Truck Night in America’s – Silver Monster

• How did you make the transition from AX to Offroading?
• We talk about the 1971 Landy Rock Crawler build known as “The Silver Monster”
• And we take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Truck Night in America, as well as the episode Dan was featured on (Pictures Below).
• Learn more about Truck Night in America.
• Check out Dan’s Episode “Beware Sharp Edges” – Season 1, Episode 5.

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.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight, we take the road less traveled. Heck, there isn’t even a road. We’re getting down and dirty with special guest Dan Rau, who is a British car owner. Avid off roader and was even on history channels truck night in America back in 2018. And we can’t wait to explore his journey from autocrosser to off roader.

Welcome to the show, Dan.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Hey, thank you. It’s been looking forward to it. It’s going to be a fun evening.

Crew Chief Brad: And as always, I’m your host, Brad. And I’m Eric. All right. Looks like the winch is secured, so let’s get ready to pull ourselves out of this

Crew Chief Eric: So Dan, we go way back. [00:01:00] I met you a long time ago in a much younger state of my life, and you were an avid autocrosser.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, I used to, I used to have a lot of fun autocrossing. I enjoyed that a lot. Volkswagens was what I used to autocross. Oh yeah, well ask him why he has that

Matthew Yip: email address. Oh,

Dan Prasada-Rao: man. There is a story behind that.

Crew Chief Eric: The Slow Rocco, right?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah. I used to autocross the 1981 Scirocco S model.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I was jealous you had your Scirocco.

I’ve always been in love with those

Dan Prasada-Rao: cars, so. And it was a fun little car. It was all suspension, no tweaks to the motor or anything. And I thought it was pretty slick and I thought I was okay. But there was this guy that used to hop in my car, and every time he hopped in my car, he’d beat my time in my own car.

And so he started calling it the slow knocko. That person was Matthew Yip.

Crew Chief Brad: What’s funny about that is I too have a similar story [00:02:00] about showing up to an autocross with a Volkswagen. 2001 gti and the person that introduced me to autocross would always get in my car and beat my time Every single single time and that person was mr.

Eric

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a Volkswagen thing nobody else gets it that’s

Dan Prasada-Rao: That must be it.

Crew Chief Eric: So dan let’s talk about that. So you started in autocross. So what happened between then and now And getting into Offroading, how did, how do you make the transition there?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, you know, I, I had always wanted a four-wheel drive vehicle since I was a little kid.

Well, I don’t know if you guys rem Well, Matthew might remember an old show called, I don’t remember. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I used to watch that show when I was a little kid and there was this guy, Marlon Perkins, I think was his name, and he used to ride around in this old 1963 Land Rover all over the world.

And, you know, I was born in Africa. My dad and [00:03:00] his brothers had Land Rovers there. And so this ad for an old Land Rover popped up, and the bug just bit me. So I went and talked to the guy and ended up buying it. He gave me this long, sad story about how he’d apparently pissed off his dad, and his dad had pulled his college funding out from under him.

And so he had to sell this thing to get money to pay for college. Now, whether it was true or not, apparently it worked on me.

Crew Chief Eric: I had the opposite reaction to Land Rovers. My parents subjected me to the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and I saw what that guy went through, and I was like, no way, no how, it ain’t happening.

Matthew Yip: Ironically, I watched that movie

Crew Chief Brad: last night. This will come up later in the show, but did the Land Rovers you had in Africa, Also have a small block Chevy because that makes them infinitely more reliable.

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, they did not. They were the standard old Land Rover four cylinder with a whopping 75 horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: So the Land Rover you have [00:04:00] now, is that the same one you’re talking about? It had the, you’ve had for this whole time, or is this multiple land Rovers later and, or is it multiple British cars later?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Actually, it’s all Land Rovers. I do still have the first Land Rover that I got, and I’ll be taking it out on the trails this weekend.

That one is no longer stock either. It’s got bigger axles and bigger tires, but the first one I got was a four door, and so that’s what I’m taking this weekend. That thing, instead of a small block Chevy, it’s got a Cummins turbodiesel in that one. Oh, wow. A little four cylinder Cummins.

Crew Chief Brad: The 4BT? 4BT.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yes, exactly.

The 4BT. Basically, the same motor that was in the early Dodge diesel truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Between autocross and off roading, was there anything in there?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, pretty much. Went from one to the other, and I was tinkering around with the Land Rover more and more. And, uh, I moved down to the southern part of Maryland, down near Pax River.

And that put a lot of the autocross [00:05:00] locations farther away from me. I kind of figured, you know, for the same amount of work that I do on stuff, I could spend a whole weekend driving, or I could spend about five minutes driving. So, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly.

Dan Prasada-Rao: So let me ask

Crew Chief Eric: you this. Did anything from the autocross discipline translate over to off roading, respectively a different discipline?

Dan Prasada-Rao: That

Crew Chief Eric: carries over.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, that’s probably the most common, but yeah, there were there were some other things, you know, things like watching tire pressures and monkeying around with tire pressures to get vehicle to do what you want to do and handle the way you want it to. Discipline and you know, watching your feet and what you’re doing with your feet

Crew Chief Eric: and

Dan Prasada-Rao: being able to control.

Clutch and brake and gas at the same time. And, you know, one of the things that I’ve used consistently off road that I learned in autocross was left foot braking to set yourself up for different kinds of [00:06:00] situations. Uh, that whole left foot braking thing was a tough one for me to learn. The first time I tried it in autocross, you know, I was coming around the autocross course and I thought I was doing pretty good.

And I went to shift and forgot my left foot was still on the brake. Oops.

Crew Chief Eric: Autocross requires quick reaction time. It also requires you to maneuver the steering wheel very quickly to have what they call fast hands. So I also wonder if shuffle steering and some of the other techniques translate over to off roading as well, where you have to maneuver, you know, very quickly because of obstacles and things like that on the trails.

Dan Prasada-Rao: It depends on what kind of off road stuff you’re doing. So most of what I built my Land Rover for and the Land Rover that was on the show, both of those were built for rock crawling, which is generally a very low speed event. So you’re probably working the pedals faster than you are the steering wheel, typically.

to try and, you know, maintain momentum or stop momentum or, you know, those kinds of things. [00:07:00] But steering is probably one of the slower things, unless something starts to go wrong and you need a quick recovery to keep something from going really wrong.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you miss autocross at all?

Dan Prasada-Rao: I do. I do man on a regular basis.

I look around at cars and I think man I’ve always had this fascination with mid engine vehicles And I saw a porsche 914 the other day that just looked real pretty and I was like, oh man, that would be fun That would be a blast to autocross.

Crew Chief Eric: So this is a good segue. Let’s talk about your build. Let’s talk about the quote unquote Silver monster.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, I helped build it. The silver monster actually belonged to a buddy of mine and he passed away. And when he passed away, I ended up with the truck and it’s always tough for me to change anything on that truck. Cause for me, it belonged to my friend, Mike Van Curen, and it’s always tough for me to change anything because I kind of want to keep it the way that Mike had it, the way that Mike set it [00:08:00] up.

But. You know how vehicles are, they need stuff. And at some point you got to change things and you know, you got to modify things to make it continue to work or to work for you better. Cause you know, everybody, ergonomics are different, different driving styles and that sort of stuff. But the silver monster originally, when he started building that, he pulled the front part of the body actually came out of a buddy’s farm and had a tree growing up through it.

They had to cut that off.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay.

Dan Prasada-Rao: The back half of the body, the body tub, actually Mike bought for me. Oh wow. And that was an old Land Rover that I saved from the wrecking yard. It was named Kalua Kate. It had the Kalua logo and the Kalua script on the tub and it said Kalua Kate. And when I was trying to sell that tub, somebody came to me and said, you know, I actually knew her.

So she was apparently a real person. Oh, wow. With a fondness for Kalua.

Crew Chief Eric: So on the show, they gave a brief overview and they gave a clip of you talking about the [00:09:00] silver monster. You said the name was bestowed upon it by your daughter. So there’s a backstory there. And they gave us some technical specs, right?

71 Land Rover with a small black Chevy. I thought I heard you say there was an Allison trans in there, but it was really kind of Blurred in the conversation because I think pistol Pete was talking over you a little bit I could tell it was a manual from the video And on the spec sheet that they put up as a graphic They said it had 450 horsepower with an 88 inch wheelbase

Dan Prasada-Rao: The stock wheelbase on that short two door body style would have been 88 inches The wheelbase on it as it stands is probably closer to 100.

Maybe just a maybe 150 I think it’s about 102 is what the wheelbase is. So the wheelbase has been stretched.

Crew Chief Eric: And for our listeners out there, if you want to compare it to something, that is the wheelbase, uh, 104 inches is the wheelbase of a mark four Volkswagen GTI. So that’s a pretty significant stretch, uh, to get up to that size.

Matthew Yip: Trying to think what else is 88 inch wheelbase. I [00:10:00] think the Miata is pretty close. Isn’t it?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. So you’re going from Miata size to GTI size. That’s a big stretch, but anyway, continue.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah. So the, um, the frame was built from scratch using rectangular heavy wall, rectangular tubing. It’s got a small block Chevy, but it’s been stroked.

So instead of a 350 cubic inch, it’s a 383. The transmission is. It’s an old Chevy transmission, the SM420. Old Chevy four speed transmission, which you really drive like a three speed because first gear is this really low granny gear. It’s like seven to one in first gear. Oh wow. Then behind that, it’s got what’s a real popular transfer case in the off road world is the Atlas transfer case.

There it is. Axles are one ton Chevrolet. truck axle. So it’s a Dana 60 in the front and what’s a corporate Chevy 14 bolt rear end. That’s kind of the drivetrain and the tires on it [00:11:00] are 39 and a half inch iROC tires on beadlock wheels. Completely not

Crew Chief Eric: street legal car. Yeah. I saw it had a tow bar on the front.

Did you flat tow it all the way down to Georgia?

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, no, actually that’s not a tow bar. It’s what a lot of folks in the, uh, in the off road world call it a stinger. Okay. So it’s a, it’s tied to the roll cage and comes up off the bumper tied back into the roll cage that, where if you’re tipping, over forward.

Sometimes that can keep you from going all the way over. And if you do roll, say if you roll over sideways, a lot of times that’s a higher pivot point that between that and your roll cage, it will keep from smashing your engine, your hood all in. That’s what he saw, it was not. I put it on a trailer to take it down to Georgia for filming.

Nice.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about the name. It is Silver, and it is, does kind of look like a monster, so maybe it is pretty obvious, but you know, how did your daughter get the honor of naming the girl?

Dan Prasada-Rao: So [00:12:00] a little more personal history here that maybe you guys aren’t aware of, but After Mike, who built the truck, passed away, I was spending so much time with his wife, Wendy, and his daughter, Maddie.

You know, one thing led to another. We ended up just spending so much time together and really enjoying it and getting really close, so. Now I’m married to Wendy and Mike’s daughter is now my stepdaughter. It’s like a

Crew Chief Eric: Hallmark movie all of a sudden. I like this.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah. So when we were prepping the truck for the show, she had called it the silver monster well before that.

And well before I owned it, you know, before I got it after Mike passed away. So she had already been calling it the silver monster. And mainly just because it made so much noise. It’s a loud truck. It’s got a couple of really. It’s got a single muffler on it, but it’s wide open.

Crew Chief Eric: And I tell you what, when you came around the corner for staging on that hill climb, I was like, what is that?

I [00:13:00] mean, it was outside of that 2000 horsepower diesel, which we’ll talk about later on. I mean, it was, it was like, what is

Dan Prasada-Rao: coming around that corner? Holy cow. Yeah. It’s a fun truck. You can hear it coming. That’s for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to call it practice, but But where do you go off roading on the regular?

Where do you take the Silver Monster to get acclimated to driving it and putting it in extreme conditions?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, you know, that’s, that’s always the hard thing here on the east coast. Two places I go most often just west of Winchester and, uh, uh, there’s a little town called Gore and not far from Gore, there’s the, uh, the Cove campground.

And at the Cove Campground, they have miles and miles and miles of trails. And I’ve been going to that place for, oh man, it’s gotta be over 20 years I’ve been going there. I know the owners real well. They like people to come off road, but they like people to come for organized events. But, you know, I know them well enough that I could pretty much call them up any weekend and say, Hey, can I just swing by and [00:14:00] and play, and they’re usually pretty good, not letting me do that.

But on the East Coast here, pretty much anywhere you go, you have to pay. So when I go to the Cove Campground, I pay them a land use fee, or I pay them for camping, that sort of thing. There’s, uh, the other place I go most often, a property that’s been set up as an off road park. It’s called Roush Creek Off Road Park up in Pennsylvania.

So Roush Creek is old coal mining property and the property owners, once they mined the coal, they were trying to figure out how to bring in revenue. So they said, look, you know, they built an off road park and they have a section for full size vehicles, they have another section for ATVs and that sort of thing, side by sides.

Crew Chief Eric: So for our listeners, we have a few members in GTM that are big into off roading. And so the places you mentioned, they also have participated at or in events at those locations. And what’s interesting is, if you go to our website, And search things like Toyzuki, or you search Red Clay Rally, or Roush Creek, [00:15:00] articles will come up where we’ve covered events where even Brad has gone to Roush Creek with one of our region chiefs, Harry, uh, one of our members out of the Aberdeen area built a Toyota 4Runner Suzuki Samurai, he calls it the Toyzuki, and he was at the Cove last year in Gore, and we covered all that, and it’s really interesting, so, Common stopping grounds for everybody.

So that’s, that’s good to know. And, and that these places exist, especially on the East coast, where we continue to develop and to develop and to develop, and there’s not gonna be any trees left anymore, you know, by the time we’re done, so the science of off roading, I mean, you’re talking slow speeds, granite gears, things like that.

But. What are you most worried about? What are you looking at? You know, we’re always talking about look at the apex and you got to track out. You got to position the car in a certain place because of weight transfer. A lot of those things apply to off roading as well. So what’s the driving style like,

Dan Prasada-Rao: you know, I think one of the things you asked me, what are you most worried about?

And I think the one thing that most crawling that are most worried about is rolling, flopping, or rolling, or because [00:16:00] that’s where you’re going to get hurt. That’s where you’re going to do a lot of damage, and I think that’s what people are most worried about. I mean, there’s some hardcore guys with full on tube rigs that they can care less if they roll.

They might be more worried just about breaking stuff, you know, high dollar stuff. For me, I love being in the woods. I’ve been camping since I was a little kid, and so for me, one of the, one of the attractions of Off road versus autocross is I’m out camping for the weekend. I’m out in the woods I’m running around in the woods all day And you know if you get stuck you’re doing a lot of hiking up and down hills to get recovery gear and pull winch cables you know, but I love the whole outdoors and out in the woods aspect of it, and typically every night you’re sitting around a campfire.

We’ve got to the point now where some people bring smokers or fryer setups. We eat good when we’re out there.

Crew Chief Eric: If you were given advice. to somebody that was just starting out in off roading. What would those tips [00:17:00] be?

Dan Prasada-Rao: My tip, and I think you’ll get this from a lot of off roaders, is bring what you got and learn how to drive it and figure out what’s what before you start just throwing money and buying stuff that looks cool.

You know, before you spend, you know, 1, 700 on the fancy worn winch, you know, learn how to drive first before you spend 2, 000 on a lift kit, another 2, 000 on huge tires and wheels. Learn your vehicle because every vehicle is going to be a little bit different. You know, even on the track, every vehicle you get in is going to handle a little bit different.

It’s going to have its own quirks. So learn your vehicle, learn what works for it. Talk to other people that have the same kind of vehicle. And you got to figure out what you want to do with it too. You know, the scope of off road motorsports ranges from, you know, a quarter mile or eighth of a mile an hour doing rock crawling to high speed desert racing like Pistol Pete used to do.

[00:18:00] Expedition kind of off road stuff where it’s more about traveling long distances and camping overnight So you got to know what you want to do And get out there and experience it a little bit first before you start throwing money down the drain

Crew Chief Eric: In your opinion or maybe in the off roading community that you travel with is there a good starter off road truck?

Like something you would recommend somebody starting out.

Dan Prasada-Rao: It’s so budget dependent, to be honest with you, in my opinion, probably the best deal going right out of the box is the Jeep Rubicon, you know, they’ve gotten more and more expensive. Now find a good used Jeep Rubicon in good shape with no rust.

It’s got low gearing. The low gearing is a big. And then lockers in the differential lockers front and rear right out of the box. There’s nothing else in its price range that you’re going to get that.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there a type of truck that you’d say, no, stay away from, don’t even don’t do that. Land Rover.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, absolutely.

Land Rovers. [00:19:00] Don’t get me wrong. I love Land Rovers, but you know, for off roading, I take the old Land Rovers, you know, 70s and earlier, maybe early 80s. When they still had what were called the series land rovers were all the older leaf sprung land rovers. Even a Defender is great off road, but when you get to the Defenders, the price of entry goes way up.

Starts getting really expensive. The coil sprung land rovers, like the Discovery and Range Rover, they’re great. Actually, if somebody has really got their heart set on using land rovers, I’d suggest finding an old Range Rover or an older Discovery before they got. As fancy as they are now,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah,

Dan Prasada-Rao: the new ones are pretty capable vehicles.

But when you break them, you’re going to pay

Matthew Yip: well. And so they’ve got so much electronic glitz in them.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I mean, I don’t see anybody taking an evoke to the cove and going off road like you do. So I’m not going to happen.

Dan Prasada-Rao: You’d be surprised that you show up at [00:20:00] some of these Land Rover rallies and there are people will show up with, you know, less than a year old brand new Range Rover.

Take them on the trails in the mud. And you know, some of these guys aren’t afraid to get them dirty.

Matthew Yip: Wasn’t there a study or a survey that said as a percentage, more Land Rover owners went off road than anybody else.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, it was probably paid for by Land Rover.

Crew Chief Eric: You never know, right? So these new vehicles are extremely capable compared to, you know, we talk about that a lot with the cars where a piece of crap that you buy today, subcompact is better than a GTI from 30 years ago, you know, just hands down.

But, but I, I digress in our world, we have coaches in the right seat that are teaching drivers how to, you know, refine their skills in a particular discipline in our case. It’s driving on the track. Is the same true in off roading or are you on your own to just sort of figure it out?

Dan Prasada-Rao: We talked earlier about Roush Creek Off Road Park.

They actually [00:21:00] offer training courses at Roush Creek. So you can pay your money and it’s not an exorbitant cost, but you can pay the fee. You can go to Roush Creek and take their 101 off roading 101 course and then I think they have more advanced courses. So that’s what I would recommend.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s what Harry did.

So what’s your biggest? Oops moment.

Dan Prasada-Rao: That’ll lead

Crew Chief Brad: into my question.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Biggest oops moment? Man, that’s a tough one. Embarrassingly enough, probably my biggest oops moment was in my first Land Rover. And it wasn’t even off road. I used to drive this thing to work and back. You know, I had the top off of it. It’s a four door.

It wasn’t really made to drive around with the top off, but it unbolted, so I took it off anyway. But I would drive this thing. I have a whopping 15 minute commute to work. So it’s fun to just drive it into work on the base, on the military base down here, and drive home. And on the way home, the neighborhood was still being built up.

And so every day on the way home, I’d drive through where the construction was going on just to see what the progress was. [00:22:00] One day, I’m on my way home and, uh, we had a summer thunderstorm and it was all dirt roads back where the construction was going on. I’m coming along and there’s a road that I knew to be nice and level and flat and well graded and packed solid.

What I didn’t account for was that it was a bunch of clay that had got saturated.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Dan Prasada-Rao: got out in the middle of what should have been only a couple of inches deep mud puddle, but it was probably a foot and a half of saturated clay. Couple inches of water and I got about the middle of it and I can just feel the whole truck sinking

Crew Chief Eric: My

Dan Prasada-Rao: dress clothes nice shoes, you know good slacks on and you know I’ve got probably 10 15 feet of mud on each every side

Crew Chief Eric: of me Took

Dan Prasada-Rao: my shoes off rolled up my pants, which still got muddy anyway Walked home, which was probably just a couple hundred yards around the corner.

Walked home and had to get [00:23:00] my neighbor with a Ford Excursion to come over and pull me out. And, you know, as payback, I had to wash his car for him. I had to wash it in my driveway, so I ended up with all the mud.

Crew Chief Brad: Speaking of oops moments, I mean, they happen all the time on track. They happen in autocross.

They happen in off roading. I mean, oops moments are everywhere. What is something you recommend, uh, a couple items that you recommend or good safety gear that someone just starting out should, should take with them? Safety or recovery gear, whatever.

Dan Prasada-Rao: I would recommend a couple of both. So, anybody going out, number one, for off roading, you know, one of the basic rules that you’ll hear from most people is don’t go out alone.

Um, don’t go off roading alone because there, there are just so many nightmare stories, you know, of, you know,

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not a solo sport.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, no, it really isn’t. You know, it’s just so easy for something to go wrong or for you to get injured that the number one rule is don’t go alone. But as far as equipment, even for a beginner, [00:24:00] always have a couple of D rings or what people call them shackles or D rings and A couple of toe straps or at least one toe strap and a d ring for each end of that toe strap.

Do not get the toe straps with the hooks that are already sewn into them. I’ve seen more of those fail than anything else. So get a good quality strap with just loops on the end and then use a couple of d rings or shackles at each end. And that’s, you know, that’s your most basic recovery gear. That and a jack.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, whenever I go off roading, I always make sure I take a shovel with me too.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yep, so those, those kind of those three things are just great recovery gear, just the most basic, um, as far as safety, personal safety, some people actually, especially if you have roll cages, some people wear helmets, they’ll just use like even a bicycle helmet will keep you from cracking your noggin on the roll cage and a good pair of gloves, I’d say probably the best thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Are there any websites or books or anything that you recommend for people that are starting out that they should check [00:25:00] out?

Dan Prasada-Rao: One of the guys that’s pretty active. There’s a guy named bill burke He has a website and he does off road instruction. He’s based out west bill burke If you don’t recognize the name He was one of the american drivers for the camel trophy if you remember the camel trophy events that were all you know Heavily sponsored by land rover.

He has some books out Very common sense guy, very focused on safety and the environment and doing it in a manner that’s, you know, not damaging. If you’re looking for an author, if you’re looking for a guy to find or follow, I would say Bill Burke’s one of those kind of guys. Any forums or anything that you recommend?

Crew Chief Brad: Whatever manufacturer you have,

Dan Prasada-Rao: yeah, whatever manufacturer their brand specific forums. I’m on a lot of the rover based forums or, you know, Facebook pages now where a lot of things are going. There is a website called pirate four by four dot com heavily trafficked by a lot of four wheel drive folks, but it’s kind of Sketchy at [00:26:00] times and depending on which of the sub forms you’re in people can be just downright rude or you know In some cases really helpful.

It’s hard to make a good solid recommendation for one specific form one that I used to like Even though i’m a land rover guy was uh called. I hate mud. I h eight mud And it was a Toyota form, but the guys on the forum were really helpful. Um, you know, even, even for a non Toyota guy, they put up with me, but that was one of the forums that I never, you know, a bunch of forums, you walk away, they kind of, sometimes you just have a sour taste in your mouth.

I’m like, I’ll stay away for a while. I never got that on the, I hate mud form. Um, they were always pretty decent. So that, that, that might be a good one to recommend.

Crew Chief Eric: And any places you’d recommend for parts? I know it’s, it’s very much more specific for the Landys, but. Yeah, you

Dan Prasada-Rao: know, to be honest with you, wherever I can find them at an affordable price, [00:27:00] I use most of the major suppliers.

I, I was just at AutoZone today buying stuff, you know, and so I go to local places. I go to Napa. If I can find common part crossovers. that I can easily find in local stores, I’ll go buy it in a heartbeat rather than, you know, pay the high prices for a Land Rover part number. So, and, and online, you know, I tend to use, uh, some of the online car places as well, you know, Rock Auto and some of those places.

I mean, I use all the same standard stuff everybody else does.

Crew Chief Eric: Perfect. Let’s move on then a little bit. And let’s talk about truck night in America, because this is the thing that has me the most excited about this episode to talk to somebody that’s been on this show. Let’s talk about how you got on the show.

What motivated you to do it?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, you know, somebody put a bug in my ear. Actually, they posted something on one of the Land Rover forums or one of the Facebook pages. I can’t remember which it was. But I saw a [00:28:00] post from somebody saying they knew about this show and that they thought that the producers really wanted a Land Rover, a built Land Rover, because they didn’t have one yet.

Nobody had applied yet, you know, yada, yada, yada. There’s a company that does all, you know, casting calls for all these contest shows, you know, ranging from cooking shows to truck night in America. So I found the casting call and I put all the stuff together and sent them, you know, a bunch of pictures, sent them the story of the truck and, you know, all that kind of stuff, little human interest stuff.

And I sent it in to them on, I think it was like a Monday night, about less than 24 hours later, I got a phone call. and a voicemail that said, Hey, give us a call back. We want to talk to you. Wow. You know, it went from there. I called them back. We did a Skype interview. Then I think we followed it up with another Skype interview.

But, um, after the second call, I said, well, so, you know, what’s the deal? [00:29:00] And that was told, well, pretty much, you’re, you’re in. Wow. So it was just, it was just like that. I mean, it just happened, that part of it happened quick, and then all the rest was working out the details of where to be and when to be there, and, you know, all the logistics kind of stuff.

In the initial concept, you had to have a driver. So I had a buddy of mine. He was, uh, he was a retired Marine that works here. He’s really good with his hands and phenomenal fabricator. He drove down with me. In fact, we used his truck to trailer it down. And it wasn’t till after the first day of filming, they were just doing like interviews and you know.

All the kind of filler material. And at the end of that day, they said, Oh, by the way, co drivers are out. We’re not using co drivers. Wow. The episode I was in, although it showed up as like, I think maybe the fifth episode in that first season. We were actually the second episode that they filmed. Oh, wow.[00:30:00]

And they were on the steep end of the learning curve, and they determined just on the fly, and I think part of it was History Channel. You know, pulling some punches. They determined on the fly that now we don’t need co drivers. So they’re out.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting. They had already figured out the idea of the coaches as well.

And we’ll talk about that in a minute. There are a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. Obviously you’re on the hook to bring your truck down there, get it prepped. How much time from that initial conversation to when you started filming? Was it months? Was it weeks? Was it days?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh, it was months. It was months.

I think my first discussion with them was early summer, and I don’t think we filmed till August or September. I’d have to go back and look at notes, but I think it was initially supposed to be in August, and then it moved, and we were in the beginning part of September when we finally got told, here’s when you need to be there.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Dan Prasada-Rao: And they were really good about covering expenses and that sort of stuff. So, you know, they asked us to get medical [00:31:00] exams and a doctor’s release. They offered to pay for the doctor’s exam. They offered to come pick the truck up and send us plane tickets to fly down there. So they were covering, you know, because they were doing this for people all across the country.

One of the guys in my episode, the guy, Eric. Peterson and I believe he may be related to the family that owns the Peterson Automotive Museum.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow. He’s the guy with

Dan Prasada-Rao: the, with the Dodge. Yeah. Yeah. So Eric Peterson, uh, the guy that won is a cop from, uh, I think Albuquerque. So those guys, they ship their vehicles cross country or, you know, they gave them the option of shipping it.

Crew Chief Eric: And one of the things that they didn’t do on the episode is actually say where you guys were from. So, I mean, I knew that it was being filmed in Georgia, but I don’t know if the audience had any clue where anybody was from. So it sounds like everybody was from four corners of the U. S.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, yeah, they were.

There was, there was, uh, Albuquerque, California, or, uh, no, actually, it was Albuquerque [00:32:00] and Arizona. I think Eric Peterson lived in Arizona. Uh, Rob Wozniak, he lives in Baltimore.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, and then, uh, Avery Abbott, the guy in the Toyota pickup. Yeah. Um, he was a local, actually, he, he knew, he, he knew where that Off Road Park was.

He knew all about it. He, he was a local from the, uh, from Georgia.

Crew Chief Eric: A lot of these, what’s called in reality shows, whether it be, you know, food Network or Discovery or, or, or on history. I’m watching you on TV for, let’s say a third of the episode, but you’re probably there for the better part of a week. How long did it take to do all this?

Dan Prasada-Rao: I believe our episode they did of day one was show up and get fitted for helmets and all that kind of stuff. They interviewed us about the vehicles. They took us around the site to different locations. And that’s where you see some of the interview stuff when we were solo. They actually took video. I mean, you know how it goes.

They probably shot 10, 20 times more videos. video footage than what was actually in the show. They [00:33:00] actually had people in the car riding around with us, shooting while we drove around. They had us drive down the local roads and had a car in front, a car in back, doing video on the roads. They didn’t end up using much of that footage.

So that was the first day. Then the second day was actually starting the competition stuff. Oh, interesting. But on that second day. They said, you need to wear the same clothes you were wearing yesterday. So it looks like it’s still the same day. For consistency. Yeah, yeah. Consistency. Although we were all bitching about having sweated our asses off in those clothes the day before.

And not being given a warning so we could at least wash them. But oh well. The second day was the first three events that you saw in the show. So it was the um, the hill climb.

Crew Chief Eric: The slag heap, they call it. It

Dan Prasada-Rao: was the tug of war.

Crew Chief Eric: The silo pull down, yeah.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, and then it was, what do they call it, four soldiers or something?

Yeah, where they have to come down the

Crew Chief Eric: steps, yeah.

Dan Prasada-Rao: So [00:34:00] that was all in one day. So first day was set up stuff, all the fluff material. Second day was those three events. And then the last day was that final competition and event, I guess if you want to call it that, going through green hell and all that stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: The way the show is edited, it’s edited. Any one of you could have potentially won or put down the fast lap through the green hell. And I was wondering if, if you got a chance to actually do a lap of that obstacle course, or they said no, because if you break your car and you can’t do the other exercises, how did those logistics work out?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, actually the way the show played those things was the order in which they took place. So although it, the show takes place over an hour, filming was three days worth of filming for one episode. The events actually occurred in the exact order. And it was an elimination as you saw it on the show. So Avery and the, in the Toyota, when we did the slag heaper, that hill climb, that very first challenge in the show was the first challenge that we [00:35:00] actually did.

Avery actually got farther up the hill than I did.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Dan Prasada-Rao: I was having issues. I actually, they didn’t show it on the show, but you know, this is a throttle body fuel injection is on that, on that small block Chevy, uh, it was, uh, an older system made by a company called retro tech. Well, the two guys that were retro tech split.

One of them went to work for Holley on the sniper program, and the other works for Fitech. So, you know, those are both aftermarket fuel injection systems that are pretty common. But in any case, I was having problems with the fuel injection system, and every time I put a load on it to go uphill, it would start stalling.

It was acting like a carburetor, and so I turned around, and I just figured, well, let me try it backwards. So I got it. Halfway up the hill backwards, I actually ran over one of their cameras that was buried in the middle of the dirt. Avery got farther than I did, but since he was not able to drive away from it [00:36:00] and needed a bunch of repair work, and I could, I could just simply restart it and drive away.

They said, well, he’s out here.

Crew Chief Eric: Was that all shot in one take then, or did they have to restart that climb?

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, it was all one take.

Crew Chief Eric: So then in your case, when we see them cut away, obviously we don’t see the backup part. That would be the director’s cut, which I, I would totally wanna see, especially running over the camera.

But , so did you just basically go down and come up the side of the hill or something because you never made the full climb then?

Dan Prasada-Rao: That, that’s exactly what I did. I went down, went out the way that you saw the vehicles coming in to begin with and met them up by the silo for the, for the tug of war.

Actually, what happened was, uh, we went back to, to the trailer and in between those two events. So they took us back. They fed us some lunch, I think, and, uh, then they staged us up by the silo area after a little break.

Crew Chief Eric: So had you guys already done the round table interview thing with the whole crew at that point with the host of the [00:37:00] show?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, we did.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So, yeah, again, this is all the magic of editing, right? And, and having. Things just all spliced together after the fact in the cutting room floor. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the host of the show. So you got to meet everybody. You got to meet pistol Pete. May he rest in peace.

Right. He passed away last year. They did the whole, you know, you hate it like dodgeball in elementary school. Yeah. You got picked last, you got partnered with Glenn. So what was that like?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh, I, we had a blast actually, you know, the whole filming part was a load of fun. They had us all in the same hotel, but we weren’t supposed to know each other.

We were told, you know, don’t fraternize with the enemy kind of thing. You know, we were all in the bar together after hours. We were eating breakfast together. But as soon as the producers would show up, we’d just kind of clam up and act like we didn’t know each other. But when we first met the hosts of the show, I don’t know about the other guys.

I think they were kind of in the same boat as I was. And I finally said, well, tell us about you guys because we don’t know who you are. [00:38:00] You know, but it took us prompting them to do so to figure out who they were. You know, Glenn was, Glenn was awesome. He’s a good guy. He’s very, very laid back guy. It was a fun thing.

Very cool. And I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, Pistol Pete Sorenson, he is a nationally recognized, you know, Baja champion. All those rallies and all that kind of stuff. And I mean, he, he’s a, is he as tall as he looks on TV? I gotta ask.

Dan Prasada-Rao: He is, yeah, he was a tall dude, yeah, they must have

Crew Chief Eric: specially built those vehicles for him.

Dan Prasada-Rao: They had to, yeah, he was a big guy, but all those guys were wonderful.

I mean, one of the guys, uh, Abe Wine, he’s actually somewhat local. He lives out. Manassas, Winchester. He’s one of the

Crew Chief Eric: master fabricators, if I remember correctly.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yep. I believe his family runs a truck repair business and stuff out there, and he’s setting up shop, doing some of his own stuff now, fabricating.

I’m still in touch with a bunch, with most of the guys from the show.

Crew Chief Eric: They assigned [00:39:00] you a coach. What does that exactly mean? Cause you, you, we only get little snippets of that and, and, you know, you’re supposed to be paired up, you know, so they eliminated the co driver. So they, they give you this coach and said, what’s that all about?

Dan Prasada-Rao: You know, there wasn’t at least in, you know, early on, like I said, we were the second episode to film. There really wasn’t much by way of coaching. I think after the second challenge, when you get some actual shop time. Before you do Green Hell and all that, you actually get some time in the shop, which, you know, I think is where you got to know the coaches a little better.

So, for the length of time that I was on it, the only time you saw the coaches was when you showed up on set. And, you know, most of that was just quick suggestions. When I was prepping to do the, uh, the silo pulldown, Glenn was, you know, making suggestions as to tire pressures. You know, he, he actually suggested that set up.

It was him. He would just let all the air out of the tires and run them with the tires flat, [00:40:00] because that would create a lot more drag for the other guy. If he was trying to pull you backwards, I guess that was his theory. He said, just run them as flat as you dare. We were busy, uh, right before we filmed that.

Just trying to lower the tire pressures as much as I could.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you get to run the green Hill just for fun? Like I know you didn’t get to compete in that part of the competition, but were you able to get your truck working and everything to run that just for fun while you were down there?

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, I did not.

I would love to have been able to, but pretty much once you were knocked out or eliminated in the show, they didn’t want you around at all. They didn’t want you on on the set. They didn’t want you. Yeah, it was. It was kind of you’re out of here, you know, pack your stuff get your stuff loaded and get on out That’s a shame.

At least give

Crew Chief Eric: you time to play on the on the course, you know,

Dan Prasada-Rao: I think they were Really, you know and as they should be they were concerned about liability issues for one But they also didn’t want you interfering at all in any way with the The [00:41:00] filming that was going on and if you were out busy doing that kind of stuff, you would have showed up in the background of shots that they were filming and they didn’t want that kind of stuff happening.

Crew Chief Eric: Would you have had the opportunity to stay down there and get time on the course just through the facility itself?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, once the filming was completely done, what History Channel did, they locked this place up. They paid, I think it was called Sunshine Off Road, RV and Off Road. They locked this place up for the duration of the filming.

Oh, wow. They paid enough to get exclusive use. And when you pulled in there, you could see that they’ve spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. On designing a course and building the obstacles and they didn’t want people just kind of running around willy nilly damaging the facilities. They had a significant investment cost.

Crew Chief Eric: So were you able to watch the other competitors like make your car disappear? But were you [00:42:00] able to watch or did you have to just basically vacate the premises?

Dan Prasada-Rao: You had to vacate the premises. They wanted me to load, load that thing on the trailer and get it out of there as soon as possible. So I think what they did was they had you, they had us all in a hotel and they would load us in a van.

They would drive us every morning from the hotel to the set. They would throw us in a trailer for the cast members. And if you even wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to get one of the staff members there. to escort you to the port a potties and then back to the trailer.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Dan Prasada-Rao: So they were really tight lipped about anything else that was going on that you didn’t have to be directly involved in.

Crew Chief Eric: So the slag heap, right? They tout that as a test of speed and acceleration while climbing a hundred foot vertical. I mean, steep as all get out, right? So do you think If the landy had been running right you would have been able to make it all the way up Where do you think where do you think you would have fared out compared to the other the other trucks?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh, I think [00:43:00] i’d have done really well the motor in that um, I think when mike built it he bought that motor from patriot performance and they He got the dyno sheet with it. So the dyno at just over 500 horsepower, just motor at the flywheel. Wow.

Crew Chief Eric: So in the second exercise or event is the silo pull down and they call that a test of strength and torque.

What kind of torque numbers is the silver monster putting down? I mean, we know your horsepower specs.

Dan Prasada-Rao: I actually have no idea. I’ll have to see if I can find the old dyno sheet and see if they even gave him the torque specs. I really couldn’t tell you. Okay. But you know, with rock crawlers and things, a lot of it’s in the gearing, you know, you just gear those things so low that you could have a small motor and still go rock crawling really more about the gearing than it is about the power.

Crew Chief Eric: So I wondered about the silo pull down, which is, you know, a giant tug of war. And in the first round you went up against a JK Wrangler, right? The one [00:44:00] dubbed the nightmare JK. Yep. I mean, the guy said it’s not your average mall crawler. He did a lot of suspension work, all that kind of stuff. But from a motor perspective, sounded like a six cylinder didn’t seem like it was anything really outside of the ordinary that didn’t come from Chrysler.

It wasn’t like he had a, a Hellcat motor under the hood all of a sudden, you know, what happened there on the first poll, was it cause he had an automatic and it just dropped all the power in one shot and that was the end of it, or what, what happened there?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, it took me by surprise how quickly he got on it and just, I mean, he just yanked me backwards in a heartbeat.

You know, he had quick reactions, maybe quicker reactions than I did. And once I started moving backwards, that was it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Um, you know, he got the better of me really quick. Yeah. I

Crew Chief Eric: noticed too, that the Landy did a lot of hopping as it was being dragged backwards. That had to be not the most pleasant ride for you.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, I’m used to that thing bouncing and hopping, so it didn’t bother me. But I think in that first round [00:45:00] with him, I think the tire pressures were A little bit higher than what they should have been, but even when I lowered the tire pressures and went up against the, uh, the Ford pickup, it still ended up hopping a fair bit.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I noticed that as well.

Crew Chief Brad: How disgusting was that stuff in the silo

Dan Prasada-Rao: when it dumped all

Crew Chief Brad: over the truck?

Dan Prasada-Rao: That was nasty. And I got it dumped on me twice. It was probably a foot and a half deep in the back in the bed of that. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: What was it? Was it crickets or beetles or something? It was

Dan Prasada-Rao: crickets.

It was crickets and wood chips, wood shavings. I actually, I actually saved a big bottle of it just so people that want to come by and see what it smelled like.

Crew Chief Eric: So I wondered about that. Did they even offer to clean your car or clean your truck after it was all said and done?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh no, they

Crew Chief Eric: didn’t offer anything.

It

Dan Prasada-Rao: was pretty much get the guy out of here and [00:46:00] send us receipts. We’ll pay for your gas on the way home kind of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s your consolation prize. Yeah. So let’s talk about round two. And I was like, thank God they didn’t put you up against that dodge. Because I mean, the size of that turbo is probably as big as I am around.

And I mean, it was, it was massive and he’s putting down astronomical numbers. I noted, uh, what did they say? 1946 horsepower and 2888 torque. I mean, was anybody ever going to win that tug of war out of the, out of the rest of you? I don’t think so. That thing was just a monster. You got chained up to that 94 Ford F 150 X farm truck, which, by all intents and purposes, it just looked like a regular old farm truck.

Except, he Frankensteined that thing and he was running a 7. 3 liter power stroke under there. Going back to those torque numbers, I’m like, I felt for you, because I’m like, he’s got a Chevy in there, he’s got big bucks. power numbers, but he’s going against diesel. And if this guy could put the [00:47:00] power to the ground, even though his all wheel drive was busted, he’s got a leg on you.

I thought, cause they kept saying, Oh, I think the Land Rover is going to get them. And I’m like that F one 50, he’s got double the, the, the wheel base on top of it all and everything. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, So, you know tv being what it is and editing being what it is There’s stuff that wasn’t readily apparent when you watch the show

Crew Chief Eric: So in

Dan Prasada-Rao: the first challenge everybody flying up that hill the big dodge the four door jk And the ford those guys went screaming up that hill and They were excited and they had the pedal to the metal.

So you saw how, I don’t know if you remember how much air that Ford caught when he came off the top of that Hill. He busted his front axle and they would let us work on stuff overnight, but he busted that front axle and you know what, now that I’m thinking about it, I just remembered there was actually a dead day between some of [00:48:00] the stuff and they let us work on the trucks a little bit, but.

And I think it was between the first day when we filmed some of that fluff stuff, you know And then there was a overnight and the next day was free. Then we started filming the actual show Um, but that night after he came flying up that hill and jumped he realized he busted his front And uh, so he was trying like hell that following night to get spare parts the show producers Set somebody running a couple hours away to try and find front axle shafts and parts for him to get his truck going

Crew Chief Eric: So they addressed that later in the episode they split it into two Almost like on like a rally stage where you get the time to fix and they say it’s an hour in the garages And they tried to address the fact that he broke the front axle and they’re shown and work on stuff and he’s got parts all over the floor and And I’m saying to myself, did he really drive around with a busted front axle the whole time?

Or did he try to fix it right away? Or so was that scene in [00:49:00] the garage actually filmed that night while he’s trying to fix it and not after, you know, whatever event or whatever happened?

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, it really was filmed later. The scene in the garage. Yeah. But what happened was he busted the front axle and then we ran the silo pull down.

But he knew he had a busted front axle. The axle shaft snapped. Um, so when we did the silo pulldown, you know, everybody, a bunch of people tell me it was such an unfair matchup. But what I know Is he was down to two wheel drive and I still had four wheel drive, right? So it wasn’t as unfair a match as you might have thought

Crew Chief Eric: I thought you were gonna get him actually because you had a good leg on him if you watch especially from the drone shot I’m, like dan’s got him and then all of a sudden it’s like I don’t know if he hit boost or what and it was like he just yanked you straight back and it was like well That was that was quick

Dan Prasada-Rao: No, so the problem I was having was with that retro tech fuel injection system You [00:50:00] It kept stalling on me when I, when I’d get too much of a load on it, it would stall.

And it was giving me fits for that whole show. Uh, incidentally, when I came home, I spent a day just going over everything. And when we were there, I kept popping the hood and looking around, seeing what I could figure out, trying to figure out what the problem was. I finally did figure it out when I got home.

When Mike built the truck, it was essentially like four barrel carbs. So it’s got primaries, it’s got secondaries. Mike had taken and put a extra throttle return spring on the secondaries to hold them closed more. When I was working on the truck before the show, I had disconnected that. extra throttle return spring on the secondaries and never did hook it back up.

I, you know, I, I could have shot myself in the foot by not having done that. Cause when I figured that out and I reconnected that spring and I had to know if that did the trick, I hooked the silver monster to my Dodge truck in the street, out front of the [00:51:00] house and had my wife. Climb in the Dodge and I said, just stand on the brakes.

So I was pulling against the Dodge with the silver monster on the street in front of the house. And I had all four tires smoking in the street and you know, it was just pulling like crazy. So I think that’s what the problem was, was that one lousy 50 cent return spring.

Crew Chief Eric: Sometimes that’s all it takes. So there’s other shows like Truck Night in America.

And one of them in particular that I watched, my daughter’s very much enjoyed Truck Night in America. So we got through all that. And then I found myself kind of wanting more. And I stumbled upon Alaska Off Road Warriors. Have you seen that?

Dan Prasada-Rao: I

Crew Chief Eric: have. It features two Land Rovers. What did you think of that show?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh, I love that show. I got hooked on that one too. In fact, uh, Jason Beard, the guy that owned both of those Land Rovers, because he broke one, left and then came back with the other one.

Crew Chief Eric: The diesel, which was even better.

Dan Prasada-Rao: He, uh, he [00:52:00] friended me on Facebook after truck night, you know, I’ve kind of stayed in touch with him a little bit.

Yeah, that was a fun show.

Crew Chief Eric: That was a very different exercise in the fact that they drove the bottom of Alaska to the very, very top, completely off road, off the grid. I mean, obviously they’re just like Top Gear and a lot of other shows. There’s always some. Support vehicles going with them. And I often wonder what those support vehicles are on top gear.

It’s always Range Rovers, oddly enough. But you know, that was, I have to say, a hell of a journey for them and, and I was hooked on that show and I was surprised when the first Landy died. I was like, oh man, here we go again. But you know, he came out. With another one I was like, this is awesome. Oh, yeah, he did really really well, even though they basically Dequeued him from winning, but you know still he did really really well All the other competitors hated the fact

Dan Prasada-Rao: that he came back

Crew Chief Eric: to oh heck.

Yeah

Dan Prasada-Rao: producers were setting that up Just looking for some juicy conflict in the show

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, but those guys with that franken jeep that they built that thing was I don’t know. That was crazy Yeah, it was a nightmare too, you know [00:53:00] It did all the right things, I suppose, in the end. It leads me to my next question.

Would you do it all over again, knowing what you know now?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Yeah, in a heartbeat. In fact, one of the producers, their quote, four wheel drive expert was a guy named Cody Smith. Really nice guy. You know, he and I stayed in touch a little bit after the show. And he told me, he said, you know, if you didn’t have that problem, he said he was, he was convinced I’d have done really well in the show.

Maybe. You know, had a good chance of maybe winning. This truck would have done really well in the mud and, you know, the green hell and stuff. It would have done really well,

Crew Chief Eric: especially being smaller, lighter and more maneuverable. And some of those places like the deep swamp and that the Kaelin, which is that that’s almost like quicksand.

I think it would have just floated over that stuff compared to the other trucks, but it’s like, they’re just burying themselves in it. You know, it’s. I guess that makes me wonder because we know the show is still on hiatus after Pistol Pete passed away because they haven’t found anybody to replace him with.

And I, [00:54:00] I heard stories about, you know, the cast being, you know, distraught about it and all that. And it’s true. He’s, he’s a larger than life individual and he’s a hard person to replace because you’re kind of rebuilding the show at that point. But I often wonder if it would be like other history channel shows where there’s like a redemption episode, like Forged in Fire is famous for doing that.

And then some of the other ones, so. I honestly would love to see the silver monster on a redemption episode of truck night in america and get your chance to get out there and do it man

Dan Prasada-Rao: I’d love that too. In fact, i’ve told them as much multiple times as you need to do a redemption show I told him I told him right from the start i’d come back any day.

It was so much fun

Crew Chief Eric: So is there any indication as to the show is coming back? Have you heard anything from them?

Dan Prasada-Rao: I had heard that, you know, for a while there was chance of a third season. I think it was more than Pistol Pete that was the issue for them not continuing. I think this show was really expensive to produce compared to a lot of other shows.

A lot of [00:55:00] machine and equipment time and building those obstacles and, you know, construction costs. I think they just weren’t seeing the kind of numbers that they wanted to see for the investment that it took to make the show. And I think it was more about that than anything to do with Pistol Pete.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah.

It’s never going to beat the ratings that Forged in Fire or Curse of Oak Island or Ancient Aliens or any of those shows are going to bring in, which are probably much lower in budget. But you know, as a motorsport enthusiast, this was really cool. It was something different. It really got people engaged and I think motivated and hyped roading, which I think oftentimes gets overlooked as just a bunch of guys in the woods playing with their trucks.

It’s more than that. There’s a lot of technique. There’s a lot of science, a lot of really, really strong engineering because unlike us that are, you know, running on road course where we’re worried about a millimeter of suspension travel, you guys are like, I got to climb a boulder that’s as big as your house.

And I got to figure out how to get this Land Rover [00:56:00] to do it. I think it’s super cool. I mean, it gets me really excited and I would, honestly, I would love to come out to the cove or one of the places where you’re going to be with the silver monster and see what it’s like, you know, I mean, I don’t want to, I don’t want to drive your car, but I would love to ride shotgun sometime.

Dan Prasada-Rao: Oh man, you should drive it. I’d let you drive it. That’d be fun, man.

Crew Chief Brad: I’d like to go to the cove if I can get my Tundra through it.

Dan Prasada-Rao: You’re only going a half or a quarter mile an hour, so.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s even how bad could it be, right? What’s the future look like for the silver monster? What do you have planned?

What’s up next?

Dan Prasada-Rao: Well, you know, that’s an interesting question because Wendy, my wife and I have been talking about it because I have two built rigs that are built for rock crawling and the silver monster was fun when our daughter was much younger. I had this Little jump seat. So it was perfect for Maddie when she was young, when she was five, six, seven, and still small enough to squeeze in between the two of us.

And it sat up high so she could see out [00:57:00] really good. But you know, now she’s 12 years old, and she’s just got too big to sit in that little tiny seat and too big to squeeze between the two of us, the three of us would be killing each other. So we’re talking about whether we’re gonna, you know, just bite the bullet and, uh, yeah.

Between my Land Rover, the four door one with the Cummins and the silver monster that has the Chevy small block, trying to find a way to maybe combine the two, get the long wheelbase with four doors and the additional seating, but maybe keep the Grieman small block Chevy and, you know, the high dollar transfer case and stuff, mash the two together somehow.

It’s actually feasible that I could maybe just stretch the wheel base on the silver monster a little more and then put the four door body on that chassis because that’s a stout chassis. It’s really heavy.

Crew Chief Eric: So Dan, I can’t tell you how excited I was to do this episode. This has been really cool. It’s been a long time coming.

Dan Prasada-Rao: We’ve covered a lot. [00:58:00] Pretty much everything we’d planned and then some,

Crew Chief Eric: As we were talking in the pre record, you know, I couldn’t believe when I saw you on TV and I was talking to Matt and we all are connected through the autocross world. And I was like, man, we got to make this happen. We got to have Dan on the show, get the inside scoop on what it was like off roading, being on truck night in America and everything.

So I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been fantastic. This has been a lot of fun. And hopefully for our listeners out there, They get a new perspective on this and maybe a newfound interest in off roading. So again, I can’t thank you enough

Dan Prasada-Rao: It was fun. Thanks for having me on the show, man.

I appreciate it

Crew Chief Eric: Until next time.

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 Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 [00:59:00] 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. 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 and Write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content.

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

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