Jason Bunch leads off in Episode 262 with stories galore

Stories so big we need two episodes to tell them!  Jason Bunch of Tri-Couty Gear has a storied history and he shares it with us. Rockcrawler, racer, business man, enthusiast, Jason’s been part of the OG crowd. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

4:47 – We’d take about everything trying to make them faster, we’d grind the rod on a lawn mower and hold it wide open to see if we could make it blow up

16:08 – A cop rolls up and goes, “this brings new meaning to shade tree mechanic!”              

21:04 – my Flat Fender had a healthy 350 in it and a 300 shot of nitrous oxide in it. It was fast. 

30:59 – One night we clocked ourselves going through Sledge Hammer, did the whole trail in 51 minutes and one beer stop included. 

36:25 – I watched Steve work with people and I thought, I need that guy for something, but I don’t know what.

46:34 –I used all of my knowledge of Jeeps and the things I’ve done to build that Jeep, no blueprint, just all in my mind.

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

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:05.300] - 

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.

[00:00:46.530] - 

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.

[00:01:12.920] - Big Rich Klein

This interview with Jason Bunch on Conversations with Big Rich has been split up into two equal episodes. Please catch part two next week on Conversations with Big Rich. My guest this week is an off-road enthusiast, a business owner, an O. G. Rock Crawler and rock racing competitor, and a friend, Jason Bunch. Good morning, Jason Bunch. It's so good to have you on the podcast and talk about old times, and we haven't talked in quite a while, so it'll be good to get caught up. So how are you doing today?

[00:01:51.010] - Jason Bunch

I am great. How about yourself?

[00:01:53.080] - Big Rich Klein

Doing fantastic. So let's jump right in. And first question I'm going to ask you is, where were you born How did you get raised?

[00:02:00.950] - Jason Bunch

I was born in Columbus, Ohio, and I lived there till I was about 10 years old. We basically moved to Southern California because my dad got a job at Douglas. My whole family actually started out in California when my dad came back from the war and basically worked here in California, and then he went back to Ohio to work for North America and Rockwell. Are you an only child? I am not. Okay. I basically have five siblings, three sisters, one brother. Unfortunately, my brother just passed away. Sorry to hear that.

[00:02:47.550] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, my younger brother, anyways.

[00:02:50.000] - Jason Bunch

Basically, we came to California, and I feel like I'm just a Southern California kid, like a native, because I grew up riding my bicycle to the beach every day, surfing, just enjoying the weather that we have here, and grew up working on lawn mowers to motor cycles. That's really my first love, motorcycles. Okay, let's talk about that. You said you rode your to the beach to surf.

[00:03:24.820] - Big Rich Klein

So you were living close to the beach then? We were seven miles from the beach. Okay. That's a nice ride.

[00:03:35.120] - Jason Bunch

Yeah.

[00:03:35.610] - Big Rich Klein

So every day during the summer, surf board in your arm, you're lucky to have swim trunks on, bare feet, pedal to the beach.

[00:03:47.380] - Jason Bunch

I had this collie mix dog, Mick Duff, that would follow me to the beach the beach. While I'd be out there surfing, he'd be biting at the waves. This is long before you had to have leashes on dogs and stuff like that. He would just follow me all the way to the beach. He was incredibly strong.

[00:04:16.320] - Big Rich Klein

Wow. Those early years, school-wise, would you consider yourself a good student, or average, or one of those kids that was always looking out the window to go do something else?

[00:04:29.390] - Jason Bunch

I was definitely the kid looking out the window, dreaming about flying airplanes, being an astronaut. And I really had no care about academics.

[00:04:43.290] - Big Rich Klein

So it's hard to become an astronaut without the academics.

[00:04:47.590] - Jason Bunch

Yes, it is. But later on in life, where I didn't do much math, and then all of a sudden, geometry played a big part in rock crawling, I really needed that. Which is amazing. I would say that, but it just is. Today, you need to know all those basic things to run a business, just everything in numbers, right? True. But anyways, we grew up in Southern California. I basically worked odd jobs of working on cars and and motorcycles. Like I said, motorcycles was by first love. We take apart, we'd port and polish everything, trying to make them faster. We would do stupid stuff, like grind all the I beam off a rod in a lawn mower and put it back together and hold it wide open and see if we could make it blow up. We were just dumb kids, right? But we had fun doing it. I always had a group of guys at my garage, and we'd take something apart and fix it. It's some of the stupid stuff we would do. Going through junior high, I got to be I'd say an okay machinist going through the program there and basically always trying to build cooling vins for my shocks on the bike.

[00:06:45.170] - Jason Bunch

Stuff like that. Those were the good old days. I basically raced motor cycles and a friend said, Hey, come on and race your motorcycle. I went and I was scared out of my life. I ended up winning that race, the first race I ever raced, and then found out that I was really good at that, which gave me the confidence to race. Basically, like I said before, basically, as a young kid, I was probably the last person you would pick to play football. Because I didn't have the confidence to catch that ball or hit that baseball or catch it. I just didn't have the confidence. But something clicked when I got with mechanical things and the desire to go faster. I've always loved speed.

[00:07:52.190] - Big Rich Klein

That need for speed. Yes, it's addictive.

[00:07:55.750] - Jason Bunch

Yeah. It was addictive to me. And I just felt good on the motorcycle and gave me the confidence in life to do all other things. Like I said, I worked in a place called John's Place. It was on the top of Signal Hill, actually right next to where Stroppe was, that built the Broncos. I basically learned a lot about Porsche's and Volkswagen's and those type of things. Eventually, I went to work for a Lucky Market so I could have insurance and- A steady income? A steady income. As I was going to high school, in high school, I basically worked at Lucky's. I wasn't one of those kids that got to go to the football games and all that stuff on Fridays because Fridays and Saturdays, you worked at the grocery store. If you were lucky enough to work on a Sunday, you had time and a half. That was pretty good. Eventually, what ended up happening is I went to Pismo Beach with my sister and my brother-in-law, and he had a Jeep. Him and his dad had a Jeep. They both had Jeeps, and there was a big group of their family that would go jeeping.

[00:09:37.680] - Jason Bunch

I went to Pismo with my motorcycle and had the time of my life because that's when Pismo was really just popping off. The beach would be packed and so many wild-built machines and everybody racing up and down Competition Hill It was just a great time to see all that. Eventually, I bought a Jeep from Dennis's dad for 960 bucks, 41 flat Fender I believe it had a 283 engine in it. The motor barely ran, but it was good enough to go jeeping. I would go jeeping with those guys They would take us on all these crazy runs. Taradale, Seoul. It used to be big runs up in Saugus. I'll never forget. I was there going down this hill and only had those nine-inch breaks. Man, I was pushing on those brakes with both feet, trying to stop this thing from going down so fast. But I eventually was working on the thing, and I went into Harvey's Jeep one day, and then somehow we got talking, and I asked them for a job. I kept my day job or my night job. I would go to Harvey's Jeep at 8: 00 in the morning and leave by 2: 00.

[00:11:20.800] - Jason Bunch

Then between 2: 00 and 4: 00, I would come home, pull the stuff out of my garage, work on my Jeep a little bit, push it back in the garage, take a quick shower, get to Lucky's at 4: 00 and work till 10: 00. Then sometimes I party on the newsstands till 2: 00 in the morning with everybody.

[00:11:45.450] - Big Rich Klein

Party on the newsstands?

[00:11:47.750] - Jason Bunch

Well, basically, at newsstands where they had the papers, right? And we'd all sit on those at night and drink beer. And then other nights, I would go home early and work on my Jeep till 2: 00, 3: 00 in the morning. Because when I worked for Harvey's Jeep, I never got a paycheck. They always got my paycheck because I'd be buying parts for I'm not going to say I'm not going to build a Jeep. I really lived on the lucky's money, lucky's market. All the money that I would get from Harvey's Jeep would go back to them because I was buying every part that I could to build a Jeep. Because like a dumb person does that buys a Jeep, I took it all apart and bought a welder, learned how to weld, Fixed all the cracks in the frame, painted it. This is all in my mom's one car garage. I would pull stuff out, work on it, put it back in. I can't believe the My neighbors didn't shoot me, but I was always in pretty good standings with them. But anyways, built that Jeep. Eventually, I had an El Camino that I had bought, and the transmission was out all forward gears.

[00:13:19.050] - Jason Bunch

So I drove it home backwards and took the transmission out, rebuilt the tranny and put it in there. That was my first automatic I ever fixed. And then eventually pulled that engine out because it was a 350, bigger than my 327, and rebuilt it and stuck it in my Jeep, and then put the 327 back in my El Camino so I'd have something to drive and tow my stuff to the desert. By that time, ATCs had came out.

[00:13:52.830] - Big Rich Klein

The little three-wheelers.

[00:13:55.650] - Jason Bunch

Three-wheelers. My brother-in-law had bought one, and then I ended buying a 110. I was like, The greats of rath, this El Camino, that when I'd go out to the desert, I'd fill it full of motorcycles, toolboxes, nuts and bolts, and the thing would be dragging butt. I basically had to put a taller hitch on it with a two-inch extension on the ball just to hook to my towbar or my Jeep, because I would have the ATC in the back of the Jeep sticking up and down, my motorcycle on the tow bar on the thing that I had built, sand tires everywhere that you could think of. Those days, it was Grooved Slicks. Off to the desert, I'd go, and I'd turn a weekend into four days because I never went to sleep. I was in something, driving it or fixing That's how I learned to work on things and work on things fast. Eventually, in that Jeep, it had a offset transfer case, and I would bring a spare transfer case because I would blow one up, dump in the clutch, and they would just break off like eggs. I got pretty good of taking all the pieces that were still good and putting them back in another case.

[00:15:26.810] - Jason Bunch

I was pretty abusive, but I had a pretty fast run Jeep. Eventually, driving the Jeep, you end up going to the sandrags, and I got hooked up doing mud bog racing. So that was pretty fun. Messy. Very messy.

[00:15:45.910] - Big Rich Klein

Artificial mud bogs? Because Southern California is not known for a lot of water.

[00:15:50.680] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, artificial mud bogs. And heck, I've raced at the Coliseum, Angel Stadium, up north, Sacramento. We would go everywhere.

[00:16:06.110] - Big Rich Klein

Still toeing with the El Camino?

[00:16:08.720] - Jason Bunch

Well, by that time, I ended up getting my motorhome. Bought my first motorhome when I was about 22. Wow. Yeah. I mean- That's like being responsible. It is. But I like going to the desert. As a kid, we never did such a thing. I really like going anywhere jeeping. I'm hanging out with a group of people that are older than me. I'm hanging out with my sister and my brother-in-law and got into a Jeep club. All these people were established, had homes, and then they were going jeeping. Got to do. I got to get a motorhome. I'm still living at my mom's house, right? Right. Now I got this motorhome El Camino. I was always buying and selling different vehicles to make a few bucks here and there. That was a good part about that. One time, I was putting an engine in an old Ford truck. I got it hanging from a big pine tree in front of my mom's house hanging out into the street, putting an engine in. A cop rolls up and goes, Oh, my God, this brings new meaning to shade tree mechanic. That's what he said to me. He goes, Get that engine in there.

[00:17:48.860] - Jason Bunch

I didn't see this. It drives away. But I was a kid. You know what I mean? I didn't have no money to go rent a cherry picker.

[00:17:59.480] - Big Rich Klein

You did what you had to do.

[00:18:01.170] - Jason Bunch

You did what you had to do. I mean, even today, working on those motorcycles, sometimes it takes special tooling to take one of those things apart and not mess things up. I would just make crap. I don't know. I like the puzzle, right? If you like the puzzle, then you dream about it and think about it, and try to make it better. And so that's what I always did as a kid.

[00:18:34.330] - Big Rich Klein

So do you have one of those toolboxes that has all sorts of things in it that have been modified?

[00:18:40.620] - Jason Bunch

Yes. Yeah, I do.

[00:18:42.250] - Big Rich Klein

When somebody, someday when you pass all that on, somebody's going to open that toolbox and go, I wonder what he used this for.

[00:18:51.330] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, I hope. But, and today, you know what? I saw the value in tools. I When I worked at John's place, the Porsche place, so I bought my first set of snapple on metric sockets, right? And I would buy tools. I never really had much money in my pocket. I was giving it to the toolman.

[00:19:20.730] - Big Rich Klein

That or the parts guy.

[00:19:23.100] - Jason Bunch

That or the parts guy. I basically learned how to fix things on nothing. Eventually, working, ended up going to work for Scotty's Jeep. Scotty's Jeep was a… I think we ended up being six acres of a wrecking yard of four-wheel drive stuff. I think I mentioned that I worked for Harvey's Jeep. That's where I learned to work on the Jeeps. Then eventually, I moved on to Scotty's Jeep and basically I learned about looking at stuff and making things come together. Out there at Scotty's Jeep, that's where I built my first '44 front-end for my flat vendor, put a Detroit locker in the front. I already had one in the rear because when I worked for Harvey's, that was the thing to do. At Harvey's Jeep, I learned how to do rear ends and transmissions car-wise. I learned a lot from Harvey. He was a great teacher. Then I worked for Scotty's, and then I would go there once a week when I still worked for Harvey's Jeep, and I would build Scotty five or six T-90 transmissions because he had a bunch of stuff that he'd buy. They always had broken trannies, and I I'd build a bunch of trannies, and he would sell them off.

[00:21:04.330] - Jason Bunch

Then I'd come back the next week, and I'd build a whole bunch more. Eventually, I went to work for him, and that's where I learned about all the different components. I took my flat vendor and took all the springs off of it and put longer springs using different other vehicles. I learned about moving the springs, out rigging the springs on my flat vendor to make it more stable. I basically, at that time, had a pretty healthy 350 in it, a 300 shot of nitrous oxide on it. It was fast. I remember once coming home from work at Harvey's Jeep, and I pull up to two motorcycles, One's a 900 Calvi, and the other's a 750 Honda. I look at them and go, Hey, you guys want to run those things? They go, Sure. We make a right turn and we go to the next light. The light changes and I'm gone. I just leave these guys. They pull up and they go, Holy crap, that thing runs. So we wait for the next light. Then the guy on the 900 cali, he was a little bit more in tune on the next light, what I was going to do.

[00:22:33.280] - Jason Bunch

And he stayed right with me, right at my right rear quarter panel, while we left the 750 in the dirt. I was pretty much a maniac in those days. I got a couple of tickets in that Jeep. A couple? Yeah. Well, I got two exhibitions of speed on my motorcycle in one day. I was the wheel Really king when it came to a motorcycle. And that bike was always the front wheel was in the air. And you get one, take it, what's the chances of getting another one? Well, I got another one. I learned to slow down when that happened. They wanted to kill me, the judge. Anyways, back to I worked for Scottie's Jeep, learned to look at things. At that time, I had sticks in my Jeep, and I was blowing transfer cases up because I was a young, dumb kid, and I would smell the clutch, right? And I would go, Oh, more pressure on the clutch. But I would go down to this clutch place, and he eventually built me a dual disk clutch, and I eventually made all the linkage mechanical. So this thing was just violent when you let the clutch out, right?

[00:24:07.490] - Jason Bunch

You could literally go first to second and just a little bit of more power and grab second and do a big old wheelie in the dunes. It was bitching. They just a whole bunch of people would be watching you drive by, and I just go, boom, and grab second, do a wheelie. That was a big show off. But the transfer cases, I would blow those up like nothing. Eventually, when I worked for Scottie's Jeep, I would bring three transfer cases because I'd blow that many of them up.

[00:24:45.200] - Big Rich Klein

So you spend as much time wheeling it as you did wrenching on it?

[00:24:51.990] - Jason Bunch

Yes. I was a pretty good balance because one of the things I learned is to save it for the Sunday, right? You save it, save it, save it, save it. And then, of course, Saturday night at Comp Hill or something, you let it rip, right? But you would always blow those things up. And eventually I thought, all right, what can I do to make this better? And I put an automatic in it, integrated a torque flight automatic that came in a four-cylinder Jeep with an iron Duke. And I go, Look at that. It has the same bolt pattern. I figured that out, stuck it in my flat vendor. And then that's where as much money I spent on clutsches, I spent probably a little more in torque converters. I got hooked up with this guy named Monsinger that did nothing but drag racing torque converters. I was trying to keep the stall where I needed it and keep the heat out of the transmission. I worked a lot with him on that and eventually tackled it where I could side-hilling the dunes all day long without getting It was a cranny too hot. Plus, I had put, at that point, it was an Allison diesel automatic transmission cooler on the roof of the flat fender.

[00:26:26.450] - Jason Bunch

So fans on it. I was a pretty abusive. I love to go fast, race the mud bogs with that Jeep, did pretty good. I was always the guy, not the fastest, but always the guy at the pay window. That's where it's always For me, in the rock crawling world, I was never their very best, but I was always there at the pay window. So that worked out pretty good for me. To be honest, in a lot of ways, not having much money to do these things taught me how to use what you have and make it the best that it could be. It worked out in a lot of ways.

[00:27:19.390] - Big Rich Klein

You always had this need for speed, but you got into the rock crawling. How did that transition work?

[00:27:30.810] - Jason Bunch

That transition, I have this flat vendor, and you would go out to High Desert Roundup, Cara Del Sol, all these jeeping events that would happen. Then the rock crawling, rather than just going to the desert and driving around and you would go through some rocks, stuff like that, the rock crawling started, and those guys, Victor Valley guys, were starting to build trails in Johnson Valley. Now, I had been out to Johnson Valley riding motor cycles, but that's about it. I was hooked up. Rick Russell, I'm sure everybody remembers Rick Russell, he used to make all the maps and stuff like that. I would always see Rick at the big runs, and he would come by the shop and put some maps out and stuff like that. Basically, He was doing the mapping in Johnson Valley, and I went with him once. I went, Wow, this is a whole different world out here. I used to be a guy that went to Glamis three or four times a year. I haven't seen Glamis in maybe 20 years. It's probably not been that long, but it's been a long time.

[00:29:11.980] - Big Rich Klein

It's a crap show now.

[00:29:15.780] - Jason Bunch

Well, and that's what happened. I did all those land fights, you know what I mean? To try to keep land open. It's working with politicians, and politicians will smile at you and they'll cross their arms and go, I'll see what I can do, and they go and do what they want, right? Absolutely. I ended up going to Johnson Valley, and I ended up helping those guys or the Victor Valley guys on a couple of trails. You know what I mean? I went out there, helped them pull rocks, and I helped them build Wrecking Ball, and there was one other trail. I would go out there in the Flat Fender, and of course, I always love speed, right? I started taking customers out there on Jeep runs, and you would take a group of people, let's say 10, through Sledge Hammer, and you would be in there for 6, 8 hours for that less than 2 miles or whatever it is, right? But you were learning each little obstacle. I mean, Sledge Hammer was tight. I mean, tight to get through that in the beginning. I mean, I look at it today, and because of the racing through there, in some spots where it was just horrible to get through, it's now blown open three cars wide, right?

[00:30:59.540] - Jason Bunch

Then the areas that were somewhat easier done to get through are hard as hell because there's big rocks kicked in there and no one filled in the areas that are a big void. I would go in there with a flat vendor, and at this time, my business is really cooking. Tricounty Gear, it's really cooking. I'm doing a lot of things for the magazine. Hey, Jason, did you build this transmission? We'll do an article. I'm going, Sure. Hey, Jason, build a roll cage for this. Sure. And they do the things. And then that was bringing business into Tri County gear. And I eventually ended up having a bunch of Germans coming from Germany. They shipped their Jeeps here. I built them all up, and then they were here for three weeks, and I took them jeep in every weekend, different places. And a lot of that area was Johnson Valley because they love the rock crawling. One night, because I like speed, we clocked ourselves going through a sludge hammer, and I went through that whole trail in 51 minutes and one beer stop included. I went, Wow, that's pretty good. Then for me, because normally I drive up a couple of hundred feet, I walk back and I get all those people up to me.

[00:32:44.230] - Jason Bunch

Then I drive another couple of hundred feet, and then I would walk back and throw rocks and get all those people up to me. I learned how to place rocks, put rock in different places to get vehicles over. It was You're learning the whole time you're in the rocks. Then I figured out, Well, that's a pretty good time to get through there in 6, 8 hours to go through there. I got very proficient running my Jeep through there. Then I want to say probably '98 or something like that comes along Lauren making the coil over suspension for a YJ, right?

[00:33:36.450] - Big Rich Klein

That black diamond?

[00:33:38.860] - Jason Bunch

The black diamond. And at this point, I'm rocking and rolling. I had 17 employees. We're building Dana 44 rear ends, Dana 60 rear ends. We're cranking stuff out. I had gotten proficient at building roll cages, bought a vendor, just doing all kinds of wacky stuff for customers, any fab work. I got 17 miles to fee, right? So I had to make things really work. It's stupid stuff. We're putting in Chevy's, Chevy Motors and people's YJs. Stuff you don't make money at.

[00:34:25.340] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:34:26.560] - Jason Bunch

But it was an accomplishment. You know what I You may be made a little bit. To be honest with you, I look back at some of those things of the hours that you have in it. I'm such a perfectionist sometimes. My guys would make something. I go, Now, let's change that. I don't like it. Let's make it better. Let's make it beefier. Because at the end of the day, when it went out there on a trail and broke and Tri-Town, he touched it, they didn't say, Bob built that. They said, Jason did it, right? Yes. I was real particular. I had learned over the years of building my own Jeep, that's too heavy of a piece of material. Let's go lighter, but let's go just enough. My flat vendor, I kept fairly light. So 3,000-pound Jeep, It goes pretty good when you stand on it. You're not moving like a 4,000-pound car, right? Right, exactly. Yeah. So it was pretty light. So anyways, the Black Diamond thing comes along. Somehow, I hooked up with Warren. We do a magazine shoot on… I have a YJ, a four-cylinder YJ, and we throw that suspension on there.

[00:35:57.050] - Jason Bunch

It goes into the magazines. We go out to Johnson Valley. There's actually a picture of that thing jumping over the dunes over there. It just worked good. Eventually, what happens, someone does a Rock Crawling thing. I think the first one happened in Arizona, and you might help me on this if you remember.

[00:36:23.190] - Big Rich Klein

Yes, it was...

[00:36:25.130] - Jason Bunch

Sports in the Rough. Sports in the Rough. Yeah. Bob. What was Bob's last name? I couldn't think of it. Hazel. Hazel. There we go. Anyways, so I didn't go to that, but that just got... Everybody was talking about it, right? So then Bob's going to do one in Johnson Valley, right? This is where Steve Hastings and I got hooked up. I would watch Steve on all these Jeep runs, and he was the guy at the top of the hill telling people what to do or he'd winch him up. I watched him work with people and I'd go, Man, I need that guy for something, but I don't know what it's for. That's what I said to myself. I'll never forget it. We were in Panaman Valley, and there was this big hill climb, and he was talking to people, and he was calm. Of course, I came along, and he knew who I was, and I knew who he was. Of course, I just zipped right up there with my flat fender. I would help him out, too, when people would break on the trail. I go, Keep your people moving. I'll get this guy working.

[00:37:44.560] - Jason Bunch

We became friends. He came in and bought a U joint or two at the shop. Then eventually, I ended up selling him a Dana 44 front-end for his CJ5. But he was just a good jeeper. He grew up in the Jeep, him and his two sisters and his parents, and a CJ5. They would tow, I think, a 20-foot trailer behind that CJ5 and go everywhere. I mean, this guy has been everywhere in California and a lot of places. So he loved the Jeep. But anyways, so this This talk of this rock crawling comes along, and I had already built what I call the Red Jeep, which its nickname is Skipper, okay? Because Lindsay Lindsay Wagner, Cody and Lindsay, she named it Skipper because my TJ, or jumping ahead here, but my TJ got coined Barbie Jeep because my daughters were riding in it when I first got it in '97. My daughter, Taryn, goes, Dad, this Jeep is not like the other Jeep. This is just a Barbie Jeep. That's what she said. Because she was used to riding in the flat vendor. It was open. It was noisy. She called it a Barbie Jeep.

[00:39:26.970] - Jason Bunch

That one got coined Barbie. Then Skipper. And then the other one's Skipper, which Lindsay named. Anyways, so basically, Bob's going to have this competition, and I call Warren, I go, Hey, would you guys want to give me another suspension? And Tom Telford there at the time, he goes, All right, Jason, we'll give you a suspension. Just do me a favor. Make it look like a boring. So I go, Okay. Basically, they sent me a suspension, and I got this white YJ, and we decided to tear this thing apart and put the suspension on it. It had to have a flat belly, so we cut that out of there. We took the sides that said, Warren on that five-inch belly that would hang down underneath the frame, and we put that on on the side of the frame. We took all the control arms and reversed everything upside down to where it had way better ground clearance. Cut the frame to where the upper tube would go up into the frame as the suspension would go up and down. We took the back bars and bent them to where if you looked at the Jeep sideways, all you saw was tires and nothing holding those axles.

[00:40:58.810] - Jason Bunch

We used the four-cylinder Jeep. My knowledge of working with fly wheels in my flat vendor because I had a 35-pound wheel and a 50-pound wheel. You learn how that kinetic energy works. I'm tapping on things that I've done in life, right? Does that make sense? Yes. Things that you felt in life. Anyways, tapping on that, and we're building this Jeep. Steve came into the shop one day and I said, Hey, they got this new rock crawling thing coming along, and I really think that you would He helped me be the spotter. He was like, Okay. I go, There's a competition coming up, and I'm building this Jeep. Would you like to be part of it? He said, Sure. First, you have a lot of... You have friends, then you have customers that become friends. I had a lot of help of people to build this Jeep. Then I pulled on to A few people in the industry painting people. I would do a lot of rear ends for L and G. I got them involved to paint the vehicle. We Basically, cut the floor out of the bottom of this thing and raised it so that the transmission and transfer case would fit in it.

[00:42:40.390] - Jason Bunch

Like Lauren wanted, I made it look like a Lauren suspension. We go to the first competition in Johnson Valley. I am literally working on this car on the trailer. I had spent two I had too much time on… I built a Jeep. You know what a Wattslink is, right? Yes. Okay. I decided I wanted to put a Wattslink on the front differential. And as I put the watch link on the front differential, it makes the front differential stay perfectly in center. Now, Now I'm watching the steering wheel change dramatically because this is going straight up and down and it's not following the arc of the drag link. So then I get this wild idea, look, if I change the timing of the upper, lower links that's holding the axial through, I think I could make it follow that same arc. Why I made it do that? Now when you would cycle the suspension up and down, the steering It still wouldn't move at all. So I had corrected all that. But when we would go out and test it, it was breaking and bending. We didn't have strong enough components in there to hold it.

[00:44:14.960] - Jason Bunch

At this time in my life, I don't even know what Croll Mawley is. I probably knew. But remember, I'm walking around my shop and going, Oh, that looks pretty good. Kind of like the farmer grabbing the fence post to make a drive shaft, right? Right. That guy, I'm going, You know what? We got to get into better materials. Now you're talking about buying Cromoly tubing and Bungs to weld those in there and Hyme joints. Those were expensive things, right? Yes. At that point in my life, I didn't know nothing about them, right? But I did know that, you know what? I sure like that old Cherokee tie rod over there. It was heavy duty. It was small, but heavy, strong. So what I ended up doing is cutting all that stuff off, which is a shame because it was probably would have blown people's minds in the industry, right? How I made it work with a 12-inch suspension going up and down and all that stuff. I ended up just doing a typical tie rod across, drag link, and worked out the track bar to where I had zero bump, steer, that type of thing.

[00:45:41.800] - Jason Bunch

We went out, literally just barely Getting it done, going out in this competition. Now I got a vehicle that I don't even know how to really drive. I know how to drive my flat vendor, which is a little bit smaller vehicle, automatic, lots of horsepower. So even when I wasn't going to make something, I put my foot in it and I'd make it. When we go out to this thing, I'm learning how to run the car in between stuff. We go out the first day of competition. Let's see. I think there were two days of competition, right? Or were there one?

[00:46:20.180] - Big Rich Klein

I think it was two because I remember a big windstorm. Yeah.

[00:46:24.330] - Jason Bunch

So there was one day of competition, and you had to get into the dirty dozen, right? Yeah. Somehow, I'm learning in between obstacles, what gear to put it in, how to operate this thing. I had put the Clune V in there. I don't know if you remember that thing. Oh, yeah. I had gearing from hell. My lowest gear was 210 to one. Jesus. Yeah, it was beautiful. I had the mighty four-cylinder. I had built a heavier flywheel to put in the thing. Like I said, I used all my knowledge of the Jeeps and the things I've done in my life to build that Jeep. A lot of A lot of hard and cold. Really no blueprint, just all in my mind. Like I said, having a lot of good friends, customer friends, coming in to work on it. Just every part got massage in every which way. So we're out there, we're running this thing. And I mean, you remember some of the...

[00:47:52.090] - Big Rich Klein

What were some of the big cars?

[00:47:55.750] - Jason Bunch

Those guys had 44-inch tires on them. They were- Oh, Samson, and Goliath, and Brutus, all the guys from Northern California. Yeah. They had machines, right? They really had some machines, and we end up getting into the top 12. John Curry and I are the only guys that have 35-inch tires, right? Everybody, the shortest tire in that group of 12 was maybe 38 next to us, right? But everybody else had huge tires, right? Here, John and I are in the the dirty dozen. But like knucklehead I am sometimes, we come back on that Saturday, and I'm coming back from the back there with a master's course I believe. I'm hauling ass. I got the four-cylinder hung out sideways, and I don't have enough horsepower to get it back in. I hit a big old witch hole off the side of the road. It goes up on its nose and it lands. I could feel it in the wheel immediately. I go, Steve, look out the window or look out the side and see if that wheel's leaning. He goes, Yes, it's leaning. He's pissed at me, right? He's pissed. We get back to camp and everybody's added up their scores and Harold's there.

[00:49:43.870] - Jason Bunch

He goes, I think you're in, Jason. You're in those top 12. Your score is low enough. I go, Really? We load the Jeep up on a trailer. We hook it behind Danny Grimes' truck and haul ask to the shop. Steve goes into town. We don't have cell phones then. Those are the early years, right? We go to the shop, I put the Jeep on the rack, I straighten the front-end, I fix any of the ball joints that's messed up, put it all back together, put it back on the trailer, haul butt, and somehow the word got to us that we were in. So we get back to Johnson Valley somewhere around, I don't know, 1: 00 or 2: 00 in the morning, right? Go to bed, get up, and go compete. That's where he had those different little sections out there to compete. I think I was 11th in the Dirty Dozen, and John was seventh, seventh, or eighth. John and I are the only jeeps. Well, I shouldn't say that. What was the guy from Oklahoma? He had a shop. Sam's Off-Road? Sam's Off-Road. Sam was… He had a CJ5 with big tires on it.

[00:51:28.860] - Jason Bunch

I don't remember. There was huge. Sam was there. Those two buggies were there. There was a lot of good equipment. Two They were working buggies that had made it. They were Jeeps, and they were all cut off. Some guys from Colorado. Then we get into this thing, and we're just not going I'm dead. You know what I mean? I'm getting a good or better feel for this vehicle. You know what I mean? And long story short, we end up fifth. I think the courries went back to probably 11th. Everything in front of me was huge tires. So that was a major accomplishment. I think maybe there were 65, 70 vehicles that first time. There was a lot of vehicles. To do that with that little Jeep was amazing. Then, of course, we went to your events and Ranch's events in that Jeep, which we were at least always the top 10 in that Jeep, even when the tiny got built.

[00:52:55.050] - Big Rich Klein

When everything started going Moon Buggy. Moon Buggy.

[00:52:59.230] - Jason Bunch

I think when they had a championship, John won the first one, right? I believe so. Yeah. Was that the same year, you think? I don't even remember.

[00:53:13.860] - Big Rich Klein

I think it was I think it was '99 with Arca was the first series. It was John and Jeff Wagoner, Rookey.

[00:53:27.350] - Jason Bunch

I didn't compete in the series because I had a business to run. I think I did do a couple of those things. I think, what is it, Cedar City? Cedar City. Cedar City, I think I went there and competed and did really good on one of those first ARCA.

[00:53:54.010] - Big Rich Klein

That first Cedar City ARCA event was huge. I was the club president there in Cedar City at the time. The Sheriff estimated 10,000 spectators, and I think there was like 100 vehicles. It was pretty crazy.

[00:54:11.580] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. We had a roll over there. Steve and I put it back on its wheels and finished an obstacle. I cleared out all the mosquitoes, things smoking away. But yeah, I mean, that Cedar City event was just huge. Amador, remember Amador?

[00:54:39.270] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:54:40.410] - Jason Bunch

That was a bitch- That was my first event. That was a bitching event. It was pretty fun. We would go, most of the time, half asleep because I was always pay attention to the vehicle and get it done. Then we would take off and drive all night and then have to compete. We're not very smart that way. I think I had one event where we went to Farmington with that Jeep I got there a week ahead. I had first got the 17-inch Good Years. They were 37s, I think. 37s. And so we didn't know which one to use. It We just went out there and tested and played with the tires and air pressure. At the end of the day, I thought that the 17s were better because they didn't wind up. What I mean by that, you would inch the vehicle at something super steep, and then it would break traction. When it breaks traction, it picks up the vehicle like a dragster and hops the car. I found with the 17s, and they were like E-rated tires, they were stiff as hell. They wouldn't do that. You would just break traction, and then you could power up it without the car hopping.

[00:56:15.670] - Jason Bunch

I just thought that was a better way. Another thing, I drove both sets of tires down a curvy road. When I came back, I go, Man, it feels It was like the car is on rails with the 17-inch tires. So we decided to use the 17-inch tires, and turned out the right pick. We lost that competition the first day because We just brain farted or ran over a cone. It's just stupid. But anyways, to make the story get to the end, we come to the big hill climb. You remember that big hill climb in that?

[00:56:59.490] - Big Rich Klein

The Money Pit?

[00:57:00.470] - Jason Bunch

Money Pit. Yeah, there we go. We come to that big hill climb, and I have one point against me. I actually had 11 points against me. I had a cone, and I went up something and I side-hilled it to get through the cones, and the guy gave me a point for no forward movement. I went, But the wheels were spinning the whole time. And he goes, He goes, You gave us a point. So you know what? Okay, what's the point? You don't argue it, but you never win if you try to, and at least I never tried to. So anyways, we get to this thing, and I mean, the crowd is so sick. I can't even get up there to look at what I got to climb. One of the things I had learned, if you couldn't see everything, I learned to ask the starting judge, Is there anything that I need to pay attention about? And this guy knew nothing. He goes, Look, I'm just a starter. You started off back in the trees, right? And then you had to come up through this canyon and do stuff. So immediately, we leave the car there.

[00:58:15.160] - Jason Bunch

I run up with Steve, we stack some rocks, I run back. He's still stacking rocks, and I work my way up through there, and I make the climb, right? Well, I'll never forget it. There's this Jeep truck on a fin there, and they had put a cone, or in those days, they were a flag, I think, up high. When the Jeep went up through there, it touched the roll cage. Yeah, sick. We lost by four points to Shoupie. It was like, Man. But we got second. It paid really good in those days. True. I mean, it paid really good. I think that was seven grand or something. It was pretty good money. But that went on to that. Then that car basically was just getting its butt kicked by the buggies that had come out, and these guys have made things lighter. I mean, I competed with Darren Union. So Darren had a car, and we had gone to that Mexico thing, right? And became friends. Both our cars got towed down there. And then Darren got this other car with portal axles. And God, I never worked so hard in my life on a vehicle.

[00:59:51.250] - Jason Bunch

The portal axles just, it didn't give the bite to the car that it needed. At that point in my life, I don't think I was smart enough to totally figure it out, even though I had thrown so many different geometries at that vehicle to make it work better. It would work awesome in some crazy obstacle. Then the easiest obstacle, and then the easiest obstacle would work for shit. It was really bad. Then eventually, we decided, Okay, we're going to build our own. I got hooked up with another guy that was going to build a car, and that didn't pan out, even though we had the car built. I decided that it was a bad marriage. I decided it's the last. I talked to the guys, all my friends that were helping with this thing, and I go, I don't see where this is going. I don't like it. Can you guys mind if we just pull out? We'll build our own car. And so that's what we ended up doing, taking the car apart, bringing all the pieces back. I had a sponsorship from Turnkey because I was putting a bunch of those LS motors in people's Jeeps at the time.

[01:01:16.210] - Jason Bunch

He gave me a motor. I was so comfortable with the torque transmission, and it just happened to have the bolt pattern of that engine, which was what they called a Short Star V6. Yeah. Would I have been better off to build a Bolt's wagon and get that center of gravity down? Yes. But I didn't have to pay for it. So I used what somebody gave me. And we ended up building a jig out of some big I beam that somebody had given us, and we cut it up and leveled it out and then took pallet racks and put them over the top of this thing. We set the motor in it where we wanted it, which was a rear engine motor We set the axles where we thought they would be, dummy stuff. And then we put a seating there. We basically held everything up with wires to the pallet rack. Steering column, position, all these things. Then we… I still have it today, a piece of cardboard someplace where we drew up the general shape of the vehicle and we started bending pipes and made that rock buggy, got that all together, went to the first competition, and I built this three-link suspension in the back, where the lower link was like a A arm that pivoted It was the center of the differential and then two upper links.

[01:02:50.470] - Jason Bunch

And that differential basically was like a propeller. It had no rear steer in it whatsoever. I went to that first competition, It bent. It bent immensely. I went to Harold off shop, and we scabbed on a bunch of steel to it, finished out the competition, but we had already broke it on the first day, so we were out of the competition. And then I came back and made it all out of chromoly, and it still bent. I go, All right, Jason, this is not working. I made it a four-link. I would say that is where the light bulb said, You should have done better in math and geometry. I just had to learn it a different way. I remember going, All right, how do I figure this out? I welded what would be the frame mount on the steel table, and then took a drive shaft tube and started welding stuff to that and started moving the links the links there, and basically articulating this and articulating this, and trying to figure it out how to make the geometry get rid of the rear steer out of it. I learned because a little bit of my drag racing stuff.

[01:04:16.150] - Jason Bunch

I have a '41 flat vendor, basically sand drag car. Pretty proud of it. It's 700 horsepower, weighs about 1900 pounds, and it does in 100 yards, 4 seconds at 85 miles an hour. Nice. And somehow I was pretty good at it. I don't even know how, but I would go to Dumont Dunes and win a lot of trophies and lots of passes. By the end of the day, as the field gets thinner and thinner and thinner, I wouldn't even stop. I'd make a run. I have to come back and run somebody else. And that's where I learned about getting your mental state good, where you have to have your mental state to be a little bit tired, where you're not so jumpy. You have to eat just the right amount of food and drink about the right amount of water to be good at the lights. You take all these little weird things that you do in your life, from the motorcycle riding, the hiking, just everything. The jeeping, the sand drags, the mud bogs, and you end up to become a pretty good driver. But anyways, back to the rock Crawler. We built that rock Crawler.

[01:05:42.510] - Jason Bunch

We were horrible. We were a 20th Both Place car because BFG had the sticky tires, and we, at Good Year, were having the basically DOT tires, right? Right. And we just did not have the traction. Teammates were Joel Randolph, myself, and Walker Evans, right? Right. And both those guys, Joel Farmboy, smart, very smart on figuring out obstacles and stuff like that. You just watch him and you go, Man, that guy's got it, right? And then you have Walker Evans, balls as big as my house, done all kinds of racing, built vehicles. Randy Anderson, smart guy, right? Very smart. Anyways, so we build this car. Walker ended up sponsoring me on the Shox, and Randy would almost see me there every event going, They're too stiff. They're too stiff. He'd roll his eyes every time I'd come in there. I'm talking with Walker about them, and he finally bounces off one hill. Then Randy really went to work on fixing those shocks, getting them to really be more compliant to the ground. That's what you learn in racing. They're building shocks new and stuff like that. But anyways, we build the car. We're 20th-place cars, something I'm not used to.

[01:07:29.720] - Jason Bunch

I You always been lucky to be up there competing. Then Good Year gives us tires. I'll never forget, we go to Phoenix at Firebird Raceway. They built a rock crawling course out there. Manmade. And next thing you know, I'm third place. Joel was sixth place, and Walker was eighth or ninth. And it was like a light switch, right? How bad we were getting beat. Then you end up getting this other wild confidence of doing this stuff. You have all the tire manufacturers right before you're going to compete, right? Coming up, pushing on the tires, moving them, trying to talk to you, right? Maybe they're either trying to distract you or just see what's going on. I think it was more a distraction, you know what I mean? Because we were doing good, right? There's certain things in racing that if you don't grow up right there, you don't know a lot about what competition does. I just looked at them and by this time in my life, I could just shut the world out. There's an obstacle in front of me. I watch five guys roll off of it and crash their cars. You got to go over the top.

[01:09:10.230] - Jason Bunch

That happens a lot. Now we're doing good. I don't think that car ever really wanted an event, but it was always in the top five then.

[01:09:20.300] - Big Rich Klein

This is the end of the first half of the Jason Bunch interview. Please check out part two next week on Conversations with Big Rich. 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 to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.