Howdyy again people

This weekend i am planning on heading out to my favorate offroading spot, called El Mirage dry lake bed. Its about 20 min outside of Palmdale/ Lancaster area ( Sothern california)... I am planning on doing a few things out there
- High speed runs
- Max 0-60
- Sand driving
- Trail riding

The reason i am telling yall this is that ill be sure to post what happends this weekend. Expect a great story or 2 :) Also just a note, prob no pix, my camera is acting up..... i kno sry

cyall in a few days

http://www.elmirage.org/images/El%20Mirage%20Days%201%20&%2020001.JPG

I hope the price of petrol doesn't take the shimmer off your weekend. :wink:

Some mild offroading would do me some good.

I hope the price of petrol doesn't take the shimmer off your weekend. :wink:

Some mild offroading would do me some good.


never! ive been saving some money up for a while... ill be kook

Hello everyone

So today I made my way out to El Mirage dry lake bed. My uncle and I Departed at around 7 AM and got out to the lake at around 9. We first stopped about 20 min from my house for gas and set out on the 5 Freeway towards El Mirage. After arriving in Palmdale we stopped for Breakfast at the local dennys, ahh dennys good. Anyways we filled up on gas again and made the 30 minute trip out to the lakebed. I was very surprised how many farms are out there! Alotta cows. So we got there, to the main entry sign ( see my first post for pic of sign) and raced down the road onto the 5 mile long lakebed. There we set up camp. My uncle was so jealous, he had to set up a little tent, where as I had my air mattress, all neatly packed for the night. At about 10 am we set out for the hills. Knowing that there was some soft sand ahead I aired down my tired and set out on the trail. We hot some tricky stuff. There was this one hill in particular which was almost all sand at about a 35 Deg…. Barely made it up. I was roosting sand up allover ans made some huge ruts. But I made it. If I had another 100 pounds of gear in my element I porb wouldn’t have made it. Then after making it up I had to go down. Heres where it got tricky. The downhill was equally as sandy, and my uncles s-10 blazer made it down just fine. So I tried it. I stared down just fine but about halfway down my back end started sliding down. So I tried to correct it with steering. But I got myself pinned up ahainst a rock on the side of the hill. So I had to do a 3 point turn on a 35 deg hill in the sand. Very tricky. Also when I was doing the turn I kept sliding. I was very happy when I made it down onto hard ground again. About 3 miles down the trail further there was a long straight section with Whoops. For those of you who don’t kno what whoops are , they are small little mounds which are created by motorcycles, going fast on trails. See pic below. So I was going about 10 MPH over a set of whoops and then I heard a crunch…

It turns out that my trailerhitch had gotten stuck on one of the whoops. So I had to use my uncles hilift to get it off. After those accidents I decided to do some lakebed driving. So we finish the rest of the trail, in an orderly fashon and head back to the main basecamp.We decide that we want to see how fast our cars can go. But before we did that we had some lunch. I had a delicious Piece of pizza I had had for dinner the previous night and my uncle had some kind of sandwich. So after lunch we set out towards the other art of the lake where there were very few people, ( keep it safe)… so we start out. My uncle goes first. We record 103 MPH in his car. So the moment of truth. I start up my element, put it in gear and floor it. I end up hitting 105. Im not sure what the limitor was at but I was going as fast as I needed to. Man was it a rush. The fastest I had ever gone was 89 In my old Gangstiva. So after doing that we decided to try some articulation tests. I got the left rear wheel off the ground. I forgot the measurements for RTI but it got pretty far up the ramp. I was surprised how much the elements suspension gave. Then we went back to basecamp and had some refreshing ice cold water. I put my mini fridge in the element so I has some nice water. I love this thing. After resting for about an hour it was about 5 PM. We decided to do a night trail run. His blazer had some night lamps on the brush guard. I only had the stock lamps. I was kinda worried.

So we hit up the trail. This one was a lot tamer than the one we did this afternoon but it was longer. As I was going down the trailthere was a rock I was slowly going over. Then suddenly the rock gave way…. CRASH….. It smacked the drivers side of the element. So I grabbed my maglite and inspected the damage. I opened the dor and I was amased! There was basically no damage. Even to the underside No damage. I was soooo happy. So we finished the run, and went back to camp. I inflated my mattress and had a great night sleep. Then after waking up at like 8 AM we decided to do one more run before heading home. So we went on another trail run, the same one that we did the night before. The run was fun and uneventful. Then we packed up camp and went home. Best trip ive ever done

Dave

please post ur replies

It turns out that my trailerhitch had gotten stuck on one of the whoops. So I had to use my uncles hilift to get it off.


How did you use the jack? Lift directly on the hitch?

Seems that the only other way of using a hilift on an Element is to use their wheel adapter - which lifts the wheel rather than the car. In theory then you can stuff rocks and branches under the wheel and get unstuck that way. I haven't seen a review of this.

For what it's worth, the plastic base for a hilift fits the Element's jack; so if you don't think it is worth carting a 4' hunk of steel around, you might, in pinch, be able to lift a corner of the car a bit off the ground with the car's own jack.

The hilfit supposedly can also be used as a winch. But it seems that you need to carry an ungoddly amount of heavy chain as well as the jack to do that.

paulj

...For what it's worth, the plastic base for a hilift fits the Element's jack; so if you don't think it is worth carting a 4' hunk of steel around, you might, in pinch, be able to lift a corner of the car a bit off the ground with the car's own jack.

The hilfit supposedly can also be used as a winch. But it seems that you need to carry an ungoddly amount of heavy chain as well as the jack to do that.

paulj

This makes a lot of sense - the days when I want to carry a hilift jack around are long gone. If you really need a winch occasionally, you might want to look at a Tirfor hand winch, Theelements, if you are unlucky not to have someone around with a jack or a power winch.

http://www.landroverclub.net/Club/HTML/Recovery_Tirfor1.htm

How did you use the jack? Lift directly on the hitch?

Seems that the only other way of using a hilift on an Element is to use their wheel adapter - which lifts the wheel rather than the car. In theory then you can stuff rocks and branches under the wheel and get unstuck that way. I haven't seen a review of this.

For what it's worth, the plastic base for a hilift fits the Element's jack; so if you don't think it is worth carting a 4' hunk of steel around, you might, in pinch, be able to lift a corner of the car a bit off the ground with the car's own jack.

The hilfit supposedly can also be used as a winch. But it seems that you need to carry an ungoddly amount of heavy chain as well as the jack to do that.

paulj

I just hijacked the hitch, i barely hot it under. it was that or the jack mounts on the car

It turns out that my trailerhitch had gotten stuck on one of the whoops. So I had to use my uncles hilift to get it off. After those accidents I decided to do some lakebed driving. So we finish the rest of the trail, in an orderly fashon and head back to the main basecamp.We decide that we want to see how fast our cars can go. But before we did that we had some lunch. I had a delicious Piece of pizza I had had for dinner the previous night and my uncle had some kind of sandwich. So after lunch we set out towards the other art of the lake where there were very few people, ( keep it safe)… so we start out. My uncle goes first. We record 103 MPH in his car. So the moment of truth. I start up my element, put it in gear and floor it. I end up hitting 105. Im not sure what the limitor was at but I was going as fast as I needed to. Man was it a rush. The fastest I had ever gone was 89 In my old Gangstiva. So after doing that we decided to try some articulation tests. I got the left rear wheel off the ground. I forgot the measurements for RTI but it got pretty far up the ramp. I was surprised how much the elements suspension gave. Then we went back to basecamp and had some refreshing ice cold water. I put my mini fridge in the element so I has some nice water. I love this thing. After resting for about an hour it was about 5 PM. We decided to do a night trail run. His blazer had some night lamps on the brush guard. I only had the stock lamps. I was kinda worried.

Can you enter the dry lake bed with a low ground clearance? I would like to do some runs with my sports car out there...
-mbaha

Can you enter the dry lake bed with a low ground clearance? I would like to do some runs with my sports car out there...
-mbaha

well, i have been going to El Mirage since i was like 10 or so, and now i am 16. Before last year therew was a long dirt road about 2 miles long that was rough bumpy and dusty. This was the only way that you could access the lakebed from the main road. But earlyier this year they put in a nice paved road. But they didnt compleatly link up the Road to the lakebed. theres still about a 200 ft gap between the paved road and the lakebed. I have seen Miatas make it, The last time i was going out there i was following behind a mini cooper. I reckon if you have enough momentum then you will be fine. I never scraped on the way out there.

also you wont be alone, I have seen corvette meets out there on weekends. But the only thing that you need to worry eabout is little 5 year olds on motorcycles. I have seen younglings get hit out there from fast moving cars. There is no speedlimit and is kinda, doas you wish ou there.

This makes a lot of sense - the days when I want to carry a hilift jack around are long gone. If you really need a winch occasionally, you might want to look at a Tirfor hand winch, Theelements, if you are unlucky not to have someone around with a jack or a power winch.

http://www.landroverclub.net/Club/HTML/Recovery_Tirfor1.htm

Actually that is really kind of neat. I might want to look into one of those. I usually wheel with a high lift, and a buddy. My uncle Brought his Ford Bronco so i dod feel safe.