'Wallet-built Trucks'

I was driving from LA to Vegas one night, when I passed an RV pulling a
massively built, shiny new TJ. It got me thinking about the current
evolution of our sport.

I am going to make sweeping generalizations that some people may not agree
with, but a lot of people will support. My goal is not to alienate anyone,
but rather echo the opinion of many people I have talked to in the past and
the comments I continue to hear regularly.

The current movement I want to talk about here is not a new phenomenon. A
lot of old school hot-rodders routinely complain about this trend. Their
concern is partly about the lack of effort that can be put into a project
and still come out with an impressive vehicle. I sincerely believe we are
about to join them in their predicament. We are dealing with a double edge
sword here, tough, as every coin has two sides...

I first encountered this phenomenon when I rode motorcycles. I was part of
the old school of motorcyclists that rode bikes that smelled of oil and gas,
leaked in the driveway and could be fixed on the side of the road with duct
tape and bailing wire. Of course, like many of my buddies, people looked at
me funny, with a mix of scorn and apprehension. Like so many, I was
automatically pegged as a fringe element. Not always good, but it worked
with some girls. Otherwise, the benefits of being pegged a rebel were slim.

Clean running bikes soon came along, reliable and fluid tight as Civics.
Rich Urban Bikers, AKA "rubies" then came along. They bought luxo bikes and
decided that looking like a fringe element was cool, so they got temporary
tattoos and started buying "genu-whine" HD accessories and clothing. As the
movement took momentum, people looked on "us" with a different attitude...
Hey... maybe a was just a lawyer on my day off now, acting out my bad boy
fantasy (presumably wearing my wife's frilly pink panties under my shiny new
leathers) after a hard week in a suit. Not to mention that the pencil necks
put some pretty smoking bikes on the used market... All of a sudden, I
became a lot more socially acceptable... For the wrong reasons, but I did...
Bottom line is... the little old lady next door was now saying hello. Hey...
Her nephew, the dentist, had a bike just like mine!

How does that tie in with us? Well... Think of yourself as the guy with the
oily boots and smelling of gas (a stretch, I know), look at your truck then
check out the guy driving his "turn-key" tube framed rock buggy, with
Rockwell axles, he ordered some time ago. Are you starting to smell it? I
sure do.

Historically, hot rodders took street-going cars and chopped them, raked
this and that and channeled the body. They bobbed fenders and did all the
other magic things hot rodders still do to vehicles, to make them the piece
of art they end up being. As time passed, enterprising people, hot rodders
themselves, took it upon themselves to make certain hot-rodding staples
readily available for others, to build their projects. A brilliant idea,
really. It would cut down on the fabricating time and allow for more rods to
see the light of day. They made dies for rollpans, tailgate handle
relocating kits and a pile of goodies I never used. Mold were created for
the guys who wanted to build a T bucket but could not be bothered (or did
not have the time) to scour the countryside for the ever increasingly rare
original model T's, rusting away, waiting to be saved, in some farmer's
field. Out of these new molds came out brand new bodies for old, out of
production vehicles.

Most people can now buy a new fiberglass body of an old truck, grab a
catalog (or a few of them) of repro parts, buy an adapted suspension system
from some other car and just slap the whole shebang together like an erector
set. For the few with the available bucks, a rod could be had in the matter
of weeks, if not days!

Long gone, now are the days when building a rod meant you had to find ways
to roll steel, do bodywork, handle a welder... have imagination! ...Or, by
golly(!), get dirt under your nails!

Now all you really need is fat wallet and a pile of catalogs. Your helper
now wears a uniform, drives a truck, and asks for a signature when he
delivers your part, at your door (or the guy's being paid to put it
together). If you have the money, you now can have built a rod to your
precise desires, without ever ruining your manicure.

By now I'm pretty sure you're wondering what the heck this has anything to
do with offroading or the kind of trucks we drive... Well, it has a lot to
do with it. A lot, and maybe a little too much, if you happen to be in the
same tax bracket as I am.

Historically, the guys who tool with hot rods aren't all that different from
the guys that tool with offroad trucks. The result of the work is different,
of course, but the basic crowd is pretty similar. The means to achieve the
end, also, are just about identical. Things have a way of changing, though.

It hard to deny that, as kids, when we played ball in a park and a guy on a
bike rumbled by, we though it was pretty neat. Same thing when your
neighbor, this insanely popular guy who dated all the best looking girls in
school, would pull up in his black window-tinted ledsled. I suspect you too
certainly thought it was cool. Ditto with offroad trucks. How often do you
pull up to a fuel-efficient pretty-boy-douche-bag-mobile and the babe in the
passenger seat smiles at you and let you know your truck is cool? I bet more
often than you'd care to admit to your wife... Well... It's revenge of the
nerds now...

A few delicate she-boys, who spent their days looking at the guys who drove
cool rides from the safety of their mother's skirts, started making money.
While we were spending our precious few dollars on parts and getting our
hands dirty building our dream rides, and sometimes learning a trade, more
than a few of them drove around personality-deficient, anonymous-mobiles,
and getting manicures. It was only a matter of time before our one-of-a-kind
vehicle would elicit some degree of jealousy. Hey... You have to face it...
No matter how low an Acura is no matter what parts you put on it, it's still
an anemic, over priced Honda... How was it that us, the grease monkeys who
enjoyed cold pizza and warm beer while changing our oil, could be the only
ones to enjoy driving personalized (often large) vehicles? Why was it that,
with all their money, they could no longer make their Lexus/Acura/Mercedes
more impressive than their neighbors? ...Or our trucks?!? No longer would
they accept breathing our fumes and looking at our rear axles! Ho no!!
Something had to be done! The "rubies" of offroading are now born.

Think about that one, long and hard, next time some clown in a stock Yukon
with a big "No Fear/Bad boys Drive Bad Ass Toys/2 Cool For U" (or my
favorite, seen in Windsor, on some stock baby truck: "Must U Look?") sticker
weaves in and out of traffic like he's driving a... lowered econobox...

Try to think back a few years ago... When I got into offroading, almost 10
years ago now, the guys who drove jacked up trucks with big tires and fat
engines were, more often than not, the same guys that put them together
(They also often had bad kidneys and backs from the jarring ride). Close
friends and family members often lent a hand and their particular skills.
The engineering, occasionally terminally flawed but often very functional,
was typically the result of long nights, sweaty days and skinned knuckles.
The parts were often neither pretty, anodized nor powder coated, but their
cost was minimal and they served the purpose.

Our trucks had a particular look to them. A certain flair that can only be
achieved when the driver, with a grin from ear to ear and beaming with
pride, can say that yes, he built his truck himself, in his garage.

Why does that matter?

Well... I used to think that there was a pivotal difference between
grassroots offroaders and show truck owners, whose main concern, arguably,
is their paint. For the longest time, offroaders built functional trucks
that weren't necessarily pretty, for minimal amounts of money. Show truck
owners, on the other hand, often spent gobs of cash on paint, chrome, weird
chemicals that make your rubber shine and foamy stuff to make their motor
look like it never ran.

I suppose I never went the show truck route. Probably because I have never
been enamored enough with large paperweights that cannot be driven on the
street for fear of scratching the paint... That's when the vehicle is street
legal and/or safe enough to drive, that is.

How often have you seen lift blocks on some way-too-tall-for-the-street show
truck's front axle? I have. Ever seen one of those blocks spit out the side
of a show truck while twisting its frame on the trail? Well, actually,
neither have I. None of these bazillion dollar trucks ever seem to make it
to the trail. They look good, though. I like them too! I just can't fathom
putting oodles of cash in a truck I won't feel safe driving... Even if the
pain on any number of them is probably worth more than any truck I have ever
owned...

This, however, is not about show truck v/s trail truck. Both are cool and
have a place in the mechanical world. My point is about the increasing
prevalence of the need for big bucks in order to stay in our sport. Like
NASCAR, that started with bootlegger's cars racing on Sundays, most of us
started in the sport with clapped out truck (and the occasional Lada) that
served as our daily drivers. The days of racing a bootlegger's car in NASCAR
are now long gone.

I am wondering if the days of the shadetree mechanic putting together an
early Bronco, to use the following weekend, are on their way out too.

Are we engineering ourselves out of our sport? There is no "entry level"
NASCAR racer position out there. If you want to race with the big boys, you
better do all your learning early and preferably have an inroad on the
sport... ...And money to spend to make it as a competitor on race day.
Otherwise you are in the stands.

Are we headed towards a time when guys like you and me will have to park our
Jeeps, early Broncos, Scouts and other current trail icon?

Will we end up sitting in bleachers to watch tube framed buggies, packing
air, onboard welders and dashboard cappuccino makers, scoring 2.5 billion on
the latest RTI ramp, lumbering down a super duper extreme hardcore, rated 32
on a 10 scale, trail ??

We just might.

The recently created rockcrawling association, and its high profile members
and competitors, may very well be a very real sign of that. Is the time when
trails will become open to strictly professional "racers" far? Before we get
quite that far, though, how many of us will even be in a position to worry
about it? Between the constant trail closures, the trucks bought on day 1
and completely built for "ultra extreme hardcore" trails by day 3 and lift
laws, how many of us will bother hanging on? And this is not taking into
consideration the hassle of dealing with the dweeb, his
"insta-trail-wonder", his proportionally large ego and inversely
proportional driving abilities...

Try telling this guy to pack out what he packed in. You're driving a truck
built with parts that did not come in a plastic or cardboard package dude!
Who do you think you are?! ...Maybe if you had dual 2.5 ton axles, hydraulic
seats with 5 wheel steering (hey... That spare needs to be steerable too!)
and 6 lockers in 3 directions, with on board modifiable powerband adjustable
motormount gaskets... Then maybe, maybe, you'd be worthy of addressing
him... Then again...

Luckily, I have never encountered these kinds of people personally, on the
trail anyways.

I did meet similar royalty in racetrack paddocks though... I'm kind of
hoping I'm dead, or already so old that I'll be too busy drooling on myself
to care, by the time this kind of people make it to the backcountry...

Now don't get me wrong. It's not jealousy driving me, here. I don't buy
shackles at the store because I make my own. They end up being cheaper,
beefier and work just as well. In fact, I avoid buying much of anything. I
build most things and what I cannot build, I do happily buy at the store. I
can't make urethane bushings and there is a zillions other things I can't
make on my own for my truck...

However, when you look at my trucks, you *know* I didn't drop them off in
stock form at the local 4x4 shop with a blank check or a credit card number.

That's the part I like.

I *like* being able to say I did the work.

I hate cutting up my hands and smashing fingers, but I wear those scars with
pride. Like trail damage, they are a testimony to my determination, my
resolve. Better yet, I feel pride when I meet an offroader with similar
bumps and bruises on his truck and himself. We have that much more in
common. He is likely to understand my predicament when I break on the trail.
He's likely to know what to do and help. What's a rolling fat wallet with
pretty fingers going to do? Get on his cell phone? Triple A doesn't go in
the back country...

I also enjoy my ability to not put manufacturer stickers on my truck for
parts that are on it. Pro racers get paid good money to sport those
stickers. It's paid advertisement. They got the parts for free or at a
discount. I, on the other hand, paid for my parts. When I make money, from
them, using those parts, I'll advertise for all to see.

Unlike "wallet-built" offroad truck drivers, I place my pride in my
workmanship, my truck and my ability to drive it. I don't need a full
vehicle coverage worth of stickers to make me feel like my truck works and
convince others that I know what I'm doing...

I said at the beginning of this that we were dealing with a double edge
sword. So what's the other side of this?

Well, for one, some serious offroaders who build their own trucks make a
great living selling the part they build. The economy is also benefiting
from all this and the aftermarket is afforded some expansion room... and the
best part? Well... When the tide turns, and it always does, when offroad
trucks fall out of fashion for the more fickle of us (or them...), we'll be
left with some killer built trucks for (hopefully) cheap...

So next time some poseur in a built up truck passes you by without any
acknowledgement whatsoever (Jeep drivers in particular, with the Jeep wave),
smile (at least to yourself) and rest easy in the thought that, one day, you
may be driving his truck and putting it to better use...

Before any of you who own such wallet-built vehicles flip out and start
flaming me for dissing you, take this into consideration... I too have had
work done on my trucks by others. I still do. I spent months in near hell,
in LA, without my shop, my tools or even a garage to change my own oil...

A friend who builds show trucks (freakin' amazing ones, too) assembled my
Suburban. I paid him for it... There are many things I'm just not good at
doing so I farm the work out to pro 4x4 shops. My beef is not with you per
say and certainly not with your trucks. My beef isn't even with the fact
many of the drivers of wallet-built trucks don't do any actual work on their
trucks... Some people just can't do the work due to a lack of room,
disability or lack of time...

My beef lies in the attitude many (not all) drivers of wallet-built trucks
have and display on and off the trail.

Because someone else than the owner built those trucks in a store, I contend
that many of these owners know less about their rig, about the sport in
general, and yet try to act like seasoned veterans.

I believe this to be true because there is a spirit to offroading.

There is a camaraderie on the trail that newcomers need to learn and earn.
That takes time.

As we all know, the bond offroaders share on and off the trail, like their
trucks, is built, not bought.
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author unkown