Camburg conquers “Vegas to Reno” two years in a row!

Huntington Beach, CA– Coming into Best in the Desert’s Vegas to Reno race, everyone knows the difficulties and challenges ahead of them. With over 450 miles of race course it has some of the most technical and abusive terrain in the US.


Jason Campbell driving with Scott Zindroski navigating and Morgan Wilson in the 3rd seat was last off the line in class as they had a rear start position mid Friday. The first 80 miles was some of the roughest terrain and it showed soon into the race with the vast amount of trucks and buggy’s already broken down early. Once they were able to set a good pace they came into the first bottle neck of the race. On a single track trail leading up through some mountains race traffic came to a dead stop. With the high heat and elevation many of the lower powered buggies were having issues traversing the terrain. After about 15-20 minutes of sitting stopped on course, traffic began to flow and the race started back up again.


Now coming into some of the silt sections, the Camburg Tundra stopped to help out a Class 3100 SUV who was stuck in the silt and needed to be towed to stable ground. Now under way and motoring through the rocky & silt areas a rock came up into the backside of the radiator and punctured a hole. Allowing the engine to cool, they crimped & fixed the damaged radiator core row, poured in some stop leak and topped it off with water. After about 30 minutes they were underway once again.


Making progress through traffic Jason came up on a UTV that was in the middle of the course and on its side. Scott and Morgan jumped out and helped the team tip it back onto four wheels.


Getting into the higher elevations (5,000+ ft.) of the course and still having a fairly high ambient outside temperature the truck ran into gas vapor-lock issues not associated from a heat source on the truck. The truck would begin to stall, so they would have to pull over, shut the truck down and purge the fuel lines. Unfortunately they encountered this problem every 10-15 minutes which made for many stops and slow progress on the course.


Around mile marker 170 a stranded buggy who ran out of gas flagged the Tundra down just short of their scheduled pit stop. Jason crawled under the truck, disconnected the fuel line right after the fuel pump and began to fill up 8oz. empty water bottles with gas as Morgan cycled the fuel pump on and off. Filling up the bottles about 30 times was enough to get the buggy back underway.


With the sun going down and heading towards the summit (8500+ft) the truck had the same vapor-lock issues but more frequent. At times they were only able to drive for 5 minutes before they had to pull over. Once they were able to crest the summit and started heading down the problem improved and they were able to get to race speeds once again. They came into Pit 6 at mile marker 229 about 8.5 hours after they started for a driver change and fuel dump.


Jerry Zaiden took over driving, with Brad Hisgen navigating and Justin Hinds in the 3rd seat. Now that they were into night and it cooled off, the vapor-lock issues weren’t as harsh but power was down. With 200+ miles to go Jerry knew it could be anyone’s race since usually half the field doesn’t finish. Making his way through the darkness Jerry made multiple stops to help class 7, 10 and 1600 racers in need, with most of them being stuck in the Nevada silt. By this point in the race it was all about finishing and getting others to the finish line. The last thing any racer wants is to be stranded out in the middle of no where through the night. After pulling out one of the last stuck buggies before Pit 9, the truck was stuck in 4-LO which tops out at 27 mph, so it made for a time consuming crawl to the next scheduled pit stop.


Jerry pulled into Pit 9 and the crew went to work splashing fuel, looking over the truck and resetting the ECU which allowed the truck to get out of 4-LO. 2006 BITD Class Champion Randy Merritt in his KC HiLites truck came through the pits before Jerry could get back under way. Now only 110 miles away from the finish the light was at the end of the tunnel. Jerry set a pace that was going to take him and his team to the finish line. Chase crews paced the progress of the race truck on the highways and then headed to Dayton to wait for the Camburg Tundra to come out of the darkness and into view of the finish.


The Camburg Tundra crossed the finish line 6th in class and 99th overall in 16hrs 57min 10sec. With 202 vehicles starting the race and only 51% of those entries finishing the race, it goes to show you how difficult the course Casey Folks laid out and what kind of endurance is needed for a race this size. Having all the Class 8100 trucks finishing typically is unheard of and is an indicator of how hard all the teams worked to get to the checkered flag.


For the 3rd race in a row, Camburg finished the race on the original Nitto tires they started on, had zero air filtration issues in the silt and the KC HID Pod lighting worked awesome all night long and into the early morning, so well they didn’t use the roof mounted lights.



“With the race being over 450 miles, I wasn’t about to jeopardize a finish, so I set a conservative fast pace initially.
” – Jason Campbell

“Towards the end when we were out of a podium finish I had no problem losing a couple positions in our class to help stranded racers.
” – Jerry Zaiden


For more information on Camburg products and race team involvement, check out their websites www. camburg. com and www. camburgracing. com or contact them directly.