More Stories, More Jason Bunch, part 2 is Episode 263

Part Two. 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.

7:06 – For once, I’m the guy, not the guy on the outside of the fence, I’m the guy on the inside.

19:08 – Damn, why didn’t anybody tell me I was doing that?!              

24:14 – I owe a lot to learning about mechanical things and driving different vehicles. 

31:42 – I’m on Junkyard Wars, right? And they had us build a land speed vehicle/rockcrawler that could be a boat! 

48:01 – I’m screaming at them, “the k*ll switch, the k*ll switch!”.

54:34 –At one point in my life, I had race face where I was pissed off because I wasn’t winning, I was taking it too serious. 

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.

[00:00:46.510] - 

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.

[00:01:12.660] - Big Rich Klein

This episode of Conversations with Big Rich will be part two of my interview of Jason Bunch.

[00:01:20.540] - Jason Bunch

One satisfaction that I forgot to talk about Rockstar when I built it. Remember when they had the 24 hours of the hammers?

[00:01:28.990] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:01:30.260] - Jason Bunch

So that was a fun thing to do. And that was... You had 24 hours to run seven trails. That was in the early days when things were super tight, right? Right. Now, they're all pretty blown out, but they're still good. So A or B had this thing called the 24 Hours of the Hammers. You I had the magazines there and all that stuff. They asked me, How long do you think it would take to run these trails, Jason? I go, I'm thinking about nine hours. Nothing happens, right? We go do this thing, and I'm the first guy. This is how crazy, stupid stuff was. I'm supposed to get out and tie ribbons along the way, and we leave in five minutes increments. So I take off. Steve, we'd pull up to a Bush, and we'd tie a thing on and take off and go, right? So we're running through this thing, and we finally get over there to sun bonnet and I get hung up. And Steve gets out of the car and goes to throw some rocks. And he just walks up a hill, a little silty hill. And I was, Man, a shaley hill.

[00:02:58.880] - Jason Bunch

And the next thing you know, he's on the ground. I go, What are you doing? Get up. He goes, Something happened to my knee. I go, What? I get out of the Jeep and through his pants, his legs going down and the bottom half of his knee is off to the right. I mean, I'm not good with that stuff, and I am damn near about faint. I go, All right, what do you want me to do? Be like John Wayne and pull on that thing and put it back in? He goes, No, no, no. He's in I go get some puckerbushes. I make a splint. I tape it all up. I get on the radio and say, We got a medical, but we're down in a hole. We had CVs in those days, right? And you can't get out. So anyways, I just welded up the passenger seat, too, because it was bent back. I have to bend it back, put him underneath the bar, put him in the car, take a bunch of stuff and put it underneath his leg, tie his leg up to the dash with bunies, and off we go. Side to side, he was okay, but any time the back would drop off of something, he was just in pain.

[00:04:17.780] - Jason Bunch

We finally get a hold of the camp. Now, we're in this race, right? I think there were, were there 12 or 15 competitors? Do you remember that?

[00:04:27.450] - Big Rich Klein

I don't remember how many.

[00:04:29.830] - Jason Bunch

Anyway, Anyways, so we take off. I get to the dry lake. We take Steve out of the Jeep. Danny Grimes is there. We throw Steve in the back of his truck. Off he goes to the hospital. Alan Mitchell, that he worked for me at the time, jumps in the Jeep with me. We take off, and the next thing we needed to go to was Sludgehammer. Yeah, Sludge Hammer. I slide right in front of Ned Bacon. So Ned left five minutes behind me, right? So I know that I am screwed here. I've just lost this race, right? So I take off through Sludge Hammer, and I get through Sludge Hammer just ahead of him. And now I got to go at Jack Hammer, and I'm going up Jack Hammer, and I get to the top. And this is where I wasn't sure which way to go because you had the new Jack, and I had never been on it. As we were supposed to go down new Jack, and I'm on the radio trying to figure out which way to go, and Ned comes up. We're talking back and forth with the camp, and Ned goes, I think we got to go this way.

[00:05:46.140] - Jason Bunch

So now I'm behind Ned, right? And I can't keep pace with Ned. He's got the killer bee. He's got a V8. He's got a granny four-speed. I got the Mighty The Four Banger, the Mighty, what did I used to call it, the Mighty Four Banger 2. 5 low output. That's what I used to call it. Anyways, we can't keep pace with him going up there. I do the best that I can. You get on top, I don't know if you've ever been up there on top. You're making a left or you're going down back or north Jack. I go, This is my opportunity. I get the thing wound up in the more soft area, and I pass it, and I fly by them. Now I'm back in front of them, and now I am going like hell down that side. Then you had to go run wrecking ball and claw hammer, whatever else it all was, and then back to camp, right? Well, we did it in 5 hours and 20 minutes, and he ended up doing it in maybe an hour, an hour and a half after me. We were the only two that came in.

[00:07:06.720] - Jason Bunch

Eventually, I went back out and helped people get through there. But I'll never forget how important that was in my life to build this vehicle and to win in it. Basically, the magazines wrote stories stories about it. I can remember we went, I think it was Colorado, to a rock crawling championship right after that. We went and played in the Black Hills or whatever. We come back and Steve's driving Rockstar, and I'm driving Skipper. Steve pulls in first, and this is right after it happens, and to watch everybody like, salute. You know what I mean? Everybody looked up and they go, Oh, my God. You hear the talk as I'm just idling by, right? Oh, my God, there's Rockstar. He did that thing in under 6 hours, all those trails. It was like, Wow, they're talking about me? It's like, Wow. It's like getting complimented sometimes, and You don't know how to take it. It was weird, very weird. It was like, Hey, for once, I'm the guy, not the guy on the outside of the fence. I'm on the inside of the fence. Nice. So that It was pretty cool to learn to do that and build a machine that beat everybody that day, which was pretty impressive for For us.

[00:09:00.440] - Jason Bunch

But back to the buggy. The buggy was fun. We learned a lot on that on geometry. When Craig bought it off of me, I took it to the shop, and I had it here at my house, took it to the shop and cleaned it up. You look at every little piece that you built and you polished on and you finessed with and how we Got all that stuff underneath that seat. Transmission battery. No one could ever figure out where the radiator was in the vehicle because they said, Hey, it needed to be covered. We covered it. We just looked at the rules and we did what they said. That was one thing that we learned a long time in the beginning. There would be guys arguing with the sanctioning body. We just They did what they said, and then we didn't have to play that game. They would be there for hours arguing. I won't mention names because it's part of it. We just learned early, just do what you need to do and make it all work. Then the rock crawling basically started to fizzle out in the fact that, well, cost and Good Year said, Hey, we're pulling the plug on it.

[00:10:33.740] - Jason Bunch

To be honest with you, I was a little bit tired of driving across the country all over the place, being away from family and stuff like that. Right before I stopped rock crawling, I knew there was something wrong with me, but I didn't know what was wrong with me because I would lose focus. I ended up buying a go-cart. A friend had a go-cart, and I went, Okay, maybe this is a thing for me to go out there and just get on a track, and it's repeatable, right? Start go karting. What ended up happening with that, why I went that direction, we would go to the Cema show, and a bunch of us would go go karting. The courries would go, Come on, we're going to go to the go kart track. I can remember going to that. Of course, the courries know a lot of people, and there's a lot of racers and stuff like that. We're all standing there at the end, and some guy goes, Who in the hell is this Jason Bunch? I go, Well, that would be me. I didn't know who this person was. He goes, What makes you so fast?

[00:12:06.860] - Jason Bunch

I go, I don't know. I just like go-karts. He goes, I can't believe that you beat my time. I go, Whatever. He goes, What do you do? I go, What do you mean, what do I do? Now I know what he's going for. He's trying to see what skill sets I have. I'm going, Well, I'm a rock Crawler, and I could see This was a perfect opportunity to just screw with him a little bit. He goes, Well, what do you mean a rock climb? I go, Well, they set up cones, and then we rock climb between these things. We go really slow through these things. He just gave me the face of like, What the hell? This guy beats me. That goes back to skill sets. You learn all these different things, right? Every time we'd come back from anything that had to come through Vegas, rock crawling, we'd stop at that go-car track because they'd be open till 2: 00 in the morning, and the place would be packed. We'd stop, and then we'd go. Every time I'd have some pretty fast times, and I go, Hey, I might be pretty good at this stuff.

[00:13:20.330] - Jason Bunch

I buy this go-cart, and I go to the track. What really ends up helping me was, after After rock crawling, my neck was a mess. I was having headaches because doing the rock crawling, you crash. You fall off some big stuff and beat my head around on those roll bars a couple of times, and I didn't know what was wrong with me, and I just felt something was wrong with me. Anyways, I get the go kart. I eventually meet a guy, Steuhaner, and we become good friends. Steuh was doing go karts in his garage, and we would go to the track. And my goal was to use that as my exercise program because I don't exercise that much. And I would go to the track. I'd get there at 8: 00. They open the track at 9: 00, and by 2: 00 in the afternoon, I would have 150 laps plus on this one-mile track. Now, most go-carters maybe do 40 in a day, and they're wiped out. But I had this drink from the rock crawling, throwing rocks, running, that I had the strength in the go-carts. I got to be pretty good go-carter.

[00:14:53.040] - Jason Bunch

I ended up winning two championships in a 125. Then eventually, I got seat COPD from the go karting, so I had to stop because that two-stroke smoke was just killing me. I knew something was wrong because when I first started go karting, I would wear a mask. That helped a lot. In fact, they'd all call me Dr. Bunch when I went up to the starting grid. But I took my mechanical ability and learned how to tweak on those go karts to make them work for me. That mechanical ability basically helped me immensely. The driving in the dunes, the sand drags, the rock crawling, the just going out and having fun, high desert roundup when they would do all the games, I would do those games and be the high points winner of all those things. That me in the go-carting. Then the go-carting, I got this COPD and I'm working through it. Then Tom from PSE gives me a call and goes, Hey, Jason, I'm building a new Altra 4 car. You want to help me run it? It's like, Yeah, I really love to do that. I ended up doing it, helping him. He brings that car to the dry link.

[00:16:30.790] - Jason Bunch

It's typical new car blues. This doesn't work, alternator, you name it, it's not working. We work on it for four days, everybody and anybody, at trying to get this car working and running and doing all the stuff. Tom goes out and runs the desert part, and then I run the rocks. The whole time, we're having fuel pickup problems. When they built the tank, I don't know if you know what a wall borrel is. Yeah. Those little check valves. They only put one in the tank, not four. If you just hit wrong, that thing would bounce up and kill the fuel. So we're in second. I'm fighting that thing, and we ended up with third that first time, King of the hammers. So that was an accomplishment. I took it to Glenn Helen, qualify second, roll the car in the heat race because I didn't realize the tires were... I was driving it like a go-kart, the tires were coming off the ground Every corner, roll the heck out of it. By the time they put me on my wheels, I'm 11th or 12th. I drive it back up to seventh. Now we got to start the main event.

[00:17:59.940] - Jason Bunch

Start the main event in seventh. I get outmotored by eighth right off the bat. I just went to work and picked them off, caught up to third. I forget the guy's name, but he had this big truck with a big block Chevy in it. Where I roll the car the first time, I go around there so hard, I damn near roll it. I got to bicycle the car, get it back on its wheel. But I'm watching him the whole time in front of me, blow over the burm to the next turn. And now he stands on it and I up this thing, and I hit the burm, and I go over there, and I go, he's going to hit me where he's going to come over the top, right? And I went wide. He comes over the top and lands like 90 degrees to me. And he hits so hard, he breaks the transmission. So I take off. And then, God, I forget his name. He builds cards. Gosh, start it. He's second. Anyways, I catch up to him and I dive underneath him and he went wide. And now it's pinching off and he's wide, but I got a straight line for the next right-hand turn.

[00:19:21.400] - Jason Bunch

He comes in to me and goes in between my wheels. Of course, our wheels touch. He goes flying, right? Where that back tire picked up over the top of mine, he goes flying off, and I go to Steve, Did he make it? Steve goes, Yep, he made it. He got back on his wheels, and We go and we chase down first, but we needed one more lap. We got second in that deal. Years later, we're at a race in Texas. We're sitting there talking in the shade, and he goes, Jason, I was pissed off at you at that event. He goes, I thought about it later. You got me on the inside, and I came in and tried to cut you off. I got the bad end of our wheels touching. But he goes, I got behind you, and I watched you go through every corner with your wheels, the inside wheels off the ground in that car. I just thought, This is no biggie. This guy's going to crash. That's what he told me. But I didn't end up crashing. I got pictures from that later on in my life and I went, Damn, why didn't anybody tell me I was doing that?

[00:20:47.700] - Jason Bunch

But that's what the go karting is probably all the things I've ever done, the rock crawling, the sand drags, the mud the dogs, the motorcycle riding. It comes down to where the go karting was just so intense. What do they run? 18 laps when you race? But when you come out of that 18 laps, you are just done. I mean, you are done. I've raced the King of the Hammers and raced my car. I eventually bought a car because Tom sold his car, and I ended up buying a car, and I ended up winning the Championship with it the first year, King of the Hammers. A Championship for the West. You run that thing 150 miles or whatever the races are today. I get out of the car and I am just like, Hey, I could do another 150 fifty. I am comfortable with a helmet on. I'm comfortable sitting in there, and I don't panic. And I watched a few of those deals where you watch everybody come in on the podium, right? And I wanted to make sure that I talked up all my sponsors, stuff like that. It's another thing you learn in the rock crawling, right?

[00:22:30.640] - Jason Bunch

Talking to media, saying the right things. I watched many of people badmouth their sponsors, and I just thought, Why are they giving them money or parts? I never did any of that stuff. You'd watch these guys that come in way behind you. They're half my age at the time, and they are done. They are physically, mentally done because they haven't learned to put the fear to the side, and their cars are probably not working that good. They're on limited budgets. They only know what they know, and you can tune all day with shocks. And unless you know what to input or are willing to change to make it better, You're never going to learn anything. True. That's one of the things for me. I've learned to make things work, not because I'm a real smart guy, It's because then I just never give up. I just keep working at it till it works. Then if it doesn't work, I cut it off and change it and rethink, Well, why did that geometry do this to the buggy at that point? Then we would try and go out and duplicate that over there in Johnson Valley and test that and watch the suspension and watch the bite of the car.

[00:24:18.480] - Jason Bunch

I don't know how many cars that obstacle at the Seema show. There was the Matterhorn or whatever. Too many people had too much bite in their car when they would climb that, and now the bite pushes it off the obstacle, and then they fall to the ground and break all the links out of the car. There was just tons of them that did that crazy stuff. You watched that, and I played with all those kinds of pickup points on the vehicle and learn how to manipulate the vehicle to not do those things. I learned a lot about steering geometry that most people never figured out because I would watch their cars just plow as they were turning through obstacles. I learned early on the Ackerman angle was everything, right? And that's how I beat a lot of people, not because I was the greatest driver or even a good driver. I just basically learned to massage my equipment to make it work. I owe a lot to learning about mechanical things and driving different vehicles. And All that stuff got in my business, fixing people's Jeeps, coming in with different problems.

[00:26:07.290] - Big Rich Klein

You approach it from an analytical side. You just didn't throw shit at it.

[00:26:12.980] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, yeah. And Today, people come to me and they go, What's the best suspension for my Jeep? I cannot answer that because this company might have something good and they got something really bad. Or that company might have that one part that's really good, and the rest of the stuff is bad. I learned that by watching. I got to give credit to Steve Hastings because he got to watch the vehicle when we were competing. A lot of our success was because of Steve Getting to watch the vehicle. Steve can watch a baseball game and understand all the things that are going on. You know what I mean? I watch the baseball game, and I can't tell if that guy got out or not. He just watches it better than me. The difference between Steve and me is there was a big obstacle. I could put the scare factor to the side and go do it, where Steve would have a little bit of that scare factor. Although I believe Steve, as a jeeper, was a better jeeper than I was. I just got to drive the car because I put most of the money in.

[00:27:50.480] - Jason Bunch

He drove it. He drove it in competition. There was a time my business was not very good. I said, Here, take the vehicle and go. You just got to find somebody because I got to stay here at work. But Steve brought a lot to the table of our success because he could watch things and we would talk about things. To make the car a lot better. Like I said, I have a lot of friends that help build these vehicles that worked many, many How many hours working on these things to make them what they were. What I could say to people that are in racing or competing is first you need the foundation of all these things, and then you put it together. You have to learn to manage your emotions, and you have to understand the vehicle. When I go to the go-car track, it was amazing how they mentored these kids as race car drivers today. You look at You look at the Andersons, these kids today going out and doing things. Remember, when I first went to a mud bog, they had Bigfoot drive over a vehicle, right? And now look what they're doing with those big, heavy vehicles.

[00:29:37.480] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, it's the monster trucks. It's just amazing what they're doing. And look at the engineering in a trophy truck today. People that just do nothing like me. I go to bed, I got an issue on my mind, I think about it, it puts me to sleep. I wake up and I have the answer. A lot of times my guys would go, I go, I thought of something the last night when I was sleeping. They go, Oh, God, this is going to cost us weeks. Working on the car. But another thing I can say is try to balance the family out. I didn't do the best job of that. I could have done a little better job balancing it out. Unfortunately, racing does that. You just put so much time into it, whether it be the Jeep. Going back to the jeeping today, I just got back from Lone time. Didn't even really care if I drove out in my Jeep anywhere, but we did. You know what I mean? Right. And put it around, but it was just relaxing to be out there. In the old days, I was Jason Bunch of Tri-County gear. Even when I was competing, people are coming up to me and going, Hey, come over here.

[00:31:07.480] - Jason Bunch

Look at my Jeep. I got this wrong. I would go on a Jeep run, and I'd be fixing people's Jeeps the whole time. And then everybody's going, All right, Jason's standard time. Hurry up and wait for Jason to take us on a Jeep run. I'd have to hear that. The one thing I learned It was about boating, when I was a boater, I was just another boater. No one came to me to fix their boat, right? And that was very relaxing.

[00:31:41.430] - Big Rich Klein

Being anonymous.

[00:31:42.840] - Jason Bunch

Yes. Being anonymous. But Some of the things, not being anonymous, I was lucky enough to be on that show, Extreme Machines. Johnson Valley was featured there. Took it a Taking Jeeps through there. Then at the time, I got to be on Junkyard Wars, which I thought somebody was pulling my leg because I used to come home and watch that show and go, Wow, it'd be fun to be on that. The next thing you know, I'm on Junkyard Wars, right? Nice. Luckily, the Junkyard Wars, that was during the rock crawling days, and I basically won. They He basically made us do a land speed vehicle, rock Crawler, and then make the thing a boat. Luckily, I was always I was in the speed, and the rock crawling thing came easy. I was a little bit of a boater, jet boat, skier, that type of thing. I called the guy guys that make those ducks that you see in the San Francisco Bay and stuff like that. That guy gave me a formula about the weight when I need to displace that weight to float it. I basically had some practical knowledge on that. Junkyard Wars was fun.

[00:33:26.900] - Jason Bunch

They try to pitch you away from your group people. And my group of people were the guys that built the RAPTAR airplane, so they're all engineers. So that was helpful in one way because we figured out how to weigh the vehicle with a piece of wood and me standing on the piece of wood at 200 pounds and picking it up at each corner and calculating each corner. So then we figured out what the displacement was to float that thing. So the lucky thing is there were two vehicles that I saw in the junkyard when I walked through. They won't let you through the junkyard. And there was a Ford pickup truck and a Chevy pickup truck, where I really wanted the Chevy, but the Ford was in front of the Chevy, so I had the guys bring the Ford and the Chevy, and they fought me on that. I said, no, I want them both because I could steal parts from them. And basically, I knew what I was doing there. I was basically taking the two most horsepower vehicles away from the other two teams. So eventually, the Chevy comes in. It's a small block Chevy.

[00:34:56.660] - Jason Bunch

Somebody had spent some money on this thing, had angle plug heads on it, a Holly carburator. It was right up my alley. I basically had that thing running in about, I don't know, half hour, 45 minutes and revving the shit out of it, right? And everybody goes, Why are you doing that? I go, I'm basically scaring the other team. So we worked hard at building it. First, you had to a land speed. So we stripped the truck down, and basically I left the sway bars, the shocks on it, those types of things. We cut the roof off of it, built a roll cage. I had a little war with the sanctioning body. They said the roll cage was too low. I had to cut it out and make it taller because of their pools. I'm going, You just guys just watch me build this roll cage, and now you're telling me this stuff? I go, What if I lower the seat? I lowered the seat and made them happy. Then we went to… We weighed the vehicle that way, and then we figured out, we found bomb container things to float this thing. And we made pulls go through The frame of the truck, we torched it out and ran those through to float the truck.

[00:36:35.310] - Jason Bunch

And then two 55-gallon drums on the back, plus the tires helped float it, right? Right. And we I gave this stuff all modular where you could take it apart because in this particular deal, you had an hour to basically get your car set up for each individual obstacle. And basically, We go out to the desert, out by 29 Palms, big dry Lake out there, and we raced the truck. Now, I'm not allowed to be in the truck. They just wouldn't let me buy it. They had these guys drive it. We take off, and of course, the guy stalls it on the line, and then we take off, and we ended up going out, I don't know, a mile or two and back. Maybe it wasn't that far, maybe a mile. We ended up winning that one because we had the fastest vehicle that Chevy ran. Then we go to the rock crawling thing, and I had had it figured out, all right, all the sway bars come off, all the shocks come off. Just let this thing articulate. I had welded the rear end up, and we couldn't get the drain plug out of this thing.

[00:38:01.320] - Jason Bunch

It was just in there. It was a typical 12 volts Chevy. The plug is manguled. I welded stuff to it. It would not come out. So I welded up the spiders, and I'm going, All right, how am I going to get the oil in this thing? And I go over to the catering truck and I get a bag, a ziploc bag, and I take the ziploc bag and I pour oil in it. I ziploc the bag up and put it inside the differential, put the cover on it. Of course, they're videotaping this, and they're seeing me do stuff. The cameras were just always on me, right Any time. After the first time moving vehicles around, I threw a bunch of dirt on the ground, and we had this side by side to move shit around. I told these guys, I need to move the Ford out of there. It was in my way. I threw a bunch of dirt on the ground there, and I took a chain to it, and I go, take off. And that thing just slid sideways, right? It was like one of the first crazy things I did. And then the camera guys around me go, What's this quack doing?

[00:39:20.250] - Jason Bunch

So anyways, we put the diff cover on. I go, man, once it turns, it's going to break that bag and the oil in the rear end. I basically had learned that from the rock crawling days when somebody break a cover or something like that, we'd put a ziploc bag, catch the oil, right? And of course, we'd pour it back in. But just the things you learn along the way. I turned it into an environmental statement. You know what I mean? Well, we go out rock crawling. We don't want to have oil on the ground. This is what we do. I was using my head for our sport. Basically, now we do the rock crawling. Of course, we win that hands down. That was the one I was most worried about because all the rock crawlers that you compete against, if I wouldn't have won that, I would have gotten harassed a lot. Then we go out by Palm Springs. There's a lake out there, and we switched this thing over, and now we got to float this truck. And they basically... Something happened when we were building the vehicle. I'm, A, looking for a propeller, and I'm looking around, and I'm not allowed to go in the junkyard, but I'm looking for a big fan.

[00:40:59.690] - Jason Bunch

And I see this fan. What they had was these prop walls that would basically roll around. If they were interviewing you, they'd roll these prop walls up with parts all zip-tied to it and talk to you. I see this fan. Of course, I got the camera on me all the time. I go to my guys, I take my mic because they're miced up the whole time. I go, You got to get the camera guy off my ass. Go do something, go pound on something, whatever. And of course, I went over to get a drink of water, and the camera guy goes, Okay, well, he's just drinking water. I'm going to go chase this other guy down, and he's pounded on something and explaining something to them. And I got a pair of dikes in my pocket, right? And I sneak over to this prop wall because it's this D8 fan, all right? For a D8 caterpillar. It's huge. It's huge. And I cut it off the wall, and then I walk up behind the vehicle, and I'm looking at it, and I'm going, All right, the rotation of the rear-end is counterclockwise, right? Is this propeller going to work for me?

[00:42:19.140] - Jason Bunch

And it just happened to be the right direction without me having to twist the blades the opposite direction. So Next thing, the camera guy's on my ass, and he's going, What are you doing, Jason? I go, I'm looking at the direction of this fan to see if it's going to work. I'm going to weld it to the drive shaft. And he goes, Oh, okay. So it ended up being the right fan for what I needed for the direction. Back to getting it ready for a boat, we take the drive shaft off, we weld the fan on there. They wanted me to put some safety device to kill the engine that was in front of on the dash at a rope, and you had to pull that. I think we eventually use that in the rock crawling world to shut vehicles off. The other thing that happened in there, I found a rudder. I go, Wow, that piece of steel looks just like a rudder. Go get that to the one engineer guy, my helper. He gets it, and then I get busy, and the next thing you know, he cuts it. I go, Why are you cutting that thing?

[00:43:39.770] - Jason Bunch

And he goes, Oh, for drag? I go, We're trying to float a barge here. We need a rudder that's going to turn this thing. By that time, it was over. It was done, right? So we made the rudder work. And then, of course, you put the thing together and you have that hour to put the car together. You put the rudder out, you put the thing on it, put the thing on it. You throw anything else that's on this barge off. We slide in the pipes, we put the flotation devices on it. The race starts, they drive down in the water on the beach and take off. Well, if you went too far as past this one buoy, and you If you had to go around this other buoy and stuff like that, you're disqualified if you did it. So we made some paddles just in case to paddle this thing. They go out. I took the radiator out of the vehicle and I took the water hose of a water pump and tied it down to the lower spring to where it would suck water up, stuff like that. And just trying to get rid of weight.

[00:44:58.510] - Jason Bunch

Basically, they take off. It gets in front of everybody, and now it can't turn because the rudder is too small. They climb up on the top of the dash and go across there. Well, I don't know this, but one of them pulled the kill switch, and they thought it overheated. The team The team from the UK had built a Cherokee and made it float. And the Russian team had taken a boat and put a engine in there and made the drive come through the bottom of the boat, and then they had put wheels on it. They had made a trike is what they had made to do their rock crawling and their land speed. Well, land speed, they weren't anything. The rock crawling, they were so, so on, and Cherokee was probably better on. So at this point, we have two first, right? And Now, you know what? I want to get that first for the boat. That competition kicks in. So now the Cherokee is catching on fire. Those guys are rowing it and putting the fire out and trying to start it. The Russians, they start rowing their boat immediately. They knew that they and pass everybody.

[00:46:40.330] - Jason Bunch

The Russians ended up getting to the beachhead first and then push it up the beachhead where they got to go across start finish line. We're still in third place. The thing that happened when you first go there, they The producers all interview you, and they had told me the point system, and I had told them, they're sitting there drinking cocktails, and they're thinking, How are you going to do? I go, I've already figured out the points. I just do this, and I've won. So what the rat masters did, they changed the points. And that's when I learned to shut up. So anyways, back to the thing that's going on. Our boat, they're trying to row the boat. They won't let me get next to the water and scream at them because I had charged that battery 24/7 the whole time I was there. And I was trying to scream to them, put it in fourth gear and crank it on the starter. I'm screaming this. They finally let me go down to the water. I'm screaming this at them. And then I think, I wonder if they touched the kill switch when they climbed the deal.

[00:48:01.430] - Jason Bunch

I'm screaming at him, The kill switch, the kill switch. I look down, or the guy that's driving looks down. I could tell in his eyes, he sees it off. He turns it back on. The car starts. He starts coming. The guys from the UK are at the beachhead, and they're trying to make it start and climb the hill. They're trying to push on it. They're trying to do everything to make this thing go. It would fire and go up and then quit and roll back. It was like a scene just going on, and it made the end of the race look pretty good. All of a sudden, that thing fires up, and then they come charging, and they drive up to the beach, and we get second. I go, Well, second's better than third, I guess. But it was pretty cool. I asked what was going to go on with that vehicle after the event because that motor was a pretty nice motor. It had a little camshaft in it and stuff. I thought, Well, maybe I get my hands on that motor. It had angle plug heads. Those are pretty good heads, just like I had on my flat vendor.

[00:49:15.560] - Jason Bunch

The one guy told me, he goes, We're not allowed to tell you anything, but that truck hadn't run in seven years. They're off there going buying stuff off the street. After I had made it run, I think the group of people that were working on the show figured out that that was a pretty hot motor, and they probably had the same idea I did. That was a bumer, but I never got the truck. But it was, like I said, it was opportunity because I put myself out there to do such a thing. I got to see in the film business that not many people want to make a decision. They do a lot of, I don't know, they're creative people and they do a lot of, Oh, that's so smart, and no one ever makes a decision, right? Unlike working at Tri-County, you make a decision every two minutes. Sometimes a good one, sometimes they're bad one. But that's just what it's been like. But it was a lot of fun to do that show. That was a week of building it or two days to build it. The rest of this thing we're on this bus, driving it around, filming it and stuff like that.

[00:50:52.100] - Jason Bunch

It was really pretty cool. Middle of July or August in Burbank in a junkyard People were faining like it was going out of style. It was hot as hell. But I had just gotten back from, I think, Moab or something like that, from a rock crawling thing. Literally came home, kiss the wife, hug the kids, and I was gone again to that. Pretty exhausted from the rock crawling and then having to do this. So It was really my first good night of sleep, sleeping in the hotel there. I actually did miss the bus in the morning. I didn't know where to go. I had to call the thing, jump in my Jeep and drive to the junkyard the first time because I overslept. Oh, man, what an ordeal. Start thinking about all those crazy things. But I was probably in the best shape of my life doing the rock crawling stuff. I used to have this big old German shepherd, and I'd hike him in the hills a lot, and he kept me in shape in those days.

[00:52:13.360] - Big Rich Klein

That makes a difference. It really does.

[00:52:15.290] - Jason Bunch

It did make a difference. I'm not no muscle building guy. I was thinking of the guy that ran pirate.

[00:52:29.440] - Big Rich Klein

Lance Clifford?

[00:52:30.880] - Jason Bunch

Lance. Lance was a mountain of a guy, right?

[00:52:35.850] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:52:37.160] - Jason Bunch

He was strong. There was a lot of strong guys. I mean, the guys, the Campbells. Oh, yeah. He That they had super strong guys. That's what it was. Probably that one of the times in the rock buggy, I got second place. I had first place locked up as Shannon. There was a V-notch. We had to climb. Shannon falls off in it, right?

[00:53:07.360] - Big Rich Klein

And nick pulled him up?

[00:53:09.820] - Jason Bunch

No, he stood on the gas, and nick was jerking on it. If I would have tried that with my car, it would have broke. I had already done the obstacle was the top of the hill. I had won the event, and somehow Shannon pulled it off, stood on that car, had the car hopping all over there. It came out of that crevice. The car was literally 90 degrees in that crevice. With the right size tires down, it was crazy. He got out of it and won the event. You get those ones, you get ripped off or stolen. He was just better. He was just better. That's all there's to it. He was It's just better. I can remember in the beginning of Rock Crawling, Shannon was not very good. He was more about show and go. He won an event, one of the ones Ranch did. You know how Shannon used to party, right? He was partying, and I went, Okay, this just doesn't look good for the sport. I went over and talked to him. I go, Shannon, you got to stop drinking. You got to get up in front of all those people and talk.

[00:54:34.790] - Jason Bunch

I forget his wife's name at the time. Tammy. Tammy, that's it. She goes, Shannon, he's right. Because I could see the sport going someplace. At that time in my life, I watched a lot of NASCAR, and I watched how those guys would talk on TV, I would go, You need to model yourself that way, Jason. Be accessible. Talk to people. Congratulations people when they've done better than you. Just had to learn that. I had to learn that in go karting. At one point in my life, I had race face where I was pissed off because wasn't winning. I was there, but I wasn't winning, and I was taking it too serious. One day, I'm standing at the shop, and I would see this guy. He was blind. He would come down from one of those apartments down there, walk to the store and get enough stuff he could carry, and walk back. I went, You know what, Jason? You got to look at life a different way. You're getting to do things. You're getting to wake up and see the sunrise and the sunset in places that people will never see. And it changed my attitude about, you know what, take every day and just do it and do the best you can do.

[00:56:23.050] - Jason Bunch

It made a big difference for me in the go-carting world.

[00:56:29.600] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. That's pretty profound.

[00:56:33.130] - Jason Bunch

Yeah.

[00:56:33.310] - Big Rich Klein

I'd like to say, Jason, thank you so much for sharing yourself with us. It's been awesome. I mean, to go through the mechanics of how you were able to achieve what you did without big support and all that stuff. And just a group of friends and just thinking problem solving. It's awesome.

[00:57:09.230] - Jason Bunch

Yeah. I'm lucky to do it. I'm just very lucky to do it. I'm lucky to have a lot of good friends that help build these vehicles. There's a lot to name. Steve Hastings, number one. Brian Smith helped build the rock buggy. The three of us really put our heads together to build that car. Tons of people in my Jeep club, or I guess you would say the Tri-County Club, helped on Rockstar and came out and supported. That was the main thing, a lot of support. A few sponsors on the way, advanced adapters, turnkey engines. Walker Evans supported me a lot with equipment and stuff like that. Lauren, obviously, with the winches and the The Black Diamond suspension. It made me learn about linkages, which was incredible. There are a lot of good companies. I'm probably forgetting a whole crapload of them. That G&J aircraft, they pretty much gave me every nut and bolt and Himes and stuff like that over the years to to support the vehicles.

[00:59:01.750] - Big Rich Klein

Did Tom Allen help you out along the way?

[00:59:05.410] - Jason Bunch

Oh, yeah. There's another one. Tom Allen. Tom gave me steering stuff. We used his car. Darren Runian, when I used his car. There's just support in the off-road world. I was not smart enough to do the social media to ask for things. Those things pretty much came to me where they were business relationships, right? Good Year tires, man, they supported me a lot during those years of doing it. I got to do lots of Good Year runs where we would take customers out. I launched the MTRs. My My first Jeep, my Barbie Jeep was the first set of Jeep that I know in California that had those. They sent them to me. I went and tested them. I tested some tires for BFG also. I tested tires for Maxx. Nitto tires helped me win in the Championship in the Alter 4. I mean, so I had a lot of good companies that helped me. I wish I would have been someone like Lance that saw the future in the social media. It would have been more beneficial to have money in your pocket to do some of this racing, right? You never have enough money to do any type of racing.

[01:01:23.170] - Jason Bunch

I spent money, trust me, but I did it on a more affordable way. When you get into an ultra-four car, oh, my God.

[01:01:40.120] - Big Rich Klein

Nowadays, even, it's $300,000 for a car.

[01:01:45.960] - Jason Bunch

Yeah. Well, I know Cody, Wagner in that independent car. I don't know what he's been. I've heard a lot of dough, and I got to drive it once. I taught Cody how to rock-crawl. He was one of my customers. And look at that guy. He went out and won championships, rock-crawling, and built a hell of a car that… I say it like, My car, I lose my eyeballs going through the whips at about 80. And his car, I don't lose my eyes at 100. I don't know why he trusted me to drive that car. I damn near killed me and some kid that I didn't even know. But I just... The speed was bitching. But yeah, there was a lot of people along the way that... Cody helped out on stuff, building his laser business, Laser Nut. I mean, just a lot of good people along the way that would help us out on stuff.

[01:03:12.490] - Big Rich Klein

Well, good people help good people. That's how life works.

[01:03:18.310] - Jason Bunch

Yes. It never would have happened if I didn't buy that Jeep. There you go. That $960 investment cost me a A lot of money over the years.

[01:03:31.660] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, but a lot of smiles, too.

[01:03:34.900] - Jason Bunch

Yeah, lots of smiles. Lots of things. And thank God I have my wife that helped me get to a lot of these places, and filled out the paperwork, and all the things. Organize the guys. And tolerated your time in the shop. And. Yeah. I mean, we used to do the customer appreciation runs, and she ran all that. Basically, to take some 35 Jeeps on different trails, and keep all those people together and keeping everybody moving was A lot of work, but a lot of fun at the end of the day when we would either have a dinner or sit around to fire. Exactly. So lots of fun.

[01:04:25.850] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. Well, Jason, thank you so much for for sharing and spending the time this morning and having the conversation. I really appreciate it. Next time I'm down in LA, I'm going to give you a call, and maybe we can do a dinner or something like that. It's been a long time since we've done that. I'd like to see you guys again. No, definitely.

[01:04:47.010] - Jason Bunch

Definitely go to dinner, and maybe I'll see you on the trail somewhere, now that I'm a little bit semi-retired. I I just finally bought a new remote or home, and I'm trying to use it and go places, and check out stuff. Perfect. Checkout stuff.

[01:05:06.810] - Big Rich Klein

Well, cool. I hope to run across to you. And like I said, thank you so much for spending the time. You've had a good life, and I hope that continues.

[01:05:21.590] - Jason Bunch

Yes. Thank you very much. I hope everybody has a great time out in the desert, whatever they're riding or driving, and keep the desert clean. There you go.

[01:05:33.890] - Big Rich Klein

All right. You take care, and I'll talk to you shortly.

[01:05:37.280] - Jason Bunch

All right. Sounds good. Okay.

[01:05:38.570] - Big Rich Klein

Thank you.

[01:05:39.710] - Jason Bunch

All right. Bye-bye. Bye.

[01:05:42.420] - Big Rich Klein

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