Cal Offroad Events

The 2007 Finke Dessert Race.

Congratulations to Murray Collins, Terry Collins and their team in this Classic Event.

"Special thanks to:

Cal Offroad – Apart from the diffs, everything on the car was purchased from Cal Offroad and all of it proved fantastic in extreme conditions. Service and support has been A1 and we appreciate your efforts. We wont shop anywhere else.

Mickey Thompson – We were faced with hard pack dirt track (wet and dry), sand, mud, rocks, hard edges under sand, river beds, road and dunes!!! What tyre do you use for that? Our MTZ’s performed extremely well in all of these conditions. We can compare them to a couple of others that come to mind. 1 is the Townsville guys in a buggy who had 5 flat tyres on day one. The other is the Pro buggie we passed on virgin sand while bogged on a big red sand dune. Our tires don’t even have a mark on them and ready for more. Thanks for the help with the tires of choice."

"I special thanks to all involved with our first race in the Chief Cherokee. It was a great experience and a very steep learning curve that taught all of us heaps. It was the drivers, navigators and support crews first ever race not to mention the trucks first outing after the last bolt was installed and tightened the day before we left. We had a half hour test at my place before heading off to the toughest round of the Australian championships for our debut race.

The truck passed scruitineering ok and both driver and nav passed there driving tests. It was then impounded and put on display in the shed where it received heaps of attention from on lookers and lots of praise.

After many hours on the road and lots of discussion we decided our approach would be a sensible one and that we would strive to finish rather then try win or place. With this in mind we prologued conservatively and sensibly, driving well within ours and the trucks limits. Turns out we managed to prologue quicker than 138 of the bikes and quads and also quicker then a few buggies. We managed a time of 7:34 mins and were only 11 secs slower then 2nd place in class and 7 secs behind 3rd place in class. We were stoked with this and ready to race!

Gates dropped with 2 cars at a time and we had an epic battle with a Subaru over the first couple of ks. We managed to be in front of him before the track closed in and got tight, rough and dusty. We battled with the dust from the next car before finally getting him around 50kms further putting us into second place in class. We were doing really well and managed to pass another few buggies and tin tops before the first check point. We got to the first check point in 59 mins – 1 minute ahead of the Holden supported rodeo (ex Glen Ridge) and only 7 mins behind the untouchable Aussie champ Geoff Pickering in the Pajero supported by a professional team and backed by Mitsubishi and Raliart. The first place truck in the fully modified class was another Aussie champ Colin Hunters V8 Jeep who cam in 9 minutes in front of us.

We were stoked with these results and just kept plugging away at the same speeds, The truck was doing great but ran low on juice. We made a fuel stop before a cut off point that we were not aware of at the time, this blew us over the cut off mark for time on that day (another lesson to us). Second day we were off to a great start and managed to pass the slower traffic in front of very quickly giving us clean air. I looked over at the speedo once and noticed we were doing 135ks in a tight sandy, rough two wheel track, we were using all of the little track and managed to collect a little bit of local bush along the way. We did 29ks out of 30 of the baddest whoop section anyone could imagine before the engine bolts sheared off and dropped to donk. It was then a long tow home for a few beers.

Knowing what we now know we feel we could do much better and cant wit to prove it when truck is back together – all part of learning. At least we now know we can do it and the truck can too. One good point of the breakage was this was the only thing that broke and the only thing we did not touch."

Special thanks to:

DAMS – Jeeps are supposed to have a weak drive line, If that didn’t break it nothing we do will. It got a serious workout and never looked like giving us any problems. All the work you guys did to strengthen driveline and race prep the truck is now proven at the highest level. We now have heaps of confidence in the vehicle as a whole, it never overheated, the auto was perfect and the drive line stood up to the test. Thanks for all your support and sharing all that knowledge along with hard work – we have managed to build a beauty.

Magnum Steel – A full bottle of Mig gas went into the build of this truck, everyone know this means a lot of welds! The roll cage was perfect and gives a lot of confidence, it and other strengthening components designed and installed by Magnum steel were looked at very closely by officials and other competitors, All made comment on how well it had been built. Great job guys and thanks for the ongoing support.

Family – The support from Mum and Julie has been great. Dad and I have been head down bum up working every weekend for the past God knows how long and the understanding and support from you guys has been great and thanks to you both for making it easy.

Last but not least the service crew – Ollie and Silver have done three million miles and been faced with many hard decisions to make by them selves and managed to make some very good ones and very important ones. You guys did sensational and gave some of the factory teams a run for there money. Without you we would still be there, no actually we wouldn’t have got there. Thanks guys.

To all, keep up the good work and look forward to the next one.

Muz.

Murray Collins"

OZ Rock.