cable, the steel cable people, for some reason, like them because they’re, you’re under the notion that it’s just, it’s a stronger material. Now the Spydra is just as strong as the three eighths steel and it’s safer in a sense because steel cables have a problem of storing the energy of the pool within the cable itself.

And what happens is it can explode and whip. When you get a cable that thick flying around and people are [00:59:00] not being safe standing behind trees or what or don’t put the drop bag on it, that’s a very dangerous item. It can most certainly a really nasty laceration if not If that thing starts flying around,

Mountain Man Dan: I always tell people with the steel cables, be careful because that easiest reference I have is if anybody’s ever seen the movie of men of honor, when the anchor chain snaps, takes his leg off, I’ve seen cables and chain snap and the way they whip back.

It’s I’ve been fortunate not to be in the way of them a couple times

David Andrews: and see now spider cable Synthetic cable does not store that kinetic energy within the cable itself You can literally stand right next to it. If that cable fails, it’s not going with it’s simply just gonna Turn into papier mâché and fall to the ground.

Crew Chief Eric: I like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Poof! One more quick question on the winch. Harbor Freight winches.

David Andrews: [01:00:00] Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: What are your opinions on them versus I just went through this. I was looking for you know, a winch to get for the truck because the bumper has the winch plate. I settled on the Smittybilt XRO Uh, with synthetic cable, 10, 000 pound, but I seriously considered the, uh, the Badlands, uh, 12, 000 pound.

Um, cause they’re both similarly priced. I, I ended up with Smittybilt because of the, I guess the, the reputation, uh, Harbor Freight has. But what are your opinions on that?

David Andrews: There is nothing wrong with Harbor Freight whatsoever. I, I say you should have got the 12, 000 pound Harbor Freight because. The thing is the Harbor Freight winch uses Smittybilt parts.

The difference is the Smittybilt is modular. Like you can take it apart, work on it, and then put it back together and all that great stuff, the Harbor Freight, it is what it is. When it burns up, just [01:01:00] throw that son of a bitch in the trash and get you another cheap one. You can’t take it apart, but if you have the money for like a nicer winch, Your off roading is equivalent to your use.

Like if you do a lot of off roading and you get stuck a lot, probably going to want to get a really good winch because you get

Crew Chief Brad: what you pay for with the one. Yeah.

David Andrews: That Harbor freight will burn out long before a. A Smitty build or mile marker or, or a warn or wor. So me personally, I’ve gone with warns.

I’m getting a warn Zon and this bad boy comes with everything. It is remote controlled. I can control my lights, you know, I can plug up air compressor to it. It, it gives me, it lets me know what the voltage usage load. You’re not gonna get that with a, uh, a Harbor Freight. You just better hope your alternator and battery can deal with it.

Mountain Man Dan: Another quick [01:02:00] thing for winches and being a year on the trails, a lot, a big thing I tell people all the time with winches is because I’ve, I went with the 12, 000 pound Badlands from Harbor Freight, but I don’t off road very often, it’s not that often I need it. So I couldn’t justify buying a higher grade winch.

And other than that, because I have multiple vehicles and tractors and things like that to change around on. I put mine into a cradle system instead of mounting it on a bumper. One of my trucks, because the fact that one thing that I tell people time is a lot of guys, you see it very common with Jeeps is a guy have a winch on the front, but if he doesn’t use it often enough and then everything gets all corroded inside for the contacts.

They get out on the trail, they pull it out and then it won’t go back in. So you’ll see a guy coming back from trail with the lead wrapped around his front bumper because he couldn’t get it to go back in. So do you have any recommendations of any sort of protective stuff for ones that are solid mounted and what’s your thoughts on cradles where you can change front to back as I did with mine?

David Andrews: Yeah, I think it depends on what your requirements are [01:03:00] for the winch. Obviously it’s beneficial to have a cradle because you have more options on where to start to pull from, but the strongest platform would definitely be a static mount. I’ve seen people do static mount winch up front and then keep another winch in the cradle and only put it on the rear when they need it.

They have the connectors and everything going to the rear

Mountain Man Dan: other than that. Do you know like a protective out of the weather elements like covers and stuff? Oh yeah.

David Andrews: Yeah. I forgot about that one. Yeah. You’re definitely going to get more life out of your winch. You’re going to get better response out of your clutch control.

If you protect it from the elements, because what sucks. Is when it’s two degrees outside and you’re trying to handle a winch. That’s all iced up because you didn’t cover it up. That sucks. I learned that lesson a while back ago. It’s probably best to use a [01:04:00] cover. Second, this is where still this kind of going back to what you were asking me, Eric, about still versus Spydra still.

is resistant to U. V. Spider is not. So when the sun bakes the spider cable, the synthetic cable, you compromise its strength. It would probably be best to most definitely cover your winch.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m assuming like you were saying when it was two degrees and if the synthetic had a bunch of water in it, it turns into a solid block and it’s hard to unspool it.

David Andrews: Yeah. Oh yeah. Same thing for, uh, still just cover it. I mean, the cover is like a few bucks and it takes a few seconds of your time to cover

Crew Chief Eric: it. So drew, man, this is all really good information. So for somebody that’s starting out, let me say like myself, that’s not as familiar with off roading like mountain man, Dan is Brad and so on.

And other guests that we’ve had on the show, are there any books, forums, websites, or anything that I could use to [01:05:00] kind of get You know, nerd out on and get more familiar with, you know, now that we’re going into the winter, when a lot of motor sport is closing down, that I could do some research on, is there anything that you could recommend?

You can wheel in the winter,

David Andrews: will in, in the winter. For me, when I started out again, as an adult, we didn’t have this wonderful tool called Google. Just type in like off road parts for whatever your vehicle is. And like, It’ll immediately give you some really cool websites, not magazines, but I mean, obviously four women is probably the biggest one where they show some pretty interesting projects within the magazine.

But for me, I haven’t really been big into the forums as much as. What is out there for me now and how do I make it work for me? I never really looked at other people’s [01:06:00] projects and said, Ooh, I want to do that. So for me, it was go to Google and then you go, you start finding about things like Quadratech, which is a really big one.

Then, uh, there are a lot of off road based communities on Facebook for both. Nissan, Toyota, and Jeep and Ford. Those groups tend to stick to themselves. Like Jeep people don’t talk to four people. Four people don’t talk to Toyota people. And there’s always like,

Crew Chief Brad: and nobody talks to the Mercedes person

David Andrews: yet.

Nobody at shoot. Mercedes people don’t talk to Mercedes people. I’m finding that out right now. I don’t get no waves. Dude, you have to apply for their overlanding group, the Mercedes G Wagon Overlanding of America and all that stuff. And the fact that I didn’t have a G Wagon as my cover photo.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not overlanding the Bloomingdales.

David Andrews: Oh, that’s what the problem is. [01:07:00] I’ll be like, excuse me, I need to run over this bush real quick. The most entertaining route to me is the Jeep groups. I’m still a part of the Jeep groups. Jeep Colt, Jeeping of America is another one. Those people just want to have a good time, but. They do some of the funniest ball busting.

Like I can’t say it on this, but like, you look at some of the memes that they say, gee, people are like this. And it’s usually like this man’s man and whatever. And then Toyota people are this. And it’s like, eh, I’m not going to say it on here, but it’s all in good fun. I got a question. You guys have seen it before.

Crew Chief Brad: How, how do all those other people feel about the Subaru people? Oh, the Subaru. We won’t talk about the

David Andrews: Subaru folk.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re a special breed too.

David Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. No, the Subaru folk. I’m cool with the Subaru folk. Matter of fact, I did Tell of the Dragon this year, Eric. [01:08:00] Ran into, I was riding with my buddy. He has a, uh, 2012 STI, I believe it is.

The one that gets no love. The ugly one. The ugly one. That’s what everybody calls it. Anyways, so, my boy’s like, Uh, we’re gonna just, you know, take it easy. We’re not gonna do anything. And next thing I know, Womp a bop pow pow pow! And we’re just hauling ass down the road. And then there’s this guy and a No, what is that thing called?

The Subaru The Tribeca, the Forrester? No, not the Tribeca, it’s like, it’s It’s like the Crosstrek but it’s renamed Oh, it’s the

Crew Chief Eric: Impreza Crosstrek, yeah Oh yeah,

David Andrews: okay, yeah And he is keeping up with the STI and his Crosstrek Ah, I was I was dumbfounded, dumbfounded. But they

Crew Chief Eric: were on, they were on pavement, right?

David Andrews: Yeah, we were on pavement. But he, he, he said, he says he has a WRC [01:09:00] loadout, whatever that means. He has tires that are a bit knobby for him to go off road. I’ve heard things where guys say that they have the simulated low gear setting in their Subaru Outback. And I’m like, that ain’t, if it ain’t a transfer case, it don’t count.

And dude, you see these guys, they got them. They’re at Grouch Creek. They’re always like the super skinny, uh, throughout his life. And he’s got like, and he’s talking to you serious about his off road capabilities and then for some reason he tries to drive. Yeah. They start talking junk. Like you paid all that money, bro.

And I can do that. And I’m like, well, you’re like, here, here, here’s my digits.

Crew Chief Eric: Text me when you want me to pull you out. All

David Andrews: right. Yeah, exactly. I need to get a sticker that says, uh, Subaru recovery team.[01:10:00]

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. So you, you, you mentioned Roush Creek a bunch of times. Some of our guys, including Brad have gone there to take the school that they offer. Are there other places like that, that do you want to do courses or do you now, and you also mentioned you’ve been doing this for so Do you find yourself teaching other off roaders how to To work this motorsport.

David Andrews: Actually, I have, I haven’t done any official cadre work simply because I don’t have time, but when I do go off road and we have someone new. You know, we always have, you know, the before the event brief where you get everybody in a big huddle and you go over the basics, who to look for, for information and I do that stuff for my own club.

And then what we’ll do is we try to sparse the experience. Drivers in between the inexperienced drivers. So like every three or [01:11:00] four vehicles, depending on how big the group is, we’ll have an experienced driver lead, then three or four unexperienced drivers or people without the appropriate recovery gear, then we’ll drop in another experienced driver with all the.

Appropriate recovery gear and experience. And then what we do is we call it, it’s called spotting. So if we get to a rather technical obstacle, the first driver goes first, then that driver stays in spots. The next driver, then the first driver takes off. And then the driver who just got over the obstacle spots that driver, or it could just be like one guy just sits there the entire time and just.

He just knows the trail and he just tells everybody where to go. And that’s where the teaching of the inexperienced driver comes into place, or I’ll see somebody like go down a hill a certain way and I’ll tell them to stop. Do not do that because we do not want to roll over a situation because [01:12:00] a lot of people.

We’ll turn away from the hill because they get scared. And when the vehicle is shifting and transitioning into like that in between phase of shifting its weight around, it gets kind of scary for people and they don’t know where their will is. But the last thing you want to do is turn. Away from the, the lean, you want to always turn into the lean and do not stab the brakes because it’ll cause the vehicle to kind of get very unsituated and it can lead to a whole bunch of mess you don’t want.

Crew Chief Eric: So that brings up a really good question. Um, ABS, are you for or against it in off roading?

David Andrews: In off roading, ABS is a really good, Because anything that you can do to increase traction, you want it. And ABS increases traction through just being a traction manager, through slip management. Also, it helps [01:13:00] to prevent, to a certain degree, individual tires locking up.

Now, ultimately, if you’re on loose gravel, ABS ain’t gonna matter because once you start sliding, that’s it. It doesn’t detect that the vehicle’s moving when it detects all wheels are stopped. So it’s not going to try to ABS it up, but like on muddy situations and stuff like that. Oh yeah. ABS definitely helps.

Crew Chief Eric: So is there a structure to moving up in off roading? So is there like so many hours behind the wheel, you know, things like that?

David Andrews: I don’t think it’s a managed structure. I think it’s more, what are you comfortable with? What do you consent to?

Crew Chief Eric: So is it more like. It’s like we got the green hills and the blue hills and the double black diamonds

David Andrews: literally like that.

Yeah, Rouse Creek. They literally have the definitions of the trails, but the green trails are like, you know, stock friendly. Then blue [01:14:00] trail is imminent body damage possible. You’re obviously going to want to have a lifted vehicle at that point. Then you have your black. And those are the trails where they are extremely technical, body damage will happen.

So if you are all about bumping something, getting out and checking it, you don’t want to do a black trail. Then above the black trail, you have the red trails and that’s just the Jesus take the wheel trail. You don’t want none of that sauce right there. I’m going to tell you right now, cause I’ve been in there and I’m sitting there.

Okay. Cool. Some of them trails is sketchy, especially again when you start climbing up house sized boulders going up the hill of a mountain or something like that. That’s buggy level. You need buggy or truggy.

Crew Chief Brad: And to Drew’s point about the different trail levels and stuff, Rouse Creek also has for some of their obstacles, they’ve [01:15:00] got bypasses.

So if you’ve got a recovery vehicle behind you, or you’re an inexperienced person mixing and they don’t want to take, they don’t want to drive through rock Creek and there’s a bypass for it.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. So are you allowed to take passengers or only your spotter?

David Andrews: No, you can take whoever paid. Oh, okay. If you can fit them in there, they, they get the ride along.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It’s not, it’s not as structured as a track day.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m just curious. Cause some of our listeners do come from the track world. So, you know, I got to ask these questions, right? Yeah,

David Andrews: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I would love, I would love to ride shotgun. So, you know, let’s

Mountain Man Dan: do

Crew Chief Brad: it.

Mountain Man Dan: Speaking of that, you were saying how like Roush you go to quite often and I know Roush charges per Passenger and there are some other parks that don’t and it’s basically you pay for the vehicle and that’s it What are your thoughts on places charging for the passengers or not?

Do you think that’s good for the parks or?

David Andrews: I think if you’re going to come and have [01:16:00] fun and use the facilities, and even if you’re just a ride along, I think, I think it’s fair that you pay a price to come on to the property because these properties are private property and they have to be able to keep the business going.

And also they’re not your friend. It’s, it is a business. So if you show up on their property and you want to ride along, yeah, you got to pay. Now, I don’t think you should pay as much as the driver. Like, and I’ve never seen a park charge the same amount for passenger as they do a driver. Also, there’s a difference between the upfront costs.

So like Roush Creek does like a upfront costs and then you get what’s called a membership card. But I think the price was like 30 or 40 bucks, the upfront costs. But after that, for the rest of the year, it’s only like 12. To get onto the property. I think that’s fair.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I like that too. [01:17:00] Another question for you as we kind of finish out the segment here, there’s a lot more off roading shows on TV nowadays than there used to be.

Right. And it’s made the sport probably more popular. And so, you know, some of them like truck night in America, Alaskan off road warriors. There’s Bunch of shows on motor trend that have to do with off roading and four wheeling and stuff like that. What are your thoughts on stuff like that? Are they overproduced and really don’t show off roading for what it is?

Are they too glitz and glammy? Or is there one that kind of is just right that you would recommend somebody watch that? Yeah. That’s kind of really what it’s like out there.

David Andrews: So those shows are a hit and miss for me. What I can’t stand is when you get a guy who openly admits that they don’t off road and they’re giving.

Sage advice, performance trends on what this vehicle can and can’t do. And then they’re like, Oh, this thing is very off road worthy, you know, stuff like that. I’m like, Oh God. So it gets a little [01:18:00] cringy for me, but then when I think about it, the mass majority of the people who sees those shows, they roading either.

And then sometimes you have a hit, like, I don’t know if y’all remember a few years back, Top Gear America had a off road, I thought that was one of their best shows when they, when Tanner Fowlson took off to Alaska. I thought that was hella entertaining because Those guys actually knew a little bit of something, especially, uh, what was the guy from North Carolina?

Rutledge Wood?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

David Andrews: Rutledge Wood, yeah. He actually knew a little bit of something, something about off roading. So I appreciate when these guys have real authentic moments off road instead of like these staged, Oh, get me going up this hill and a tire off the ground. And then Alaska off road warriors. I’ve seen a couple of episodes.

My dad’s been trying to get me into it. [01:19:00] Oh, he’s like, man, you need to see what they’re doing. And I I’m impressed. I’m impressed. Like that’s legit. And I’m also a fan of seeing car reviewers, hop into the passenger seat of an off road vehicle and ask an experienced person about the vehicle and what its capabilities are and all that great stuff.

I’ve seen that a lot, the stuff motor trend is doing. I like their car stuff. He takes the vehicles and does a hot lap at Willow Springs. Oh man, I love that. But off roading. A lot of these series have not hit the mark for me, and I don’t watch it too much.

Crew Chief Eric: So Drew, this has been really cool because we’ve gotten to see a different outlook on off roading.

And like we’ve said, motorsport is deeper and wider than people realize. There are flavors and colors and different styles within every discipline. Of motorsport to include off roading. As you talked about, you got the rock climbers, you got the [01:20:00] overlanders, you got the survivalists, et cetera. So this has been a really cool and technical outlook on a, yet another variation on off roading.

And I’m hoping our audience learned something new today and, uh, maybe a newfound interest in a different type of motorsport. So I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show.

David Andrews: Well, Hey man, thanks for having me. Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation because it had me think about some things as well.

So, but thank you. Thank you for having me.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email gtmotorsports. org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. [01:21:00] Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it. But please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going. So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content.

So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

Consider becoming a GTM Patreon Supporter and get behind the scenes content and schwag! 

Some stories are just too good for the main episode… Check out this Behind the Scenes Pit Stop Minisode! Available exclusively on our Patreon.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into their automotive and motorsports pasts. As a bonus, let’s go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode for some extra content that didn’t quite fit in the main episode.

Sit back and enjoy. Enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and support BrakeFix on Patreon.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So, all right. So now what we’ll do is we’ll do this thing called a pit stop, where we get to know you a little bit better. We ask you some off the wall questions and maybe elaborate on some of the stories and whatever you want to talk about.

So you guys good on that?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: All right.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, we can, we can wax. No, no, this is good. This, this is actually a really,

Crew Chief Eric: this is a really technical episode. So I like this. So one of the questions I had, and then we’ll get to the real fun ones that Brad likes to ask, we’ve mentioned more than once. on the drive through, uh, which is our monthly recap episode about a gentleman in [00:01:00] California who has gotten his jeep stuck on a mountain biking trail.

So I don’t know if you had heard about this story and if you didn’t, Brad will elaborate, but I wanted to get your feedback on this particular jeeper.

David Andrews: Do we know this particular jeeper?

Crew Chief Eric: We do not, but we’ve talked about him on our news.

David Andrews: Which one of you two did it?

Dude, that’s a constant story, man. These guys go out on those, um, those hill trails and they just, Oh God, they just, just don’t.

Crew Chief Eric: So this, so this particular gentleman, Brad, do you want to explain in short how this worked?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, this idiot went out and basically he took a bike trail instead of like a hiking trail bike trail.

Yeah. Obviously it’s not wide enough for even a side by side, let alone a Jeep Wrangler. And you know how those new Wrangler, like the JK owners get is like, Oh, I just got [00:02:00] myself a Jeep. I can go through anything. Watch this, you know, hold my beer kind of stuff. Yeah. Four wheel drive, bro. Yeah. Four, four wheel drive, bro.

And he got

Mountain Man Dan: all four tires are still touching the ground that when you high side the whole vehicle, it don’t work.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So he said he’s on this bike trail and he gets, I don’t know if he started early in the morning when it was dark or whatever, but he gets to a point where it’s a cliff on either side and it’s about like four feet wide and his vehicle sitting at like that 35 40 degree angle fall off this cliff and it’s just, it’s just parked there.

Somebody spotted it. Eventually he got like a, a local jeepers club, uh, with the help of a helicopter went out and they helped pull the vehicle back. I don’t know how the helicopter was involved other than spy photos, but. Uh, the Jeep has being recovered, but, but yeah. What, what would you say to lift

Mountain Man Dan: it up and carry it?

Yeah,

David Andrews: maybe. Well, that’s what I was about to say. If you get, if you getting into the game of getting a helicopter to [00:03:00] recover you, dude, can you imagine what the bill will be? That’s Operation Dumbo. Drop territory right there. Mobo drop,

Crew Chief Brad: operation ass drop.

David Andrews: Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly what I was about to say.

Operation Dummy. Oh. See these guys. who do this stuff, you can’t tell them nothing. You try to, Hey man, it’s probably not a good idea. No, no, I’d be all right. It’ll be all right. I got, I got 500 pound feet of Torquem’s. All right. It’s like Hearst

Crew Chief Brad: purrs.

David Andrews: Yeah. I got Hearst purrs. All right, bro. You go ahead and do that.

Crew Chief Eric: So icing on this particular cupcake. Is that some brilliant individual and I’m not using sarcasm here at Ford offered to go pull him out with a new Bronco?

David Andrews: Yeah, how did that go?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, he declined the offer. All right.

David Andrews: Yeah, I bet he did.

Crew Chief Eric: But can you

David Andrews: imagine? The ball busting will never stop.[00:04:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So that led me into my next question. What do you think about the new Bronco?

David Andrews: I love it. Eh, I feel so dirty for saying it because I think they kind of, they missed a mark with me with going with a IFS on that thing. That thing is literally the size of a F-150 and it’s an off-road vehicle, and y’all deemed it necessary to put a IFS on there.

Now look, I know an IFS. can be worked with and can be a decent platform, but something of that caliber should have came with a straight axle. And I can, I see it already. Pete, they’re going to rip that IFS right the hell out of there.

Crew Chief Eric: So would you say that’s the biggest disappointment or the

David Andrews: fact that it’s not coming with a V8?

No, I thought it was coming with a V eight negative ghost runners. Why did I read that? There was a V eight model. It’s only an eco

Mountain Man Dan: boost that that V eight. That V eight will be when everybody LS swaps it and puts that solid axle under it.

David Andrews: Yeah, [00:05:00] exactly. Exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: It takes a Chevy. It takes a Chevy to make a Ford.

Good.

David Andrews: Ooh. Ooh. Shots fired.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s fight words. .

David Andrews: Some would say that about a Jeep because, uh, I’ve seen a lot of Ls, Jeeps. Running around. I mean, the LS is just a great motor. It can either be in a sports car, you can truck it, or you can buggy it. And it’s perfectly, it’s an all around, it’s an

Crew Chief Eric: all around engine.

Yeah. Just one of the greatest motors

David Andrews: in history.

Crew Chief Eric: It is the only thing Chevy got right, but we’ll leave that where it stands.

David Andrews: Yeah. Get your ass down. Sorry. The cat is trying to jump up on you. I thought you were

Crew Chief Eric: talking about me and Daniel. I thought you were talking to Daniel.

David Andrews: Sorry.

Crew Chief Brad: They got the square body right.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, whatever,

Crew Chief Brad: whatever.

David Andrews: But back to the Bronco, I think that’s kind of where who asked me that Brad about the technology versus utility. Again, I think Ford struggled. [00:06:00] I’m pretty sure the research and development went in there and they were like, Oh, what can we do with a straight axle? I’m sure somebody asked that question, but then a bean counter or some physicists was like, Why do we need to do a straight axle?

Independent is more controllable on the highway. It rides better on the highway and we can still get a little bit of off road utility out of it.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, do you think that was bean counter? You think that was focus group related for the fact they know it’s going to be a lot of like soccer moms? Yeah, I

David Andrews: think, I think I was wrong in saying bean counter because honestly, a straight axle would have been cheaper.

I

Crew Chief Brad: think you’re, you’re not too far off the mark with the bean counter. Cause I think the Bronco, I think the Bronco is actually built on the Ranger chassis, not the F one 50. And I think that the Ranger is a, uh, is an IFS. I don’t think the Ranger has a front and a side.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. But the new Rangers, the [00:07:00] size of the old F one 50.

So it’s huge either way.

David Andrews: Yeah. So I’ve seen a few of those things running around. I can’t believe how expensive that truck. I drove,

Crew Chief Eric: I drove one when they debuted, we were down in Texas and we got an invite to go test drive one. I wrote an article about it. And I was, it was kind of like the Bronco where it’s like, why does this have a four cylinder?

Like put a V6 EcoBoost in it. I mean, that’s the unfortunate

David Andrews: trend because V10s are pretty much gone. V12s are pretty much gone in certain sports cars. Now V8s are next because ice

Crew Chief Eric: ice motors in general are out the door. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah

David Andrews: Pretty much. Yeah, I think Ford sees that it’s unfortunate But we’re gonna have silent cars here within the next 10 years

Crew Chief Brad: It’s like so speaking of silent cars.

Have you put in your order yet for the new Hummer?

David Andrews: Ooh, now that’s my friend. I’m sorry. I like that. [00:08:00] I like it. So have you seen the new Hummer EV commercial?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. We were talking about

David Andrews: it crab walks. There are guys literally doing that now. They can make their, their buggy crab walk and, you know, counter turn to like, jump it around a boulder.

It’s like, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. Uh, no.

Crew Chief Eric: So, so, so that begs the other question. Well, if he ain’t going with a Hummer, you’re going to get the lyric then the Cadillac, because that’s basically the same thing.

David Andrews: First off, I will never buy another GM vehicle ever again in my life. All because of the GTO, because Pontiac did not stand by that car whatsoever.

Cause it

Crew Chief Brad: wasn’t a Pontiac. It was a Holden.

David Andrews: Unfortunately, they got rid of the best thing they had in their lineup. That and the, uh, G8. Which was the HSV. I still don’t understand why GM shut down. Holden

Mountain Man Dan: made no sense. That was [00:09:00] definitely where the bean counters came in.

David Andrews: Oh, come on. Hold on. I’ll call her back.

Sorry about that guys.

Crew Chief Eric: No worries.

David Andrews: GM’s dead to me, even though that new Corvette. Is interesting. I don’t know what that, how I feel about the new Corvette. You don’t fit in if you’re

Crew Chief Brad: six three and I’m six four, we don’t fit.

David Andrews: Yeah, don’t even worry about it. Oh dude, you should have seen me get into my buddy’s VR one.

Oh, that was a show. . .

Crew Chief Eric: I think getting out would’ve been even better. Dude,

David Andrews: I’m up here. Like I got like half the parking lot cracking up. Oh, I got in there. I was like, oh, oh, lemme turn around. I gotta get in ass first. And then I bust my ear hitting the, uh, that pillar didn’t know I was bleeding. So I’m bleeding in my, my buddy’s a hundred thousand dollars ER one.

And then when I shut the door, dude, I was like, think small, he’s six, four. But fortunately on the driver’s side, they [00:10:00] were nice enough to give more space to the driver. But me, I was done, dude. My leg was up against the door. I was smushed and then I can tell he doesn’t know how to drive properly because he’s stabbing the gas in mid turn and I’m like, Oh God, we about to go into this thing, but first, but anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: So as soon as we’re talking about new vehicles, what do you think about the Wagoneer? Being a Jeep guy. I don’t like it. Really?

David Andrews: The front end looks like a lit up chandelier. Like if I want a chandelier, I’ll go put one in my house. I don’t need my car looking like a rolling chandelier. I ain’t

Crew Chief Eric: got nothing.

I mean, I can’t fault that logic. I mean, it just makes sense.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I was going to say his, uh, his Mercedes doesn’t have the lighted three pointed star on the front. And you don’t have that option?

Crew Chief Eric: That is the tackiest Mercedes thing in the world. No, because

David Andrews: mine is back when. They used to make where men were when Yeah.

back when men were men. . Well, yeah. Back when we were men. . [00:11:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So let me ask you this, you brought up a story about driving a JL off road. Do you want tell that one?

David Andrews: Uh, no. I didn’t drive it off road. Oh, okay. Why did, oh, my S eight had to be put in a shop. And I don’t remember why I do remember why this is going to be a good conversation, but anyways, they didn’t have any loaners.

So they sent me to enterprise and they gave me a yellow jail. So big ass black dude, driving a yellow jail.

But anyways, I was shockingly surprised. At how sturdy that thing is because there were things about the JK that annoyed man. I’m like, why did they do that? Why does this feel like this? And the JK, you know, wanted to drift and stuff like that. But the, the JL is quiet. You don’t hear a whole bunch of buffeting.

Anymore in the, in the, uh, roof, it’s just a well put together vehicle. And then I started looking up under there [00:12:00] and their control arms are like, they will be upgrades for the JK. That’s how beefy they are.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I’m hearing is this is how it translated into my brain. Fiat got something, right? Is that, is that

Crew Chief Brad: what I heard?

Yeah. If you want a really good American car by as much as I

David Andrews: hate to admit it. Look, Fiat controls Chrysler. I get it.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the best thing to ever happen to Chrysler. Yeah, I think

David Andrews: so. Because Hellcat. You can see where they’re engineered. Huh?

Crew Chief Eric: He said because Hellcat.

David Andrews: Because Hellcat, yeah. And what’s the new truck?

The Raptor Beater. Rx the

Crew Chief Brad: Power

David Andrews: Wagon.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s like the, it’s like the, the RX or

David Andrews: something. R tx. That thing has 700 horsepower. What? For, why? Because this news. Who cares,

Crew Chief Eric: bro?

David Andrews: Oh, I was like, that is

Crew Chief Eric: the, I’ll tell you, I, I said this on another episode. When you [00:13:00] walk into the Chrysler factory, there’s a sign that says, we don’t give a shit.

Send. Does it really? I mean, seriously. They don’t care. .

David Andrews: Yeah. So I looked at, I looked at the Hill Catt. I started gooning over it a couple of years ago. I’m like the white one with the black, black on white. I was like, man, look at that. I ended up getting a charger as a loaner because my commander was in the shop.

And I was actually impressed at how well the Dodge chargers mannerisms are. Especially at high speeds. Like I’m up here doing 90 and it feels like I’m doing 55. I’m telling people to move faster,

Crew Chief Eric: especially as Brad would say, for being a 400 year old Mercedes.

David Andrews: Have you looked at this suspension? There is nothing American about that suspension on it.

No, not at all. I’ve never seen an American car come with what are the three fricking control arms and.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. The modular wishbone. Yeah. [00:14:00]

David Andrews: I told the dealer, I was like, you know what, I want to go look at that Hellcat over there. And then the closer I got to it, my eyes, you know, was analyzing everything.

I’m like, does that really say 265. 30? And this thing’s got 700 horsepower. Dude, I’m gonna be ice skating all over the damn place in this thing. And then, but it’s Pirelli PZ Rose. I don’t care if it’s Jesus grip, you don’t put that kind of tire on a 700 horsepower. Are you kidding me? This is a joke, right?

And then I’m like, I’m looking at the sticker.

Crew Chief Brad: Them off roaders got that Jesus grip.

David Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. Jesus grip. I’m looking at the sticker. It says 88. 5. And I’m like, okay, well, let me sit in it. And then I’m, I’m feeling the material and I’m like, dude, y’all want 80, 000 for a souped up police car [00:15:00] is for wrong.

It’s wrong. How y’all how this interior is. And he was like, yeah, but, but the, but the screen, damn the screen, look at this material. Like I’m feeling all around and I’m like, nah, this ain’t what I want. So, I mean, it’s a, it’s a cool car, but yeah, I’m, I’m too hoity-toity now that I’m used to like SA interior d bougie, because that’s like my benchmark.

Crew Chief Eric: basic now that’s what, that’s what it’s all about. Which actually leads in, leads into one of Brad’s Great question. So we’ll do it this way. We do in the garage, we do the million dollar Man. Which one do you wanna do, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, well, we’re gonna do ’em both, so,

Crew Chief Eric: all right. This is the million dollar man question.

If you had all the money in the world, what would you buy? A house. No, a car. It has to be a car. Oh, oh. Vehicle. Vehicle.

Crew Chief Brad: A houseboat.

David Andrews: Oh, house and boat. Okay. Uh, I was like houseboat? Wait a minute. Ooh, for my [00:16:00] car? Hmm. All right, so for you don’t

Crew Chief Eric: you don’t have to be able to fit in it. This could just be the car that sits in your garage.

Yeah, because you also

Crew Chief Brad: bought lipo in a couple inches shorter.

David Andrews: Yeah, but if I’m if I’m worth that kind of money, because I can, I’ll customize that bad boy. Yeah. You’ll

Crew Chief Brad: pull a

David Andrews: shack. Yeah. Right. Head right out the top, but I’m happy as hell. So Ferrari just released a vehicle that I don’t know the name of it.

I haven’t been keeping up with Ferrari in a long time, but man, the angles on that bad boy, and she’s blue, red. With that orange or yellow, uh, Ferrari emblem, you know, which one I’m talking about. It’s got like the really swoopy headlights. Oh, is that the

Crew Chief Eric: 812 super fast?

David Andrews: I think that’s it. That’s got

Crew Chief Eric: the two round lights in the back, like a Ford GT.

Yeah. The 812 super fast.

David Andrews: Oh my [00:17:00] gosh. That thing is gorgeous. Yeah. I would get that for my truck.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re got right into the three car garage now.

David Andrews: Yeah. My truck would be that Chevy. No, the GMC. Hold on guys. Cause I think I plugged up the wrong charger. My phone. There we go.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, you said no more GM.

David Andrews: No, I I’ll, I’ll make an excuse for this one.

It’s that giant is looks like a Tonka truck. It’s the giant GMC

Mountain Man Dan: Kodiak.

David Andrews: Yeah, I’m just, I’m taking up four fricking parking spaces. Asshole. But you can’t tell me shit. So you say you wouldn’t do the six wheel G wagon. You wouldn’t do the six wheel G Wagon pickup. Oh, I got the six wheel G wagon pickup. I saw it was so cute.

Hold on. Hold on. That

Crew Chief Eric: was some trick photography right there, man. I [00:18:00] don’t know

David Andrews: where it is. It must still be in my car. Dude, this thing comes with a front locker, center locker. And the two axles lock, like it can crawl

Crew Chief Eric: on an RC. Really?

David Andrews: Yeah. And that’s bonkers, man. It’s got a high gear and a low gear best 1200 bucks I’ve ever spent.

Crew Chief Eric: Dang.

David Andrews: Yeah. So the million dollar

Crew Chief Eric: man question leads into our. this infamous three car garage. It’s usually on an island or a racetrack or wherever you want it to be. And there’s all these variables involved and people have gotten very creative with their answers. So you kind of gave us two already. Would there be a third vehicle in your three?

These are the three cars you would live with the rest of your life. The rest of my life, man. What kind

Crew Chief Brad: of question is that?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, man. If you could only have three cars, that’s it. What would they be? Or three vehicles? I mean, you can go back. You can change up your answer. Because I led you into this. You can change them out now.

So, what would be in your three car garage?

David Andrews: If it had to be a permanent vehicle? I’m kind of [00:19:00] liking that lucid sky. Can I get my, can I get my updates with the lucid? How good your Wi Fi is? It has to stay in place as is, because if I can get my updates, I think I can survive. Like, did I get my candy cane OS on this thing?

Got that

Crew Chief Brad: Fruit Ninja.

Crew Chief Eric: I think Tanya, Tanya talked about the Lucid. That’s like the hot underdog EV right now because it’s a bunch of guys from Tesla. They got mad and went and started their own thing. Look man, I’ve

David Andrews: been drooling over the Lucid for about a year and a half now, two years, and they’re finally about to release it.

I think that’s going to be a game changer. I mean, Tesla’s already adjusting their prices. Yeah. You like, you like that

Crew Chief Eric: Cylon front end? I

David Andrews: think that’s super dope. I’m finding out that I have a love for any vehicle that has like animated headlights. I love how the Hummer has the charging lights that kind of like have the sequential charge on [00:20:00] it.

Kind of like, I’m charging my phone, I’m charging my Hummer and they both have the sequential charging.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That’s cool. Do you think off roading is going to be the last motorsport to go EV?

David Andrews: I don’t think so. First off, I don’t know what Tesla was thinking with the cyber truck, but I think the Hummer is going to be a good test bid and I think it’s going to be an honest shot at being a smart off roader.

Now, I’m not a big fan of super air suspensions because that’s what it has. Like. This thing is going to be able to raise the vehicle, uh, 10 inches or something like extract mode. What the hell is that? It will be able to fit 40 inch tires without an upgrade. That’s big to me. Oh yeah. What vehicle, you know, that can do that.

And then you are now effectively getting away from [00:21:00] the complexity of axles because it no longer has a center axle. It has traction motors. So it doesn’t need a locking mechanism that can fail on you to actually simulate lock. Like one motor can literally just walk the vehicle up the hill or whatever wheel has the best traction or they can lock them together without a physical lock.

Like I’m blown right now.

Mountain Man Dan: That all comes down to amperage or wattage to each electric motor or wheel.

David Andrews: So

Mountain Man Dan: also I think because the electric engines torque, I think off road it’s going to be great because climbing some of those, especially the rock crawling rides, you put the gearing down at low enough and it’s going to be able to pull mountains.

David Andrews: Well, they’re not even going to be geared from what I understand. It’s just a direct, I could be wrong. I need to do some research, but based on what I saw, I think the [00:22:00] rear motors are coupled, but the front motors are individual. I don’t know. I I’d have to do a little bit more research on that.

Mountain Man Dan: But as you know, in the off road community, somebody eventually wants to give it 10 years after they’re out.

They’re gonna find ways to put some sort of reduction in there and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, like do with doublers and things.

David Andrews: Oh, yeah, like a portal axle or something. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that’d be cool. So let’s flip back to something fun. Sexiest car of all time in your opinion. I’m gonna have to give it up to that.

What’s that car? That just did 331 miles an hour. Oh, yeah The two the two atara. What’s hara dude? They hit all the right angles on that bad boy Now, I don’t know if you saw my post on Facebook, but I said something hilarious. I was like, I would have, I would have shat myself at 268. I literally would have dropped a dookie right there in the

Crew Chief Eric: middle of the car.[00:23:00]

David Andrews: Dude, because like just watching how. The the line splitter start. It just became one line. I’m like, you realize how fast you’re going? Let just a gust of wind. Let somebody sneeze across the street. That car’s done. And he did 331 miles an hour. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. We don’t we. Oh, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: un, it’s un that unverified.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. There’s a whole bunch of drama around that too. So Bugatti is still leading out there. Guinness Book of World Records was out there. Yeah. But they said, they

Crew Chief Brad: say it was unverified. They had

Crew Chief Eric: to do it multiple times. And the GPS is that the use were inaccurate. And there’s a whole bunch of litany of stuff.

So, and then, and then there’s like, some people say it didn’t, it didn’t do 300. Some said it did three, 10, some just said it three or six. It didn’t do three.

David Andrews: Idiot. If you don’t think that car didn’t hit 300, that man went back to the future [00:24:00] right there before our eyes. And we’re up here questioning. Oh, he probably didn’t do 300.

That man went to berserk mode. When you, the lines in the road become a solid line, you’re going fast. So flipping the coin, ugliest car. Pontiac Aztec.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s funny. It’s such an in jerk reaction, man.

David Andrews: That thing, that and its twin, the Buick rendezvous. Oh, what were they thinking with that? But have you

Mountain Man Dan: seen the off road version of the Aztec?

Well, there was

David Andrews: an off road version of the Aztec.

Mountain Man Dan: Yes. They’re okay. So like,

David Andrews: it had Ripley bottle paneling does not make it an off road vehicle.

Mountain Man Dan: I actually think that was on the American top year that I think Rutledge showed up with it and he put like some 30 ones on it that were knobby. And surprisingly, it made it look better,

Crew Chief Eric: but it’s still from Hill drops didn’t help it at all.[00:25:00]

David Andrews: Um, that just goes to show somebody will buy something.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Let me, let me ask you one more. All right. If you could have a beer with Clarkson Hammond or may, which one would it be?

David Andrews: Yeah, I don’t know if I could take Jeremy Clarkson before I have to punch him in the eye. You wouldn’t be the first. But he also makes me laugh, so I guess, what beer?

Crew Chief Eric: I like how that’s, that’s the important, which beer are we talking about?

David Andrews: You gotta have a scotch, which you have to make. It would have to be a pale ale for me, but I don’t drink beer anymore. The important part. Yeah, I don’t know which, it would have to be some kind of pale ale, like I can, I can drink that, and it’s strong enough for me to like ignore Jeremy’s flaws.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice, nice, I like that. That’s a good answer, that’s a good answer. But no, you know, it’s, it’s always a good time when we, when we get together, you [00:26:00] know, and it’s funny because You’ve come and gone a couple of times from GTM and, and, you know, we’ve really changed over the years and, you know, we started as a bunch of track rats and all that kind of stuff.

And it wasn’t, wasn’t necessarily for everybody. Right. But I think over the years we’ve really kind of Broaden. We’ve taken the blinders off. We’ve broadened our horizons, especially with the definition of motorsport, but you know, you’d be amazed how many guys now are into bikes, how many off roaders we have, all the different, you know, motorsports disciplines people are bringing to the table and the stuff that we’ve been just going out of our way to do because, you know, you can only make, let’s Let’s use the joke.

You can only make a left turn for so long. Right. Uh, before you start to get bored and want to do something else. So, you know, it’s been an interesting couple of years, you know, and, and change and development and the personalities that come to the table. So, you know, if you ever want to come back for a third or fourth time, You always have a home, you know,

David Andrews: well, I mean, I look at it like this.

I never left. I just became [00:27:00] inactive and then y’all boot me.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s just the way we do it every year. If you don’t renew in December that we just, we flush out and we flush, you know, flush the,

David Andrews: but I gotta tell you, man, I’ve been a fan of GTM over the years. I mean, I’ve peaked in. At first it was a little difficult for me to understand and navigate and try to figure out how the forms work.

I remember you talking about doing this kind of stuff way back when we used to work together. And then you finally made a website and y’all partnered up with all you guys doing this thing. And it’s cool to see that this is, uh, evolved. into what it is today. I swear to God, I’m actually going to come out and go to one of those meets.

I really congratulate what you guys are doing. I think y’all are doing something that I haven’t seen anybody do really where you guys are tying in all the disciplines and becoming like a central point. For, uh, [00:28:00] people to sign up for stuff or expect to show up somewhere at a show, provide people a platform to express themselves in their experience.

I think that’s really, really dope. And I do enjoy listening to the podcast. I’ve been peaking in on the podcast and stuff like that. I wish I was there for the big man in a little car. I know,

Crew Chief Eric: I know. You have to do

David Andrews: another

Crew Chief Eric: one. Yeah, it was a good episode, man. .

David Andrews: Yeah, that was, I enjoyed that one. We’re doing an off roaders edition was six 10 in the, in the pot.

6, 6, 8. . Six eight. I’m like, man, you just hating life. You can’t fit in anything.

Mountain Man Dan: And uh, you’re always welcome to come up to the mountain to try out the logging trails. I got up here.

David Andrews: Okay. All right. I’ll bring her up there. Always good talking to you, man.

Crew Chief Eric: A pleasure, my friend. A pleasure.[00:29:00]

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their [00:30:00] strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GTMotorsports. And remember, Without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction and Overview
• 00:26 Pit Stop: Getting to Know the Guest
• 00:54 The Jeep Stuck on a Mountain Biking Trail
• 04:02 Discussion on the New Bronco
• 07:49 The Hummer EV and Other New Vehicles
• 11:00 Driving Experiences and Vehicle Reviews
• 14:39 Evaluating the $80,000 Police Car
• 15:41 The Million Dollar Man Question
• 17:07 Dream Car Garage
• 20:09 The Future of Off-Roading with EVs
• 22:24 Sexiest and Ugliest Cars
• 25:06 A Beer with Clarkson, Hammond, or May?
• 25:56 GTM: Evolution and Community
• 29:02 Closing Remarks and How to Get Involved