Just seeing if anyone else here gets off the tarmac. I try to get sideways on the perfect Alabama rally roads almost every weekend. Pretty soon I will be on Forester suspension and have 4 more fog lights. Post up if you do.
the one time i went (and I rode, didn't drive), between the three cars we lost an entire exhaust system, blew a strut, lost a wheel well (happens when you try and cross a creek at 30mph), lost an entire carputer system, knocked the alignment off all three cars. Not sure if this contributed to the effect or not, but one of the guys lost a tranny shortly after. If that's worth it to you, knock yourself out
Gotta find the right roads and drivers I guess. Alignment is not really an issue as I have my rally wheels and tires for rallying (which are on most of the time) and a good friend of mine has a shop that will performance align me for free as long as I help him work on his shop car. In the process of covering most of the bottom of my car with 1/8th" steel sheets. I know it adds weight, but I am not too worried about that just having fun. I'm not worried about my tranny while I am "rallying." I just leave it in 2nd or 3rd the whole time. I don't really go that fast. Just like to get it sideways around the dirt hare-pins. So in short, its totally worth it for me. I'll put up some pics of my car on forester struts and armored bottom once I finish.
The right roads wouldn't have been nearly as bad. We hit some pretty massive bumps that caused a lot of our damage. I would love to take my car off road again, but I don't think I will do it here in GA. I will wait until I make a trip to PA to find some nice dirt roads to play on. I think the GA Clay makes the ground surface too rough, and have yet to find an actual dirt road, not gravel. Dirt won't scratch up the paint as much as gravel will.
there are some soft sandy ones in south ga. the water line used to come almost all the way to the appalachians in the pre-historic times so thats why its a little sandier down here and less clay (although you can still find plenty
My alignment was fine after the run and the exhaust only fell off the hangars. The trans failed after making repeated runs at the strip. I'll put the 1" lift kit and stock height springs on with snow tires in February for the "Sandblast" and make a few runs. Don't think I'll have much to worry with the Dogbox Trans and the shortened hacked ehaust. Drew you can play the part of Co-pilot if you want
I use to have a dirt/gravel road I would frequent at times to have some fun. It was somewhat populated though so I didn't really do a whole lot. I would love to take the car out to some other ones, I just don't know where any are around here.