Oh yeah. Definitely a Datsun. I found a shop that would do mudder re-caps for about $30 a tire. A little weight in the back and sometimes we wouldn't get stuck. Ha!
Love that Power Wagon, Bob! Looks like a longbed Ute??? There is a Cali guy on RamchargerCentral Forum that still has his '73 single-cab short bed from buying it brand new, and it is sweet. I have a 4-door '73 Power Wagon I bought off C-List from out of AZ about 10 years ago, and love the thing.Now that era brings back some memories! It was about that year, or close to it I remember my childhood buddy Ron trying to kill his much older brother-in-law Jack out in the sand dunes near 1000 Palms/Palm Desert/Palm Springs before the I-10 freeway was built through that area.
Jack had built a sand buggy much as you have pictured, and I seem to remember it was Oldsmobile powered. As a carpenter Jack built a wooden sled to tow behind the buggy, and he had Ron, maybe 11 or 12 at the time, tow him across the dunes. I was riding shotgun, and I remember Jack's eyes must have been the size of silver dollars when he finally bailed off the sled to save his life as Ron accelerated faster and faster!
I wonder if Jack had anything to do with the naming of Oldsmobile Hill at Glamis! It was years later when I made my first runs up Competition Hill and Oldsmobile Hill in my 73 Power Wagon, pictured here back in camp:
Yes, it is a long bed Utiline W200 I custom ordered new with a 2barrel 360 and 4 on the floor! It didn't take me long to desire more HP at Glamis, so I swapped in the somewhat built 340 out of my 70 Dart Swinger (Holley, Edelbrock, Racer Brown cam, ported heads, 13 to 1 TRW's, etc.) for double the HP. After a rod tried to sneak out the side of the block, it was time to build up the 68 440 a friend gave me out of a retired CHP car, plus a shortshaft 727 torqueflite replaced the manual trans. I eventually gave up on trips to the airport for green gas, and octane booster additives and transplanted in a detuned 440, which still sits in it today.
Well you know what they say, recovery gear is more often needed to help others than help yourself. If you had waited around long enough, a soccer mom in a chevy equinox probably would have needed to use your winch, having incorrectly thought her AWD could handle those dirt piles. She probably didn't read the Trails Offroad report to know how difficult it had gotten. Stupid SxSs, chewing everything up, ruining it for the rest of us...
Negative; was an open group ride.
