CLUBS: CORE 4×4 on New Year’s Day.

(photos courtesy of CORE 4×4)

We’re featuring a great club today: CORE 4×4. (core4×4.org), from Washington DC.

CORE is the Capital Off Road Enthusiasts. The club has been around since 2000 and they’re a very active group.

Every year, they make sure to get in a New Year’s Day trail ride. It’s a tradition based on something the club’s President was taught by his grandmother: Whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll do all year long.

This year they hit the trails in Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland.

Here in Denver we’re all a bit grounded this time of year,  so we get to be jealous of trips like this.  Water crossings in January?

Check out CORE’s web site - they’ve got a great photo gallery.  And click on the comments link to add comments and tell us about your clubs. Thanks!

Parking Lot at Work This Morning

Bestop has reserved parking for people who drive Jeeps.  So not only do Jeep owners  get to have more fun on the weekends, they get a better parking spot.  These are folks from customer service, engineering, accounting, everywhere in the company.  Not sure who owns the brand new JK with the skis on the back, but I bet he or she is leaving work early today.  As always, double click on a photo to see the full size version.

Red Neck Jeep, Part Two - Motivation

OK, we teased a bit with George’s new CJ project, and I’m guessing that everyone now feels pretty bad for him, being forced to drive a JK with a puny lift kit and sad little tires.

In part two, we’re talking go-power.  This is not a daily-driver, and it doesn’t need to be too civilized. Gas mileage? Not really a big concern for his weekend fun toy.  And while it might be fun to search the world’s junkyards for one of those old huge-block Cadillac engines, or go the huge-bucks route and buy an overbuilt custom engine, George points out that he works for Bestop and doesn’t have unlimited time or funds.

But on the other hand, wheelin’ in Colorado is way above sea level, and altitude steals horsepower.  Combine altitude with giant tires and you need to combine horsepower with gearing (or a good book).

George is going with a build up 350 Ram Jet engine.  It’s from GMC, and they supplied everything needed, from the wiring harness to air conditioning compressor. It’s dyno tested at 350 horsepower. “They send along all the dyno read-outs and video of their bench test. It looks awesome, and should really give that low end torque curve,” George says.

The engine is now installed, and ready to rumble.  Which it will do through a custom dual exhaust, fed by a slick Gen-Right Stretch Gas Tank, which is designed to tuck up and out of the way of the 6 1/2″ custom stretched suspension kit (more on that later, we promise).

This engine is guaranteed to make people from California cry with envy, but it should be just the ticket for motivating the Red Neck Jeep over some of our trickier passes.

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The Red Neck Jeep Project - Part One

The Jeep to the right is Bestop Marketing Engineer George Stickles’ JK. It’s sitting on some huge fancy rims and 37″ tires and is completely tricked out with all sorts of stuff from the Bestop catalog, like High Rock 4×4 bumpers.

So you probably think this Blog post is about this Jeep, right?

Not a chance.  See,  this is George’s daily driver. This is his city machine. And George tells us he’s getting a little bored with it. So he’s building up something completely different.  And to be fair, this Jeep gets used as a Bestop show car from time to time, so he can’t completely thrash it.

So, the Bestop Blog is going to follow along as George builds up what we’re calling The Redneck Jeep.

His goal is to have it ready for Moab this Easter.

We’ll start going over the details with the next post. Here’s a teaser shot:

Easter Jeep Week in Moab

April 4th - 12th this year.

We’re making our plans to be there, and it’s not too early for y’all to start planning. This thing is getting mega popular and a lot of the trails are filling up. Go to the official club web site and get started with the registration. 

We’ll end up spending most of our time at Moab in the vendor area, but hope to get the Bestop Jeeps out on at least a few trails.

It’s always a challenge with the company owned vehicles. On the one hand, hey, they don’t even belong to you, so drive it like you stole it.  On the other hand, there’s that horrible realization that you’ve just damaged a perfect show vehicle and the conversation with the boss is not going to be a good one.  It’s a dilemma.  But last year we got some trail rides in, so we’re hoping!