Hi Folks, I never was a hell raiser, but have any of you off-roaders done this? Spare Tire Fun Hey, I was 15! Sometime after I got the Stude dune buggy running, I took it out by the cement plant. There was an abandoned practice air strip, not paved, in a valley surrounded on three sides by steep hills maybe 200 feet high. They graded all the boulders off to the side all the way around. We would race around on it, as it was about a mile long and ¼ mile wide. If you went driving up one of the sides to the top, you could see for 20 miles out over the strip. Cool! We were up there one day admiring the view, when I got an idea. Uh Oh! I took the spare tire off the Stude and launched it down the slope towards the strip. Picking up speed, it would bounce way up in the air as it hit boulders and kept on going. We made a mental picture of where it stopped and retrieved it. We were still laughing like crazy. It had gone about 3/4 of a mile! The next day (of course) we went to Calvert’s Wrecking yard where you could buy a tire and wheel (still holding air) for $5.00 and bought a couple. (You could drive to Calvert’s from my house without a road). I pumped them up to about 50 PSI and headed back up to our launching pad. I think one of my friends brought a wheel, too. May have been his dad’s spare. We took turns throwing them off. Let me tell you, those ****ers must have been going 80 MPH. My spare hit a gigantic boulder the size of a house and launched up to the horizon! It landed straight down and didn’t bounce NO MORE. The rim was bent back to the bolt pattern on both sides! My Dad asked, “What heck did you hit?” “A boulder.” I'm 75 now and that was what we did living in the desert as kids. Bob
The Jalopy Journal
