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Rock crawling: New season, new winnersAugust 4, 2004 Rock-Crawling is growing fast and evolving even faster as a sport, but the winning drivers continue to ride on BFGoodrich® Krawler T/A®KX tires. Anyone who has watched the rugged sport knows the excitement is not the tortoise-level pace, but the vehicles' amazing ability to drive over giant boulders, climb near-vertical grades, traverse rocky slopes sideways and generally appear to violate the laws of gravity in slow motion. So far this year, the team to watch has been Rock Runner Racing, the team that mopped up the 2003 season with identical race vehicles driven by Jason Paule And Tracy Jordan. The rigs are built at Twisted Customs, the Rapid City, South Dakota shop run by Paule. Teammate Jordan has been dominating the 2004 UROC (United Rockcrawling and Off-road Challenge) Pro National Series in the Super Modified Class. Both Paule and Jordan give rave reviews to the BFGoodrich Krawler T/A®KX tires on their vehicles. "The tires are just unbelievable," says Jordan. "From the first event we ran with 'em, we loved them and did really well. Now we're really pumped on this tire. There's nothing that even compares. If you look at the statistics, you'll see that almost every one of the Top 10 finishers are on BFGoodrich tires. The statistics sort of speak for themselves." Paule mounts the motor in front and builds the vehicle with strength in mind, not lightness. Durability is the most important quality to him, and the quotient that spells the difference between finishing first and not finishing. "As a builder, I try to make the vehicle as reliable as possible. Weight isn't as much of a concern in rock crawling as most people think. "It's a simple design," says Jordan. "Jason knows rock-crawling, and he knows how to build a vehicle that you can drive without having to worry about breakage. You can just go out there and drive, knowing the vehicle has the capability to win." Paule says the sport has progressed so fast, in terms of the level of talent, that if you break down, you're out of the event. So he placed his bets on making vehicles strong enough to go through any competition without breaking. The key to the unbreakability of the Twisted Customs vehicles? Custom axles. 
"We build our own axles, " Paule says. "Other people use more of a stock axle shaft, but we buy center sections from a race supplier, with custom-made axle shafts that are almost unbreakable."
As rock crawling vehicles go, Paule's are deliberately heavy. "We use water in our tires to add weight,*" Paule says, "probably more than most people do. We also have a powerful engine up front." The power comes from an all-aluminum 350 CID V8 factory-rated at 415 HP, Paule says. But the special qualities of the Paule-built rock-crawlers don't stop at the axles and power. The steering is critical, and Paule uses what he considers the best available: steering by hydraulic ram instead of a steering box. In the ram system, the steering wheel input goes to an orbital valve which sends hydraulic fluid to the hydraulic ram mounted on the axle shaft housing, to act on the wheel. "The hydraulic ram will turn the wheel against resistance that would cause a steering box to freeze up," Paule says. The technology, he says, came not from any recognizable form of motor racing development, but from the industrial world of warehouses and farms. "Forklifts and tractors have been using steering ram technology for years," Paule says. "Tractor parts are cool," he adds happily. Curiously, on the same wheels carrying industrial/agricultural steering input equipment, the Twisted Customs race vehicles mount the full disc brakes of road-racing vehicles. Not because there is an actual need for disc brakes in rock crawling, but because they come with the wheel-spindle unit. Paule likes them because they seldom if ever fail. Looking ahead, Paule is hoping that rock crawling will get tougher. "For me as a builder, I really appreciate the work that everybody in the sport is putting out. And it's neat to see the sport progressing, and feel that I'm progressing also. I'm hoping that, now that they've divided the competition into some new classes, the obstacles will start getting harder, so we can show what these vehicles can really do." *BFGoodrich does not recommend nor endorse the use of water in tires. Adding water inside the tires is for very specialized, slow speed applications, with highly skilled drivers who engage in competitive off-road events. This practice is limited for off-road use only at speeds of 10 MPH or less. Photos courtesy of Off-road.com 
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