Another great hour on the Bower Power Hour. Loren Healy sits down with Charlene, and covers just about everything you’d want to know about racing. From what was Loren’s worse wreck, to what’s next on the bucket list, it’s a great show from start to finish. Loren is still making history with his Red Dragon Spider 9 IFS powered Ultra4, with his next race set for the Fallon 250 on August 29th (next Saturday). Enjoy the show!

Spidertrax | Thom Kingston | CC BY 3.0

We’re not the cheapest. We don’t set out to be the most expensive either. Making a part right is all we’re after. From engineering to manufacturing, we cut no corner, striving only for the best while staying true to who we are. We put it all on the table as they say… like this Spider 9 IFS housing getting some precision post-weld CNC machining today. From concept to reality, there’s nothing better than spending your days loving what you do. We appreciate all your support as always, make it a great weekend!

Something new this year at the King of Wales was a night stage. Borrowing a bit from the success of the King of the Hammer’s Backdoor Challenge, the night stage brought its own mini competition, winners competition for their own 1st place spot. Course layout was simple but challenging: run the prologue course in reverse… and at night. Great fun all around, Jim Marsden took honors that night. Enjoy the video, and have a great weekend.

Reposted video from the Offroad-Armoury Facebook page. The driver’s seat tells a fantastic story, doesn’t it?  Offroad-Armoury is our official UK distributor, and their Eurofighter Ultra4 buggy is a force to be reckoned with. Here’s some background on the video above, courtesy of ORA.

Enter ORA.

King Of Wales 2015 – Final race day and we are lined up on the start line next to Jim Marsden, We shouted over to Jim when lining up “you go first!”… This might seem like a really odd thing to do… but there was method in our madness.

We knew that Jim would be aiming to get to the front of the pack anyway as quickly as he could, so we thought we would hang back behind him off the start and gently apply the pressure to him, this also set a nice leisurely pace for us early on as we knew full well it was going to be a long long day and a real endurance race.

Not to far in to the first lap whilst following Jim we had caught the two other cars in front, we then made good use of our air horns to let them know we were there, two clean passes allowed by two very professional fellow racers and then it was about to get serious. After a little traffic we caught Jim up again entering the Odyssey Arena, and with a short sprint up to the rock steps we were right on them and ready for the pass.

Team Gigglepin got hung up on the top step and unfortunately had an airline failure giving us the opportunity for a nice clean pass with the winch (GP Tuned 8274 Thanks Jim). Paul got buckled up again and then it was on, it was time to put some distance between us and Nicolas Montador, Nicolas managed to cling on to the back for a couple of laps which made for some exciting racing, but it was time to kick it up a few notches!

Rob and Paul turned up the gas on laps 3 & 4 constantly widening the gap and zooming in on the win!… but as this is off-road racing, anything can happen and you haven’t won until you cross that line… Towards the end of the 4th lap our rear differential started sounding very unhappy, so we backed off some what to try and make it to the finish line. However about 4km in to the final lap the rear axle locked and that was us done. Paul hopped out to inspect, & it was pretty clear the pinion seal had filed and lost all of the oil causing the collapsed of the pinion bearing.

We removed the rear drive shaft and popped the car in to front wheel drive, and was ready to retire… Paul and I looked at each other and decided we would attempt to finish the final lap in front wheel drive only… This was going to be a seriously tough undertaking… but we had a couple of hours left on the clock and the determination to get it done, so we cracked on in front wheel drive only!!

We slogged our guts out winching some seriously rough and steep wooded sections (Paul mainly doing the gut slogging whilst I piloted the car) But after roughly an hour of winching and struggling the car was starting to cough and splutter on the steep winch pulls, we were running low on fuel… it wasn’t worth taking the risk of completely running out of fuel and getting stranded miles from the pits…. we pulled out and still placed a very respectable 5th place.

King Of Wales is one race we really would love to win, we have come very very close before… but not quite! Maybe next year.

Another trailer masterpiece from Will Gentile of HeavyMetalConcepts. Enjoy.