Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Amber Slawson: From Samurai to Bomber - Blazing Her Own Trail at King of the Hammers

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Amber Slawson: From Samurai to Bomber - Blazing Her Own Trail at King of the Hammers · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
0:05
over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
0:09
designers, and everything in between.
0:11
Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder to.
0:16
How did they get that job or become that person?
0:19
The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
0:27
Strap in and hold tight because today's episode takes us off the
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beaten path and deep into the wild.
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With Off-Road Racer Amber Slauson, a fearless competitor carving
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her own trail through some of the toughest terrain on four wheels.
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From Dusty deserts to Rocky Mountain climbs.
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Amber's journey into the world of off-road racing is powered by
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grit, determination, and a love for adventure that knows no limits.
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Whether she's wrenching on her rig or flying through a stage at
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full throttle, Amber's proof that the off-road world is just as much
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about heart as it is horsepower.
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So get ready to meet the woman who's rewriting the rules of
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off-road racing one mile at a time.
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And with that, let's welcome Amber to break fix.
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Hello Amber.
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Hi guys, and joining me tonight is a special co-host returning to the
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studio, David Andrews, our resident off-roading expert, who you might
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remember from the all the torques.
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And Jesus takes the wheel episodes.
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So welcome back Drew.
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What's up?
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All right, Amber, like all good break, fix stories.
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There's a super heroine origin.
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So let's talk about the who, what, when and where of you.
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What first drew you in to the world of off-road racing and do you remember the
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moment that you knew it was your calling?
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Uh, I was in college and I didn't really have direction.
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I didn't grow up in Offroading at all.
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Like my dad and my brothers had dirt bikes and we would go
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camping and stuff like that.
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And then when my dad got two older ride dirt bikes, he had
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this Toyota pickup and that's kind what I learned how to drive in.
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So he kind of got into offroading that way.
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It's because, so you do you know who Jesse Combs was?
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Mm-hmm.
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So, yeah, so just for listeners, Jesse Combs was a female
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race car driver and a welder.
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And a fabricator.
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She raced King the Hammers, and she won in spec class.
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The only year they raced it in 2014 and won stock class in 2018, I believe.
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But anyways, so she passed away in August of 2019 trying to set a land speed record.
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I'd always been a big fan of hers.
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Know, watched her growing up and she really inspired me to get
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into welding and then to get into the rock crawling and offroading.
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And then when she passed away next day, me and my brother were like sharing
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memories over the phone and he's like, well, you gotta do something.
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And I was like, kind of wanna risking the hammers and he is like, you should do it.
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So it was.
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Her passing that me to take on this whole challenge, and I was like, I
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kind of wanna do my own off-road thing.
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And then, uh, I got my Samurai when I was 20 ish.
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I went to my first King of the Hammers.
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We only went for like a three day stint on the way home.
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I was like.
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Man, that was so awesome.
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I gotta make this the center of my life.
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It was just the, I was so impressed.
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I was there for three days and didn't see another single regular car.
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'cause like back then, you know how nowadays King of the Hammers, you see
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a bunch of like regular cars driving around, people bring their daily
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drivers and there's people coming in from town and stuff like that.
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Back then it was just rock crawlers everywhere.
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I was like, this is.
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The coolest thing ever.
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So that was kind of the inflection point for me.
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Well, Amber, first off for our listeners, let's cover what King of the Hammers is.
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Yeah.
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So King of the Hammers, it's called the hardest one day off-road race.
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It's a lot like the Burning Man of Off-Road.
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That's what a lot of people like to call it.
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It's turned into this like three week long, almost like a festival where it all
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started, the King of the Hammers race.
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Was with rock crawlers basically going fast in the desert too.
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So the very first king to hammers was in 2007 and it was like a 36
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mile long course on means dry lake bed and out in the hammers trails.
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And the hammers trails are in Southern California, Johnson Valley, OHV Park.
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So it was this loop with a little bit of desert and a couple rock trails
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and whoever did 'em, all the fastest one for a case of beer basically.
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So that kind of evolved into desert racing plus rock racing.
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And now this year's course, the one that I ran was, uh, 120 miles.
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Something around there, I think is usually what they are.
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So it was about 60 miles of desert for our first lap, which we did twice,
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and then 20 or 30 miles of rocks.
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So if you've never been to or seen the rock trails at Johnson
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Valley, you should go look 'em up.
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See how big these rocks are?
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Yeah, those rocks can beat you up.
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Even just floating over 'em.
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You guys are taking them at speed.
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Up and down the mountain.
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Can you describe some of your most challenging races you've ever competed
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in and how you pushed through it?
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Oh, wait, wait.
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Before we get to that, drew, I thought you would ask her about this Suzuki Samurai,
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like you've had some weird off roaders.
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Well, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.
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I'm gonna get to that.
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I'm very curious about the samurai, but I'm really curious about the
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whole process that she brought up, bouncing over those rocks.
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That's tough.
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It's pretty totally my body.
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Especially, and that's something that I've learned going from the
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Samurai to now I'm in the bomber, is how much more comfortable this car
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is and how much less I get beat up.
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When I used to race in my Samurai, I started in 20 and the goal was
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always just to finish because there's like a 85% attrition rate,
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so like 85% of cars that interchange the hammers don't finish at all.
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So my goal was to just finish and I'd usually spend around 10 to 14 hours in
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the car just trying to get that finish.
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It would beat me the heck up getting into the bomber.
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Nowadays it's a lot more comfortable, like I'm coming off it the next day.
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Less sore, less beat up.
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But going into, you know, even when I was just prepping my Samurai, it was
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October through January, 'cause the race is the first week of February.
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To circle back to your original question, the most challenging thing
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I've ever had to overcome, it's kind of a hard question for me because.
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A lot of racers don't finish this race because they break.
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I've never had a mechanical failure.
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I've always only ever not finished due to time.
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Probably the hardest thing mentally for me to overcome was
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my very first year that I raced.
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My goal was just to finish, and I was so absolutely just hell bent on.
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I just wanna keep going.
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I just wanna make it to the finish.
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The cutoff time had come and gone and they were like, oh, you need to come in now.
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Like race ops went to my mom.
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And told her she needs to come in 'cause we wanna see her cross the
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stage and come into Hammer Town.
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I had just done the whole desert lap.
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I had just gotten to the rock trails, which is all I really
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wanted to do was rock crawl.
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And so they called me in before I got to my first rock trail and I was so upset.
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I was driving in and I busted two tires on my way in and that year too, I got
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most of the way through the first lap and then I think I was out on my second
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lap and the rear pinion nut came off.
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It backed off 'cause it didn't get.
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And, and so my pick career had that changed out in like 15 minutes.
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Oh, that's a terrible, so that wasn't that hard of a thing to overcome when
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I did my research on you and I was sitting there like this girl did King
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of the Hammers in a fricking samurai.
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I would've been good with just most challenging things
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being there in a samurai.
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So for most users that don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is.
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It's a late eighties, early nineties, SUV with solid front and
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rear axles that do not move Much.
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Very pleased to see your samurai and how you were just a rebel.
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I don't know anyone else who would run King of the hammers in a samurai
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probably saw some really amazing things that that thing can do.
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When I started racing my Samurai, no one had ever raced a Samurai stock class
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before, so I kind of had to figure it out.
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'cause.
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Had to figure out all this safety stuff.
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More or less, read the rule book cover to cover a million frigging times, trying
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to figure out what goes and what doesn't.
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So between August, 2019, it was like six months to get my Samurai
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ready for King of the Hammers.
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'cause like racing, king of the Hammers had always kind of been like this.
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I'll do it one of these days kind of gold.
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And I had always imagined building another rig to do King
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Hammer in like a real race car.
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And so at the time I was like, well, I don't have time to build a bigger
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race car, and I don't really have the skills yet, but I've got my
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Samurai so I'll figure it out as I go.
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I got through all that stuff, made it through tech.
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I think I only had to go back to tech once, you know, they sent me back to fix
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my window nets or something like that.
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Came back and passed, which is pretty good.
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Apparently made it to the green flag.
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And so I was the first to race stock class in the Suzuki Samurai.
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And then I think at our peak there were six Samurai racing in total.
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He started a trend.
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Look at you.
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Yeah, a little bit because I mean, they're so cheap.
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Like I figured my whole program was.
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Cheaper than any other race car out there.
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It was so cool to just put these things together for people
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that just wanted to go racing.
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You know, they were just like me racing something that they already had.
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Cheap, but not fast.
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Not fast.
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No, no, no.
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What did you learn from your samurai?
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Was that one of those things that other than, you know, slight little things,
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that it was actually kind of like a little donkey, a little workhorse.
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It made it through without too much issue?
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Yeah, actually, that really speaks to, like me never having
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a mechanical failure on course.
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I like to say those things don't have enough power to hurt themselves.
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You know, there's 60 horsepower from the factory stock and then
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like the fuel injection ones are like 65 horsepower and they've got
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small axle shafts and stock axles.
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To get this, I was only running 31 inch tires the first two years I raced as well.
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Oh my gosh.
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And stock axle.
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Oh my goodness.
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But the, by the third year, I'd raised.
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I had done Toyota axles and then by the fourth year I had done fuel
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injection and much bigger shocks and basically tapped the thing for the
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modifications that I could do to it.
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I length in the wheel base three inches, which was the max for the rule book.
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It was on 35 inch tires when I finished racing it 'cause stock class.
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Rules are you have to keep the stock body, if it came solid
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axle, it has to stay solid axle.
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If it came IFS, it has to stay IFS.
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If it came with leaf springs, you have to stay on leaf springs.
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You can't go to Lynx, vice versa.
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And then you have to keep the stock motor and stock transmission.
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You have any transportation axles.
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Weren't TAM MRIs on Leaf Springs at one point?
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Yeah.
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All the Suzuki Samura that were made in America were all leaf sprung.
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And yours was a foil sprung?
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No, no, no.
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Mine's still leaf springs.
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Okay.
10:22
Yeah.
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By the time I was done racing it, I had Holly Fuel injection on the stock
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motor, longer leaf springs on it, but it was still leaf sprung, so it was okay.
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Toyota axles 35 inch tires length in the wheel base.
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Like I said, it was.
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As fast and capable as I could make it.
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And it still wasn't fast because you said 60 horsepower on a
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brand new engine back in the day.
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So what did a dino at?
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I've never actually dno the thing, but I assume calculated
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is about 65, 66 horsepower.
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23 or 24.
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I blew it up and then I rebuilt it, put a freshie in it.
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Then I did the fuel injection and that added like five or six horsepower.
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You think about it, it's a 10% gain in horsepower.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It's huge.
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Yeah.
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But Eric, you don't really need a whole lot of horsepower when
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you're running in lower gears.
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And if you get your gear in right, it helps to have more horsepower.
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But that thing is so little and it, how much did it weigh?
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29 50. Think was with the 17 inch wheels on it.
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Wow.
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That's heavy for that little thing.
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Yeah.
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I cut the weight a lot when I put the 15 inch wheels, but I
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don't think I weighed since then.
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And then when you put the 30 fives on, something like that,
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the breakover on it is amazing.
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So it doesn't need the 37, 44 inch tires to get it over rocks.
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It just literally Billy goats over to everything.
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Yeah.
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Or it squeezes in between it because it's so.
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So we might have skipped over it, but let's talk about the speeds of an
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event like King of Hammers, because there's different types of off-road
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events, some really low and slow stuff.
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There's high speed stuff like the Mint 400 and everything in between.
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So where does King of Hammers sit?
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You were talking about the desert portion of it.
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Is that pretty flat and you're just trying to cruise as fast as you can and you get
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to the rocky part, which slows you up?
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Yeah.
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So speaking about comparing speed.
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Mint 400.
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I think the average speed for that one is around 60 miles an hour.
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For the winners, it's around 60 miles an hour to finish all 400 miles.
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And so the average speed, I remember calculating it a couple years ago just
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to finish, king of the Hammers is around 12 miles per hour, and so the first lap
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is pretty much just flat out, kind of go as fast as you can to get to the rocks.
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I feel like my average was probably around 45 or 50 miles an hour, even though
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I hit up to 70 and it's pretty flat.
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Like this year was pretty smooth.
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They changed the course every year and they try to keep it
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as flat and smooth as they can.
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But we also run the same as the Desert Challenge that goes on the
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first weekend of King of a Hammers.
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So like the big Mint 400 trucks will run that course and shoot
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it up, so we run the same one.
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And you're doing about 50 or 60 or 70 in the desert section, and then the
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rocks you're doing maybe top speed 12 miles an hour, usually one to two miles
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an hour, especially in the bigger cars.
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You're not just rock crawling, you know, you look at rock crawlers and
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you see like small, technical, really slow movements, really low gearing.
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When you're racing, it's all about picking your line and tuning your shocks
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just for right tires, just dance over the rocks instead of having a bam,
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bam, bam, bam hit every single one.
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But in the Samurai it was, I was going pretty slow, but I was still
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trying to go as fast as I could.
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But it taught me a lot in that respect.
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Well, you know, drew, you know what I didn't hear on her list?
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I didn't hear Jeep Commander or Mercedes G Wagon on that list.
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Um, yeah, that's.
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Messed up.
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You got no name for the G Commander or the, or the Mercedes G Wagon.
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I haven't seen either of those races, but I'd really like to.
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I'd be so stoked.
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Yeah.
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Actually, when you bring that up, I've always kind of been a fan of
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the underdog, like who isn't right?
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But.
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Every time I see a car come into stock class that's a little bit different.
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Like last year we had a, a Volkswagen Porig come in and compete with us.
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And then a couple years ago we had a Durango buddy of mine had a
14:09
Toyota Sequoia that he had built up, and I like really suckered him in
14:14
to racing mat a couple years ago.
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I was like, that's a really cool rig.
14:18
It looks like a, a modified class card.
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He is like, yo, what kind of is.
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Now he races and his wife races and they've just stepped up to a
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bigger car and got them all into it.
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And then like all the S that came in racing, like I kind of
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created this still community of, we're all just kind of connected.
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'cause you know, if I came into pit.
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And needed help.
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I know that those guys, they totally lend a hand.
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I've had friends do that for me before and if I wasn't in my pit, I'd want my crew
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to help out the next Samurai guy because you know, we all share the same parts.
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Well, that's what I had.
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I had a Jeep commander and I'm currently on a Mercedes G wagon,
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and IU actually use both of them.
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Nice.
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Commander is Donezo, and I bring that up because in every racer's life
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there's the car you started out with, which is the one eventually kind of
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becomes your personal museum piece.
15:07
So your samurai's never gonna leave you unless money talks, right?
15:11
Nope, sorry, not with that one.
15:12
Yeah.
15:12
Right.
15:13
But at the end of the day, that's.
15:14
Gonna be the one that's gonna be with you forever and then
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you evolve to something else.
15:18
And you mentioned earlier that you're an A bomber now, and so as I understand
15:21
it, that's more like you see an RC car offer a, you know, big wheels
15:25
kind of low truck, that kind of thing.
15:27
Right?
15:27
So that's what you're in now, what was that transition
15:30
like going from stock class?
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To a fully prepared off roader.
15:34
So backstory, Randy's my husband.
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He's the one that designed these cars in the first place.
15:37
Bomber is his business.
15:39
I like to think that bombers is all ultra.
15:41
Four cars are kind of called the Swiss Army knife of our sport.
15:44
You know, they have to run fast in the desert and crawl
15:47
through the rocks quickly.
15:48
But so going from the samurai to the bomber was kind of detrimental
15:52
to the Samurai 'cause now I jump back in Samurai and forget, I'm.
16:00
I had never driven anything with that much horsepower.
16:04
The bombers only got 460 horsepower.
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It's a Crate LT one, only 460 horsepower, only 460 horsepower,
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400 more than your Samurai.
16:15
I just wanna point that out.
16:16
Exactly, and it's cool 'cause just with this last race that I just
16:21
did in Moab a couple weeks ago, I'm finally finding the limits of that.
16:24
You only use the horsepower flat out fast stuff coming from the samra.
16:28
I've always been really intimidated by that fast stuff, so I just.
16:31
Really easing into it.
16:33
And now I'm trying to finally finding the limits of the 460 horsepower.
16:37
Let's see, the bomber's got 114 inch wheel base, 37 inch tires when I race it.
16:43
Nine inch axles.
16:44
Yeah.
16:44
It's a full cheater code, basically.
16:48
Yeah, it's, and they're built for the hammer trails too, like my husband.
16:51
And Randy lived down there for years and that's how he did his research
16:55
and development is what he would go out and run the trails and come home
16:58
and fix whatever broke and update it and upgrade it for the next car.
17:01
So they're really like purpose built for King of the Hammer stuff.
17:05
You know, I got to know the hammers trails really well from my Samurai
17:09
and I got to know rock crawling really well for my Samurai.
17:11
And there were a lot of just fundamentals that I learned from
17:15
small tires and small horsepower and small wheel base and stuff like that.
17:18
And it really helped me going into the bomber because.
17:21
You know, you can't just go from a pee shooter to a big gun.
17:26
There's a big learning curve and all it really took was seat time for me.
17:29
I think I've got like eight weeks total worth of seat time at
17:33
this point in that car or more.
17:35
24 was the first time I raised it.
17:36
25. I've done two more races.
17:38
I've got four races under my belt at this point in that car.
17:42
So I'm gonna lean back into our question from before.
17:44
'cause speed is important, right?
17:46
You got 400 extra horses.
17:47
Now, what's it like on the open desert?
17:49
You were able to do 60, maybe 70 in the samurai, but you're pegging that thing.
17:53
What's it like in the bomber?
17:54
Are you doing a hundred plus mile an hour?
17:56
Oh no, I wasn't that confident with it this year.
17:59
I think we did hit 90 at one point across the dry lake bed, there's a
18:02
nice dry lake bed out in the back of hammers that you can go as fast as
18:04
you want to and then you can let off and go back up into the rock trails.
18:08
But the summer, I really only ever got it up to like 50 or 60
18:11
miles an hour foot to the floor.
18:12
The hole for lap downhill with wind.
18:15
You back.
18:17
But so driving the bomber on the first slap, it's.
18:20
Win or lose the race in the corners.
18:22
And that's something that I've struggled with recently is just cornering and
18:25
the timing of it all and breaking, working on coming into a corner,
18:29
breaking, drifting the corner, and then throttling right back into it.
18:33
The infrared back in your seat is pretty cool.
18:36
So it's funny you bring that up because sometimes we talk about how.
18:39
Other disciplines of motorsport can help you with your own personal
18:43
racecraft in your own discipline.
18:45
And so have you ventured into, let's say, any circuit racing or done any
18:49
other kind of practice in other cars to get that car controlled, to build that
18:53
confidence, to get a better understanding of the cornering and the braking, or
18:56
you're just doing it as you're out there?
18:58
Honestly, haven't had any opportunities.
19:00
To do that sort of thing, I'd totally be open for it.
19:03
We have BLM land right across the street, but we spend so much time just out
19:07
practice there and we'll go from here.
19:09
We'll do 200 mile loops in a day out to the desert and out around
19:14
corners and just practice then.
19:16
Going up to Rubicon is only an hour and a half from us.
19:18
So rock crawling is right there and the federal officers don't give you
19:23
guys any mess for being out there.
19:24
Yeah, we haven't been hassled off road.
19:26
We get yelled at if we try to go on road.
19:28
It's pretty game out there.
19:29
Imagine that you mentioned that you're constantly tuning and tweaking on
19:34
the vehicle to be able to etch out a little bit more time to help your
19:39
bottom line and help you to win.
19:41
So what are some of the things that you guys look at?
19:44
To improve the balance and the performance of the vehicle.
19:48
Mostly what goes into fine tuning that goes into them
19:51
these days is just shock tuning.
19:54
So last year I made a point to make more shock tuning appointments, and I
19:59
think last year low, when we did four or five, they were mostly for Randy's car.
20:03
He is 4,400 car, but we got my car so freaking dialed.
20:08
It is.
20:09
Arguably better than the big cars now.
20:11
Wow.
20:12
I watch videos of this thing and what you're kind of looking for.
20:15
The goal is if the car's going straight over rocks, you want the
20:20
tires dancing over the rocks and you wanna watch the chassis stay still, and
20:24
that's exactly what my car does now.
20:26
That's where the fine testing and tuning goes into with every car that we build.
20:31
We build it as best we can and there's gonna be little tweaks
20:34
here and there that you gotta make.
20:36
It's mostly shock tuning.
20:37
Wouldn't the tires also be part of that package as well?
20:41
Because the air pressure alone making drastic changes in air
20:44
pressure would change the way the shocks bound and rebound.
20:46
'cause they're all part of that mechanism when it's impacting a
20:49
stone or whatever it is, right?
20:51
Yeah, actually.
20:51
So, we'll, we'll mess with horsepower depending on what race we're doing.
20:54
Like for King, the Hammers, we'll run about 25 pounds.
20:57
You're going fast and you're going slow in the rocks, so you don't
21:00
want the rocks beat you up, but you don't want to bust a tire if you
21:04
hit something part of the desert.
21:06
But like this last Moab race that I did was mostly a rock race,
21:09
and those rocks are harsh, so I bumped mine down to 22 pounds.
21:13
Just to give me a little bit more cushion.
21:15
Playing with that goes into it a lot, and it depends on what we're doing.
21:18
If we're just running out in the backyard doing laps in the desert, we'll
21:21
bump it up to 25 and keep it there.
21:23
Do you see any change in tire pressure like the road racers do,
21:26
where you're out there and you're running hard, you're in the sun.
21:29
Do you see the temps and the pressure start to climb and then
21:31
you have to adjust or you're not really paying attention to it?
21:34
After you said it, I'm not really paying attention to it.
21:36
Like I, I don't whip out a tire gauge when I'm out in the middle of
21:38
nowhere to check the tire pressures, but we do kind of compensate for
21:41
it a little bit when we're racing.
21:43
You know, it's something we keep in mind.
21:45
It's not like driving on asphalt where you've got that
21:47
constant tension and traction.
21:49
You're not building that kind of heat.
21:50
You know, you've always got a little bit of slip under the tires with the dirt.
21:53
Kind of keeps it.
21:54
Cool.
21:54
Kinda switching gears a little bit, let's talk about the human side of this.
21:57
'cause we talked a lot about the car and the prep and it gets beat up and
22:01
shock adjustments and stuff like that, but you're getting beat up in the car.
22:04
There's a lot of prep you gotta do.
22:06
And when I sit down and talk with pro drivers in the road racing world, they
22:09
always talk about, oh, I jump on the simulator and it's all about hydration.
22:12
And what's the prep like mentally and physically.
22:16
For off-roading, but this is the thing that I love the most is off-roading.
22:21
It's wheeling and rock crawling and that kind of stuff.
22:24
So for me it's super easy to just get into it and just love every minute.
22:27
All of the prep that I do, I kind of love too.
22:30
In the last year or so, I've actually started, I lift weights like two or
22:33
three times a week, and I'm trying to get a cardio machine so I can, you
22:37
know, increase my stamina a little bit.
22:39
And then I've gotten really hard on my snack game and my hydration
22:42
game in the car, and that's something that I'm constantly.
22:45
Tweaking and tuning on with the last couple races that I've done
22:47
is just staying fed and hydrated.
22:49
'cause yeah, we wear this fitness monitor just watching what your body
22:53
does, or at least me an hour before I get in the car, my heart rate raises
22:57
and just stays there, the whole race.
23:00
So I have to keep feeding my body so that it performs like
23:04
I need it to, or else I crash.
23:07
My brain stops working.
23:08
I can't think straight and I don't perform as well.
23:10
I gotta remember to hydrate, eat snacks and just keeping calm.
23:14
And I've been told and kind of experiences for myself that
23:18
running off the adrenaline is not.
23:20
A safe or good idea.
23:22
So you kind of keep your heart rate down, stay calm, twist, throttle.
23:27
You're not slamming Red Bulls and just,
23:31
yeah.
23:31
But I mean, it's still, uh, the whole time I'm in the car, but I've been
23:35
working on mitigating that in your samurai older car manual transmission.
23:41
More rowing of the gears, working the clutch.
23:43
Even at low speed, you're a lot more physically active in the car.
23:46
I can assume if it's anything like some of the ATVs I've been in, especially
23:51
the high speed ones, floppy paddle gearbox in your bomber automatic
23:54
transmission, it's a little less physical.
23:57
And I'm not saying it's any less physically demanding, but you're
24:00
not as active behind the wheel.
24:01
Am I wrong about that?
24:02
Well, I mean, if you're comparing the same ride of the bomber figure, I'm
24:05
probably more active behind the wheel on the bomber just because I'm going faster.
24:10
Well, I am using my clutch foot on the brake pedal now just in a different way.
24:13
And then I'm still shifting gears because it's turbo 400 transmission.
24:16
So I'm still shipping 1, 2, 3 in reverse whenever I need it.
24:20
But it's a lot less of pat your head, rub your belly, and
24:24
jump up and down on one foot.
24:26
Kind to think with the automatic transmission.
24:28
But I kind of love that about the clutch too, 'cause I got so good at it.
24:32
My samurai just.
24:33
Became second nature and with the three pedals set up a skill that translates
24:37
from road racing to off-road is knowing how to heel toe, because you need to be
24:40
able to hold the car, slip the clutch, give it a little all at the same time.
24:44
It's like, wait, I got two feet and three pedals.
24:46
How the heck does this work?
24:48
Yep.
24:49
It's something we try to drill into our students in road racing,
24:52
but I think you guys kind of pick it up almost intuitively.
24:54
Yeah, you, you have to.
24:55
There's a stuff, especially with the Samurai, that it just won't do clutch.
24:59
A dirt bike, clutch.
25:01
Beat the crap out of it to make it do some really cool stuff.
25:05
And that's what I really loved about that thing.
25:07
That was a fun part.
25:09
You're taking the biggest beating out of everyone who you're working with, but do
25:15
you expect your crew to be able to have some sort of level of fit as you to be
25:22
able to, you know, replace a half shaft?
25:24
As fast as they can.
25:25
Those tires are like over a hundred pounds.
25:28
They have to pull disassemble, suspension.
25:31
So is there a a requirement for them to be just as capable as you?
25:35
I mean, I don't expect my pick crew to be as physically capable.
25:39
I know they are though because I'm 130 pound chick.
25:42
If I can do it, these dudes on my pit crew, they could definitely do it.
25:46
And so that was actually a. Thing this year with me and my co-driver, because
25:50
I busted a tire going into one of the rock sections at Hammers this year.
25:54
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was so exhausted and gotten tasked for
25:59
water when we came for our main pit stop.
26:01
So I was exhausted, I was dehydrated, and I busted this tire.
26:05
I couldn't have gotten that done by myself if my co-driver had been there to help me.
26:09
Like we even had a hard time just getting the lug nuts off.
26:12
They've been toed on so tight, which is something that I'm
26:16
now fixing going forward.
26:18
I know that I can't pick those tires back up, put them back
26:20
onto the rack on the car.
26:22
Having my co-driver physically fit is a requirement, and I know that most
26:26
guys are able to lift those tires.
26:28
I just can't.
26:28
As far as the crew goes, you always hope for the best.
26:32
Right?
26:33
You know, if we breaks something major, like a link mount rips off or something
26:37
like that, we'll just call the race.
26:39
This year at Hammers on Randy's car, we had a diff failure for him.
26:44
It was me and a couple guys trying to get the thing changed out.
26:47
It was no problem for any of us.
26:49
You know, these parts aren't big and heavy.
26:50
It's just a matter of knowing how to do it.
26:52
Well, you brought up something really interesting.
26:54
You said the word co-driver.
26:56
Immediately.
26:57
I fall back to growing up watching World Rally and.
27:00
Stuff like that.
27:00
You know, again, very centered in European racing, but in the rally world, co-drivers
27:05
are there with their hieroglyphs and their notes, and it's all pace notes, how much
27:09
to the next corner, how fast you can go.
27:10
They do a lot of sighting and trying to figure out where the course goes, even
27:13
on those long stages that they have that are tens of twenties of miles.
27:17
So what is the expectation of a co-driver at King of Hammers?
27:21
What are they there to do for you?
27:22
Are they giving you those same pace notes and that, or they there to help you,
27:25
like fit the vehicle through an area?
27:27
What, what's.
27:27
The deal.
27:28
Yeah, so it's not so much Pace Notes is like, we have a low
27:31
risk GPS in the car and it's got the course downloaded onto it.
27:35
So it's basically just telling me, you know, there's a corner
27:37
coming up, turn right, turn left.
27:39
And then this year they've been really hard on rock checkpoints.
27:42
RCPs and vcps virtual checkpoints that our GPS points are exact.
27:47
So these are points on the course, and you have to hit the vcps within, I think
27:53
125 feet and the RCPs within 50 feet.
27:57
So we basically have to navigate from point to point to point.
28:01
Like it's not like Rally where it's just point to point.
28:04
You have to figure out how to get there.
28:05
The course is kind of set up for us.
28:07
We just have to hit those checkpoints.
28:09
So that's the biggest job of the co-driver is just to wash the
28:14
map and make sure we hit those.
28:15
Also, like I mentioned earlier, when you bust a tire, they
28:19
need to get out and help.
28:21
We got stuck a couple times in the rocks, and so the co-driver will hop
28:24
out and either winch or try to get the car unstuck or something like that.
28:28
Shout out to my co-driver, Tom, this you.
28:29
He did a great frigging job.
28:31
We got stuck more times than I'd like to admit.
28:33
Had a ton of issues with at one point.
28:35
I was almost with my steering ram into a rock.
28:39
So we couldn't winch forward, couldn't pull ourselves backwards.
28:42
I was ed on a rock and we had to get the high lift jack off, and he tried to jack
28:45
up every corner of the car, get some traction somewhere to get it unstuck.
28:49
It finally worked, but just the high lifts didn't wanna cooperate most of the time.
28:53
So that's pretty much co-driver duties.
28:56
So Drew, this goes back to what you've always told me, which is never go offroad
29:00
in a low, never in front of camera.
29:02
Drew opened the door to talk a little bit more about how much
29:06
the team plays into your success.
29:08
We've heard from drag racers what it's like behind the scenes, and they come
29:13
in from a run and they got a thrash and you know, tear motors down and replace
29:16
clutches and all this kind of stuff.
29:18
What's the dynamic like on an off-road event behind the scenes?
29:21
Oh, it's definitely still a thrash sometimes.
29:23
And so we try to prep these cars as best we can while we're at home in
29:28
the shop where everything's nice, but sometimes things do break out
29:31
there and you do have to come back and absolutely thrash in the car.
29:35
The night before the race a couple years ago, Randy brought two cars.
29:40
He had a 4,400 unlimited car and a 4,800 limited class car that he was racing.
29:44
One of them blew a transmission and the other one cracked the axle housing.
29:49
Thrashed to get those things ready.
29:52
One of 'em was the day before qualifying, and the other one was
29:55
like two days before the actual race.
29:57
Sometimes you pull the car into the tent from pre-running and find
30:03
something's absolutely broken and needs to be fixed right now, and you
30:06
just don't go to bed until it's fixed.
30:08
And then you try to get as much sleep as you can until the next day.
30:11
And then either you gotta a qualifi or you got a race.
30:13
Sometimes it's like that.
30:15
Thankfully it hasn't been like that in the last couple years,
30:18
and I like to keep it that way, so I'm gonna keep prepping my cars.
30:21
Well, but yeah, and, and that's kind of the beauty of hammers too, is if
30:26
you camp close to Hammer town, you'll hear grinders and cars revving and that
30:30
kind of stuff going all night long.
30:31
And it's kind of part of our culture, if you wanna put it that way.
30:35
Yeah.
30:36
Even just in rock crawling and off-roading in general, you know,
30:39
if you break on the trail, sometimes you're out there fixing it after a
30:42
and all the way through the night just to get home the next day, go to work.
30:45
And that's why we tow our rigs in.
30:50
Yeah.
30:51
No help.
30:52
Well, this might be intimidating to a lot of people that look at this
30:55
stuff and they don't have any clue like what goes on in the background.
30:59
What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have
31:01
about off-road racing?
31:02
Everybody thinks it's dirty, and it definitely is.
31:06
Probably the biggest one, is that we don't care about our public
31:09
land and we're just here to mess it up, which is completely not true.
31:13
You know, it's this balance where we love what we do and
31:17
we have to keep the land Nice.
31:19
To keep doing it.
31:20
It's really funny.
31:21
They were really hard on the RCPs, the rock check points and stuff this year,
31:25
and they told us we have to hit them because they didn't want us blazing other
31:30
trails next to the actual rock trail.
31:32
They wanted us to stay in the rock trail.
31:35
And so we do things like that to minimize the impact on the environment.
31:40
There's also suns of smokey and tread lightly will come out and do
31:45
trash pickups every night because the place does get pretty trash.
31:48
I know King of the Hammers works a lot with the BLM, especially
31:51
throughout the year to keep the trails nice and keep Johnson
31:54
Valley OHB good for the rest of us.
31:57
But there's a lot of stuff that I do too with Rubicon Trail Foundation,
32:00
for example, is trying to set a good example of people that need to be out
32:04
there and keep our trails nice and don't trash the place, don't drive off trail.
32:09
And you know, it's just, it's little stuff that seems like
32:12
it should be common knowledge, common sense, but it really isn't.
32:16
And I've seen that side of it.
32:18
It's just a matter of teaching people when you come out here,
32:21
we have to treat this stuff with respect or else we're gonna lose it.
32:24
All of us have to do our part to treat it with respect and act responsibly
32:29
and teach others so that we can keep having fun out on public lands.
32:33
I, I don't think people understand, like you said, when you gotta treat
32:37
these lands and trails with respect.
32:39
Because once the government gets involved or any local municipality and
32:44
they take it away from you, that's it.
32:46
There's no getting it back.
32:47
You can petition.
32:48
You can go and talk.
32:50
It's happening all over the country where trails and lands are getting shut down for
32:57
recreational use, so it's very important.
32:59
One of the first things I talked about when I was being interviewed was to
33:03
make sure you clean up after yourself, any fluids, dirty water, trash.
33:09
Fire pits clean up.
33:11
I always like to say, leave it better than you found it.
33:14
Absolutely.
33:15
Leave it better than when you found it.
33:16
Yeah.
33:17
So what are some of the moments and things that didn't go as planned
33:20
during a race that's like, gosh darn it, and did you learn from it?
33:25
Did you have a after action review and say, all right.
33:27
This is fixable.
33:29
This is what we'll do going forward to not let this happen again.
33:32
So the second year that I raised King the hammers in my samurai, I had
33:35
finally made it to the rock trails.
33:37
I made it down the first rock trail and I started heading up the second one.
33:40
And I was so stoked to finally be out Rock crawl, and we got maybe
33:45
a hundred feet into this trail.
33:47
And came up on six or seven cars, either broken or stuck, basically in this
33:53
trailhead completely blocking me from going forward and completing my race, and
33:59
there was nothing I could do about it.
34:00
I was so pissed off in that moment.
34:02
I was literally looking at these canyon walls thinking I could
34:06
attach my winch up there, just like Spider-Man across the cake.
34:10
That thought seriously crossed my mind and after.
34:15
But, so the lesson that I learned from that was staying ahead of the traffic
34:19
because king of a Hammer's, like I said, there's an 85% attrition rate.
34:23
85% of the cars don't finish.
34:24
Traffic happens and it's a big deal.
34:27
Strategizing in a way to stay ahead of the traffic is a huge priority
34:32
in my book now, and that's part of what led to my success this year.
34:36
So I actually took second place.
34:39
In overall in the Everman this year I finished physical first and I
34:44
was the first female to take the physical first overall finish in
34:48
the Everman Challenge this year.
34:50
And I was knocked down to second place due to missing a couple RCPs.
34:54
So those are time penalties worth 15 minutes a piece,
34:57
and I missed three of them.
34:58
So I got knocked from first to second.
35:00
That was my second official finish at King of the Hammers, and obviously
35:06
my best one yet, so next year it's just gonna have to be better.
35:09
By the time I was finished with Lap one, I started in 30th
35:14
position and I moved up to six.
35:16
So there were only six cars ahead of me going into the rocks.
35:19
Six cars is totally manageable.
35:21
Even if all six of those cars broke down in the same spot, I
35:24
should be able to get around them.
35:25
But if you are last in a field of 120 cars like I was in the Samurai and you've got a
35:32
hundred cars broken in front of you along various points in the course, it's gonna
35:38
be really hard to get through those spots.
35:40
That was a big frustration.
35:41
They are then the obstacles.
35:43
Yeah.
35:43
They, we like to say, uh, if you're not moving on the race course,
35:46
you're part of the race course.
35:48
That's like, you are not in traffic.
35:50
You are traffic.
35:51
Yeah.
35:52
Earlier you mentioned you were the, uh, only female at the time
35:56
racing a stock class Samurai.
35:58
Did you have any goals or aspirations to be like a. Figure for other women
36:05
or other rebels to choose vehicles that not necessarily the gold standard.
36:12
Yeah.
36:12
As far as goals of being a role model for females in the
36:16
sport, that's been a thing too.
36:17
And I've been working a lot with the Jesse Combs Foundation, bringing new
36:21
girls into King of Hammers 'cause they have a scholarship program
36:25
for girls going into the trades.
36:27
It's not just a scholarship.
36:28
They also really try to immerse these girls in the whole community and the
36:33
industries that are involved too.
36:35
So they'll bring the scholarship recipients, they'll grab a group of
36:38
them and they'll bring 'em back to King of the Hammers or SEMA or PRI show,
36:42
or Easter Jeep Safar, another one.
36:45
You know, they.
36:45
Bring these girls out and introduce us to us, and I show 'em around our pit
36:50
and show 'em what it takes to go racing.
36:51
So that's been really cool too.
36:53
Oh, that's really cool.
36:54
The Easter Jeep Safari stuff.
36:56
So they bought a new Jeep and you show 'em like, Hey, if you're
37:00
interested, there's levels to this.
37:02
Oh yeah.
37:04
Okay.
37:04
Yeah.
37:04
I love that part.
37:05
This past year has been really interesting because we have looked
37:09
at a lot of different disciplines of motorsport investigating
37:13
the gender parody that exists.
37:15
In some motor sports and not in others.
37:17
And so NHRA drag racing is at the top where it's almost 50 50 men to women
37:21
and you kind of come down into short track racing and things like that.
37:25
So how do you see the off-roading landscape, at least in your area?
37:30
What does it look like in terms of, you know, men to women ratio?
37:33
Are you seeing more women getting involved in off-roading?
37:36
Oh yeah.
37:37
Definitely seen a lot more women getting offroading, especially since
37:40
I was a kid, which is really cool and I attribute most of that to Jesse.
37:43
Tom.
37:43
She was a big driving force and having women offroading and wrenching and
37:47
wheeling and welding and all that stuff.
37:49
I'd say around here it's probably 15 to one men to women, and then
37:54
also with King of the Hammers.
37:57
This year I was the only female to race in 4,800.
38:02
Although I had other female friends racing in 4,500 modified
38:06
class, 4,600 stock class.
38:08
So I think total in the everyman challenge, there was five or six.
38:12
Females racing, the every man challenge.
38:14
I know there was exactly one female racing in the 4,400 unlimited class.
38:19
That was Bailey Campbell this year.
38:21
And I've actually become friends with a lot of the females that have
38:26
started racing after me, and a lot of 'em that came before me too.
38:29
So it's fun to have that little friend group and we all bring each
38:32
other up and help each other out.
38:33
So what do you think off-roading could do to make the sport more inviting to women?
38:39
That's a good question because in general we don't like to get dirty
38:43
and it's a really dirty sport.
38:45
The thing that really drew me to it was the independence of it all.
38:50
First of all, like when I was a kid and having my own car, being able to
38:53
drive places and take myself places was.
38:56
Awesome.
38:56
That was paramount.
38:57
Getting into off-roading and learning how to fix your vehicle
39:00
when it breaks, how to maintenance your vehicle so it doesn't break.
39:03
Taking yourself out into the wilderness confidently and just knowing that
39:08
you can take care of yourself, you know, whatever happens, you're
39:10
not gonna die for the most part.
39:13
Just having that confidence to be able to go out and do these solo trips.
39:17
It's been a building block for me in a way, just like a pushing factor.
39:21
You know, when I'm out by myself, I can go out by myself first and
39:25
foremost, and then when I am out by myself and something happens, I
39:28
know that I can get myself outta it.
39:29
Circling back to your question, and this is something that I push
39:32
for, is showing people, especially women, that these are attributes.
39:38
That they already have in them.
39:40
It's just a matter of knowing that you can do it, whether you think you can
39:45
or you think you can't, you're right.
39:48
Do you think having representation in organizations like Women in Motor
39:53
Sports North America, or Shift Up now, or some of the other groups out
39:57
there that represent women racers, would that help with inviting more
40:01
off roaders in especially young girls?
40:03
Oh yeah, for sure.
40:04
Jesse Combs was the whole reason I started racing, and if I hadn't
40:09
seen her in Extreme four by four when I was a teenager, you know,
40:13
she was on that TV show, extreme four by four, and we would watch it
40:15
every Saturday morning on Spike tv.
40:17
So seeing Jesse do these things.
40:19
That mostly guys would do made me think to myself, well, if
40:23
Jesse could do it, I could do it.
40:25
And so I've had this conversation with a friend before about how people are
40:29
inspired to do new things when they see someone that's like them doing it.
40:34
Having women out there representing the sports is a big deal.
40:39
Well, you've been at this now for over a decade, and whether you have
40:43
acknowledged it or internalized it, you're now a role model.
40:47
Four young girls looking to get into Motorsport, like my two daughters.
40:50
They're of the age where they're going.
40:51
I see myself as you said, see me.
40:54
Then I can be there, sort of thing.
40:55
Let's say one of my daughters walked up to you and said, Amber, why race off road?
40:58
What advice would you give them?
41:00
How would you tell them to start out?
41:01
Probably biases you, Sam, I or you commander or a Jeep commander.
41:10
She says, begrudgingly.
41:13
Yeah, because that's kinda how I got started was when I bought my Samurai
41:17
and I just kind of dove into it.
41:19
I just wanted to learn all this stuff that I could.
41:21
Would it be worth coming in and basically shadowing by maybe starting
41:25
out as a co-driver or something?
41:26
Yeah, that is another way.
41:27
So.
41:28
If we go all the way back, if came to me and asked, how
41:31
do I get into offroad racing?
41:32
I would tell them, get on with pit crew.
41:34
Find a friend who races.
41:35
I'm a friend who races here, come here, be part of my pit crew.
41:38
Just hang out with us at the campfire, like see what goes into this.
41:41
And that's kind of how I got started in racing too.
41:44
So 2014 was my first king to hammers and me and my family all
41:48
volunteered the whole first year and we volunteered every year since.
41:52
So having that behind the scenes perspective.
41:56
Of the whole event really helped a lot too.
41:59
That would probably be my number one piece of advice to any regular Joe or
42:03
Jody out there looking to get into these kinds of events is volunteer first.
42:08
You know, they're always looking for volunteers.
42:09
It's a great behind the scenes.
42:11
Thing to do.
42:12
You really see the inner workings of the whole situation.
42:16
And then from there you're gonna meet people, you can get on a pit crew,
42:19
start seeing what picks to be on pit crew, go from there to a co-driver.
42:22
You just work your way up.
42:23
It's kind of like I started welding, you know, start sweeping
42:26
floors, same kind of thing.
42:27
You work your way up.
42:28
What's next for you?
42:30
When will we see you running the Mint 400 or.
42:34
Maybe NASCAR is in your future.
42:37
Dirt oval.
42:38
Yeah.
42:39
A little bit more flatter, straighter, softer.
42:42
Oh gosh.
42:42
What's next for you?
42:43
What's coming up?
42:43
So the next thing for sure is King of Hammers next year.
42:46
That's all I've got planned for sure.
42:49
May or may not risk.
42:50
Vegas to Reno this year, which would be a big one for me.
42:54
That's a bucket list.
42:54
That would be a fun thing.
42:56
And that's about it.
42:57
That's about all I've got planned.
42:59
I try not to plan too far in advance, but you know, if opportunities
43:02
pop up, sometimes I say no.
43:04
It's sometimes the stupidest thing I ever say, but I catch myself or
43:08
I go back and say, yes, we're gonna see you on, I be rooting for you.
43:12
Hundred percent.
43:19
We can get some stickers on her rig at least if nothing else.
43:21
Matter fact, I wanna see that the barbecue hut that you guys got,
43:27
where you do catering and stuff like that, just putting it out there.
43:30
Oh gosh.
43:31
So in my camp we actually do have a building that one of our friends
43:35
brings that's like a four or five-sided wood building from Burning
43:39
Man that they bring out and set up.
43:41
And that's our kitchen like tent area.
43:44
Okay, that's interesting.
43:45
So my mom gets there about a month ahead of the event, ropes
43:48
off a big old area for us.
43:49
And so we set up this kitchen tent and the whole camp area pitches
43:54
in for meals and cooks together.
43:57
And it's, it's a big community effort and it's a lot of fun.
43:59
We may or may not also have pyrotechnics up there.
44:03
Well, I'm glad you brought up camping, like outside of getting in.
44:07
Your bomber and your Suzuki and and racing for a living, what do you like
44:12
to do outside of the motor sports space?
44:15
Do you still like to be an outdoorsman type, recreational
44:19
off-roading or anything like that?
44:21
Oh yeah, for sure.
44:22
I wanna say this.
44:23
Racing thing is kind of the full-time thing for me because
44:28
if I have a free weekend, I'm up on Rubicon Trail Rock Crawl.
44:31
If we've got another free weekend, we'll take the race cars and
44:33
go head out to the desert, do a couple hundred miles in the desert.
44:37
I've also got a 22 Tacoma, and I take that camping.
44:40
I did.
44:40
Three days in Death Valley last year by myself actually, so funny story.
44:44
When I was a kid, I didn't like camping.
44:48
We would go to Jone Canyon in test on California, so my dad and my brothers
44:52
could go dirt bike riding every year, and I would sit and play on my game.
44:57
He kinda snowballed.
44:58
But yeah, I also ride dirt bikes too, so we'll go out and do that behind the house.
45:03
I just love every part of the stuff I get to do every day.
45:06
I get to.
45:06
Come in and work in the shop and build cool stuff and make customers happy.
45:11
And then after work, I go out and play in the hills and go
45:14
to the river and go camping.
45:15
Stuff like that.
45:16
Well, I gotta tell you, one of my bucket lists is to get out to the Rubicon
45:20
trail and experience that whether I'm driving or be in a passenger.
45:25
I've always wanted to see that and go on top of the mountain, wherever
45:28
that, I call it a river lake, but it's a big old lake on top of a mountain
45:32
somewhere, and people jump into that lake all the time from like a big
45:36
boulder, and it's on a Rubicon trail.
45:38
It might be Buck Island Lake in case you ever do wanna come out.
45:42
I run an event called Zuki Con.
45:44
It's mostly for Samura, but I let anyone come.
45:47
I gear it towards new people coming to the root Con.
45:50
If you ever want to, you're invited.
45:52
We could dress up your GWA to look like a Suzuki Samurai.
45:55
I don't think so.
45:57
Well, I got some things I wanna do to that thing first before I even think
46:00
about hitting the actually stock.
46:02
I think that thing could tackle the Rubicon trail.
46:05
It's a fricking tank when you get up under them.
46:08
They are so simple.
46:09
They have radius arms and they're just beefy.
46:12
They don't have control arms or a leaf spring or anything like that.
46:15
A SE coil and a big metal arm directly connected to the body.
46:19
I have yet to see a G wagon out on Rubicon.
46:22
I'm gonna be stoked the day that I do see one out there, but I think.
46:26
Either way, get some arm under it or else it ain't gonna be the same coming out.
46:31
Maybe, uh, we can trade some information and I'll send you some photos.
46:35
And I have a YouTube channel as well with videos of me scaling walls.
46:41
Oh, cool.
46:42
Nothing like what you do.
46:44
That would be super cool to see.
46:45
All right, Amber, we've reached that part of the episode where
46:48
I'd like to invite our guests.
46:49
To share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything else
46:52
that we haven't covered thus far.
46:54
If you want to reach out to me, if you're interested in my event,
46:57
Zuki Con, or you want to learn more about Bomber or King of the Hammers
47:02
or any kind of off road racing, you can reach out to me on Instagram.
47:05
My handle is.
47:07
The Bur D-A-B-U-R-R-S, and if you have to ask, it kind of sounds like
47:12
my name, Amber Da Burrs, or you can look up two stone racing on Facebook.
47:17
Check us out.
47:17
All right, folks, that wraps up another adrenaline fueled episode of Break Fix.
47:22
We had an absolute pleasure diving into the dirt, grit, and glory of
47:25
off-road racing with the unstoppable Amber Slauson from her early days
47:29
behind the wheel to the high octane challenges that she tackles today.
47:33
Amber gave us a powerful glimpse into what it takes to thrive in one of motorsports.
47:36
Toughest arenas.
47:38
Her passion, resilience, and drive are nothing short of inspiring.
47:41
Not just for racers, but for anyone chasing the dream off the beaten path.
47:46
And with that, Amber, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break
47:48
Fix, sharing your story with us.
47:49
And we wish you the best of luck.
47:51
We wanna see more trophies in the trophy case for you from
47:53
King Hammers and other events.
47:54
And I wanna see you at the Mint.
47:55
One, we're gonna be rooting for you.
47:57
I've been to the men, just haven't raced it yet.
47:59
Let so I'll see it there.
48:00
We wanna see you in it.
48:01
Not at it.
48:03
Okay.
48:03
Maybe calling, but yeah, please tell me you got your inspiration
48:08
from the police car episode of Top Gear when Richard Hammond built one
48:11
with the spike strip in the front.
48:13
You remember that with all the glowy lights.
48:14
And the pink foo trim and all that.
48:17
Gosh, I don't know if I've seen that one.
48:18
Oh yeah, it's a classic.
48:20
Gosh, I think that's the last time I've seen a Suzuki Sam ride was
48:24
on top gear like 20 years ago.
48:27
There was a second time I saw a Suzuki Sam ride and that was also on top gear, and
48:30
they used one in their Bolivia special.
48:32
James May drove one, and I remember how slow it was compared to the
48:36
Range Rover and the FJ and all this other stuff that they had.
48:40
But at the end, it was the most reliable.
48:42
It made it through that whole journey that they took, which
48:45
was like 1200 miles or so.
48:46
Okay.
48:47
I gotta go back and bl that one now.
48:48
Go ahead.
48:49
I don't know why when you said Burning Man, I immediately, my mind shifted to
48:53
the Fyre Festival and I imagined this guy standing there with nothing around him.
48:57
And that was the kitchen.
48:58
I'm sorry.
48:59
It's just like my mind was wandering.
49:01
Mine's a fire needle going the kitchen.
49:04
And on that bombshell.
49:05
It's time to end.
49:06
Amber, thank you for your time.
49:08
I enjoyed the Good luck.
49:09
Thank you guys.
49:15
We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts,
49:19
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