I have never met any off roader that would not love to have a 40,000 buggy, myself included, and I could possibly have one if I sold my old YJ. Problem is I have such a hard time parting with that jeep. Part of it maybe that it was my first wrangler, but mainly because it just plain works. Now granted it’s not running 3-D at the gulches or the hammers but for a trail rig it’s great. Stock axles, stock shafts, 4:56’s, lock rites, rubicon express 4.5 in. extreme duty springs, and a rough country 3 in. body lift with cut fenders, not an extreme build by any means. Now it’s not a truck you can tattoo a peddle to the floor and I don’t compete with it. For competition a buggy trump bodied rigs. There is higher initial cost to build a buggy but if you have a heavy foot or going to compete in a series it is cheaper in the long run. Buggy’s have no body panels or glass to deal with and let’s face it bodies have a shelf life when off roading. It is only so long before body mounts crack, seams split, metal fatigue, or just plain rusts away.

Auxiliary lights, spotties, whatever you want to call them, are one of the first modification people seem to make to their 4X4. For someone driving an older 4X4 I can understand it. The driving lights on older rigs like 40/60 series Landcruisers are just plain shithouse.

These days new rigs actually come with some pretty decent lighting, right out of the box, so there would be a heap of other mods I’d make before lights. But this is not a ‘why you shouldn’t fit spotties on your rig’ article, so let’s take a closer look at how you can pick the right auxiliary lights for your rig…

Recently I was asked a very simple question, "what is Free Rock?" and it occurred to me that other than our fliers, emails and forum postings we had never explained what free rock is on our own site! Well, to understand Free Rock I will give you some back ground on where it came from. In late 2008 the concept of Mud Covered Productions was born, a production company to produce high quality east coast off road DVDs. The company was started in early 2009. As a company we knew that the east coast had all the things needed for great DVDs, great trails, great vehicles, and insane drivers. We set about calling parks and clubs to put the rite people in front of our cameras. After a fateful conversation with the owner of the Gulches ORV Park we set a private ride for filming and showing off. That ride quickly turned into an annual event called Gulches Got Talent. It was crowd judged and an amazing hit. We have since modified the format and turned it into a series called the Free Rock Nationals.

Let’s face it, off roaders have a very bad reputation with environmentalist. To put it gently, some of the organizations would like to see our rigs crushed and recycled. As with many groups of people, a few can give all a bad name. We are seen as gas and oil spilling, erosion contributing and plant destroyers. If we are going to keep any of our parks open we have to blow this stereotype out of the water.