EP 49 Randy Slawson

A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life.  The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry.  What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty.  From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.

You can't call yourself "the premier podcast for ULTRA4 & Off-Road Racing" without having on the current and three time King, Randy Slawson @bomberfabrication on your show.  Randy the driver of the ULTRA4 Racing 4448 & 4848 and sole proprietor of Bomber Fabrication.  With a legacy of a fast, simple, no non-sense stable of his own cars, and a slew of those he's built of designed for others that complete all all levels of the offroad circuits.  He gives us the low down on what makes him tick, why he believes he's had the success he's had, and most importantly.  He's a damn nice guy despite his shyness, and lifelong RBF prognosis. 
We talk The Fab School, dirtbikes, being married to better drivers, working with junk, and never giving up on this episode of The Talent Tank . 

Headshot provided by Alan Johnson @thedustygnome

After the Checkered Flag-
King of the Hammers 4400 Winners

• 2007: JR Reynolds and Randy Slawson
• 2008: Shannon Campbell
• 2009: Jason Scherer and Jason Berger
• 2010: Loren Healy and Rodney Woody
• 2011: Shannon Campbell
• 2012: Erik Miller and Robert Ruggiero
• 2013: Randy Slawson and Michael Slawson
• 2014: Loren Healy and Casey Trujillo
• 2015: Randy Slawson and Michael Slawson
• 2016: Erik Miller
• 2017: Shannon Campbell
• 2018: Jason Scherer
• 2019: Jason Scherer
• 2020: Josh Blyler
• 2021: Randy Slawson

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Transcript

Intro/Outro: 0:02

Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast with your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities and Ultra4 and off road racing.

Wyatt Pemberton: 0:20

Alright, alright. Alright, welcome back everybody the talent tank back in session. Man we are chasing the chasing the sunset at this point on the spring season we're we're closing in on the last couple episodes and this this is a guy that I've wanted on basically ever since episode number one. I mean, you've got it. You've got to get the Kings on and nothing better than having a three time and current King Randy slawson sitting in front of you and in discussing everything about who Randy slawson is and what Ultra4 means to him and how many cars he's built and all that, Randy, welcome to the show. How you doing, man?

Randy Slawson: 0:56

Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

Wyatt Pemberton: 0:57

Well, it did take us a while to get this going right? Between silly chords and my technical ineptitude. I think it took us two hours. It wasn't even that it was the computers we had trouble with. Even our phones, like I wasn't even though get a good phone connection with you just to call you. So I was most frustrating felt like there was solar flares or something. ethen with us? Yeah. Thank you for taking the time. You know, we had talked. When did we talk? We talked right after kayo Ah, you know, maybe sometime in late February about coming on. And I sent you a case and then we didn't quite flange out. And you did. You did another podcast, which was awesome for the wheeling wine and whiskey guys, Chris and Jason. What do you think of that experience? good experience. That was super fun. Yeah, they get a little different program than what we're doing now. They both came over to the shop and brought booze and we just sat around and wrapped for a couple hours. It was pretty fun. Yeah, I find that I find those guys to be fun as can be. And I was at a Ford dealership and you called me and you kind of like you lead with like apologizing for doing this their show and what we had going I was like, whoa, whoa, no way. irini right, you are current King, you need to take every opportunity. It's just not you. I mean every racer in my opinion needs to take every opportunity they can to get their message out to the media for me that for you promote and bomber fab and you promoting the stuff that you your products to, you know, promoting BFG and promoting just King shocks in what you do. Yeah, you were apologizing? I was like, No, are you kidding me? I think it's awesome. And plus, that said I also really like Chris and Jason. I mean their their show women wine and whiskey. They do a good job. And they somehow means they crank it out every week. I can't keep up with their pace. Right? Yeah, it was a really good time. So here we are, you know, your episode is going to come out here you know memorial day week. So we're recording before that but you just you just came back from quite an adventure you you co drove down and simply Bay the el rey de los ma hos I still don't know what that means. You know what that means? I don't I can't even say the words a little and know their meaning. And then you hold a 4800 car down there that you built that you're so you're you've got an EMC car. Right So how was that adventure?

Randy Slawson: 3:24

Well, the we raced to the race like I am famous for we started building on that car. We started back building on that car I should say like two weeks before we went to Mexico and we were you know welding it out and finishing body panels and building the exhaust and you know, mountain bits and pieces and getting the plumbing together and literally had the thing a completely empty chassis laying on its side welding the bottom of it a week before we were leaving. And somehow he managed to pull it together and I put it in a trailer here and drove down to Southern California CBM and they got it running for me it hadn't run when we left to go to the race. And then we figured out that it had some plugged injectors and it had some crossed wires and this and that and got it fired up and put it on the dyno and it put 410 to the wheels. And we pulled it off the dyno and put it in the trailer and went to Mexico had never been in the dirt before we got down there you set yourself up. Oh yeah, always just to have it there and have it run and we were able to do a little bit of shock tuning with Qing and then set the pole in DMC you know the fastest time by few seconds was pretty fun. Oh, absolutely. And then, you know, we all know that you started. You had a new employee start that week leading in San fleabay. With amber Turner. How's how's that gone so far? She's a couple of weeks in with you. What do you think? I love her attitude. She just wants to do it all see that I'll learn it all. No shows up and works hard. So, so far. It's been really fun.

Wyatt Pemberton: 5:00

Yeah, that was my take on her since I didn't know her before I interviewed her. She made me you renewed my, my belief that they're still good humans out there. Right good people out there. Yeah. So it turns out so often you and you and I've had this conversation a decade ago about bad people and people we dislike because they're bad people. And we could get we'll go there down the road, but uh, just the some of the stuff that she was saying, I was like, wow, I love I do I love your your outlook on life. And so it was awesome to have her on. This isn't amercia. We had her a few weeks ago. But it was awesome to hear that she started with you. And she helped you get the 40 100 down to simply pay you did you put it on the pole and then walk through walk through that race? What was the outcome? how did how did it work out for you?

Randy Slawson: 5:44

Well, it didn't go as we planned, right? you'd imagine it rarely goes to plan. So put that out there. But we got less than a lap in and that thing was overheating. And we ended up having a burn up comm cables from the s pod controller to the to the main brain. And we knew that we'd had problems with that in previous cars. And we didn't have time to get a high temp cable for it. It was a cat five cable that it's fairly hard to find that stuff in high temp. So I had problems with that. And then we had to jump for the fans. And so we fixed that at the end of lap one and the car was cooling great again and we went back out but the pressure relief valve I've been using push lock for the dash six back to the reservoir off the external pressure leaf for the power steering. The hose that we used, I don't know if it didn't jive with the push lock or what but it got warm and popped off and end up spraying a bunch of fluid down in the in the middle of the car. Fortunately, it didn't spark up and we didn't have a fire was the biggest thing. I was happy about that scenario. But yeah, I just you know how it is. There's always some silly little thing. 50 cent part, you know, you needed a hose clamp type of scenario that will take you out and it's always good to have some testitude time on before you decide to go and race them. So, lesson again. So what's the Genesis behind and believe me, you're you haven't you on a subject matter expert cuz you were billed and race combined. So you know, your car's absolutely inside and out. So I definitely am going to pick your brain on that stuff. But on the 4800 itself that you you've had, you're typically not a series racer, right? We see you Okay, ah, and I fully fully get that. And I think a lot of people do. It's like, you've got so many bullets in the chamber. And as a small business owner, that's building racecars, you pick and choose and you know where you're good at. Right? You're right one at three times. What was the decision two weeks before? What was the catalyst two weeks before to say, you know what, let's get that car together. Let's have an EMC car. Is it the intent that you're going to run that at ky this coming year? So the catalyst to us deciding to try to finish that car and go race it was Chris wicks, Justin wicks, has been riding with his dad, his dad gave him the opportunity to choose one race for this season to drive. So he chose the Mexico race, he thought that would be a fun one. And his dad told me that he couldn't ride with them wouldn't ride with them, he needed to find a co dog. And so I said, You know what, if you guys can't find anybody, I'd I'd be down. That sounds like a good time. I read with Justin the first day he drove the car, his dad brought it over here to the house, and we ran around out in the back 40 in the BLM land by my place, and the kids very respectful. You know, it's not like typical kids these days. And he's a mountain bike racer and a dirt bike rider and just got a really good feel for the equipment. And he's not going to push it until he understands what it's capable of and just gave me a really good feeling. You know, he operates like I do. Say, you're a dirt bike racer, too. I know you, you definitely put you pre run on a bike and you read terrain really well. Do you see the similarities? and Justin wicks is yourself? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he's a, he's a very talented kid. So ended up deciding we're going to go down there and Chris, talk to me about it, and then left, and I told them that we were going to go down there and support those guys and co dog with them and whatnot. And then we're working on that 48 car and we're like, I'm wonder and he's like, let's try. So I'm not going to push a guy like Adam, you know, to do something that he doesn't want to do, but when he wanted to do it, it's fun for me to take on a challenge that, you know, I've got my haters that are like you can't finish that car and I'm like, watch this, you know, and we got it done. You know, it didn't. We didn't get the finish that we wanted, but we started the race. That's right. You went to Mexico and you took the green and and then you'll figure it out. So that car is is your plan for km h to kind of be like

Wyatt Pemberton: 10:00

Some of the other drivers that we've seen enter earlier races in the week so they get that extra pre run time that extra look at the course. There's no pre running like racing. So fully agree. absolutely want to run it in the aemc I don't know exactly what that's going to look like if I'll, if I'll Run DMC myself I'll have my brother run lap when we did it in 16 I had a little v six powered 4800 car he ran lap one and I ran two and he was my co dog for the 4400 race as well so we between the two of us seen all the all the track this is a good point to bring up Yeah, so you bring up your brother your brother Mike also was raised as well has been with you off and on kind of three are you to be asked let's go back to the the genesis of I met you and Mike the same time in person like I know who you were but 2009 Vegas to Reno. What was TV night? Someone were called unite. Yeah. Is your TV night. I feel like I met you next door back door possibly the year before? an entirely possible thing of the hammer. Did you come to King of the hammers? 2008 or 2000 2009? was nine. Yeah, 2009 we would have we would have met entirely possible to as a nine It was a that was our first time out there. And then that would have been February and then August that year was that Vegas room? So my question is meeting you next the back door. He had the maroon triple nickel car with the was it? It was the flames on the fives, right? Yep. Yep. It's kind of like that. Or we or something? Yeah, I I always kind of thought it was the memorable conversation I had with you was it was k wage 2010. And it was kind of near where the old start finish was. And I don't remember the exact details. But I remember rolling up I was in that crawler and see you and since I'd just done Vegas arena with you, you know, five, six months earlier, I remember. Yeah, you come over, you're wearing carhart's You're pretty chill, dude. And I got along with you. And I'd always I'd already heard you know me people saying like, they don't get along with Randy. And I'm like, how do you not get along or Randy, I love Randy, like we jived on Vegas, Reno. And it's funny, we're sitting and we're kind of BSN. And this, this guy walks, buys 100 feet away. And I point out who it is. And you looked at me and we both had this look like that guy's such a douchebag. And we just was like, I knew like you were my people. Like I could bond with you and have that conversation like people that you know, aren't good humans. But you know, they're, they're in our same genre. So you're not going to discount them. But I really I bonded with you over that. So over the years, people say, Oh, man, Randy, Randy's not approachable. Ronnie's an asshole or Randy's whatever. And I'm like, easy? I don't think so. I think you're quiet. I misunderstood I believe, I think so. I'm definitely not a bad guy. I have my my ways of doing things. And a lot of people don't understand that. But if you come up to me with a question or, you know, whatever, we're going to share a beer and talk about racing and go crawl some rocks and I love love rock crawl, and more than just about anything. So I think I'm plenty approachable. I feel like I'm misunderstood. Because, you know, I'm in the shop all day every day, I'm under the welding hood. I'm working on my car. And then when I get out in public, I come off people assume cocky when it's actually just reserved and I'm a little bit you know, shy and kind of in my own little world still. So I know what to bring to you. You know yourself. I think you know yourself better than anyone else. And that's exactly from what I know about you. I think that's exactly it. And that's the words I've heard. You know, when people have asked me Hey, when are you going to have Randy on the show? In the exact words like they want to know about you because you aren't really a well known? I mean, you're well known but now I don't know all the the background on you, you know, they they know a little bit of stuff they you know, glimpsing glimmers and and now your three time King and like, what's his real story and like now we're gonna talk I'm not scared to Randy. I like rainy I like rainy a lot. So we're good. We're good. So So Mike, so your brother Mike. I met him Vegas arena with you. And, and you guys were racing. The car that you won your first kfh with it was the Oji bomber that Ben Napier had just purchased from you. And we teamed up on that car. I remember before the race talking to you on the phone about we were trying to kind of put together a a parts list of common parts between the three cars that we were campaigning in that event, and you just basically laughed at me. Like there's nothing common like that cars doesn't share any of the commonality with anybody else. Like it's like it's this that all these different things and, and you made your conglomeration of parts, work and it put it put that car On the box in 2009 and then Napier ends up with it, we race it Vegas to Reno. And then Mike himself Mike, what year did Mike race k wage and 4400 he got a car like maybe 14 or 15 it was after that, I think it was 17 or maybe 18 I think it was 18 that he raced that car. That was actually the car that I built in one in 13. And then it went back east to Tim Cameron and kind of made the rounds back there and then it came back out west and I helped him remoter it and rebuild it and try to get it dialed in. Oh, that's a great story. I remember seeing Tim Cameron he knew so this was Kentucky. How man I'm gonna say 2015 Ultra for it was a Gosh, I mean, I can't remember all the details of this race. But the new call surely was his co driver and they knew they needed to be in the top I think it was like top 11 we're gonna get to h spots. And so he monster trucks a rock pile like some ROM like ROM prindle did at Nortel recently like just doesn't even check up for the rocks and just moss I mean just airborne looks like currently sailing through the air just sales that car the pictures of it are your bomber it had white panels on it and it's like it's a solid 20 feet near solid 20 feet in the air and he lands it and and yeah they got the they got a K weight spot conveyed to him but I that's a that's a cool circle backstory that that car came after Tim stop racing I forgot who was who was funding their ultra for efforts or somebody that was putting a bunch of money behind them. Dude by the name of rich. I don't remember his last name at the moment. But I went out and did a rock bouncer event. It was right after February king of the hammers when I was in that car. And I linked up with Cole surely I knew him a little bit and gave him a ride around the park in that car. And then he's like, you got to give Timmy a ride in this car. So I gave him a ride. And then shortly thereafter we broke a rear axle shaft in it and didn't really get to play with it anymore that trip but out in Arkansas at superlift Park. That's probably the furthest out there I've been but those were the guys that tried to build what we talked about and I Fs bomber is that the tangent we're on where Yeah, that that transpired. They bought the bomber and they're going to get some seat time. And then they wanted me to do an independent car. And we had a pretty cool parts list compiled and we're getting things going and ended up getting the second Armada independent front end from those guys that are mod engineering the second one to the red dragon and started building that chassis and then we rented timeline problems and money problems and the guys like I just want out of the thing and so ended up Robby Gordon sent Todd Romano that Tonka trophy truck driver to me. Yep, Park City, Utah. Yeah, I ended up selling that car partially finished to Todd and he he's had a three different shops or four different shops. I think it's running and driving at this point. I haven't seen it out actually racing anywhere. But yeah, I haven't seen it race either. But I think he's had it in Mexico a couple times to pre run with it. I have definitely seen it out driving. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, Todd's a wealthy guy lives in Park City. He's, you know, kind of neighbors over there with you know, our own Paul horschel. I haven't seen that they've interacted it would be cool. You know, Todd Romano is an interesting character. He, I know you're a dirt bike guy, two wheel guy when they did the one of the king of the hammers motos. kena modos. Tada. Another dude did motos and electric bicycles. Shoot. Yeah, I didn't know that. And they finished. Right. And they finished pretty well. Actually. It was it wasn't mad. Yeah, it gets really ugly. Just carry your bike over it. That that's kind of I think that what their modus operandi was on that. I found it interesting. They're good dudes, but it was cool to see you did that I that independent car, the chassis and everything and then it left. And then it just went into hibernation for years, like, three, four years, five years, and then it pops up kind of back in Utah anyway, and then, and I heard about it from Brian Gillespie. he's a he's a Utah guy now and and he hangs out with Todd I think they whitewater raft or something together. But uh, that was last time started seeing pictures of that thing being driven. I think it got finished out in Vegas. I can't remember who though. Which route to Vegas first, I believe. JT Stevens. Is that son right? Mexican dude that races a class one car. Oh no. TJ Flores. There we go. That's the right name. JT Stevens is who bought the Dave Cole's original irfs car the kirbyville that we raced in. oh nine that Ridgeway caught on fire. Right J and J two. I think he's a Missouri guy. But I don't know what happened to JT he has he's been out of the the racers circle for by easily for years. And I don't know what happened to that Kirby car either. That was a kind of a revolutionary car for our sport. Yeah, definitely at the time it was the big old is class one looking monster. Yeah. Right. So we kind of went down the path. So where we're at today, here you are, you're in gardnerville. garden Ville, Nevada, where you've got your bomber fab. You know, your shop, set up your sole proprietor, you've got a couple employees, and you guys are cranking out cars. But you're not in Nevada, you're actually from California, right? One race, not from California. I'm born and raised in Oregon. That's in my part of the world, that's roughly the same place.

Randy Slawson: 20:51

Give me a hard time I really have no idea where you're from, you think you would know like, I mean, I think a lot of people probably do know, I've always known you just as a California guy. And then I even send out like a questionnaire like to get make sure I get some background information and facts. And let me let me look at yours. It actually tells the timestamp of like, how much time yours was, you'd open the app for 14 minutes and six seconds. And most of the answers are one, if not two words, maybe three words. So I've read it, I just laugh And so yeah, I'm gonna get some stuff wrong about you. Because I've assumed Yeah, so I was born in Grants Pass Oregon, okay. And I, my parents moved to tell them with Oregon, which is where the cheese comes from, okay, when I was about three years old, and then I lived in a couple different houses until the muck till I got married, which was 24 us out for, you know, college couple years, but mostly just wheeling around, or tomac burn and all the logging roads, riding dirt bikes, beaten on old Ford Bronco that I had in college, in high school, and then, but after high school, I bought a 95 y j from the wrecking yard in Portland and scabbed it back together and beat on that thing and drive it from tellement down to the Rubicon and we'll Rubicon in different places get my rock crawling fix when I was young, how closest tell him what to or even Grants Pass in dsid Schneider from like a little small town in that area to I don't know if Dave and I crossed paths wall. He was in Washington State and I was in Oregon. I don't know if we crossed paths until we were down in California or I was already down in California and he would come down. I remember for sure meeting him at some of the real early Cal rocks events. Lions pride in Johnson Valley was about oh one maybe oh two. There was a event I believe it was after that that. I remember what they call it but it was rocks. Sorry. I was thinking he was right there near Tim McMillan. He was monta Sana Washington. So in my head, you know, like I said, we were a little mud Toyota guys, you know, we wanted to be rock crawlers, but we just had mud and snow. So we both definitely came from the same era up there. But I don't think I ever crossed paths with in there. Now. You got married at 24. Krista? Yes. How did you meet her? So a friend of mine went to Walla Walla to community college took auto mechanics I didn't know what I wanted to be but I knew I liked cars. I wanted to learn more about it. And I was driving my jeep why Jay and I saw this sweet Toyota four runner and I started talking to guy and we became fast friends and later roommates and all kinds of stuff and did tons of wheeling and camping and stuff together. But Levi was from Wenatchee, and my wife was sort of annachi and he introduced me to my wife basically we ended up taking her out wheeling and that was it

Wyatt Pemberton: 23:53

by the Jeep that she should that's how you got that's how you landed or you know Walla Walla that's the has the town so nice. They named it twice. I have a college professor and that's me in the Wenatchee areas gorgeous man I've been up there and then the lake Leavenworth have gone to some conferences and when actually a few times that's a pretty part of the world The last time I was there though, it was kind of a smoke bound because there was so many there have been so many forest fires in that area. And that's suboptimal and then so you guys was near will go off on the side of like you grown up I think you were you are you Seventh Day Adventist? Yeah. Is Chris I think Christy is to write in so that that equals I can see her so that's a commonality right you guys have you grew up very similarly and right, kind of the birds of a feather flock together. That's how that goes. So well a wall if you're if you follow a seven day Adventists wall the wall is a hot spot. Okay and then we went straight from Walla Walla to Loma Linda which is another big hotspot and she took surgical tech and then nursing in Walla Walla er at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Inland Empire in Southern California. It's an all new getting married and moving down there was that's where Johnson Valley was. So that was exciting. That's where the Johnson Valley is. Oh, man. So So Krista, I have a lot of respect for her at just at the very moment because our two our two and a half hour session of trying to figure out why we couldn't get things to work and the microphone to work and it didn't be in the cable in the kit that I sent it's been well it's made it around the world enough times enough other guys have beat on it. You just ended up with a cable that was loosened in quiet one engage well, and so Krista solves what you and I couldn't figure out so unbound out her like she's, she's a hero in my book at this moment. But, uh, you recently built her a car. Right? Talk about that? Is it sexy is a good looking car. I appreciate that. I'm pretty stoked on it. So before that, in 2017, I took the legends card king of the hammers, and we had problems during the EMC race and, and parked it. And, you know, in my mind, we're just getting ready for 4400 The next day, and some of the crew talked my wife into entering it in the 4400 grace. So

Randy Slawson: 26:20

she ran around and Brian Maloney had won the backdoor shootout, and how to spot so he drove lap one and then she drove lap two and lap three, and then finished. And she beat me she got 21st and I got 50 s or something. I think I was the last finisher of the day. But we had, you know, a ton of problems, obviously. But anyway, so. So she beat you. She has beat you. This is on record. Yeah, this is solid Good for her first and only race she's ever raised. She beat me. So she's got that going for event. She's been wheeling with me, you know, since the Walla Walla days. And, you know, we spend a ton of time down in Southern California riding dirt bikes together, and she's quite the little athlete in her own right. She really understands, you know, the dynamics and you know, she can really read drain and then drive over stuff. I remember early on in Johnson Valley, we were running my old leaf spring eco cage, poop pipe, Toyota truck, and she was driving it up, wrecking ball. And I remember john James, in the background of our video. Probably the only reason I remember just saying she gets it. She's fearless. You know, doesn't play john James from pirate days from, you know, 20 something years ago, but it only dates us a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. We're we're definitely getting older. But yeah, so the trail bug, yeah, decided that, you know, I had so much fun with the one I built myself. And it's been two years now. I was like, I don't want to fight over who gets to drive, we just need another car. So one of the, I guess the first batch of kits that I got, I started putting it together and just kind of more or less cloning, the one that I've been wheeling was just kind of an abortion of a bunch of bits and pieces that I'd had laying around that I modified and put together as cheap as I could. But hers, you know, just started with a nice new fresh kit and all the bits and pieces and I just really built her a nice car. And then for me personally, I don't want side panels. I don't want glitzy stuff, you know, I want to take it out and just torture it, beat it to death and roll it over and laugh about it and then roll it back on its wheels and keep going but she wanted to side panels. So once we got that in my head, you know, then it's well what color are we going to paint it and then you know, it ended up being the candy red powder coat and somewhere in the middle there. I ended up hitting up john from crawl and said Hey, man, I got something that I'd like to have you shoot if you're interested in he had made some noise about wanting to shoot my, my trail buggy and I was like nobody wants to see this thing. It's no it looks like it's been through a meat grinder. It's just beat. So when we got that thing going it was like a week and a half or so before we left for King of the hammers. And we literally drove in the trailer and took it over to moon rocks and not many rocks, we take it to prison Hill, took it to prison Hill and unloaded it and the first time it saw dirt was you know, pulling off the trailer. So you know all the nipples on the tires and as fresh as it was going to get so got to shoot it dude got to cover and they go spread in the magazine and then drag it down to Johnson Valley and that was some little new car tuning blues and stuff getting the fans working correctly and this and that and but the cars turned out to be super rad. She can drive it anywhere anybody else can drive and it's funny, you know, like Sunday we will lit prison Hill and then Monday night after work. We went down to knuckle Buster this week.

Wyatt Pemberton: 30:00

You know, two nights in a row basically, we learn that thing and I wondered going into it how long it was going to take her to start getting cocky. And she'll point the thing in anything that you know, anything that I'll do, she'll try and and usually do just as good or better, you know. So she's pretty good driver, so she pushes you and keeps you on your game, huh? Yeah. Well, definitely the pictures I saw just from your I think your Sunday trip was a just the vertical. You guys were doing some some pretty sweet verticals. Nothing looks like a go so that Well, I've tried it 20 times I made it once. And she poked at it three times and drove straight up the thing. I blame the tires, but those Red Label 42 crawlers on her car really, really stick and hook up good. So it's pretty neat. I like the car. And I think it's cool that she has it one and two that she's such a good and accomplished driver. I heard back to the grapevine that she that she'd made some comments like oh, it only took 20 years. So

Randy Slawson: 31:04

after that, but no very, very, very, very, very nice. I'm frustrated with myself for I sold the trail buggy to Nolan Grogan, my first trail buggy that everybody on dubs. No, sorry, it was a rush buggy. No one named it what am I trying to say he christened it he dubbed it. Nolan dubbed it the bash buggy as was just a beater. It was a pretty cool car. In its day, it had a three rz which I believe was the first three years the in a tube car. And it was all cromoly front to back, you know, all all the chassis was all 4130 tubing and it had a narrowed 60 in the front. And that Toyota 8.4 in the back and the thing was 2600 pounds on 39 inch gsls exes are not TSL sex but regular old gsls I guess. And the thing, it was just an absolute Riot to wheel it had like a 7030 weight bias with that 16 the front, you didn't need to run water or anything, just anything, you could push that 60 if it would drag the rest of the car along behind it. So I sold that thing. What I was getting at is I can't believe it took me from that was oh five to 220 18 2019 I finally built another trail buggy and I wheeled the dog crap out of you know a bunch of my race cars over the years because I was all I had to play with. But the trail buggies are a ton of fun. I think what you've done by winning k weights three times being in a solid x a car is proven. And where I'm kind of going with this is proven that you know the rocks and you didn't just learn the rocks on day one, you didn't just buy a car, build one car and go out you have you end up you know, in Southern California and then you end up close to the Johnson Valley and you end up basically just living out there for the most part for many years, but leading up to the onset of K wage becoming a thing. Right. Dave? has told me I don't know how many people he shared it with. But that was one of his inspirations for starting king of the hammers. One day we were out there running sledge hammer. And me and my buddy Shane white bro with the fro Empire. We went up sledge hammer in past Dave and his cronies and then came back around down the sand hill and passed them again. And they hadn't gotten that far. And I we may have passed them three times on the same trail basically in the same spot. And he was like, dang, we should do a race. So that was my mo before racing. Rock racing was really much of a thing was, you know, let's,

Wyatt Pemberton: 33:42

we've seen that we can drive these trails. Let's see how fast we can drive now. You know, and that little Toyota buggy worked out really good for that back in the day for me. You know, I still will every now and then randomly we'll text Nolan Grogan great guy lives in a some little Burg north of Jackson, Mississippi. I can't think of the name of it off the top of my head but love the guy. I've gone and stayed with them. You know, his little ranch that they they live on. I wish I could remember the name but it would come to me. You know they fill movies out there on a regular basis. And the biggest one I remember being filled out there was Oh brother Where Art Thou with and they feel met at Nolan's place north of Jackson. But yeah, that that bash buggy? I didn't know that you didn't name it. That's funny. But I know that was a car that that dude loved I think of all the cars that he hadn't he had some nice different wheelers. I mean, had that four seat twisted chasms at one point, but it always seemed like I'm not putting words in loans, but advice he might read in his emotions was the basketball. He was the car that he missed the most like that. He got you know, I guess maybe was because it was the match. But he didn't. He wasn't so nice to it. And so we got a wheel harder versus when you got that twisted customs car. It was so much money and it was so nice. And it didn't get us to its full potential maybe I don't know.

Randy Slawson: 35:00

So I'll tell you how I met Nolan. I don't know that I knew of Nolan. Maybe I'd seen. I call it one Grog. I don't know if that's how you pronounce his screen name from pirate. Yeah, but I may have seen it. But I went to to Arizona and we ran the bumblebee area for Martin Luther King Day, in this, I believe was 2005. Or maybe it was 2006. But Nolan and his buddy Jim had come out from Texas, and Jim had this$150,000 sunray. Engineering buggy. That was beautiful. And Nolan had this red Land Cruiser you call me, Kate? Yes. That sounds Yeah, that's right. Yep. And it had, I believe it just had a solid axle like a 60, or something in the front, but it had, it had mogh porlex on the back with a nine inch center. And I was like, steel, you know, I want to call it a fabricated nine. But everyone would have the wrong idea of factory Ford housing, and the extra leverage and the way that thing was set up with the boxes. He got money shot, which is the first obstacle that they did when they pulled the rigs off the trailer. And he twisted the tube right out of that center section, and broke it and broke the shock and the springs were falling off. And that was the end of his week. He made it you know, not five feet on the first rock trail and the thing blew up. And Jim, his car, he made his top of money shot but he landed on the front Lincoln it side loaded it and it broke the weld bung The, the tube adapter out of the end of this weird fabricated link that they built it sunray and it didn't have much engagement on the bone. And that was just a little cute, pretty TIG weld, and it just sideloaded and broke it right out. No, I ended up riding around with me in that car for the rest of the weekend. And the very first thing he said to me when I pulled it out of the trailer was doesn't run. He walked over and looked at it. He's like, does it run? And I was like, Well, yeah, I came here to wheel it. Obviously it runs but I used to get that a ton with that car. I buried all the wiring and all the plumbing the best I could the car didn't look complete, you know, by most people's standards. like where's the battery? Where's, you know, and everything was just tucked away as much as I could come in from work in a couple years at the same car shop down in Southern Cal. I tried to hide everything the best I could. So anyway, he asked me something about is it for sale? Or would you sell it? And I was like, Yeah, for 25. Please like 2500 Don, I'll take it today. I was like, Fuck, you can't have it for 2500 bucks. It's 25,000 bucks. And he laughed at me and then he rode around in it for the weekend. And by the end of the weekend, he's like I'll be in touch. So within a month or something I think he mailed me a check for it and had it picked up some of the some of his other Land Cruiser cronies came by and picked it up and took it out to contempt see for one of their big runs in Texas. Yeah, he was he lived in Dallas. He's he is from Jackson, Mississippi area, but he lived in Dallas for quite a few years. And that's when I initially met him. And then Jim, when Jim had that sunray but he built you know, Lance Gilbert was at Sunrise at the time before PSC and then before tribe. And you know, Lance knows that car inside and out. But Jim passed away, basically with that car and Clayton and they were cutting trails, and he had a heart attack. And you know, winter went to Jim's funeral. It was it's probably the cleanest I've ever seen the North Texas wheeling crowd, you know, somber moment, but you know, at the same time, it got us all together, cleaned up and not on the trail and not holding beers. And it was a good loss of a great man. That card left that summary card left the basically the circle. After he passed away his widow bounced it. I don't remember where it went, but it came back. And a good friend of mine Derek Stewart now owns up in the Dallas area. So it gets it gets regularly wheeled at this point versus it didn't for a long time. But yeah, that was that sunray Mikey, it's it's something else, I mean, huge like 1550 steering joints and you know, just these custom aluminum knuckles like it was it was pretty baller back then. And now even today, I just remember the inner C's are like inch and a quarter or something thick bar that they press broke into a C shape. Yeah, and then machined it all out. And it's pretty wild. It's pretty cool to just have the the tooling that will allow you to do something like that. So that's, that's where we're at. I mean, it's still there's things on that car that are still cutting edge today. And it's a 13 or 14 year old car. I would say it's usually 13. It may be more than that. So five or six when I met him when he had that. Yeah, there we go. So there we have, maybe it's even 16 or 17 years old and it's still there.

Wyatt Pemberton: 40:00

things on that Viola the electronic sensors for recentering the rear the rear steer like it has a little electric limiting delco Remy sensors where as it bumped it, it would know where it's what resistance range. Yeah just I mean just little stuff like that. I mean just just fun is out the unknown. Grogan got tilba Bogue that's the name of his, his place there and Tilda Bogue I don't know what Tilda Bowden means means but it's lots of Spanish moss hanging on trees that's what I'll go with and then less very humid there. This is exactly what it is it but there's no population there's nobody lives in Mississippi there's like 14 dudes and I get

Randy Slawson: 40:47

a lot of action so so you're you're you built this the bash buggy and So Cal so you're you guys moved down from Walla Walla you moved to So Cal Chris has gone to school? What are you doing because I somewhere in here you've started learn how to weld How did you learn how to weld fabricate and go from that kind of world in So Cal to unit with a job you were a welding teacher at fab school, jumped through that those couple chapters, those couple years in life of how you went from there to there to there, connect those dots for me, well, I'm gonna just skim through it real fast because it's not super exciting. The first job I got the only thing that I knew was in So Cal was was all pro offroad. So I went over to him it and I ended up getting a job for john and i think that lasted about three months and he fired me. And then I worked for a tire shop, Goodyear Tire dealer and I made like 650 an hour I think busting tires and changing oil. That was terrible. And then I quit and I started working on my garage on Chris Ridgeway buck brought me a little Samurai that he'd rolled in Moab and turning that thing into a bogey he a friend of his cut it in half and they literally like wheelbarrow ducking excuse me like wheel bear the thing into my shop hanging onto the back frame rails and he brought some Toyota axles and just a bunch of scrap yard junk you know some Toyota release springs we put up front and some some TJ coils we put in the back like stock stuff from from behind somebody's shop or something and we know building a little car that really worked way better than it should have and made a lot of people cry used to make john Reynolds pretty sad when it would lap him on back door when they would race and this is so long ago. Ridgeway still he'd already lost his leg at that point right. Actually during the build process he did have it cut off okay, so as soon as it was finished he was out there you know on crutches basically operating the clutch to this five speed buggy you know, with the with the crutch and his other leg with his new stumble bandage dub, I can't imagine being in that situation to make the decision to have your leg amputated. Yeah, I hope I never have to choose that. But he had had his ankle fused. And then he'd go back racing dirt bikes and get more and more play and movement in it. And then you have it fused. And offseason, year after year of doing that, and then it had real bad deema and it was just just a mess. And it just constantly was you know, he was in pain and on medication, Norco, you know painkillers, and he just said, you know, it's not worth it. I don't need this thing dragging me down. So he cut it off. And then he was able to go race extremity games, with all the games,

Wyatt Pemberton: 43:44

like, terrible. Well, you know, I know a friend of mine, a guy in the community now is kind of going through, you know, kind of the same thing. It's Josh West over at CBM. You know, a guy that, you know, and he's he has knee problems and, and I think he's going through the end, he was on the talent tank a couple episodes ago, but I just found out, you know, past maybe two weeks that he's in a situation where he's considering an amputation of his leg because of his problems on his knee. And I just I just pray for him. I can't imagine being in the situation to have to make a decision like that. Yeah, I'm hoping that they can do a new joint in his knee or something like that. He's already has an artificial joint, but it's just not working out for him. But yeah, football in his college days wasn't nice to his knee, I guess. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's a big guy. So Southern California. How did you how did you meet Ridgeway just, we went out at Johnson Valley. Yeah, so he brought a samurai out and I was telling amber about it because it reminds me of hers. It was just a little 10 top on, you know, it's 31 or 32 or something like that. And he's talking about how he's gonna run wrecking ball with it. And I was just shaking my head like, no, you're not running up wrecking ball on

Randy Slawson: 45:00

One inch tires on a stock Samurai that he gave Hill and then, you know, ran into him a few different times, but ended up you know, he brought that thing over to me and we turned it into a buggy after he mangled it in Moab in that era, you know, this was way before km h was even, you know, a glimmer in anyone's eye. How many weekends Do you think you spent a year on means dry, like, running around Johnson Valley? Oh, man, I wish I could sway Ember a lot, you know, we'd go out during wheeling season, you know, a couple weekends a month, maybe more. And I would go in spurts, you know, when I first got down there, and it was it was that time of year went a lot. And then I think I ran that Toyota truck that I moved down there with for two or three seasons, and started getting kind of tired of it. And then you know, got onto the buggy build thing. And then, of course, when the buggy was done, I think the first time we ran, it was at the 10 vendor, January and April, and it was already getting hot, send up relocating the radiator to the back of the car. So we didn't have all that heat from the radiator fan blowing at me. And then we would go out on Friday after work and we'll till three in the morning and then crash out on the open trailers or in the back of the truck or whatever and get up with the son You can't sleep anymore at five o'clock in the morning or whatever it is. And we'll until 10 or 11 when it was 105 or 10 or something out there already. And then head home. And we did that for a year. I only had that bash buggy for a year or so before I sold it to no one actually I think was nine months from when it first ran till when it was sold. That's nothing at all You barely even broken in at that point. Right? I did that with the first the first bomber car too. So when those Land Cruiser dudes came by and picked that thing up and took it to Nolan, one of the kids that was in the group, his name was Matt. And you touched on earlier the caddy on dubs, he ended up coming to me and brought me a bunch of parts that he'd been collecting to put in a Land Cruiser that he had. And we started building a buggy out of it. And at first it was a TBI 350 ns 700 R and some a portion, duel transfer case Land Cruiser stuff I don't know anything about and one piece at a time I talked him into an LS and then talked him into an Atlas and but he showed up with these, these portal axles that were by portal tech. And I ended up being the guy that was the first their first victim I would say, dealt with that for close to a year being lied to every time I talked to him on the phone and strung along. And portal tech is some of the people might realize became super 14 years later. So that's where Doug's axles are, I guess, they have hair still with them. Yeah. So those guys are some of the worst people have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. And that's currently torque. Right? But I'm gonna get them wrong. I'd like to RC but not the ones that are the green logo in the northeast. This is like an orange logo. I get good. Other torque bad. Torque bad. That's right, man. And if you'd need if you ever you know, need to know the right one just call Phil accardi and be like Phil, which which worst examples? Worst axles are gonna get a spiel, right? Yeah, I could have saved a lot of people a lot of grief if they don't listen to me. But sometimes you just have to learn it the hard way. Right? Well, I think we're all kind of, you know, the school of hard knocks. I think that's why we all like each other because we're hard headed enough to, you know, cut our own path and blaze our own trail. And, and with that comes some lumps. And we try to make the best of the lumps. But uh, yeah, all we've done is we really haven't failed. We just found a way not to be successful. And we won't do that again.

Wyatt Pemberton: 49:09

Oh, man. So you do rejoice Boogie, do your own. You've done carry on Dev. You've done a couple things out of your place there and so Cal, how did you learn how to weld because today, you know, you walk the cup like a pro you throw down these amazing bull well, porn is what you know, it's it's commonly known on Instagram as wellborn. You've got these beautiful, just beautiful beads that you run with the TIG torch. It's clear you've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of visor downtime, perfecting your craft. what sparked that? When did you pick up the torch and when did you start, you know, burning metal. So that leads perfectly back into your first question about where I've worked. We got sidetracked on Ridgeway and working on the samurai in my garage, but he'll do that to us. Yep.

Randy Slawson: 50:00

That project lasted a few months. And how did it go? I ended up a new neighbor moved in and he had the chops on the grinder and he came over with checking out what I was doing. And he had a little shop in Grand terrace, which is up three miles up the road from me that he called suspension dimension, and it was airbag mini truck stuff. And he was working on a about a 99 or 2000 Chevy crew cab. And this was like, oh, two, three, maybe. And he was putting 44 inch boggers or, or TSL or something under like the biggest tire you could buy at the time. And solid axle swap in it and do it a big drop down. You know, subframe cradle big old, four lane, just a monster truck. You know, big old show, showboating Bluetooth front drive was a Sema fail belt? Yeah, exactly. So I ended up going to work for him. And that shop, just so happened was two doors down from extreme performance and cars. And when suspension mentioned wasn't doing great, he and I both went and went to work for our NEEMO that owns extreme performance and cars, then a really that was the beginning of my skin color, formal education. That's not the right term. I think that is I think that works. Because if you apply that to your welding, but also a lot of what your I think your the path you're going to walk us down here is it applies to your mindset and mentality in car design. Yeah, that's fair. So that was when I started playing with the TIG, I'd had the opportunity in, in college to TIG weld, and I told them, the welding instructor at the time, I'm never going to have a TIG welder, I'm never gonna have access to one of these things. Again, all I want to do is put stick welder in play with the, the gas torch and then do some MIG welding. He's like, I just just keep after it. So now the tiggs up pretty much the only thing that ever comes out in my shop. But yeah, I got the opportunity to start welding there at extreme and I learned how to weld aluminum quite well. And we did a lot of plumbing on twin turbo LS motors back in, you know, oh, 30405 era, everybody was refining their house and taken out of fat Second, you know, dropping$100,000 on 1000 horsepower, saying buggy. You know, what, what else could you want to do? Take the Glamis and rip it. Right, exactly. So, yeah, I just I learned a lot about, you know, building stuff clean and hiding stuff. And, you know, it's kind of that chopper motorcycle mentality, like dragging the wiring through the inside of the tubing on the chassis for the tail lights and just keep things really clean. And obviously, we don't do that on the rock crawler. But I just always try to hide things on my cards as much as I can and make make whatever bracket I'm making it needs to do, you know, double duty, at least a couple things, if not more, you know, we don't just willy nilly hang things on the car to do one purpose. It's always got to be thought out and, you know, do do as much for us as we can, which I find you know, you and Jessie Haynes kind of have very similar mindsets and theories on that. And it's cool to see where you guys came from completely different worlds. But then you've gravitated towards the same mentality, then we're more or less neighbors that two lives about 40 minutes from here. You guys both punched out and ended up over there. And I mean, not a bad place in the world to live. Certainly it's not in the state of California. So good on y'all. It's close enough that we can have all the perks of California without the downside. In the taxes and the people. Well, the people are unfortunately funneling in pretty quickly, but yeah, just the big city life and all this stuff that goes along with that. Hey, I just found out today my wife told me today that you know, this is Texas, we we certainly are importing blue voters at a record pace as well. And she had to tell me about some people that we know that uh, we are exporting them to to a blue state, you know, they're moving to Illinois, and I couldn't help but laugh like yes, we got one to get the other direction. We got one to leave. Yay. Finally.

Wyatt Pemberton: 54:28

Oh, Lord, sorry, sorry about the tangent on there. So you're you're working you're building sand cars, you're making them simple. It's you're developing this mindset and mentality of how to build an uncommon may be complicated, but make them look as simple as possible. And that was the first thing that went through my head when I got to see the first bomber in person and look at it and it was just like, Where's all the crap? You know, normally it's this, you know, 10 pounds of crap and a five pound sack on any Rock Crawler on anybody and yours. seem like 4.9 pounds of crap and a five pound sack. And you've perfected that over. Well now when was you know? So 12 years ago that was your first one. And how many bombers are out there today? I know we're getting off off subject in jumping ahead but you I mean, you develop the crate your, your basic bomber in a box program. Right. So I used to keep super good track and I call them bomber one and bomber two environment three. I've lost track somewhere up over 25 turnkey cars that I built myself in the shop. But there's somewhere around 75 or maybe over 80 now running around out there in in the wild. And I just picked up another 25 chassis kit. So the barns full of spaghetti bunch of bent tubes ready and waiting for the next project. Now I saw something this is a tidbit This is an Easter egg. But you posted on social media about interest in Oh, you see where I'm going? You know where I'm going? I know you're going in pint size, or the three quarter three quarter sided bomber kid bombers? Yeah, are they seven eighths or three quarter or what what? I've been approached a number of times, but a dude hit me up on Instagram midweek or, or over the weekend or something. I don't remember what it was whatever. And he's like, Hey, man, I will buy, I'll buy two of them. I'll buy three of them. I'll do whatever we have to do if you build these things, and I was like, You know what, let me I'll put some feelers out both on social and see if there's other interests and you know, hit up the CAD shop the CNC shop and see what they what they can do for me with that. Typically I need to do like you know 10 at a time to get the price point down where people can stomach it. So I hit him up for a price on 10 Chelsea's for what I came up with was Toyota axles are three quarters of the width of my racecar axle. So three quarter scale simple three quarter scale. Well I was in Cody Wagner was a customer of yours at one point, you know, he he had a couple bombers and and I was in his shop. It was a key. I don't know this year last year. I don't know the years run together, but I got to see his mini buggy or kid buggy or whatever you wanna call it. And it's quite cute, but I was like, this thing's like it was legit. Like it's it's a three quarter sized, amazing little crawler so I won't say it was on. I don't say it's on 35 but I mean if you have little bombers running around, I mean what are you gonna call them bomb? It's what do you got? You figured out name for him? I really haven't thought that much about it. IEDs improvised explosive device right mama Fatman one of my employees back in California Kyle my my main man. He was on a budget and we were going to do back in back in those days. We were bending and notching everything by hand so we're going to put the pipe die in the in the bentek and and do up a pipe bomber. Yeah, there Yeah.

Randy Slawson: 58:08

pipe. Yeah. It worked for a lot of my early projects. So So what was the I guess I've used this word now twice now catalyst what was the world where you left the same car world and and end up your teaching? Perhaps go was it you know crash of Oh, wait. I mean, what made that that move for you? I just outlive my my interest in that place. I guess moved on. I started working on the caddie on dubs project right about then I sold the first trail buggy and I bought a TIG welder and I bought a lathe. And I set up a little shop in my little tiny two car garage in Colton California. Matt came along and we started on that keti on dubs project. And I thought that would sustain me for a while but it got to be, you know, portal tech couldn't keep up with the parts and the kid couldn't keep up with the money and it just got where I needed to find another gig. So I ended up I don't remember how I got turned on to it. But there was a shop close to my place that did paintless dent repair tools and they needed well there so I ended up going and really burn a lot of rod Weldon handles on paintless dent repair tools and welding these little light frames that they use to to look at the light down the side of the car when they're doing their repair on vehicles. So I welded You know, I think I was only there six months or a year or something like that. But every day you know it was at the welder welding so I got a ton of seat time there. Then that dude, my boss there ended up turning me on to Trey Johnson. He's like crows, crows a badass. And I was like, Who's Troy. So one day at lunch, I cruised over to the shop, and they were just in the very beginning stage. Just setting up the school you know, there's still running power and air around the shop and building the work benches and with the all the curtain dividers and stuff between them. And so I ended up going to work for him shortly thereafter. And, you know, welding and building on stuff in the beginning he had Johnson fabrication and the fab shop was a couple rows behind the the school. So we were working on class one buggies and 10 cars and welding and building on race cars in the evenings and doing the fab school thing, you know, getting that place set up in the morning and getting, you know, some experience at both ends of that. And then when he got the school fired up, he'd have 60 kids, three classes, 20 kids a piece, a morning class, an evening class, and then one. So it was like Tuesday, Thursday, and then like monday, wednesday classes, so we had 60 kids going at any given time. So I got to interact with a bunch of different people doing that and met a bunch of cool guys and still have some friends today that were students from fab school. And I understand that a lot of people think I went to the fab school that I was a student there, but I definitely learned a lot while I was there, but I was an instructor and mostly welding and fabrication stuff. But believe it or not, I'd stand up front in the classes and give theory on suspension geometry and this and that. So it was a definitely a growing experience for me. I had to get out of my shell a little bit. And I think I've reverted a lot from that experience. I was doing pretty good there for a while but I learned a ton and it was a really good experience for me. And then from there. As soon as I quit that job I started the first bomber car in my little two car garage and but by that point though Randy Yuda you knew genre and olds, you co drove in the 2007, king of the hammers, the very the inaugural, the Oh, gee 13. That was 12 cars. And john Reynolds, Jr. wins the race with Randy slawson and the CO driver seat, correct? Yep. And that that really fueled the fire, of course, for the next step, which is to have my own race car. And I already been working on it. And I'd been trying but we had a few different setbacks. You know, I sold the first buggy, and I was gonna build a LS one powered car. And I had the motor and I had the trans and I had the T case and I had the axles. And then we got kicked out of our house, we had to rental program wasn't working out, we had to move and I'd pack up all of my toys and put them in mini storage. And that that was right at the end of the caddy on dubs deal. I built that caddy on dubs thing and I had to backburner my project, and then we lost the house, and we had put everything away in storage. And then so anyway, my wife graduated nursing in the same day, I quit fab school and started working on that project that had been mothballed. We moved into a new house and nine months later, the first bomber was born. The baby

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:03:13

and then that in that car went on to I mean, it lived if it lived for a while lived internationally. That thing went to Australia for a while. Did all the Napier and then it's back here. Who owns it now?

Randy Slawson: 1:03:26

The Cairo bar body Cairo body the kind of blank what's that dude's name? He's up in Washington State. Jeremy Jones. Now he's an Idaho, sir. Right. I haven't talked about getting a quick minute. I think he still owns it. He has a chiropractic clinic in tri cities or Dr. Ma, somewhere up there. It's floating around with the other 8080 bomber kits that are out there. So that's something else. So that first, you know 2007 rendering around john Reynolds, you guys, you guys win. And that really kind of sets you on a trajectory to have your own car and be be there on your own. Did you race? I'm sure you raced in a Wait. Did you raise your own car? No way or did you write to somebody? No way. So backing up just a tiny bit. Dave invited me I would have been no g to the first 2007 king of the hammers and I just sold that car to Nolan. And so I was talking to Nolan about it. And he was like if you if you want to come and pick it up in Texas, you can race it and just fix it back up and bring it back to me. And at the time driving to Texas 24 hours one way it was just not in the cards. I didn't have a shitbox old half ton Chevy and you know, I didn't have gas money like that. I couldn't afford to be driving around the country to borrow that car even though I wanted to really bad. So I didn't get to, you know, be a no gs 13 driver, but I did the next best thing and was the winning co driver. So then carry on dubs build getting towards the end of it. The kid was like if you finish it in time, you can raise it and King of the hammers. So we ended up in Maria and King of the hammers, and we drew a third star position, and we pass first and second real quick, and we were out in front crazy story about that one. So at the time, I was working for Troy, and we were out shock tuning, and it was, you know, the very beginning of, you know, my experience with King shocks and those guys in shock tuning. And you know what that was all about and how amazing that is, like, if you haven't had a car that shocked incorrectly, you're really missing out. So we're shock tuning in this L q. Nine that turnkey engine supplied, put some nasty heads on there blew up Brook piston. And this was Thursday, and the race was Friday. So we loaded up, we went down to fab school. And a few different guys came with us. And one of them was I'm so bad with names. Just Reese that races this stock Toyota truck. Yeah. And Justin came down and, and helped us pull the motor out of that car. We got to fab school. I don't know what it would have been two in the afternoon, three in the afternoon, something we showed up at CBM. And Chris got wrangled by Troy in to help us fix the motor. So we showed up there will pass closing time on Thursday night, it was, you know, 7pm or something like that. And we showed up with a couple $100 and Taco Bell for the crew. And he put a piston in the thing and new head gaskets and new spark plugs and got it all back together. And I think it was probably two o'clock in the morning or something before we had the car running. And we put her on a trailer and I don't remember whose tow rig it was, I don't remember much about it. I got in the backseat and tried to fall asleep. I don't think we made it back to the lake bed until you know 334 in the morning, something like that I got just a tiny little cat nap before we had to be suited up and and take the checkered flag or the green flag rather. So we got off to an early lead and rant 25 of the that year was 50 miles in the lead and then the

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:07:14

POS performance off road steering Does that sound right? pls I was a Texas guy I think or something. Anyway, history stuff lived up to the acronym that he called it in front seal fell out of the pump and ended our day early. But that was the first time I driven in a race myself. And you know it really really sparked you know that the need for speed. That shock to me experience and that l q nine with the Cameron heads in it was making 500 horsepower or something. And that was super exciting. So it didn't take me too long to get back to the shop and start working on that first bomber car. And at the time, you know, the thing was completely cutting edge, you know, had leading arms and trailing arms and it was kind of a long, low lean machine back in the day. Everybody was pretty excited about it. Oh, no, for sure. Not you aim today you had I think this is a testament you know, the light bright crowd took your car this year. You know, I say crowd, crew, husband, wife, you know your crew. And they finished Katowice their first ultra for race. They think I think 17th somewhere in there. Does that sound about right? And I wish I could remember but again, it just goes to testament that if you're a good driver and you have good equipment you can you can pull that race off and they did their you know, very, very good drivers. I really love where you've gone with with the bombers. Over the from that first one that you completed in oh nine to where we are today. How many chasse ease iterations are there? Is there very many derivations between all that time period? I know you're constantly evolving little parts of it making better parts fit better. What are the nuances like what are the biggest nuances even maybe? Well, bomber one was 111 inch wheelbase. And it had single shock. And really, when EMC and legends class came around, Dave pretty much made that class around that car, more or less, you know, it fit the bill the specs for EMC 48. Exactly. Other than the tire size. The bomber two car when I built it, I stretched it to 114 and we put bypass shocks on it. Both those cars were inch and a half cars, and I thought that was cool. It was lightened sleek back in the day. The next car I did was for Chris garrison, and he wanted an inch and three quarter car so we built an engine three quarter car and that was the last of the inch and a half cars of course, the main engine three quarter over since pretty much always, you know the first one, the second one, the third one oh

Randy Slawson: 1:10:00

Way down the line, they're all 4130 cars, it's all 4130 plate that I kept brackets out of. There's been lots of, you know, subtle little changes, we started rolling the roofs versus flat roof and we moved the cabin forward, then we moved it back to move the engine forward, and we move the engine back, we, you know, just monkeyed around with them from car to car trying to figure out exactly what we wanted. After, I think it was the 2014 car that I built. We raised the sliders up an inch and a half compared to everything else in the car, which gave it a lot more ground clearance. And we along with that bump the seat height up just a little bit, which made for a lot better visibility over the nose of the car. kind of counterintuitive to go up. But I believe it made it a lot faster on the rocks, you can see better and you're not hitting the sliders on the ground as much. And then the biggest changes over the years have just been the componentry you know, better shocks better to mean. And then with that comes, you know what once you can go faster than you need more power. And then once you have more power than you need a better transmission and a better transfer case and better drive shafts and better axles and on down the line. It goes you know, it's just a vicious cycle. This is a good good segue to I wasn't really prepared to talk about this king of hammers that you just want. I mean, you're when you're first one in 13 you're you're backed it up in 15. And then it eluded you for a handful of years. You're still you're still the solid axle guy. You're still staying solid axle you win here recently. And the rumor I heard around this and Amber kind of backed it up a little bit, but she was like that's Randy starlin taught that you actually didn't go all boy howdy on motor this time you actually backed off horsepower so that you were saving components. Is there any truth to that urban legend? So the 20 I built a new car that we raised 2017. And the deal with that was the car they raised 14 1516 ended up going to China so I bought a new car. And when we built that car, I'd had an LS three 425 stroker. That was, I don't know, I think it put 330 to the wheels. And I was like man, I need some more power. I'm getting getting out powered everywhere. So we ended up putting a aluminum LSS style block in the thing built the 440 with LS seven heads and stuff. It was a big step up from the power that it had. And I raced west coast in 17. I did all the series races and I ended up getting a few thirds and ended up third for the season and had some fun doing that. It was kind of expensive, you know, dry all out of pocket, but I enjoyed it. You know, I had a really good time racing with the guys and getting out more. The Texas race was probably my favorite all time race was the name of that town. I know exactly where I've drawn a blank is just just east of El Paso. It's you know, the famous Border Patrol checkpoint is there where they like, you know, brag about busting Willie Nelson for smoking pot or having pot on his bus. It's not tech Santa europea Yeah, there it is. So Sierra Blanca, other than king of the hammers is probably the favorite. My favorite race ever raced. We were out there on these country roads, and pre reading and I was talking to Dustin my cousin was co jogging with me. And I was like, This is the stupidest thing ever. What are we need a rally car not a rock crawler. What are we doing out here? So we pre ran and the car was set up real loose for King and hammers. And we came back to the pits. And I walked around the car with a wrench and I put, you know, a turn or so in every rebound tube. I was like something's got to get like this thing's terrible. And we didn't even get to pre render practice or test it out or anything. We just went racing. And real quick. I figured out that I nailed it. Like the car was just glued to the ground. It was the rally that I wanted. Yeah. And it felt so good. We were having a blast. So we're moving along down this you know, little lane and a half farm road gravel road. And these guys had built these kelechi road we call them kelechi roads here in Texas kelechi kelechi Well, they built these water bars with cattle guard on top of them. And it felt like it was five foot vertical elevation gain from the road way itself. And I hit one on one accident at 95 miles an hour. And we flew it was like one of those ski jumps that you see on the way so I'm gonna

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:14:41

work the song while you're in the air.

Randy Slawson: 1:14:44

And I was like, I'm gonna when I hit it, I was like, Oh man, this this is going to be bad. But it landed perfect and we just looked at each other and giggled, so we just hit all of them at 100 miles an hour. It was insane. And I can't believe nobody medialive was out there taking pictures and video of us how

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:15:00

In those crazy cattle guard crossings, we just had an absolute blast. So did it did it look and feel like like, like, you know, like Laughlin like the highway crossing or like prim like the dike jump or anything like that. I feel like it looked like that wasn't on the outside, unfortunately. Okay, yeah, it literally felt like we flew a couple 100 feet, you know, just like, not super high off the ground, but airborne, you know, for a ways that feels good, though. When you feel the tires droop out and hit the end of the straps. You feel that the straps hit, you're like, Oh, yeah, this feels good.

Randy Slawson: 1:15:41

Oh, this feels really good. That was pretty fun. I ended up having a guy come along and bought that car. You talked to the red, red and blue, not red, blue, black and blue. Oh, black Martin, Nate Jesse, Nate Jesse Brown. So Nate called me up one day, and he kind of talked about his his side of that whole experience. I was on my way to axial fest at the campground, Cisco Grove at the end of the Fordyce trail. I talked to him on my way there with that car. And he was looking for a legends car and said, Man, I already sold Legend's car. But I have this 4400 car that you could have for the right price. And so we talked on the phone a little bit and got off talk to his lady, call me back. He said I'll put a check in the mail. So I went up to that axial fest. And we were goofing around having fun. And I was going to give some of the the axial employees rides in that car. And I ended up heading up the access road towards four dice. And then as I do a squirrel, then I got sucked into it. And we made it all the way up to the first crossing pretty quick. And I looked at it I was like it doesn't look any deeper than normal. And we plunged down in there and hydrilla thing and freakin window the block on the most expensive motor I ever had. And as all bad from there. What do you think flow rate was on Fordyce at that point. Man I I'm bad at that it was probably 350 or four or something like that. If I had to guess it was about four inches deeper than my car wanted to cross.

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:17:20

That was a bit of a downer. Well, I still love that story of how Nate Jesse ends up with a 4400 car he you know he was in LA is you know, Indiana guys tell him to come up to K he should he buy some clothes. And you know, because he was in work, you know, like dress suit clothes. And he goes up there. And a year later, he's got an 18 Wheeler and he just went all the way as far as you could go. Nice is what you guys ever. He's awesome. He's, he's definitely my hero. Yeah, he liked his style. He's in he does. He's got lots of style. That whole team up and a crew is something else. So you're going up to axial fest and mess around those guys. So this must be around that timeframe. Where did they approach you? And how was that approach? Because today axial has in sells a 1/10 scale bar. And it looks just like your car. It's Blue Bomber fab King stickers. I mean it is it looks just like the car looks when it leaves the line at getting the hammers. And you can you know, any hobby shop, you can pick one up young the 450 bucks and they're fun and fun. And hell that's that's that's another key part. I remember you're selling them for a while or you were always carrying around a couple 234 Hey, if you want one, I've got one hit me up. But how did that conversation happen and start to where you now have an RC car running around there. That is something that existed inside your brain for many years. And then you built it. And you built the the one to one scales and now there's

Randy Slawson: 1:18:50

RC versions. How fascinating is that? So I've told this story to the to the axial guys. And they got a chuckle out of it. I had attracts the sledge hammer and rc 10 when I was in grade school, so I was an RC kid way back. And then when I was at fab school had a guy, one of the students come in with one of these xela extends it was their first Little Rock Crawler kit that you can buy and put together and you know had solid axles and coil overs and whatnot. So I was like, man, I need one of those. And he's like I can hook you up so I don't remember what they were, you know 53 or 50 something bucks back in the day. And my wife actually built that thing on our living room floor. Every piece of it put it all together self while I was out tinkering in the shop doing the real thing. When we're done with it, you know, I tweaked on it a little bit, cut the spring shorter and lowered the thing down, tried to make it work a little better. But the link geometry was absolutely terrible. And it worked exactly the way it looked like it would work if it was a one to one car. It was fun to drive, but it just didn't wheel that Good. So for a quick minute, I thought to myself, man, I'm gonna cut this thing up and turn it into a bomber, you know, make make a testbed that I can try ideas out on and I was like, Alright, just keep building one to one. Yeah. All right. So I never ended up messing with that thing, but I still have it. So, fast forward a few years more names. Jake, Yeoman, Jake Hollenbeck, right name? Jake hallenbeck approached me and wanted to buy the bomber two car. And it was like, right, it offered Expo time in October. And you know, I'm getting geared up for you know, King of the hammers is four months away or whatever. And I told him no, like, I'm not selling this car. I'm going racing king of the hammers. And he just wouldn't take no for an answer. Just keep kept grinding on me kept grinding on me. We had the car and offered Expo, he came down and looked at it, and ended up offering me enough money that I decided I could probably live without it. So my guy Kyle and I, we ended up starting building the new car. We had projects to finish up before we could start on my car. And we started, like Thanksgiving time. And six weeks later, the thing is on the dyno, and that was, you know, straight tubing from the tubing rack. Like every bit every piece. I called up spidertrax. And I said, Hey, I need, you know, a couple of dlm housings and they're like, well, we're four months out, and I said, No, the car is going to be on the dyno in a month and a half not waiting for axle housings, like Well, sorry. So I hit up john curry, and went down there. And he just opened up the shop, he said, Whatever you need, man. And you went above and beyond that year, we don't want to do us read racing knuckles, and you know, they don't sell that stuff. They've got their own brand, but he made actual shoutouts for the front end of that car. And machine my read racing knuckles to accept his style a yoke. And he let me weld together cromoly housings, their fab nine in their facility, they're setting me up a shop in the back, or a spot in the back of the shop, and I welded it all together. And it was really awesome working with him. You know, he set me up with sway bars and stuff and all the goodies to go race that year. And I think it was about January 15 or something, we diode it. And then the next day, we fixed a few leaks and stuff we had on the thing overnight and took it out to Barstow and went chalk tuning with King and took it back home and, you know, tied up a bunch of loose ends for a week and took it to Johnson Valley and run with it. So that was, you know, the first time that I won, and it was a pretty rad experience. I towed that race car out to King of the hammers in a truck. I sold my brother later for 3500 bucks, not just because I like him, because that's what it was worth. That's the program that we run. I get a lot of flack from a lot of people. Why don't you race more? You know, they think I've got a moneybags and I've got all these cars and all this this momentum behind me but burn the most hand to mouth tight. You know, budget race team of anybody that's one king of the hammers and on one hand, I'm I'm not proud that I'm I'm broke. But on the other hand, I'm proud have done what I've done with you know what I what I had to do with? Well, no, I'll back you up on that. I remember you had this whole halftime is that was a haften Chevy. And how many years did you drive that? I think you probably one king of hammers twice and you were still driving that truck? Yeah, I think so. And then you finally treated yourself too. Did you treat yourself to a new truck or a newer truck? newer? I have a no seven Duramax that I bought with the first check that I won with. So I had $25,000 in the bank and I went and found a truck for 25 grand and bought it and there you go. When you won that first time Did that help you basically launch bomber fab itself? Did it help? Was that the thing that helped you get off the ground? It didn't hurt but I was trying to think of the timeline when I guess that Yeah, cuz I was looking at the hammers and then immediately I had an Indonesian guy we bought the car for and then Cody and Jim Wagner came and we built two cars for them. And then in late 2013, February, February, November again Thanksgiving time I ended up building starting to build a new car and we raced a brand new car and everybody gave me flak like why would you raise a new car when you don't car one last year was not good enough and we really made some massive improvements. We went from junkyard wheel hubs and junkyard style you know, Dana 44 a lug breaks and stuff to you know, all unit bearings and you know wilwood calipers and all the cool kid shit. So it was definitely you know, leaps in Downes better than the car that I've raced the year before. The King Shark package had fin reservoirs and a lot of nicer parts on it. And the car was absolutely night and day, like 20 mile an hour fast in the desert, and then the previous car, and it, it was painful that year that 14 Racing king of the hammers, because we had all kinds of problems. We ended up getting an eighth or ninth, I don't remember exactly what it was that you're. But I knew that I could easily win in that car. So we took it back in 15. And we won with it. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of what that was your Lauren, Lauren was one in 14 and kind of, you know, upset you but you were the clear favorite, except for this new car, then there was that was a lot of questions. And that kind of set you up. I want to jump back because we didn't close the we didn't close the loop on the axials. Right. Yeah. What are they so you called them they called you? And they said, hey, let's do it. Let's make these things. So the deal was Jake owned ck RC, which was a hobby shop in Reno. And he specialized in internet sales of rock crawler RC specific stuff. So that was where the axial Wraith came from the race was Jake's personal rock crawl that he built, came along and built the miniature version, the RC version of the race. So then Jake was campaigning my bomber to car and race and doing really well. And they came to me and they said, We want the rights. We want to license this with you to build axial bombers. And I was like, cool. So from the first discussion to the last discussion when it finally you know, we signed a contract and they started making the things that changed a lot, because in the beginning, they wanted to build Jake's car. And they wanted to call it the race to win. I was like, absolutely not. You can't call my mom or card a race. And so they had to slowly but surely come to terms with that and wrap their heads around the fact that, you know, you can't rebrand my product, another builders, you know, name, right. And then during that time period that I was dealing with them, Jay quit racing, and I'd said you know, why would you build the hallenbeck version when you can build the rent fossil version? I'm the one that won king of the hammers. So by the time it actually came to fruition they build the Randy slawson bomber, you know, not that Jake axial to race whatever was Jake's a great guy, but it didn't carry the water. The blue and black and gray and white. Randy slawson kena hammers winning bomber carries. It's not as iconic. Right? Well, I'd like to think so. Well, yeah, I mean, sure. I am performed with a bunch economics. Yeah, it's a super cool thing to, you know, go out to the mall or whatever and see one or, you know, you go to various rock crawling venues and, you know, some kids running around in their little bomber car. And, you know, it's awesome. It's super exciting every time I see it, and, and it's super exciting when these young kids come up to me with their, their little axial bomber cars, and they want me to sign them and stuff. And it's been super fun. Yeah, you're a superhero in that world. Right. Okay, man, as we've kind of got through the construction and the constructability and kind of your design philosophy a little bit, we've touched on some of it, you know, simple as better make the bracket new, three separate things. Let's talk about your, your race acumen. Like you don't come out of the box over the past. Let's call it 1314 years of King the hammers itself going on, and be a three time winner.

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:28:43

If you don't have a really solid race program, for you, I know. I want to say one year in there. Oh 910. You finished really well. Or you might have even been the first one across the box. But you got dq. And I remember that and it was it was some like at the top of sunbonnet or 2021. You were supposed to go left and you went right in unit and when Dave, Dave or Jeff or whoever approached you, you knew exactly where where that was. What was the story around that and then let's talk about your race program like what is been the feather in your cap that is allowed you in the in a solid axle to continually to, to be in that conversation and to continue to return back to the podium. The story you're talking about is 2009 2009 was literally the first time that I raced the bomb or car right? So I had that new car Previous to that I'd raced 24 miles or whatever and in 2008 buying the wheel, I really didn't have much seat time in the cars as far as racing, you know. And you know, I don't I'm technically challenged as we saw earlier with this hole in the snipe thing going. So the GPS, you know wasn't good at that the guy that I had with

Randy Slawson: 1:30:00

He wasn't good at that at the time, I knew where I was supposed to go, which was the Masters courses area, the rock pile up there to fuel that was where the pit was. And I knew how to get to the pit. But I didn't know the way they wanted me to get to the pit, then we went the wrong way. And it was like three tenths of a mile difference. But when it came up, and they said that they're going to penalize me an hour, it bumped me back to places by me from second to fourth, I said, you know what the rule is, if you cheat, or if you short course, you're disqualified. And I said, I'm just call find myself. So then the next question was what has moved forward? It took several years there in the beginning, you know, figuring out silly things like stay on course, sounds simple, but it's harder to do in real life than it sounds like it might be. And knowing the place like the back of my hand, like it did do did is actually a disadvantage some times because you're not relying on the machine, the the GPS to tell you where to go, you're relying on your own intuitions and your own knowledge of the place, which bit me in the butt on that one. And then 2010, I ended up I sold that 2009 car to ban and I didn't have a chance to get another one done. I was working on other things and didn't get to build a car. And so I rode with Ben in 2010. And then 2011, I brought out the new bomber, two car, and the thing was wicked fast. And I remember at that race, we were coming down sunbonnet and we had we got to the bottom of the crossover, Hell's Gate devil slide to go back around the does the other way. And the thing I kept smelling coolant coming down that trail, and we got down to double slide. And that was the thing was overheating. We pulled over. I mean up spending, like 20 minutes on the side of the trail before the next car showed up. I was like, man, we had a huge lead. That's so rough. Yep. So I ended up I still have it. I had built an aluminum thermostat housing, and well it all together and I had silicone did on the front of the water pump on this LS one, and the weight of the water line hanging off the end of that thing had distorted it and cracked it and it started leaking. And it started leaking at the silicone, you know, normally you'd have a like a rubber gasket of some sort that would an O ring or whatever that would have some give to it and and keep it sealed. But I just silicone it on, when it started fatiguing and moving it that cracked the silicone. So I took the thing off and I was like what can we do to make gasket. So Greg parts Greg, Greg Adler came along. And he had the Ric car, the EZ rig car at the time. And he had a flat tire and I had a spare. And I traded it to him for all the water he had in his car, and a sheet rock knife. And I cut the leather chafe guard out of the back of the seat belt buckle that cut that off the passenger seat belt. And I fashioned a thermostat housing gasket out of that piece of leather and got enough water in the car that we were able to get back to main pit. And then was being pitted by Scott Hartman with the dust junkies that year. And I kind of got lucky enough to tag on to that deal. Because, you know, Ben and I were buddies, and he was racing one of my cars. And I came in with that repair. And I told the guys on the radio what I done, I said, if it's not leaking, just give it a light little snug on those bolts and fill me up with water and send me on my way. And Scott took a look at that. And he was so proud of me, he's like, we're gonna help you out. You know, I was filling out a five gallon dirt by gas cans with no fast fill tube on the car. And just doing it all wrong doing it like a broke rookie. And he's like, we can take you to the next level, you know, you got something going on. I think we came in like ninth or some 10th without repair and got clear back up to second. And the car ended up vapor locking out inline fuel pump more new newbie learning curve stuff that we're well on our way to a solid, you know, second place finish even with the problems that we had with that car, when all of that transpired with the fuel system, but good times. So Hart Hartman and dust junkies, you slide in under their wing a little bit and you learn from all their, all their years south of the border and all their years and MDR and, and get a apply some of that to your program. Right? Yeah, those guys have become very good friends. We love Scott Tandy, and they love Kristen, I. Ds helped me out every year since you know, with the pinning stuff, you know, talking shop talking strategy talking, you know, fuel system repairs, you know, not during the races, but you know, what are we going to do to make sure this doesn't happen again, type of stuff.

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:35:00

Just a lot of a lot of good times call to good memories. And I do like the Hartman's. I really enjoy them. I enjoy them a lot. This isn't even a week ago, Scott calls me it's like 1130 Central Time, PM, and I was in bed. And if Scott

Scott's gonna call me 11: 1:35:15

30pm, I'm gonna go get out of bed and go to the other room and have the conversation and talk to him. And I love catching up with that guy. We, I got to know him. Because of we were in energy trading together. He was at SoCal Edison for many years. And I was at a company called Calpine, and it would be 1234 in the morning and I'm talking to him on the phone because that that was our shift we were on. We were we were running power plants and dispatching electricity during the middle of night, but I didn't know who I'd met him out in the desert multiple times or races. It wasn't until pirate four by four big naked burly guy big naked burly I bet on chit chat. They'd have the Friday night or Saturday night losers club like who's who's the losers that are up and big burly naked guy puts up the A he was up dispatch in powerplants or something interesting so I pm or whatever the it was a pm right on pirate si p private messaging or message and I'm like, Hey, what do you do? I'm I'm I'm run California power as well. But I'm McAlpine in Houston. And he just texted me and my phone rings. Hey, man. Are you serious? Like we've been talking to each other? But we didn't know that we were you. We didn't know that. You know, the guy on pirate was the guy on the other end of the phone line that you're buying and selling electricity with? It was so well, I mean, that happened in Oh, 708 somewhere in there. And yeah, I've been closest the Hartman's ever since. They're just good people. And now it's cool to see what Scott's doing for ultra for and working over there. In his next chapter live. But so you you won k h this year? How good did it feel? You know, you won twice before, but this is six years later?

Randy Slawson: 1:37:07

Seven years later, somebody? Right. Your last time was what? 15? So, yeah, you're Yes, six, six times six years ago? Why? How'd that feel to back it up that you still have it feels great. You know, year after year, we're always a threat. Anybody that you know, that meme that popped up that said enraged losses relevant again, you know, I feel like I'm always relevant that King of the hammers, I'm always there to win. I'm always going fast. I'm always, you know, I can't tell you how many years I've led, you know, one point or another. And then we've had, you know, so little problems that have taken us out of the game, but I feel like I'm the in the contention in the discussion. Yeah. And you know, I build a good car, I drive a great race, you know, I know the place like the back of my hand still a rock crawl, I have more seat time than anybody else. I guarantee it there's nobody in order for that gets as much the time that as I do and bounced around and you know, in the back woods in Nevada here and had tons and tons of seat time in California to the point where I was just tired of of my surroundings. You know, I there was no more adventure to be had because I knew what was around every corner, you know, doubt 1000s of miles on the dirt bike and razoring and you know, now up here, it's still the dirt bike and I've got this little beater red to come with it. I've put 20,000 miles on mostly dirt. And then you know always out the race car aside beside or whatever. I'm always out playing. Well, you brought up something that I wanted to ask you about. And it didn't occur to me to re ask you about this, but I handful years ago, three, four or five. I don't remember what year it was. You entered the rock bouncer event at kth. And you you put on a clinic? Yeah, not only did I win second third were bomber cars. Cody Wagner and Ben Napier rounded out the podium in 2014. backdoor shootout. Yeah, that that was eye opening. It wasn't that long. It was a 14. I don't know. It seems like it seems like

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:39:11

Yeah, it does, man. Okay, so did we cover everything that you wanted to cover? Did we get everything off your chest that you wanted to talk about? I think we went through we definitely went through your your chassis program. Because I love the bomber in a box is by far. One of the coolest things for our sport allows the guy in the shop that doesn't that can that can weld the ability to build his own. It's such a sweet deal. I can tack one up in a day and a half, you know full chassis in a day and a half. And for what I would call a pro fabricator, and take two guys, you know, probably a week and a half, bending and notching by hand, the old school method and then allows the garage warrior to build a car without enough

Randy Slawson: 1:40:00

You're a vendor, you know, you don't need bentek or some kind of you know what wax program, you can just put it together and put your junkyard one times and your, you know, whatever it is, whatever your flavor is you can put it all together and have a race proven rig. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So top three songs from me that define you right now in this slice in time. 2021 Oh, odd. I'm so bad at that. We listen to Pandora non stop and we've got quite the genre mix that we run. You know, most of its outlaw country type stuff. A little bit of AC DC. some some some tractor wrap. Let's look Whoa, what's tractor wrap?

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:40:48

phrase before Well, what's really never heard the country wrap. Oh, absolutely. And that's tractor wrap. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It was like Cole swindell. Or no Colt Ford. Sorry Colt Ford. Ford. Yeah, let's somebody church. Oh, Eric church. There's another one. Anyway, I'm terrible. A little bit you know, m&m never heard anybody know he got some of the throwback, the 80s rap stuff going on. So you really never know what's going to come across the radio. So you're, you're on all spectrums? Okay, so it's, it's race day. 22 king of the hammers, you're lined up for the 4400 race you intend to back to back it? You know all Ah, Jason cheer 1819. And you've got your go to music to get your pumped up with the line. It's 7am. What are we cranking?

Randy Slawson: 1:41:46

Man? I'm just gonna say back in black. Okay, so AC DC. Okay. We'll get you on. Okay.

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:41:54

Hey, I just put you on the spot. See, see see where your head's at the you like kind of everything if you can busted out some Beethoven I would have been like, oh, wow, I didn't know we were gonna get into classical. Yeah, no, I'm okay. I like AC DC. Back in back is great. Great for me, Metallica. Any of those in there could absolutely. Absolutely ramp you up an amp. Yep. Well, awesome. So that's the game plan, right? You're gonna, between now and the summer, you're going to hit any other ultra for events between now and February. I'm shooting towards getting that 4448 car, excuse me. A little more dialed in and going out and playing at Sturgis. I've never been to service for the Bike Week. Right? It sounds like a crazy good time. Seems like the people watching it'd be pretty off the hook. So I'd like to get out there and use the race as an excuse to go people watch mostly right. And then, you know, the West Coast series really didn't turn out to be very West Coast. So that's probably the only one that's really on my radar. My brother's gonna be racing in Montana. That's where he lives. The shoot on a blank again, what's the name of the one that's coming up next month in Montana? I don't know what they call it. Yeah, it's the North series. And I know there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting discussion around the points for that. And the points are calculated, because if there's only if there's five cars, and you get fifth place, you actually you're gonna have you know, infinitely more, you could do D, D, and F even at Montana and get more points than seven place finisher at km h. And that could then in turn put you in national points, title contention by just racing against, you know, four or five other cars. But now that said the four or five of the cars are pretty legit. You know, you know, Jason, Jason the points anyway, yeah. Jason, Jason share Bailey with with rock royalty. And then fun Havers both both fun Havers, Lauren Healy and Vaughn getting, I saw that they were gonna be there that and then there's a couple others, not trying to offend anyone by not calling anyone. I just don't remember what the list was. But I was like, Wow, it's only a few on there. But, you know, if you I didn't realize, I didn't realize that the North series counted for points this year. And that those points were towards the national championship. I, I think the guys that did catch that, like, obviously, Lauren and Vaughn, I mean, they were doing their homework, to be in contention and look at that opportunity and plan to go to Montana, which is good, right? That's, that's how you build up our counts at these venues that aren't the standard venue every year. Right? You you move the shell game around, to move where people go to, right. I think given old for the benefit of the doubt this year, they're having hard times with venues. And, you know, they're they're having to kind of dig deep to find places that we can race. For instance, the Mexican Race wasn't the track that they really wanted to put together for us. But Mexico told them no, you can't race here. And they said, Well, what do we got to do to make it happen? And they basically use the track in from two years ago fire mental study, impact study, blah, blah, blah from two years ago to make that happen. So I appreciate the Dave's tenacity and his his ability to overcome at any cost. You know, the fact that King hammers happened this year was a small miracle. So I really appreciate how hard he's pushed to to make it happen this year. And hopefully in the future, we can have some some more cool events and cool places. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think what ultra for pulled off in 2020 was something else with some of the stuff they did there you pull off you know, a nationals Oklahoma, and we're gonna be back there nationals this year. But yeah, care which happened on this year was something else in the fact that you were the guy that walked away at the scepter at the end. It's pretty cool on its own right from you. Right? I had a few different people call me up as soon as Dave released the track information, the course and said, You better be on your game, buddy. This is yours to lose. And kind of a chilling little deal. So I was at the finish line, congratulating chase Cabrera he just won EMC in his 48 car that I built last year. And Jason's rolling through contingency in his in his Bronco. He looks over at me and he waves me over. And he goes, you're gonna win it tomorrow. And it was just like, a chill, you know, runs down your spine, you get goosebumps, and you're like, wow, you know, Jason's one of those guys that I really look up to. And he's got his shit together. And for him to predict that I was gonna win. It was pretty cool. He had a just a couple bad breaks. I mean, but yeah, the discussion before the rating before the green flag was this was a solid axle year with all the approx. And you prevailed, right? You continue to, to do what Randy Lawson does, you just you just keep going you don't quit just like the cut in the leather off your seat belt to make a gasket. There's no quitting you. It's like this, this interview itself right now, we spent greater than the amount of time of the interview working on just the technical difficulties of getting it to the point. There was no quitting you. I was like, Hey, we can put Until next week, you know, like, that was at over an hour into us fight and technical difficulties. Like, you know, there's just, it just wasn't meant to be and I'm okay with that. And you're like, No, man, I'm good to go. Let's go. We've got tonight. Let's Let's do this. Let's get this done. why we're doing all right, man. I'm here for you. We're Randy. I am very elated that you, you agreed to let me interview you and carry your story on the talent tank. Like I said, I've known you for 1213 years, and I find you to be a very approachable, fascinating guy. And I'm glad we're able to show your show that side of you. Because I've heard the other side, I've heard the other side of the coin where you'll find you're not approachable. And I think it's just as I've joked with people, when they brought you up, like no, he just has really good RBF you know, the resting bitchface you just have this very good RBF. Like he's that, if that's the look he's giving you. He's actually smiling. That's, that's really this is totally true. I have the resting bitchface really bad. I'll see pictures of myself, or I have just a really innate bad something. I don't know what you want to call it. ability to portray exactly what I'm thinking on my face. And I don't mean to you. It just happens when I'm when I'm perplexed at something. I'll just look really pissed off. And I don't I'm not but I looked at stuff. And people assume that I'm pissed off or that I think you're a fucking idiot. And it's not the case. Yeah, there you go. Well, hey, man. Again, I value your friendship. Congratulations on on your third king of the hammers. So you've got you know, a year with the scepter. And thank you for the last couple hours talking sharing your story. I look forward to cheering cheering you want in Sturgis the track good. He's building out there is pretty awesome. And then I look forward to catching up with you in February on Johnson Valley. in your backyard Man Randy, thank you for coming on with Valentine.

Randy Slawson: 1:49:23

Sweet. It was a pleasure. Wyatt always enjoyed talking with you. And I appreciate the opportunity. Like I told you when we were talking about doing this my new favorite pastime when I'm traveling chasing parts or going to races or whatever is is listening to The Talent Tank and wheeling wine and whiskey and, you know, similar podcasts finding out what people are up to and what brought us to the places we are now and so it's cool to be able to share a little bit of that with you guys. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Wyatt Pemberton: 1:49:52

I did. Alright, on that note, we're out.

Intro/Outro: 1:49:57

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