Gear Head Disease

Being a Gear Head is something like a disease, and if you do not have the disease it’s hard to relate to those who do. There is a totally different language spoken by those with the disease, and vocabulary varies with the level of infection. Left unchecked it can swell and consume your every thought. Sometimes when people see you there quietly on the couch doing nothing they may ask, “What you thinking about?” You quickly have to think up something to tell them so they won’t know you were thinking about how you can build your own carbon fiber floor boards, or do you need the compressor with 1CFM or 1.6 CFM if the larger one is fifty dollars more? The disease comes and goes in episodes of varying degree.

I have had this disease since childhood, and once over a decade ago I had an episode that at times I am still trying to work out. It was an exceptionally hot day, and with the hot South African sun beating down on your head, lunch time is much better spent at home than on the curb outside of the convenient store. So only being a mile or so from the flat, we decided to make out way home. Then as if beckoning to my diseased brain I looked up and there it was an army truck.



Army trucks were common place in the midst of a politically torn South Africa during the mid ‘90s but this was no ordinary army truck, it was a Mercedes, it had geared hubs…..geared hubs that made the axle stronger….geared hubs that gave it six more inches of ground clearance….it was cool!
Ever since that day somewhere in the back of my mind, in the depths of the muck, AR-MOG-GEDDON has been stewing. A rock crawler with Mercedes Unimog axles, only lighter, and more agile than the already capable Unimog.
I have been collecting parts for this thing for the past eight years, and now it’s finally coming together.