250R's & Glamis Dunes

[Music] i spend all of my time working these days my friend brad has a lot of good ideas and he was thinking we should get back to the dunes i used to go riding there on my raptor and now i've got some new machines that were born for that kind of riding so i tuned up my 86 250r and mounted some paddle tires on the four tracks some of you might have seen my video on the trx from when i rebuilt it if you did watch it you'll recognize this tri-z it turns out that the buyer lives in phoenix which is on the way so we agreed to drop it off so without any delay we got the trailer packed hopped in the truck grabbed nothing but the bare essentials and left the icy planet of denver colorado for the sandy deserts of glamis california but not before stopping in albuquerque for mexican food growing up in southern arizona we eat mexican food once a day open road for 15 hours a quick visit with dad we stopped to get some gas dropped off the tri-z to the tri-z collector and we just started booking it across the copper state brad explained to me that our visit coincides with a group of riders from the imperial invasion which is a riding club for anybody that rides three wheelers new or old sounds like fun [Music] you'll know you're close when you start to see off road vehicles on trailers skip across the border into california turn right on ogilby road turn left at the t and you're there [Music] if maniacs cowboys and bandits had a temple this would be it a store for all your off-road needs and friends let me tell you something this license plate is accurate you come here on a holiday weekend like thanksgiving expect to see six-figure crowds nobody likes parking in a packed lot but at least you get to check out some cool rides part of what makes the dunes so cool is there's always a blend of new and old but you guys know me i like the old stuff [Music] first order of business was to drop the bikes second go find some guys who want to get in a quick ride before dark once the sun sets we unpacked made camp and prepared for a big morning brad took off early with a group of guys while i started jetting riding two strokes living at seven thousand feet and riding it ten thousand feet often jetting is a big part of my life but i did take a little time that morning to chat with some of my neighbors this was one of the nicer buggies camped next to me once i got the jetting dialed in we got some guys together and went deep into the dunes jason the guy in the middle carved out some phenomenal lines for us he rides a 250r with baja lights which was such a cool throwback this was a great group of guys to ride with and we would go out many more times but take a look at this photo and now let me show you how far we rode to get there here's how it goes each ride has a few guys from the last one and a few new faces as well [Music] you always leave camp like a bat out of hell start meandering through the hills and before you know it you're there [Music] here we are at the slingshot in glamis 2020. the swing set is an iconic landmark of glamis a memorial for a former member of the duning community this destination serves as the perfect spot for picnicking with people you care about and a place to view the action on the surrounding hills [Music] i kid you not one of the most frustrating things about the dunes is having to accept that you'll never get a photo or video that will capture the size and scale of the experience part of that experience was seeing so many interesting vehicles getting used the way they were intended a try z a couple of custom trikes a pair of 350xs and a cool buggy sometimes at the dunes the offbeats can be as cool as the on beats [Music] one of the guys had a jeep that interested me it was super clean and it was custom no doubt about that if you're a jeep enthusiast i think you'll appreciate this one it had about 1600 horsepower if i remember correctly the owner agreed to rip it up the hill for me as we went rolling out and i'll let you guys hear it [Music] hmm [Music] uh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] back at camp i got hanging out with the neighbor for a few minutes i thought he had a cool buggy and we ended up taking a look at some of his other vehicles he had a 350x modded with one of those electric starts oh and he brought an atc70 which has been a staple of every campground in the dunes since the 1980s but what i really thought was neat was his second generation 250r besides being a great rider this bike came with an old hanes manual that had some early service notes written onto the back page i'll let you check it out [Music] meanwhile at the trailer there was work to be done my chain had come loose on that last ride and when you ride hard with slack in the chain you might end up chopping off some teeth it's all good though i was planning on changing sprocket sizes anyways and there's a store up the street the trx came back together just fine these old bikes are easy to work on and i called it a day but not everyone and if you want the story you're gonna have to ask one of them [Music] next day folks wanted to see some of those big walls and the imperial sand dunes has plenty of that ride on over hills four and five and you'll find as much action as you have fuel there's no wrong way to hill climb and you'll see guys going up it down it and crab across the side you can even use that lip on top as a jump in either direction [Applause] [Music] you guessed it relax watch the fun and tell some stories a lot of times riders will meet up on that top ledge to get a little closer look at the action [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] so uh sandstorm is sitting right now and uh we're all gonna go into some food because they're standing our eyes sat in our face and our teeth and uh we need to get out of it but i'll let you guys kind of see a little bit if the camera gets any of it sandstorm here out at glamis today so we're just working on some bikes and uh here we go just think guys have been wrenching on 250rs for almost 40 years what a testament to honda my bikes are 32 and 34 years old then you got guys like brad who are reinventing the 250r have a look at his third generation it's a 450r frame from 2007 with an 86 250r motor modified with an esr-310 stroker ported and polished he built this custom r because he wanted the ergonomics of the newer machine i'm six foot two and it definitely has more arm room and leg room than my 88 there's a pretty good story on his bike in relation to the china wall but i'm gonna let him tell that story for you guys he's the owner and operator of vintage off-road llc and he's got his own channel for stuff like that [Music] and those same guys that have been building these bikes for four decades they're walking around camp if you start working on a bike pretty much every guy walking past you wants to hang out and help need a part they'll spot you one and for payment you can tell about those a-arms or maybe the gussets on the frame it's like the next thing you know you've got a community pit crew with probably a hundred years of collective experience wrenching so we get the quad back together check each other's rides because i'm a sucker for a cool raptor and then it's time to clean up nothing like a little sand in your trailer where you sleep [Music] one of the best parts about the dunes has got to be the bulls hammer on the gas to use your power and speed to stick to the upper edge and go blasting around the top back to my earlier comment about the scale of the dunes it's really hard to capture the size of these bowls the steep sides and the speed you're using to cling to the rim when you're up there on that top lip you're going very fast probably fourth gear wide open you can feel the g-forces keeping you stuck to the wall when you look over your shoulder into the bottom dead center only then do you realize how high up you are we found a couple of giant bowls on this trip but there was one that stood out at the end of the day with high walls steep edges a deep center and smooth sand it was almost perfect so so later that night i went on a ride by myself and watched the sunset i hadn't noticed it until now but this trip was a lifelong goal i've been doing this stuff a long time and when i was a little kid in tucson my dad got me the two most important things a boy could ask for a dog and a dirt bike and by the fourth grade i'd figured it all out i know what you're thinking how much can a fourth grader know about riding or life in general plenty i knew that all the hard men of riding wrote 250rs and that i wanted to get big enough to ride one in the same places i saw in all my magazines it took me a while to getting around all this but it was worth it and the trip still wasn't even over the best place to go in the morning might be oldsmobile hill so we formed a posse and headed northeast this hill is another iconic landmark of glamis and for smaller vehicles like us it's nice to get there before the buggies are ripping the place up by the way when i tried to find out how it got its name all i found was a bunch of internet rumors like the first car that made it to the top of the hill had an oldsmobile engine in it or that there's some kind of old mobile buried towards the bottom of the approach if you think you've got the real story please share it in the comments below shout out to the invasion page that's everyone down below [Music] [Music] so so [Music] oh [Music] up [Music] [Music] back at cam i caught up with a buggy owner who was rolling out towards the big hills and he agreed to tear it up around the site for me so that you guys can see a little more variation of what vehicles the dunes has to offer i think i like buggy so much because they're always so customized engines shocks paint jobs i mostly do old stuff and you don't see that level of customization on the old stuff too often so there's this jeep got talking with the owner it's a modified cj5 it was pretty slick i want to take this time to thank all the jeep owners who've helped us riders out it's always nice to have a jeep in the convoy for when something goes wrong and we all know that something always goes wrong i grew up with a guy whose dad still has an old flat fender cj3b and he was always pulling guys out of flooded washes in our neighborhood and helping other guys out in the dunes and of course this jeep owner was no different he also had a side by side and when one of our riders broke a chain on a hilltop i think he might have been the one who helped him out also if you remember when i broke those teeth on my sprocket he followed me back to camp so just another example of dune culture [Music] but uh all good things must come to an end and i think we all want to scrape the barrel on our last day of any vacation we'd driven over a thousand miles to get the glamis in four days between our four bikes we burned 50 gallons of fuel i made some new friends and took something like 500 pictures but still you want to find a nice book in it i wanted to find something fast something mean a way to end this trip a way to end this video and when i was up there i found it so get to higher ground so [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] hmm

Channel: Retro Riders

Views: 28,614

Rating: 4.8784533 out of 5

Keywords: ATC, ATC 250R, 250R, Fourtrax 250r, TRX 250R, Glamis, Dunes, Fourtrax, 350X, ATC 350X, glamis, Retro Riders

Id: BYyt5D7xW_A

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020