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2 big 1250's in Moab video

4K views 34 replies 15 participants last post by  coachgeo 
#1 ·


The 6 ton Unimogs lumbering through Pritchette Canyon / Moab Utah.
Enjoy!

Couch Off-road Eng.
 
#5 ·
Stacking rocks up to bridge the gaps I assume. You know because the truck just isn't up to the task in the first place and should have never even started down the trail and now allowances and concessions need to be made.:D;)
 
#7 ·
is it just me or does anyone else think airing down the tires would make a huge difference?

I have no issue with stacking but taking a better line should make a the going much easier. Hang out in town by a speed bump and see how the low-riders negotiate them, the square on line is perhaps a bit silly. :)
 
#8 ·
Since you prefer to be snotty about it, I prefer not to get over it - I prefer to educate. The mileage may vary, but in the end, my opinion is as valid as yours.

They could at least UN-stack the rocks. All I see in Moab now is either stacks of rocks or ledges with huge holes spun out in front of them.

These particular guys could learn to drive more difficult trails at less then street pressure. The guy with the MPT's seems to have them aired down a little. The guy with the XM-type tires appears to have them way up there. He also seems to be the guy spinning and bouncing like a ******* with a pick-em-up truck.

They could also learn that, Mog or not, you don't negotiate EVERYTHING at a crawl. Some stuff needs a bit of momentum. After all, Moab IS the home of 'bump 'n run'.

Pritchett is not an easy trail. SOME people have the opinion that rock stackers degrade the trail by making it easier.
 
#9 ·
Even my wife was disgusted with the rock stacking. That was so lame.

I was going to leave the whole pritchett thread alone, but this is sad. I have wheeled pritchett so many times and for so many years, I know it like the back of my hand. And Im sorry to say guys, Its not a hard trail. The only hard spots are rock pile and a little off camber spot right before it. And even these are fairly easy. I once watched 5 toyota pickups with 37's bounce up rock pile like it wasn't even there with no rocks stacked. I was trying to figure out why it took you guys all day, but this vid shows everything.

Air down and speed the fawk up. I love crawling, but 99% of wheeling does not require crawling.

Airing down enough will net you a much better ride, and faster average speed over the trail.

Once again, all i can say is LAME...
 
#11 ·
Some really fun local trails that I broke with my 404 have had some rock stacking done.

Kinda funny actually. I broke the trail among a few others on a quick trip. It wasn't terribly hard, but it was a high clearance trail that required a rather built truck. We called it the bone yard because the arroyo it was in had huge numbers of skeletal remains from numerous types of animals.

So about a month later, a few of the local Jeep club guys say they made this new trail and gave us a location. Well, it happened to be the Bone Yard. We questioned them heavily as they all had pretty stockish jeeps. And they said yeah it was easy, and they can make it fairly easily. Well, we decided to go check it out because here in NM, a single rain can change a trail so that its no longer recognizable. Well we got there not to find the trail washed out, but to find that the entry obstacle which was the hardest with a 40" heavily undercut ledge had rocks stacked so that their were two distinct ramps right up to the top. Turns out this was their idea of making the trail.

Sometimes, you have to stack a rock or two, but the video above was not one of those times. and since the entry of pritchett was repaired, there is really only one place that requires stacking, and that is "Rock Pile". "RockerKnocker" can require stacking if you fawk up, but does not require any stacking especially since it has a huge bypass.

If you have to stack rocks, you did not make that obstacle.
 
#13 ·
We had a nice orange 416 doka with AG tires and the works out of california on it many years back. The 416 made short work of everything on prichett. Wish I could remember his name. He made us look silly. He actually crawled the Big boulder on the left of "rockerknocker" with his left rear tire. I have yet to see any truck duplicate what he did. It was simply unbelievable. Larger trucks tend to handle much better in Moab. Prichett is regularly run by lifted full size Fords and Chebies (Trust me I have seen it). Once we got passed up by a fullsize ford on rockerknocker that had a full size couch bolted int eh bed with four guys riding in it. We were struggling trying to get a bunch of rovers up RK and they went far right and bounced right up due to wheel base. The bigger the truck the better on prichett.
 
#15 ·
I thought that Jason and Co took it nice and easy and apart from the tyre pressure on the green one being a bit high, nothing seemed wrong. I don't see what the problem is with stacking a few rocks to get up a ledge.

I used my 4x4 to get to places, or to drive on tracks where a normal vehicle can't - but I fail to see why some people want to make things as difficult as possible. Is the goal to drive around the canyon and see the sights, or to push your truck so hard that things break or worse people get killed or injured. I look at some of the rock buggies with hydraulic rams and 4 wheel steer I see on TV from the USA, and I find them dead boring and always think - " what for" - what a waste of money - you can't drive it anywhere except for a few 100metres up a steep hill.

Jason's truck are stock Mogs - with drum brake or offset wheels. During the week it has to haul engine parts and bits of steel around - and all he was doing is making sure the truck was still going to be doing that on Monday.

I remember on bloke in his big lifted Nissan Patrol on a track the other weeks showing off on how clever he was by driving over a big rock ledge , holding up everyone whilst he aired down and crawled up over the rock - should have seen the look on his face when my wife asked him why he did such a stupid thing - couldn't he see the track that goes around the ledge :)
 
#16 ·
Yes, rock crawling is generally about running the hardest lines possible. Many Hardcore trails can be done with a stock Jeep rubicon as long as you use the bypasses. But that is really no fun at all. But that really has nothing to do with this. Rock stacking was not required, and a bit of HP and a few less PSI in the tires would have done the same thing.
 
#18 ·
Ok mr.rock master know it alls,The grey 1250 w/out bead locks was running 15-17 front and 10-12lbs in the in the rear. The orange 1250 was 12 ish in the front and 8 ish in the rear. The orange one was dam near bouncing off the Staun beadlocks when comming into some of the ledges.

It would have been a far easier run in my 416,but we wanted to give the big guys a shot at it.
We had one of our mechanics with his straight axled 37" tired Tacoma with us and that thing was a breeze to run compared to the 1200lbs+ beasts.
To say the big mogs do better in Moab/Pritchette than the 416's and the well done 404's makes me wonder if you have ever taken your monster truck tired 1300 up Pritchette before? If you had and it was the breeze you speak of,well then I guess my skirt has been getting shorter over the years,if not then shut the fawk up.

Oh yah we were both blessed w/ loosing the rear air locker seals intermittently about half way up the run and then the darkness really didn't make it any easier.
I'm not bitching it was a good time I've been running Moab since 1990.I'm just saying this time was a bear!

P.S. rock stackers are close relatives to the insidious slee stacks from Land of the Lost.
They dwell in rock caves and come out to try and turn our serious rock crawling trails into the all too common super highways we all despise today.

Try to be cool and at least enjoy the free footage and the fact that I'm not not too proud to share my screw ups w/ hundreds of people.

J.Couch
 
#19 ·
Just a bit more info, like my U1250 brother from Down Under said,these are our expensive work trucks,not just toys like my 416,404,406's,411's and some of my other 4wd's.
They need to be back to work on Monday.

On the Golden Spike we sliced a sidewall of a new tire so that meant no spare for the orange Mog on Pritchette, and yes it was aired down to around 14lbs at the time.

These rigs are running a bit bigger than normal tires and when aired WAY down, if you tend to hit things w/ a bit too much throttle you tend to bounce out of control no matter how good your shocks are because your tires tend to behave like beach balls.This is way exacerbated when your rig breaks the 10,000lb mark
The stiffer tires and especially bias tire tend to soak up a lot of that energy when aired way down. This is why the nice supple radial casing of the Michelin XM47 and the Goodyear MVT work so well on the highway and on washboard roads.

I'm not new to rock crawling and am very in touch w/ competition rock crawling and racing. If you doubt it look at some of the stuff we've done when I worked w/ my good friend Eddie Casanueva /owner of Spidertrax Off-Road The Spidertrax Store . Tube buggies are a hell of a lot easier/faster to build than big diesel Unimogs.
K.C. Carp, I have some good Unimog friends in Albuquerque, we shouldmeet up half way and take the big SBU Mogs out together sometime. I'm sure it would be fun and I promise,I won't stack until you do.
 
#20 · (Edited)
As this is a seriously subjective subject, I will leave well enough alone. You see, I am not a sight seer, Im a rock crawler. We attempt to run the trails quickly. Generally on Pritchett, we try to get out fast so we can do a late afternoon to night run on Hells Revenge or something easy like that. The bottom line of my bitching was the rock stacking, not the time so much. (by the way, we got a toyota BJ42 Diesel with a burnt clutch and 33's off pritchett well before night fall). Hell, I am only left with assumptions as to when they started the trail. Its just rare to be on pritchett after 5-6PM unless your camping or broken.

And Yes, we generally un-stack obstacles if we find them heavily stacked. Its a common courtesy on the trail, sorta like if you open a gate, you close the gate.

Jason, if your truly the rock crawler you claim to be, you will agree that the rock stacking in this vid is gay as all hell. Thats not even an off camber situation. Was the Gas pedal Broken. Maybe he was stuck in 1st gear. Give me something to work with. I will give you that AG tires are a horrible choice for Moab and have terrible traction.

Anyway, I don't expect everyone here to be serious wheelers. In fact I find that almost every Unimog owner is very timid on the rocks for one reason or another. Thats fine as I don't wheel with Mog guys very much.

Oh yeah, Hey jason check you Pressure gauge cause it might be off by about 10PSI.

An where are the vids of rocker Knocker and Rock pile. And the numerous other fun spots on Pritchett. One or two of them that I created with my 404 to many years back.
 
#21 ·
Some more info,
Started into the trail close to 4:00 knowing darkness was coming
rock stacking is weak for any trail rig
1250's are not trail rigs
XM47's are hands down the best Moab tire for the big diesel Mogs. The fresh MVT's even aired down more were not as effective as the XM's were. This is backed up by many guys that actually have made the $ investment in the XM's and run them
The tires are 45.6" and 44.2 actual inches tall,must be hard to tell,but look at some of the pics a little closer and you can see the flex.

I hear you stating your a rock crawler dude and that's great,but this isn't Pirate 4X4.
This is a way different forum as most would agree.

It's great that you are tearin it up w/ your 404,but let's get out and try to do the knarly stuff you are talking about in our SBU's. There is some great stuff in southern Colorado and N.New Mexico. I'm really looking forward to seeing how well your 1300 does in the hands of an expert. I hope you can school me on how to wheel these big boys?

P.S.I don't really like rock stacking either.
 
#23 ·
hehehe - skools in for the SBU crowd :)

KC, if being a Daddy hasn't mellowed you down too much and you still wheel your junk the way you wheeled your D90 back in the day, I would be excited to watch said school.

I hesitate to say it but MOST Mog owners are trail pussies. There. I said it.

woooooo - bring it.
 
#25 ·
Mogasaurus said it, wheeling junk. This is something anyone with balls and some brains can do.
I'm really looking forward to wheeling in similar rigs. I just hope yours is at least as nice as one of mine,and think mine are ok..
I'll get a book on some basics,I'm getting scared...
 
#26 ·
My 1300 is surprisingly nice. Has a few issues, but otherwise its a clean truck. Not as nice as my D-90 was though. If I still had my D-90, it would now be an unrecognizable pile of steel and aluminum though. My 404 had to carry the D-90's torch and it has gone thru two cabs and two roll cages. My 404 is far superior as a crawler to my D-90 and I wheel it much much harder than I ever did my D-90.


Honestly, in comparison, my 1300 aired way down has a higher comfortable average speed over rough transitions between obstacles and dirt roads than the 404. And most of the ledges etc are sucked up far easier by the 15.5 R20's on the 1300 than my 39.5 Iroks on the 404. Of course, I would prefer not to flop the 1300 on its side if I can help it, so the 404 will always be my serious trail truck. But I give myself about 1-2 yrs before the 1300 is spotted on its side somewhere. ;-)
 
#27 · (Edited)
Booo Drama!

Thanks for the videos. I enjoyed them and didn't find myself angry after watching them!

Any Unimog video is a good video IMO.
 
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