The Pit Bull Redline Buggy King of the Hammers Story
A 2WD Redline Riot attempting the King of the Hammers? Though they didn’t finish they have a great story that made me laugh, some great pictures, and a couple videos worth sitting back and watching…
By Len Daymuth
It was a great race! We worked hard to get there, drove 37 hours with seven guys in a van, through 3 snow storms that lasted hours and 2 down pours of heavy rain, but we finally made it. We slept in a cargo trailer for 4 nights that Flying A Motorsports donated to us for the race. Imagine that.
We were running a 2009 Redline Riot which was 2 wheel drive. Crazy, we know. During pre-run we were able to drive right up the sand mountain, up the step sand with the boulders sticking out, but the day of the race was a different story. We were the last team to leave the line, winning our drag race, and around the mountain into the desert by the time we had made the first check point we had passed about 3 other cars in the whoops and then in the rocks were able to drive around 3 more 4×4’s hanging up in the rocks in front of us, and had to take harder lines, but our tires kept us hooked up and going. We did struggle getting up the sand mountain during the race. Once we reached the sand mountain the day of the race the 555 car was going over the top of it so we were driving hard, but there were 3 other cars fighting there way up it and had really changed the mountain and we were not able to drive up it as easy as before. We had to winch over almost half way up it, we even winched a giant bolder down into our path…..that sucked! But we winched over that one too lol. I must say that was one of the dark moments for us, we even winched hard enough to kill 
our battery. The lights flashed and I let off the switch, but to late the car died….. it was silent and our hearts were pounding…we thought that’s it, I reached down a turned the key and it turned over and started! We were back in the race. I threw the car into neutral and held the Riot at about 5 grand for a minute and started winching again. We were able to drive up the rest of it once we were half way up. Then back to the race…
Even after all that, we were the seventh team to come into pit row, the boys from Cowtown USA, filled us up checked the Pit Bull tires……still no problems, back to the race, one mishap was leaving town…it was kinda hard to find our way out, and I think we were yelling back and forth some, because that part of the track was not on our GPS, but figured it out after a few seconds and some choice words. We were able to catch and pass 2 more UTVs, again another 4×4 hung up in the rocks ahead of us in the main path, and had to drive around them.
We finally made it through all the rock sections and were down to more or less desert, so we were on the gas hard trying to make up some lost minutes. When came our darkest hour, we hit a whoop section ………ok if it wasn’t rocks it was ALL sand whoops…so rock ~ whoops ~ rock ~ whoops ~ rock ~ whoops, you get the picture! But we hit one wrong at about 73 on our GPS and flew about 65feet. It kicked our back end up and 
we came down on our front bumper sliding across the desert just waiting to endo! The Riot set back down but then slid sideways across a whoop section and then caught and had the driver side off the ground, so I cut the wheel into the roll and stood on the gas! Much to our amazement, the Redline set back down and that we feel saved our lives, thank God! But when the driver side rear wheel slammed back down at wide open throttle it exploded the rear hub! As if it wasn’t bad enough, now we watched as our Pit Bull Rocker went by us with the lugnuts still attached to what was left of our hub!…….as we skidded to a stop and looked at our hub we knew we were out. I’m not saying we didn’t try rig it but we were done. With only two wheel drive, and now one wheel drive it was all over for the Pit Bull buggy ~ car 911 was done!
We had a great race and the King of The Hammers trys you in every way possible! It was an honor to get to race this great race, to be here with the best of the best, an just to see it all has forever changed us all in some kind of way both great and small. Yes, we will be back next year, for our redemption, with mighty Pit Bull tires, and the hard running Redline UTV, and team Cowtown USA.
Its good to live in this great nation and its great to be running an all American team. Thanks to everyone who helped us out on the toughest one day race in this land. Thanks to Mike Green at PITBULL tires and thanks to REDLINE UTV and to Cowtown USA!
** Some fun FYI – we preran the Redline that we raced with the Pit Bull Rockers 26.5” the entire course one and a half times and then used the same Pit Bull tires and the same Redline Riot to compete in the race, without one tire issue. We did brake one of the aluminum steering rods and had to make one the day before out of some pipe we purchased from a little shop in town. I think it was part of some scaffolding or something. We welded grade 8 nuts to each end and were ready to race again.
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Category: Featured, King of the Hammers
Len,
Great to meet you and the rest of your crew. Thanks for coming out to Johnson Valley for the race. You all are completely nuts for driving that far, and stuffing that much stuff in your trailer.
I hope you are looking forward to next year!
Keep the pictures coming of any trail rides you go on. We love to cover rides from all over.
Jon Crowley
Hey Jon, great to hear from you, wish we were back in the sand! It was a great time, ya we did have way to much stuff out there. way way way to much stuff, i think we lightened the load quite abit on the way home. How are the pitbulls doing we took the set we were running off and are saving them for next years race lol2 years in a row! for sure on the pic’s were going this weekend!