Kicking off Season 6 with King Randy Slawson

King Randy Slawson kicks off Season 6 of Conversations of Big Rich – that’s episode 261. Hear about the sheltered kid who turned his aggression to the rocks. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

5:49 – I was extremely sheltered, kept away from the world until I got married and moved to California

12:11 – my dad was busy and he wasn’t into mechanical anything, so I didn’t have somebody to mentor me and teach me how to do stuff             

19:34 – Seven of us went in five rigs and wheeled the Rubicon, if I wasn’t hooked before, I was definitely hooked after that. 

27:47– At the time, I was way into the Toyota scene, I’d had 20 different Toyotas, most of them basket cases.

37:59 –  I knew Marlin, but not well; I took him out to check out a weird noise, he was like, “Oh, Randy, I can’t believe the stress this transfer case is under. Oh, Randy…”

42:21 –I don’t want to call myself a know-it-all, but I just think that I can do it better.

46:34 – More power, more speed, that spoke to me. That was my style.

Special thanks to Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:05.310] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.560] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.

[00:01:13.160] - Big Rich Klein

This week's guest has been doing Rock Sports about as long as I have. In fact, I think our first competitions were the same one. But he has won more races than I have. He is a fab guy of the highest degree, producing winning KOH cars. He's worked a number of different businesses, and now he's on his own. And my guest is Randy Slawson. Randy, it's really good to have you on here.

[00:01:44.160] - Randy Slawson

It's good to be here.

[00:01:45.560] - Big Rich Klein

So let's talk about all things Randy Slawson. But let's start with where were you born and raised?

[00:01:55.530] - Randy Slawson

Born and raised. So in 1977, I was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, and my parents weren't there very long. They shortly moved to Gresham, Oregon, and then on to Tillamook, Oregon, I think by the time I was a year or so, we were in Tillamook, and I grew up there in cheese country.

[00:02:22.930] - Big Rich Klein

Chasing cows in the fields?

[00:02:25.770] - Randy Slawson

More cows than people.

[00:02:27.810] - Big Rich Klein

I've spent time in Tillamook. How long were you there for?

[00:02:33.340] - Randy Slawson

Well, I went to college in Walla Walla, Washington from '99 to 2001, more or less. I summered back in Oregon. Then in 2001, I got married and we moved to Southern California, and I think I've been back twice.

[00:02:57.040] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. You've gotten rid of your web feet from being on the Coast of Oregon?

[00:03:02.750] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. Like I say, Tillamook is a good place to be from.

[00:03:06.380] - Big Rich Klein

Do you eat cheese?

[00:03:09.820] - Randy Slawson

Absolutely. I still love the Tillamook cheese.

[00:03:11.570] - Big Rich Klein

Makes sense. Is your family still there?

[00:03:15.900] - Randy Slawson

They've moved away as well. My folks were there for several years, but they moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Can't say exactly when. It's been close to 10 years ago, I think.

[00:03:29.890] - Big Rich Klein

It's a beautiful area.

[00:03:31.460] - Randy Slawson

Yes.

[00:03:33.280] - Big Rich Klein

If I was going to move anywhere else in Idaho, besides our houses in Blackfoot, it would be Coeur d'Alene. Absolutely gorgeous.

[00:03:41.300] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. They're actually on Hayden Lake, proper. They've got a house up on the hill that overlooks the Lake. It's beautiful. Nice.

[00:03:54.370] - Big Rich Klein

So growing up in Tillamook, that's about as rural as you can get. And what was school like? Was it where the class was pretty small?

[00:04:08.760] - Randy Slawson

Yes. I went to a Seventh Day Avenue private school. There was about 50 kids from first grade to 10th grade.

[00:04:19.370] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:04:19.500] - Randy Slawson

Very through my 10-year experience there, but that was more or less what it was.

[00:04:25.970] - Big Rich Klein

No sports per se?

[00:04:30.620] - Randy Slawson

We had a sports team. The only one that was official was basketball. I was the starting forward. I was not necessarily the biggest kid, but definitely the fastest kid. I was pretty aggressive back then.

[00:04:49.540] - Big Rich Klein

Which you still use today, at least when you're driving.

[00:04:54.900] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, for sure.

[00:04:56.260] - Big Rich Klein

Got to be. What was your favorite study What did you prepare for to go to Walla Walla?

[00:05:05.690] - Randy Slawson

Favorite study? I've really never liked school. I think a lot of your people you interview say the same thing as how I do about it. I wasn't good at it. It didn't come easily. It was very frustrating. If I absolutely Absolutely applied myself, I could get good grades, but it wasn't... Some people it just comes super, super easily to, and for me, it did not.

[00:05:39.980] - Big Rich Klein

What was it like going to a small religious-type school?

[00:05:49.670] - Randy Slawson

Pretty sheltered, would you say? Extremely, yeah. I was very, very sheltered, kept away from the world, didn't really know Not much about anything until I got married and moved to California and started learning about a lot of stuff that I had no clue about. I'd say still fairly sheltered, honestly, but not as much as I used to be.

[00:06:17.260] - Big Rich Klein

If you're living some life in the off-road industry, you can't be completely sheltered. There's too many influences out there of crazy going on. What did your family do outside of, say, working or school, vacations, that stuff? Were you into hunting or fishing or anything like that?

[00:06:42.380] - Randy Slawson

Everybody asked about hunting and fishing hunting. That's mecca, I guess, and till mecca is hunting and fishing. My parents were seventh day adventist, and they were vegetarian, so we didn't hunt, we didn't fish, we didn't do any of the normal country stuff that people in that area would do. What did we do? My dad was into bicycles. He had all kinds of weird bikes. He had a tall bike, and a tall unicycle, and a bouncy bike, and a bouncy unicycle, and a side by side bike, and a tandem bike, and a beach cruiser with the clown out of center wheels, and a high bike, and I probably already said that, swing bike. So I grew up riding bicycles. I had a BMX bike when I was young, skateboards, mountain bikes. When I was about 12 or 13, my parents moved us from main street in town in Tolemao, out into Bay City, on to four acres. My dad built a house out there. And as soon as we got out there, we started riding dirt bikes a little bit. Got I got pretty into that. And then in my junior year, I bought an early Bronco.

[00:08:09.520] - Randy Slawson

It was my first vehicle. I bought myself a $1,000 rust bucket Bronco and started doing a little bit of wheeling. When I was probably well over 13, about that same time period, I guess, my folks brought us down to Sacramento to visit my mom's older brother and My family, and they took us up on the Rubicon. So I got really bit by the rock crawling bug about that time. My uncle had a '68, I think it was FJ40 Land Cruiser, and it was on 36-inch Dixie fund countries. And it had a Dana 44 front and a 60 in the back and a small block 400 Chevy and SM465, an old Rockwell transfer case. So I can power and four wheel disk breaks spring over. It was a bad jamma-jamma. I remember being on the Rubicon and thinking that it was the biggest, baddest machine up there. Everybody had 31s and 33s an occasional rig had 35s, and that thing was a monster on those big old blue and fun countries.

[00:09:23.910] - Big Rich Klein

So that was mid to late, maybe '97, '98?

[00:09:30.700] - Randy Slawson

No, it was earlier than that. '91, '93, somewhere right in there, I think. Maybe I'm off on that. But '97 was my senior year in high school, and it was way before that. Okay.

[00:09:47.870] - Big Rich Klein

Then you bought the Bronco after that trip when you got to be able to buy your first car?

[00:09:53.940] - Randy Slawson

Yes. That was my junior year, I think. Sophomore year, Might have been my sophomore year.

[00:10:00.790] - Big Rich Klein

Was it all stock?

[00:10:04.420] - Randy Slawson

It was completely stock other than… I think it had 30-inch tires and wagon, white-spoke wheels. It was still three on the tree, still had drum break gain of 30 in it. It had a 289 that I think they told me it was out of a Maverick or something else, but it would have come with the 289. It didn't have any carpet. It didn't have power steering. It just had a little two-barrel motorcraft carburator. It didn't run that great. It had exhaust leaks. I learned all these things about the rig after the fact, more or less. There was a tube that ran down the column that was part of the column shifter, and that thing split somewhere, and it flexed and it made it so... It was real hard to get it in gear. I joke about custom narrowing it. We take it up in the hills by basically up in the logging roads and smash it through these dirt bike or quad trails and do the Austin power things through the trees, forward and back, forward, back, forward, back, steering that manual steering. And I remember hearing the bodywork crinkle and pop as we pushed it between trees that were too close together for it to fit it through.

[00:11:30.330] - Randy Slawson

But we had a blast with it.

[00:11:33.030] - Big Rich Klein

You have brothers and sisters?

[00:11:36.590] - Randy Slawson

I'm the oldest of four, so it was boy, girl, boy, girl, and the last two were twins. Okay.

[00:11:43.190] - Big Rich Klein

Who would you go wheeling with?

[00:11:46.060] - Randy Slawson

My little brother, Mike. He's six years younger than me.

[00:11:50.800] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I knew. Okay. Yeah, I know Mike. When you finally got a chance to go, Well, let's keep going on the Bronco. Did you do anything to that car before you got rid of it and got onto something else?

[00:12:11.670] - Randy Slawson

Not very much. I rebuilt the carburator. We ended up breaking the spider gears in the Dana 30 and had to tear the front end apart, and the hubs were old and nasty, so I put some new worn hubs on it while I was in there. It had a charging issue that I never, I don't think I ever did really sort it out. I thought it was a bad alternator, and then I thought it was a bad voltage regulator. It had some wiring, grim one where it just didn't excite the alternator, however that works. All stuff I'm sure we could have figured out nowadays, but that was just a 15 16 year old, 16 year old kid, 17 year old kid, something. I wasn't super... I was mechanically inclined, definitely not into electrical anything, but my dad was busy with other stuff and he wasn't into mechanical anything, so I didn't have somebody to mentor me and teach me how to do stuff like that. So we just always figured that out or on our own as much as we could, go down there and ask the counter guy at Napa what to do, go home and try to do it.

[00:13:39.080] - Randy Slawson

I was before YouTube University or knowing how to get online and research stuff like that.

[00:13:49.160] - Big Rich Klein

And of course, no auto shop in the school you went to?

[00:13:54.210] - Randy Slawson

Not in grade school. So when I went to high school, I did. I took auto I took auto mechanics and I took welding. And then as soon as I graduated from high school and moved on to college, when I went to college in Walla Walla, I took auto mechanics at the community college there. I got a two-year AS degree in auto mechanics and got some ASC certs. All that stuff was super interesting to me. I think It went out pretty good quickly.

[00:14:31.970] - Big Rich Klein

I think that's what happens to most, not all the people that are in off-road, but a lot of us, is that all the book stuff is difficult, and then you get into something where you're using your hands, and now you're trying to figure things out. It just seems to come more naturally to us than trying to read it off a book and then try to make sense of it.

[00:15:04.460] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[00:15:06.160] - Big Rich Klein

So when you took auto and welding, you obviously must have fallen in love with those trades, and that's what you wanted to do at Walla Walla. What was the end game? What in your mind were you thinking that you were going to do? Just go to work in a shop?

[00:15:32.940] - Randy Slawson

I really didn't know. I don't know. I definitely wouldn't have imagined that I'd be here now. But going into it, I just knew that I wanted those skills. I wanted to learn more about cars so I could be better with my hobbies. I didn't want to I hadn't picked a trade, and I didn't want to go to a four-year school and get in debt to do something that I didn't know if I wanted to do permanently. So my parents pushed hard for college, so that was what I did.

[00:16:16.870] - Big Rich Klein

They just wanted you to go to college. It wasn't like they had grand plans for you to become a lawyer or doctor or anything?

[00:16:24.150] - Randy Slawson

No, they didn't push me in any specific direction. They told me I should take some business, I think, or maybe part of auto mechanics, I ended up taking some business classes, or at least a class. Yeah, I don't really remember. That was almost 30 years ago.

[00:16:44.740] - Big Rich Klein

Time flies, right?

[00:16:47.180] - Randy Slawson

It's crazy. It just goes faster and faster.

[00:16:51.110] - Big Rich Klein

Let's say you go to Walla Walla. Did you have the Bronco still at that point, or had you moved on to something else?

[00:17:00.620] - Randy Slawson

So I actually took a year off between high school and college. I didn't know what I wanted to be, and I was sick and tired of school. So I worked for my dad. He had a durable medical equipment business, and Some of the stuff that he rented and he delivered and stuff to people, folks' homes. And so I did a whole bunch of different stuff. And I'd done that off and on summers during high high school and college. But that whole year, I just worked for my dad and played with the Bronco, and then I end up finding that Jeep Wrangler at the wrecking yard. I was down at the wrecking yard. I went to an auto auction in Portland and I bought a wrecked... In high school, I bought a wrecked Chevy Beretta, and then right out of school, I bought a wrecked Geostorm, I think it was, and I pieced them back together with junkyard parts and painted them and flipped them. So then I was down looking for parts for one of the projects, and they had a wrangler there. It was It was a '95 YJ, which was the last year, and it had been rolled over.

[00:18:19.430] - Randy Slawson

It was already lifted, had a four-inch lift in 33s, and I had to have it. They'd pieced it back together with all... They had two shapes that were the same color, so they'd put a new windshield frame on it, a new cage. It had been rolled over. It just was a little dog-eared here and there. It wasn't bad anywhere. It didn't need bodywork. If for what I wanted to do with it. It didn't need paint. I went home and I told my parents I really needed it. And they were like, well, what are you going to do about it? I was like, well, you loan me. I don't remember what I thought I needed. I think the thing was 5,700 bucks. I needed a couple grand or something. So they loan me money. And my mom drove me over there to Portland, which was an hour and a half or whatever from Tilleamook I drove that thing home and immediately went to work on it. The Panhard bar front and rear had the comfort shackles all in a crazy bind. I thought something was bent, and when I popped that That panhard out of the back of it, those shackles squared up, and I was like, Nothing was wrong with it.

[00:19:34.950] - Randy Slawson

They just mix and match the wrong parts. So I started driving that thing daily. It had air conditioning. It was a four in the Rio Grand Edition. Nice little Jeep, had 28,000 miles on it or something like that. So that was my rig through college. Almost immediately, we went to Sacramento to my aunt and uncles, the whole family, and we took the thing to the Rubicon. I drove it all the way. I don't remember what that drive is, 12 hours or something from Tillamook to Sacramento and then up to up Ice House, up 50 to Ice House. And I think that particular trip, we were reminiscing when my dad was here last time. My dad and my brother and I went with Uncle and Dustin, Tim, and Rodney. All of Uncle Ken's boys, the three boys all had rigs, so there was their four rigs plus my rig, and all of us boys, seven of us or something like that went up for the weekend and wheeled all the way through the Rubicon. And that was my first time driving my own rig up there. And I don't remember if we... We must have stayed the night.

[00:21:00.430] - Randy Slawson

But anyway, if I wasn't hooked before, I was definitely hooked after that. We had a pretty good time. That little Jeep was super reliable. It didn't have enough power to hurt itself. That trip, it was spring under and open-open in 33s, and didn't take me too long to spring it over and get a lock right for the back. I didn't go too crazy with it, but definitely had a lot of fun with it.

[00:21:32.840] - Big Rich Klein

You did all the work yourself, right?

[00:21:35.600] - Randy Slawson

Oh, yeah.

[00:21:37.620] - Big Rich Klein

Did you have a garage to work in or were you working out in the dirt?

[00:21:44.700] - Randy Slawson

I guess I'd sold that rig by the time I moved down south. I traded it off. When I was home, my parents had a little two car garage, and I could usually clear out a spot that I could work inside there. At college, we just had a little apartment, and there wasn't anywhere inside. But I remember a friend of mine showed me you didn't need a fancy extension cord, you just need a piece of Romex. We'd plug that in behind the range in my little apartment, string it out front to the AC buzz box. I did the spring over there in the driveway at the apartment. I didn't get too terribly deep into that one, but shortly thereafter, I hope my best friend spring is, not Spring, we did a solid access swap on his '87 4-runner. Back in those days, an '87 4-runner was a fairly new car. It was super nice. I remember being extremely jealous of that rig and how good it worked. We got it up on some 36-inch Super Swamper radials. Up in Washington, all we did was snow wheel all winter during school. There was either mud or it was snow, so we did a lot of snow wheeling, and that rig worked great in the snow.

[00:23:21.050] - Randy Slawson

We were there more or less two years. Both summers, the whole group of us, my best friend and my brother and my best friend's, Chick, cousin, and there ended up being at least five of us, if not seven. We drove down to the Rubicon. That was just about the time when our parents had a long enough leash on us where we could drive 10, 15 hours away and do our own thing. Those were really good times. Camping on the Rubicon. We camped two years in a row. It was probably '99 and 2000 for a week. Drove down one weekend and stayed all week and hanging out and goofing off and being kids on the Rubicon was pretty fun.

[00:24:16.160] - Big Rich Klein

Dustin Emick, who's your cousin.

[00:24:21.010] - Randy Slawson

Correct.

[00:24:21.650] - Big Rich Klein

I don't know your other cousins, but he was really into wheeling I mean, when I met him, which was right around 2000, I believe. Was he a pirate by then?

[00:24:39.960] - Randy Slawson

I think he got initiated into the pirates in '03. Okay.

[00:24:45.800] - Big Rich Klein

Maybe it was- But he was running with those guys or around them.

[00:24:52.380] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. Yep, for sure. Okay. I moved to Southern California in summer of 2001. And then remind me when put up or shut up was.

[00:25:05.990] - Big Rich Klein

Was that- November 2001.

[00:25:09.080] - Randy Slawson

Okay, so that was within, I think I moved south in August or September. So that was within a couple of months. Dustin and I did that first comp.

[00:25:25.890] - Big Rich Klein

Tell me, well, when you moved to Southern California, did you already have a job lined out when you went down there, or did you just decide you needed to get out of the Northwest?

[00:25:38.880] - Randy Slawson

So funny story about that. My cousin had a girlfriend, wife, and she wanted to go to LA. She thought she needed to be an actress. And I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. I was like, Why would you want to move to LA? To me, that was like, could Well, then Australia. It was a whole other world. I pooh-poohed that. Then my college sweetheart, we got married and moved to Loma Linda. The reason we went to Loma Linda was because that was the adventist medical hospital University. She wanted to take first of the surgery check. She took that, worked a little bit, and then she realized that It was $13 an hour. It was silly. She went back into nursing. Then she went back in later and took her first assist or something like that. I don't remember what. But first, we were going to be down there a year or two, and then I got hooked on it pretty fast. I love Johnson Valley. I love the desert. Anywhere was better than Raining, Tillamook, Oregon for me. So I Basically, LA area, Greater Inland Empire, whatever you want to call it down there, is off-road mecca of the world.

[00:27:10.230] - Randy Slawson

There's more off-roading to do and more people into motor cycles and desert racing and rock crawling than about anywhere. So for a long time, I said I'd never leave. Then I guess about 10, well, I'll be saying it, it started to grind on me. I got tired of the politics and the people and dirty city and all the stuff.

[00:27:41.060] - Big Rich Klein

When you lived down there, didn't you work for AllPro?

[00:27:47.090] - Randy Slawson

I did. Immediately when I got there, that was one of the things that I knew about Southern California was AllPro off down there. At the time, I was way into the Toyota scene. I'd had 20 different Toyotas. Most of them were basket cases that I either picked up and flipped or or basket cases that we just scavenged parts off of until there wasn't anything good left. But I moved south with the 85 extra cab with Exo cage. It was all stick-welded poop pipe and had a Dana 44 and a Dana 60 in a 22R with five speed and dual cases. And Little flat bed on the back. It was all just super budget, super junkyard mix and match. I think it had Toyota I think it was the ranger springs up front, probably. I think it had ranger springs in the back that we got it pick and pull. It was just a booger together old rig. But it got I'd drive it through all the Hammers Trails, and I would drive it out to Johnson Valley and roll it over, beat on it, break it, fix it, and drive it back home. My wife, at the time, she'd drive to school because it was five miles away.

[00:29:18.890] - Randy Slawson

Her parents had given her this Mercedes to drive, and I'd drive it over to AllPro because it was 45 minutes one way or something over to Hemet. I worked there for three months, and then John fired Christmas. Then I found a job. I guess the next one was a good year tire dealer. It was a lube tech, changed tires, balanced tires, started doing some breaks and a few things, but I think they were paying me seven 50 an hour, and that got old super fast. Right. They treated me like a low man on the totem pole. And I was like, man, I got ASC certs, and I'm here with my $10,000 Snap-on toolbox full of tools. I was there one day on a weekend when I wasn't working, I was borrowing the press to change some wheelbarrings on something I was working on. And I came out to my toolbox and found that new guy, elbow deep in my box and my stuff all spread out. And I yelled at him. And after I left, he jammed a ballpoint pin, some part of it up in the lock and tried to glue it in there with some weather strip adhesive, which didn't really work very good, fortunately.

[00:30:51.910] - Randy Slawson

But I didn't get much sympathy from the boss, and it wasn't another a week or two before I was out of there.

[00:31:02.460] - Big Rich Klein

And what came after that?

[00:31:06.950] - Randy Slawson

By that time, I'd met Chris Ridgeway, and he had a little Suzuki Samurai, and he thought my Toyota was pretty awesome. And his Samurai was on like 30 wands, maybe. And he came out with my buddy Rusty to Johnson Valley and tried wheeling that thing up, wrecking ball. And I was like, who invited you? Who encouraged you to drive your practically stock Samurai up Wrecking Ball? He's like, oh, Rusty. So we had a pretty long conversation and became friends. He took it to Moab not too long after that and rolled it. It was a little super clean, little tin top, but he mangled it. And he had some dude cut it in half And then he decided that whoever was working on it didn't really have the skills to put it back together like he wanted. So he ended up bringing it over to me like a wheelbarrow. The front axel was under it, but the frame was cut in half. And we wheeled it into my little garage, and I started working full-time on that thing. I don't remember how long that project took, but basically, we ended up with part of the grill and the hood, no fenders.

[00:32:31.790] - Randy Slawson

And I extended the... Those things have a two by four box super frame. I extended out 12 inches up the front and hung some Toyota rear lease springs there. And I put Toyota It had a boxels under it. It had an ARB and 529s in the front with a high spirit kit. We did a school and 529s in the back. And we pieced and parts and stuff together. It had like DJ stock coils in the back. We did a little wishbone free link set up on it, and the back was just all pipe from right behind the seats. He cut the frame off, but we just basically tubed it out the back, and it was just super, super basic, super light. I think the thing weighed 2,400 pounds on 37 when it was done. And he put the hurt on everybody around Johnson Valley. I remember him racing John Reynolds in the Fat City Bronco on back door, and they would go lap, and Ridgeway would lap him. They would go up back door and over the sandhill and around to the bottom and up back door again. And it just make you dizzy just round and round and round and round five times, 10 times.

[00:33:50.700] - Randy Slawson

And Ridgeway would just hit the middle of that waterfall, not the left line, not the right line, right straight up the middle. He downshift from third to second and just jump right up. It was crazy how effortless it seemed like that rig did that line. And back then, John's rig was basically the only $100,000 rock troll I've probably ever seen. And definitely the only one that was coming out to Johnson Valley regularly. And that $5,000 poop pipe Samurai just schooled it. So that was pretty fun. I had the Toyota, and I didn't have any money, but I really wanted a buggy. I started collecting bits and pieces. I bought an old '83 Celica that had a '22 RE, and I drove it home and parted it out in my garage and called the pick and pull, and they came and got the carcass. I got a W56, and I got a dual transfer case, and I got a IFS rear-end, and I had a Dana 44 from a or something like that. And I had all these parts all cleaned up and the actual housing is all shaved and everything all prepped. And then somebody came along and wanted my my 22R, and I made a few bucks on that.

[00:35:11.760] - Randy Slawson

And somebody came along and wanted my Dana 44, and I sold that. So I ended up by 2003, about the time the Samurai was done, I started building on it my first two chassis. And by that time, I was working for Alan Nemo at Extreme Performance Sand Cars, which was up in Grand Terrace. It was five miles from my place. And it was $100,000 dune buggies. Twin turbo LS, long travel, King Shox, and the Mendeola, sequential transmissions and all this stuff. So my skill set went from grinders and the poop pipe and the The stick welder. It grew real fast. I got a MIG, I got a lathe or had access to a lathe there. I started bending a Croon Mollet. I went straight from coop pipe to Croon Mollet tubing. Ended up getting a Dana 60 king pin from a Dodge and shortened it up to the front of that thing. So I bought a wrecked Tacoma with a three RZ, and I mixed and matched the W59 from that truck with the W56 that I had that needed rebuilt. And I asked Marlin about it. I was like, Is this going to work?

[00:36:41.990] - Randy Slawson

And he said, yeah, I don't see why not. And he's like, I've never tried it, but you're going to have to either modify or mix and match some shift rails. Anyway, I made the thing work. I built this little 2600 pound buggy with a 3RZ. It had 150 horsepower fuel injected motor and dual transfer cases. I had that super heavy Dana 60 in the front and a super light little 8. 4 out of it to come in the back. I did six lug wheel hubs on the I went and put it on 39-inch TSLs. And that thing, I thought it was the best working rig around. Had it on air shocks and had 60, 40, 40% up travel type of thing. So a lot of rigs back in that day, a lot of rigs still don't have any up travel, and I built mine with a decent amount of up travel. So it was a blast. It would go anywhere and everywhere I could dream of, and nobody could keep up. I didn't think they could. And I ended up making friends with White Bro with the fro, Shane Henry off pirate, and we wheeled every weekend.

[00:37:59.040] - Randy Slawson

That thing So I got that buggy done April, I think it was '05, and went to the... I don't remember that year if it was the Bender Jambury or if it was the Foreigner Jambury. The All Pro. I don't remember who sanctioned it or who put it on, but I was out there with that rig given rides. I think I gave 20 different people rides up back door. I was getting cocky as the days went on, how good that rig worked. I knew Marlin, but I didn't know him very well. But I knew that he had a big heart and he would do anything for anybody. I went over to his camp. I don't remember. I think it was probably Sunday morning. I started telling him about my rig, and I told him that it was making a weird noise. I wondered if he'd go for a ride with me so I could show him the noise that it was making. So I got him strapping into that buggy, and we headed for back door. And I drove off the lake bed just real slow, short shift and quiet and easy. And as soon as I hit the rough, I just let her eat and went smashing up that wash up in the back door.

[00:39:19.340] - Randy Slawson

I think he was terrified. We hit back door and jumped up it, and he just commented over and over, Oh, Randy, I can't believe the stress this transfer case is under right now. Oh, Randy, I can't believe we just did back to, oh, Randy this, no, Randy that. He figured out real fast that if he started talking to me, I'd let off the gas because I couldn't hear him. So he chatted me It got pretty good. And by the time we got back to the Lakebed, he's like, Hey, will you give Big Mike ride in your rig? And will you give... At that time, there was a dude that had been working at AllPro that was up at Marlin. That's the dude's name right now. I gave him ride. I gave half the camp over there ride, up back door. I had that rig for nine months and I sold it because I had big plans of something better. I can't ever be satisfied with anything for very long. I learned so much and I'm not the type to cut something that works apart. I just want to build a better one. I took that thing to Martin Luther King Day with the build to grind guys in Arizona.

[00:40:39.490] - Randy Slawson

And I unloaded it out of the trailer and this dude named No Alan Grogan off pirate. He walked up and said, why do you bring that rig? It doesn't even run, does it? And I said, Sure it runs. It was such a plain Jane, clean, simple little rig. He's like, Well, where's the battery? Where's the wiring? Where's the plumbing? Where's this? Where's that? It's all here, man. By the second or third trail, the BTG guys were like, Hey, Randy, why don't you try this? None of us have made it before, but maybe you can make it. And I'd school their obstacle, and we'd go on to the next thing. By Sunday, no one was like, What do you want for this thing? And I told them, Oh, 25. And he was like, Hundred? Sold. I said, fuck you, man. 25 grand. And he laughed at me. The next few days into the next week, he called me up. All right, what do you really want for that thing? And I was like, we went back and forth, and I think he bought it from me for 21. 5, and I thought I was rich. I never had so much cash in my life.

[00:41:45.870] - Randy Slawson

So I started buying, bought an LS, and bought my first automatic, and bought an Atlas four speed, and started buying parts. And then I got fired from the Dune Buggy shop. They didn't have access to the TIG welder, the lathe anymore.

[00:42:04.300] - Big Rich Klein

I'm hearing a little bit of a theme here. What do you think the reason for being fired was? I had that same thing.

[00:42:21.470] - Randy Slawson

I don't want to call myself a know-it-all, but I just think that I can do it better. Sure, we can do it like that, or we can do this thing. And funny how people don't like, especially business people that have been doing it for a while. They don't want to hear that you've got a better way to do it. So I got let go from basically every job I ever had. But within a few years, by 2008, I started summer and never looked back.

[00:43:05.170] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. I know I went through a whole bunch of different careers in jobs and only got fired from one of them. But I got to the point where I just would throw my keys on the table or turn my shit in and just go, I'm out of here. You guys are idiots. And I realized that I was not a good employee. I couldn't work for somebody else because to me, they were all dumb.

[00:43:36.930] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. My wife calls it unemployment. Yes. You're unemployment.

[00:43:44.270] - Big Rich Klein

So true I get it. So let's go to your first comp. You said it was put up or shut up at Lake Amador, and that happened to be my first comp as well. That was at November of 2001. And you spotted for Dustin, correct?

[00:44:07.580] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, Dustin invited me to come out and spot for him. And so I made the trip up from LA. And I remember getting there and just being overwhelmed with all these rigs. The Favor Boys had Favor Brother. One of them had that sniper buggy, another one had that Bob Rogge built FJ40 buggyed out machine. I remember them just being painted up fancy and just like, wow, look at these rigs. I don't remember. Do you remember how many rigs were there? How many people competed?

[00:44:50.070] - Big Rich Klein

42. Okay. I know more about that first event than I do just about any other event I've gone. Because there's been nearly between racing with Vora and Dirtriate, and then, of course, Cal Rocks and We Rock. I've put on nearly 400 events. I've lost track. But that one, I will always remember.

[00:45:16.580] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. I remember walking through the pits and looking at all those rigs, or it wasn't even pits at the time. It was just the gathering of people just getting there and Really being impressed with the Favor Brothers rigs. And then I mentioned already to you that Chris Durham made a real impression on me, and I've got a little story about that. So I think The way the lineup worked, we're, Gus and I followed him around course to course. I don't remember if we were immediately after him or not, but I remember standing there and watching his... I don't remember if it was him or co- driver was talking to the course marshal and said, hey, man, if we pile rocks in front of this cone and we hit it, if we jump over the cone, does that count? And the course guy was amused by their strategy and said, yeah, I'll give it to you. Whatever. Let's see what you got. And Chris just hit it with everything he had, which was a lot more than what we had at the time. But all he did was splout of that rock pile right into the cone and just smoked the cone.

[00:46:34.480] - Randy Slawson

But I remember that his approach to the whole thing, more power, more speed, that spoke to me. That was my style. I like hitting it and seeing what happens, not picking at it and crawling and digging. The super slow, super methodical, super So thought out rock crawling technique isn't really my jam. So I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:47:08.780] - Big Rich Klein

Do you remember him breaking his driveline? Or he broke the yoke or something. It wasn't the yoke, but he had to replace the driveline on course.

[00:47:21.220] - Randy Slawson

So I was listening to one of your podcasts, and I don't remember who it was with, and you guys talked about that. And I remember you talking about how he had the wrenches necessary to change the driveline. Seemed like that was the weak link was like duct tape to the shifter in the Jeep or something like that.

[00:47:39.990] - Big Rich Klein

Everything was finger tight.

[00:47:42.630] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, I probably wouldn't have remembered that. But when you told the story, I did remember it. I remember specifically or vividly him. I don't remember if it was... To me, it was maybe the southeast corner of the the little pit. Him trying to shoot this obstacle and rolled one way and recovered and then rolled the other way. I just remember gas and steering and It was super entertaining.

[00:48:17.690] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, you got to say that about Chris. He's got the one video at Donner that was being played forever on anything that had do with rednecks, rednecksports or anything like that. It was always the clip that they showed. It's just him on the throttle bouncing all over the place on his side and then pops up the the wall there at Donner that was Just incredible. But that was his style. I mean, he loved the throttle.

[00:48:52.450] - Randy Slawson

So on that note, right after I won my first hammers in 2013, the opportunity to have my rig delivered out to Arkansas for a rock bouncing event at Super Lift Park, I guess. So I flew into Arkansas saw. We got a rental. We went over and met my rig. And I knew Madran 11, Cole. And I knew of Timmy Cameron. And So I met up with Cole, and I don't remember if he had a rig or if he got me in a rig. And it was raining. It had been raining for days. And my rig, it doesn't go in the mud. It doesn't go in the rain. So it stayed in the trailer, and I went out on the trail with them. And I realized pretty quick, it was all their wheeling area is all slate. And it's not really... It's not dirty. It's not muddy. It's not gross. So we got back and I pulled my rig out of the trailer and I took Cole for a rip and he showed me some places and he was like, man, you got to take Timmy out for a ride in this thing. So a little later in the day, we found Tim and got him in the car.

[00:50:16.870] - Randy Slawson

He just said over and over, it's like a damn razor. It's like a damn razor. He couldn't get enough of it, couldn't figure out how the suspension was so good. It only had 500 horsepower or something compared to their 8, 9, 10, however many hundreds of horsepower bouncer. It wasn't the fastest, most powerful thing there, but it was fast, and it handled good. He was I was pretty blown away by it. So ended up, money guy back then, and the money guy bought the rig and ordered another one. So that bomber 6 car that I'd won that race, that King of the Hammers in 13, ended up going. Timmy raced it in 14 at Hammers and maybe 15, too, a few other races around the country. So I was It's a lot of fun getting to know some dudes and hang out with some guys from the other side of the world.

[00:51:22.150] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And a completely different discipline. I mean...

[00:51:27.280] - Randy Slawson

Oh, that's where I was going with all that. You have to attack things with speed and horsepower. We're spoiled out West with traction. Those guys don't have any traction. So the only thing you can do if you want to make it is just hit it as hard as you can. So. Yeah.

[00:51:45.840] - Big Rich Klein

At least in a lot of the times. I know that Derek West went out there with his car and and won a bunch of races, and so did... Kenny Bloom went to one, and then they said, Okay, well, you won the rock crawling class, which He was the only one in the rock crawling class. But he crawled everything where these guys were just bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. But it was, I guess, the terrain was drier on those weekends or something. I don't know. I remember at the Hammers when they had Dave had set up for the challenge where it was like a speed run that was more into the bouncer's favor, favor going into to get to qualify. And then it was a rock crawling course for the finals. And two of the rock crawlers came in first and second, and that might have been Jeff McKinley that year that he did it. And one of the guys there said, Well, Rich, how come you're not bragging about your rock crawlers winning? And I said, and I know I'm going to catch flak for this, but I looked at him and I said, Well, I don't need to because we all know that rock crawling takes more talent than bouncing.

[00:53:07.010] - Big Rich Klein

I said, Anybody can hit a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. And he looked at me like, oh, Jesus. And that was I just laughed and walked away. Of course, I'm going to take some flack from those rock bouncer, but I just had to make that comment just as a joke at that particular moment. I think Timmy Cameron has a lot of when it comes to feeling the car.

[00:53:35.170] - Randy Slawson

Tim made a fan out of me. I didn't think that rock bouncing took a ton of skill either. But he came out West and drove that bummer after I built the new one. We did some trails like Total Love and SOS, and some trails that Dave doesn't put in that. It hammers for good reason. When you Timmy has traction, he can be extremely calculated, messful, and fix killer lines. He's a badass.

[00:54:10.870] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I agree. I think that he's One of the guys there that's doing that discipline that has a lot of talent. There's certain guys that are wheelmen, I guess you'd say, like a Robbie Gordon, where he can go fast on pavement, on dirt, roundy rounds, whatever. There's certain guys that can drive just about anything if they're given a little bit of time to pick it up.

[00:54:46.700] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:49.120] - Big Rich Klein

So how many rock-crawls did you compete in?

[00:54:52.810] - Randy Slawson

Before we switched gears, you were talking about the slow and go cone dodging thing, whatever it was. I think it was probably a few years before that, 2014, it was the backdoor shootout. I think the backdoor shootout was the first rock crawling-ish little event that Dave did as an add on to Hammers, right? Right. So in 2014, I won the Backdoor shootout, and second place and third place were my cars Cody Wagner got second, and Ben Napier got third, all in bomber cars. Nice.

[00:55:37.000] - Big Rich Klein

I do remember that. That's right.

[00:55:42.560] - Randy Slawson

You were asking about how many comps did. Dustin and I did Amador, and we thought we did pretty good. I don't remember exactly what that was for us. If it was seventh or it was 10th. We were like, Man, if we just do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, the rig is going to work better. So we came back and did, I think the next one was Lion's Pride.

[00:56:06.330] - Big Rich Klein

Yes, Lion's Pride in Lucerne Valley.

[00:56:09.850] - Randy Slawson

So Dustin drove that Toyota truck that he had. It was a '94 Toyota truck. He drove it to Johnson Valley, and he and I wheeled our Toyota trucks out there for a week or so. And leading up to the weekend of the comp, he swaps some fresh Spicer We had stock axles into his Chevy Dana 44. That was the week link. And we drove it over to Lion's Pride and completed those two days, and we drove it back at night to Johnson Valley in camp. We did worse on that comp than we did the first one as far as how we finished. And then the next one, if I remember correctly, was Moon Rocks. And we did even worse than that one. We did progressively worse as the time went on. Every one we did, we finished worse. And I don't remember if I was like, screw this, I'm done with spotting or I don't remember what happened. I know Dustin did some comps after that. I don't know if they were consecutive to your program, if you did the next one after After Moon Rocks or not, but I wasn't involved anymore for whatever reason.

[00:57:38.030] - Randy Slawson

I don't remember. That was almost, what, 24 years ago. Absolutely. But those were the three events that I did with your program.

[00:57:56.250] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk then about the King of the Hammers. You weren't in that very first 13, were you?

[00:58:05.950] - Randy Slawson

I sold that rig to Nolan, and within months, I feel like, Dave called me up and said, Hey, we're going to do this thing. It's invite only. And I was like, Man, I don't have a rig. And he was like, Well, get it back. I talked to no one about that, that I could borrow it. But he was in Texas, and I just had a crappy old Silverado 1500. He was like, If you can get it and then prep it after you're done and bring it back to me, you can run it. I was like, Once again, that may as well have been in the other to me, 20 plus hours away. Never been to Texas in my life, so that didn't happen. So my next best option was John was racing, and I teamed up with him, and I co-drew for him. And he wanted me because I knew the hammers liked the back of my hand, and I wanted him because he had a badass machine, and we won it. But before that, back to the bash buggy, Dylan named my Toyota Rock Crawler the bash buggy because you just beat on it and laugh about it.

[00:59:26.250] - Randy Slawson

I passed Dave in sledgehammer, and went up around and back to the beginning of the trail, up Second Canyon, past the mailbox, up Second Canyon, over the Sand Hill, back down around, started the trail again, passed him again, almost the same spot. I think we passed them. I think we lapped him three times on the trail. And he's like, I should hold a race out here. And he's told me this, and he's told other people. But myself and Shane Henry were his inspiration for starting King of the Hammers because of That was how I like to wheel hammer trails. I like to wheel the hard lines, but I also just like seeing how fast we could bounce through the trail.

[01:00:13.210] - Big Rich Klein

What was the most memorable moment in that first race that you won?

[01:00:22.750] - Randy Slawson

In 2000, during COVID, 2000, 2001, Dave called around and invited a bunch of us. O. G, the Kings, and a few people invited us all to come down there and race. It was all hush hush because we weren't supposed to be out and about. We were supposed to be, what did they call it? Staying home.

[01:00:54.700] - Big Rich Klein

Social distancing.

[01:00:56.680] - Randy Slawson

It was even worse than that. Stay home, stay safe. Yeah. All the way down there. And the reason I bring this up is because we re-raced that O. G. Course. It was 34 miles or something like that, 36 miles. I hadn't thought a whole bunch about it in, what was that, 13 years or whatever I remember. Anyway, we reran that course, and I couldn't tell you what it was right now. I know we went out and ran up Outer Limits first. David stashed a little booklet or a notepad or something at various places and told us where to find them. And basically, the way we to prove that we won the race was if you'd signed your name to this book. So I remember that. I don't remember a ton about the trails. I don't remember getting stuck. I don't think we had to winch. I remember finishing and it being a little anticlimactic because there wasn't even anybody there to congratulate us. Just went back to camp and had a beer. But I remember being pretty happy that we won. I think that was the first... I think that was the first race, motorized race of any kind that I'd entered.

[01:02:28.500] - Randy Slawson

I think that's accurate. And so winning it was pretty cool. I already had big plans after selling the four-wheel drive, little four-cellular five-speed rig, doing a V8 automatic buggy, and that motivated that whole program. Got me excited about building a race car.

[01:02:57.500] - Big Rich Klein

That was I'm trying to figure the timeline. You said that was during COVID?

[01:03:05.760] - Randy Slawson

No, I'm sorry. I bounced around on you. So 2007 was the OG 13 race, right? Yeah. So during COVID, we reran the OG course. Oh, okay. And I hadn't thought a ton about that course or how long it was or where we went or whatever until that time. So I bounced back and forth on you. Okay.

[01:03:28.960] - Big Rich Klein

So you're What year was your first win?

[01:03:35.430] - Randy Slawson

2013. '13.

[01:03:39.610] - Big Rich Klein

Then you have three wins, correct?

[01:03:42.960] - Randy Slawson

Yes.

[01:03:42.990] - Big Rich Klein

Then you have the one that you lost the transmission, like a mile and a half from the finish?

[01:03:54.620] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, that was one of the years Jason won. They all run together to me now. '18, '19, '20, it was one of those three years.

[01:04:06.410] - Big Rich Klein

Then you had another one where you got real close.

[01:04:12.380] - Randy Slawson

Funny, I'm not superstitious. I'm not way into numbers, but for one reason or another, I have good luck in odd years, and I usually have bad luck in even years. In 2007, we won. In 2008, I led half the race and we DNFed. 2009, I almost won. I smashed my oil pan, ended up finishing second. In 2010, I think I lost it. 2010, I rode with Ben Napier in bomber one. I'd sold that car to him and co-drove with him. 2011, I I had another car, and I think I lost the transmission. No, I had all kinds of problems all day. I led the race a couple of times, had some big bleeds, fixed all kinds of stuff on the course. I had this thermostat housing, a fabricated thermostat housing came loose. It was silicone to the water pump, and it broke the... It bent. I willed it all together out of aluminum, and it was after being it heated up so much. It was soft and malleable, and it bent, cracked. And on the trail, Greg Adler came along, and he needed water. So I gave him all my water. No, the other way around.

[01:05:47.000] - Randy Slawson

He needed a spare tire, so I gave him my spare tire, and in trade, I got all of his water, and he gave me a sheetrock knife, and I cut the leather buckle protector thing that goes on your seat belt, keeps the buckle from in your belly. I cut that thing off and I made a gasket out of it for that thermostat housing. I got into the pit, and Scott Hartman was pitting for Ben that year, and we were on the outskirts a little bit, on the the branches of the pit. I came in on the radio, I said, Hey, I made this gasket. I said, If it's not leaking, don't touch it. If it is leaking, maybe just snug it just a little bit and gas me up and let me go. So he was pretty impressed with the ingenuity and don't quit attitude that I had. And I had fuel problems on the second lap. That was lap one, I had that problem. On the second lap, I vapor locked. I had an inline fuel pump that wasn't getting it done. And so we stopped in the spare pump, and that worked for a while.

[01:06:59.130] - Randy Slawson

And I was going to get second place behind Shannon, and it vapor locked again. I swapped again. I got fourth place, which was not where I wanted to be, obviously, but it was a pretty solid finish for all the problems that we had. So then after that, Scott and the dust junkies started pitting for me, and they pitted for me all the way up until Scott retired. And the dust junkies kept on doing it, parts of that crew. But it's gone So it's like that every other year. I'll have a good finish or a decent finish, and then I'll have a DNF and back and forth. I think I may have broke that cycle. Let me think about this I think it was 2024, I won the EMC overall, I guess. So that was an even year. But something about odd years, I seemed to have a It's a better luck, better chance of looming.

[01:08:03.500] - Big Rich Klein

How many cars have you produced at a bomber?

[01:08:10.280] - Randy Slawson

For the longest time, they were all like my babies. I knew who had what, and I could tell them apart based on delivery or the green seats or this thing or that thing. When I moved from California up to Nevada, I had built 11 cars, and I moved to Nevada in 2014. I've completely lost track. I think I'm in the '40s at this point for turnkey builds. Back in '18 or so, I started building trail cars again. Dave has my first bomber trail rig Now I've built close to 10 of those. Half of them, most of them are rear-steer cars. I was liked Dang it. That was his name. Kevin Carroll. I met Kevin in 2015, I think, when I won my second Hammers. We palled around at Moab that Easter Jeep Safari after I won Hammers, and he took me rock crawling in his rig, and I took him smashing around in mine. And I always liked his style. It was basically the same power running gears I've been using in bomber cars, but tailored a little bit more towards adventure, rock crawling, hardcore, not really geared towards cone dodging, more geared towards exploring.

[01:10:01.250] - Big Rich Klein

Trail-breaking type stuff.

[01:10:02.950] - Randy Slawson

Yeah. Right. So when I started building trail rigs again, my rigs are not like red dots. They're bomber cars, but with that Altecality, big, tough. They're long, they're wide, they're powerful, 40-spline axles, big 42-inch sticky red label colors. And Had a lot of fun, a lot of success with that, too.

[01:10:34.870] - Big Rich Klein

You've always been a BFG guy.

[01:10:38.910] - Randy Slawson

The first King of the Hammers, I showed up on I-ROCK Swampers. I hit up at that time, it was Victor was the BFG rep. He said, Can you sponsor me some tires, and he's like, I don't know who you are. And he tells the story. He went to Dave. He said, I got two sets of tires left. Two should I give them to? And he listed off the guys that were wanting tires. And he listed off Randy Slawson and Rick Monihan. And Dave said, give them to those guys. So I got KRT-Bs or whatever they were in 2009. And I've never left a sponsor that I it felt like was taking care of me. If the product performed well and if it was easy to get and it didn't let me down, then I just stuck with it. I think before I even competed, one of the East Coast guys, and I'm not going to pull up his name right now, single-seat dude from New York or something. He was a Bulldog-sponsored driver, and I think he chimed in on my pirate build thread for my first bomber. He's like, What winch are you going to put on that thing?

[01:12:10.680] - Randy Slawson

I was like, I don't know. I don't really have anything in the budget for a winch right now, and he's like, I bet Bulldog would hook you up. So that was my first sponsor. Was that Doug Bigelow? Yeah, Doug. Okay.

[01:12:24.070] - Big Rich Klein

He's a good one for Bulldog. I mean, he is a Bulldog.

[01:12:30.260] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I had a ton of... That build thread on pirate had a ton of pages, and people I was really digging what I was working on and how it was coming out. I'd quit my job and was just working out of a little two and a half car garage. But I learned a ton by that point, and I had a nice welder, and I a band saw and I had a lathes and I had a belt sander, and I was turning out some pretty nice rigs, a pretty nice rig. I took it to Off-Road Expo that year in 2008. And I remember I didn't hardly know Tom Waze, but he's like, swotted me in the parking lot. Where's the rig? Let's check out that rig. So it was fun. It was cool to I built something. At the time, it didn't really look like anything anybody else is doing. It was low and long and clean and mean and had a ton of up travel. And it was the first of the evolution of hammer cars. It's funny to me to look back on it, and I'm building a car that doesn't look all that different today.

[01:13:55.850] - Randy Slawson

And there's nobody else that's been as stuck stubborn and just unchanging and can say that they've been building a rig for going on 20 years. That's still relatively the same as the first one.

[01:14:11.550] - Big Rich Klein

Right. The only one that I would say that I think is like that is Miller, Eric. Right. Especially a straight Axel. I mean, you guys are like the holdouts.

[01:14:25.230] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[01:14:27.500] - Big Rich Klein

And so about that, are you ever going to build a chicken wing car?

[01:14:31.190] - Randy Slawson

I started on one with that whole Timmy Cameron deal, 2014. That time, the winiest, most amazing thing was Lauren's Red Dragon. And so I went to Armada Engineering and ordered the second independent front suspension set up that was so It was similar to Lauren's, but I wanted to run six-inch backspace wheels, and I wanted it to be 86 or 88 or something outside of tire. Lauren's was 91 or something like that. And I thought that was way too wide for him. I started on that rig, but the guy who was financing it, he's died since. But finances got weird and ended up having to sell it. Todd Romano still has the car. Bobby Gordon, he's tight with Todd, and he said, he told Todd, Call up Randy and see if we can get a rig. So Todd called me and I said, I got something you might be interested in. So I ended up showing him that I have this car. I was disappointed that he didn't just want me to finish it. But at the time, I just needed to get out from under the financial responsibility. Long story short, I would like to.

[01:16:05.790] - Randy Slawson

It's just I've been holding out because I figured it'd take me three years to figure it out, and a ton of money and a ton of time. I figured out, I mean, it's not going to take me three years to build the car, but it's going to take me a few years failing with it before I think I'd have success. I'm afraid I would say that that's the way it would go.

[01:16:32.830] - Big Rich Klein

What do you think of the cars like the four-wheel independent? Like Cody's?

[01:16:46.450] - Randy Slawson

I drove Cody's car one time, and I followed Cody around at the Hammers Trails and watched the way it works. It works totally different than a solid-axle car. It works very similar to the way you rock-croll a side-by-side. You can just center up the biggest rock in the trail and just hit it right down the middle. As long as you got tires in contact, so it'll just... It's like a toboggan. It just slides over it. They were good. The thing that I've noticed, I've gone out with Cameron Steal, who drove that thing for a few years, and I gave him a ride in my car. He's like, man, you're mean to this thing. I'm like, This is just how we wheel. He's like, man, if I drove Cody's car like you drive this thing, it would be broke. And I'm like, Well, I like being mean to cars. I don't know if that would fit my driving style.

[01:17:53.080] - Big Rich Klein

That's the thing that I've noticed, is that it just seems like those cars are delicate There's just so many, I don't know, more moving parts.

[01:18:07.420] - Randy Slawson

Cody's car, it was Armada's first attempt at a four-wheel independent. It was Their first attempt at a Hammer car. There were a lot of design issues. Remember the big thing on pirate is triangles. There's more triangulation Well, that thing didn't have any in some real key spots. So it broke apart a lot. And there's other the flip flop on that, like Shannon's car, it's not four wheel independent, but when Shannon brought the first IFS car to the Lakebed and many that came after that, I said, those cars always break, but the independent isn't what breaks. It's the independent gives the driver so much confidence, he breaks everything else. They blow the motor, they break the trans, they break the rear-end, they break the... You name it. The CVs and the chicken wings, like front ends always hold together, it seems like. Very, very rarely have a failure with the IFS part of the scenario.

[01:19:33.200] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, Campbells seem to be engine issues.

[01:19:37.890] - Randy Slawson

I don't know what that's. Definitely recently.

[01:19:40.250] - Big Rich Klein

What's that?

[01:19:41.150] - Randy Slawson

Definitely recently. Yeah.

[01:19:43.780] - Big Rich Klein

That's why I'm glad I got into event promoting instead of building or racing. I don't think I could have kept up with the maintenance bills, to be honest.

[01:19:59.940] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, sometimes we shake our heads, buy a new diff. It costs four grand, it costs six grand, it costs eight grand. Put it in the car, think we're breaking it in nice, 500 miles later It's like Tom Waze says, hot rod gravy. It's like, man, what did I spend all this money on? I got this little Toyota Tacoma I beat on. I paid 35 It's 3500 bucks for it. Best 3,500 bucks I've ever spent. More miles per dollar. Buy one of those diffs and it goes 500 miles and it's paperweight, a bunch of junk. Two years in a row, I lost hammers to a broken diff, and I've this year to a broken front diff, which is a new one for me.

[01:20:54.990] - Big Rich Klein

What is on the horizon for Randy?

[01:20:59.470] - Randy Slawson

That's a good I got divorced a few years ago, got remarried. Amber works here at bomber. We Chase each other around in the hills and ride dirt bikes and go camping and wheeling. She's done the Suzuki Samurai at Hammers for five years or something like that and tried to finish. The last year she did that, I spent a bunch of time in the shop helping her with the car, making it better, putting big shocks on it and getting it shock-tuned and this and that, but still couldn't manage a finish in time. So In '24, I built myself a new Legends car. My brother and I raced it, we won. And that evening, we prepped it, and she raced it in '44 the next day. And she got her first King of the Hammers finish. She finished 21st or 22nd or something like that, ran more miles than anybody. She got lost and ran trails twice. So the big push for me to have her race 4,400 in that car last year was get her prepped for this year for the EMC. So this year, I spent more time in the wrong seat, I call it, in the right seat, riding around with her, coaching her, trying to get her up to speed with the desert.

[01:22:42.800] - Randy Slawson

She's a great rock cruller, but She hasn't had any means to go fast. She never had anything that you could have enough power to slide or drift or get more than 50 miles an hour out of it. I've been trying to get her up to speed with that car and then hammers this year. I don't know if you follow along with that episode at all.

[01:23:09.260] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I sure did.

[01:23:10.640] - Randy Slawson

She did amazing. She just about won it. If it wouldn't have been for missing a couple of checkpoints, she'd have overhauled the race, which was better than we imagined. I knew that she was a badass rock cruiser, but I had no expectation of her overalling. She started. She didn't qualify well. I think she started 30th and finished first. Then she ended up getting 45 minutes of penalties, 15 minutes per RCP per rock checkpoint that she missed. And some of them you could literally have spit out the window of the chassis and hit the spot that she should have been, but it was a miss. But she beat Cameron. I don't remember if it was 30 seconds or 2 minutes, but even with 45 minutes was a penalty, she beat the third-place guy. Nice. Good.

[01:24:21.150] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. So Bommer's going good. How big is your shop now? It's more than two and a half cars?

[01:24:28.480] - Randy Slawson

So when When I moved to Nevada, I was looking at this property and it didn't have a shop on it. And that was a big sticking point was, I need a shop, I need a shop. And this property ended up buying, had a coal barn on it. It was 36 by 36, but it was a horse barn. It was mostly dirt floor. It was sliding barn doors and horse stalls. It was not a shop. But I ended up enclosed it, framing the doors in, insulating it, put a little wood stove in there. And I worked in there for three or four years in some key cars or something like that out of that little barn before I scraped together enough money to build my shop in there now. And it's 50 by 80, it's 4,000 square feet. There's a nice little office, a little bathroom, and a little tool room, and an RV bay, and a 14 by 50 mezzanine upstairs, where we keep a lot of the spare parts and stuff. And the main shop floor is 50 by 50, roughly 2,500 square feet. Where we build cars.

[01:25:50.920] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. You're going to continue racing KOH, both of you. And you got any plans to ever race the Ultra Force Series, or are you just going to stick with KOH?

[01:26:07.740] - Randy Slawson

I've already raced this year more than I've raced in years. I ended up... One of my customers invited me to come race the mint. He rented a spec trophy truck, Brentland 6100. So he raced the first two laps and I raced the second two laps. We got 12th in... What was that? March, I guess, whenever the meant was, a couple, three, four weeks ago, something. So that was pretty cool. I've dreamt of racing trophy trucks forever, and finally got to check that one-off the list, and he's talking about buying a truck and doing more of that. So it's pretty wild. And then on a total win, one of my customers called me almost two weeks ago on Monday and said, hey, I'm going racing for a Yurrington 250. And I was like, Where's that? Obviously, I knew where Yurrington was, but talked to him and talk to another friend. They told me that they thought it was one of the best ultra four car desert races around to do super fun course. So my car was still in pieces for hammers, and I threw it back together real quick and made it out there. Justin Wicks co-drove with me.

[01:27:37.060] - Randy Slawson

He'd raced that race a time or two, and he, based on his calculations, he thought we could set the poll So immediately when he told me that he thought it was doable, that was my goal. I was like, let's go set the pole. So I ended up setting the pole three and a half seconds or something like that in a minute and a half or two-minute little lap. And started first and ran out front the whole race 250 miles and finished first by 13 minutes over the second place truck was the guy that everybody said would win it. It was a steel cab, a 8 truck, I guess.

[01:28:23.500] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, Class 8, heavy metal.

[01:28:25.680] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, the Germans. Everybody seems to know the Germans. They got second in a golf cart. Maverick R, I think, got third. But it was a good race. We pitted three times, got gas twice, no flats, no drama. Just drove around. We ended up... My fastest lap was 51. 25 miles per hour, and I think my average was 49. 2 2. 75 or something like that, almost 50 mile an hour average, which on a course that's winding enough to keep desert vehicles from overhauling, I thought that was a pretty good average speed. Absolutely.

[01:29:13.340] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, sounds good Are you going to have a new car for '26?

[01:29:22.220] - Randy Slawson

I'm currently working on a '48 car. Amber took mine over, I'm building another one. I joke about racing it in 4,400. I don't know. I'd have to sell my 4,400 car for that to become a reality. But Yeah. I'll be back in the EMC. Amber and I are going to go toe to toe and duke it out, I guess.

[01:29:57.780] - Big Rich Klein

If she drives over, are you going to throw a rock at I'm not really big on throwing rocks myself. Understood. Anything that we haven't- It's interesting now. What's that?

[01:30:14.710] - Randy Slawson

It's interesting how scenarios like that, and it's not a malicious act. When you're racing and you're racing to win, you're racing for keeps, things happen. And people get their feelings hurt because they're having a bad day, and you come along and show them how bad of a day they're having. I didn't I didn't mean to be that guy. I don't mean to have a bad reputation. Things just happen and people's feelings get hurt. And I don't think you can race to win and not hurt somebody's feelings. I don't think any of us that have ever won have a sparkling reputation, like never hurt anybody's feelings. You know what I mean? Right.

[01:31:10.810] - Big Rich Klein

No, that's true, especially at the Hammers.

[01:31:15.230] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[01:31:19.120] - Big Rich Klein

It's the name of the game or the nature of the beast, you might say.

[01:31:25.270] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[01:31:27.120] - Big Rich Klein

Well, cool. Randy, I want to say thank you so much for spending, well, basically an hour and a half and talking about your life and your racing history and everything. I thought it was interesting that we both had the first event.

[01:31:46.810] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[01:31:48.210] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it was good that you were there.

[01:31:51.380] - Randy Slawson

Do you- Go ahead. Sorry to interrupt you. I got one more little story. Sure. I think it was while I was moving to Southern California, we stopped at Rubicon, and I believe we chatted. I remember you and your son, you were probably in a white Cherokee. Next to Little Sluce, Dustin was there for sure. I think I remember you saying you worked at the Napa in Pollet Pines?

[01:32:20.230] - Big Rich Klein

I was the manager at Cragans up until I did that first event.

[01:32:27.940] - Randy Slawson

Okay. That's the first time I I remember meeting you. Okay.

[01:32:32.230] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, that would have been 2001.

[01:32:37.580] - Randy Slawson

Yeah.

[01:32:37.700] - Big Rich Klein

That summer. Cool. Was I an asshole?

[01:32:46.990] - Randy Slawson

I don't remember that.

[01:32:48.080] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, good. Because a lot of people will tell you I was. But that's okay. We are what we are. All right. Randy, you take care. Thank you for spending this time and hashing old memories, and I appreciate it.

[01:33:10.490] - Randy Slawson

Yeah, I'm glad we were able to catch up. We were talking about doing this before Hammers, and just It just didn't quite work out schedule-wise, but I'm glad we were able to do it.

[01:33:19.820] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, me too. So have a great evening. Have a great weekend. And like I said, this will air next Thursday, so enjoy it when you listen to it.

[01:33:30.600] - Randy Slawson

All right.

[01:33:31.270] - Big Rich Klein

Thanks. All right. Talk to you later.

[01:33:33.660] - Randy Slawson

Bye. Bye.

[01:33:36.130] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.