{"id":281,"date":"2016-10-04T04:13:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T04:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deilers.com\/AlaskaOrRust\/?p=281"},"modified":"2017-10-29T16:20:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T16:20:23","slug":"marty-tilford-his-custom-flatfender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deilers.com\/AlaskaOrRust\/2016\/10\/marty-tilford-his-custom-flatfender\/","title":{"rendered":"Marty Tilford and His Custom Flatfender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Tilford will be driving his modified 1946 CJ-2A to Alaska with his friend, Don Brown.<\/p>\n

Forty-year-old Marty Tilford\u2019s wife Suzanna had no idea what was in store for her when she began dating her future husband. Marty had grown up a member of the Vancouver 4 Wheelers<\/a>, one of the Pacific Northwest\u2019s oldest four wheel drive clubs. To him, spending weekends exploring the Cascade Mountains, racing jeeps with fellow enthusiasts, and volunteering to make his surrounding community a better place, such as cleaning up ocean beaches every Fall, was just second nature. But, Suzanna\u2019s first reaction to his jeep hobby was disbelief, \u201cThere\u2019s a whole community built around jeeps?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Fast forward twelve years and Suzanna\u2019s disbelief has turned to an embrace of the jeeping community Marty loves. They\u2019ve instilled this same love (or is madness?) in their twin children, a pair of young troopers who can ride for hours at a time without complaint in specially built seats. The whole family participates and enjoys the Pacific Northwest Four Wheel Drive Association<\/a>, of which the Vancouver 4 Wheelers are members, and the broader Washington Off Highway Vehicle Alliance<\/a>, which works to protect and enhance safe and responsible off highway vehicle recreation.<\/p>\n

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Marty’s 1946 CJ-2A modificed jeep balances the classic look of the original jeep with the practical needs of street, trail, and race.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marty, a fabricator, laser and plasma burn machine operator, sees the Alaska venture as a unique opportunity to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime jeeping event. He\u2019ll be driving his specially built 1946 CJ-2A, a highly modified jeep that began as a bare frame and an old race jeep body. Desiring a family friendly vehicle that would take his family to ice cream, survive jeeping on tight rocky trails, and race on weekends, he spent two years constructing it. He stretched the jeep eight inches, while keeping the basic shape of the standard 4×4, added a roll cage (to protect his precious cargo), and updated the drivetrain and brakes to navigate the highways around Portland.<\/p>\n

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Marty\u2019s roll cage meets PNW4WDA racing requirements and survive an unexpected roll down the steep mountains of the PNW area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To facilitate weekends in the mountains, Marty added an ARB refrigerator to keep drinks cold, installed a winch to get him out of tough spots, and added an onboard compressor to pump up the tires after jeeping so he could drive it home after a long trip. A 327 Chevorlet engine powers everything, while a TH350 automatic transmission makes driving easier. Custom springs give the jeep a soft, firm ride. He even redrilled the bolt pattern on his transmission to transfer case adapter and rotated it counter clockwise a few degrees to improve his clearance. It\u2019s a great performing jeep that will take him anywhere in Washington. Now, it will take him to Alaska for the first time.<\/p>\n

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Marty racing at a PNW4WDA event.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Brief History of\u00a0Four Wheel Drive Clubs & Associations:<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Willys-Overland released the world’s first civilian jeep, the CJ-2A in July of 1945, the company marketed it as a farm, ranch, utility, and get-a-person-to-a-remote-spot vehicle (for fishing or hunting). It was the\u00a0purposeful, yet flexible nature of the vehicle that Willys hoped would drive sales. Perhaps it was management’s Midwest roots (farming, ranching and outdoors) that led to that sales strategy, but for whatever reasons, the jeep wasn’t positioned as a vehicle designed for recreation\u2014as in the act of driving-the-vehicle-itself as a form of fun.<\/p>\n

One demographic that embraced the fun\u00a0and explorative nature of the CJ was west coasters from Washington to California. In 1946 there were still vast remote areas of the West\u00a0never explored by vehicles and a wide range of climates and topography\u2014ocean beaches, sands, deserts, hills, mountains, and forests ranging from sea level to 14,000 feet\u2014that were perfect for exploring with the new civilian jeep.\u00a0But, navigating these far-away areas solo could prove fool hardy, so groups of friends, then clubs of jeepers soon formed.<\/p>\n

One of the first organized jeep clubs was, according to Four Wheeler Magazine<\/a>,\u00a0Sareea Al Jamel (Fast Camel), which formed in 1946. The next known club formed\u00a0more than a thousand miles north, in tiny Yakima, Washington. In January of 1947 a group of jeep owners met and incorporated the world’s first jeep club, the Yakima Ridge Runners.<\/p>\n

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Early photo of the Yakima Ridger runners meeting in front of a Wally Klingele sign in downtown Yakima. Wally was one of the founding members.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These and other early clubs led to two forms of recreation that Willys Overland did not seem to anticipate, jeeping\u00a0and racing. California clubs like Sareea Al Jamel and the Hemet Jeep<\/a>\u00a0(formed in 1948 as the Hemet Cavalcade) explored the mountains, deserts, and beaches of southern California in groups.\u00a0Meanwhile, the Yakima Ridge Runners were exploring their local Cascade Mountain Range, using a long abandoned wagon trail called the Naches.<\/p>\n

For some of the Ridge Runner members, exploring the foothills of the Cascades wasn’t enough. Their competitive spirit, and likely some arguments over who had the faster jeep, led to head-to-head racing at a Native American site close to Yakima called the Jeep Bowl. It’s here the earliest documented jeep racing began in the United States. The Ridgerunner\u00a0club’s activities eventually drew\u00a0the attention of\u00a0Life Magazine, which did an article on club\u00a0members<\/a>, and Universal News, which published two\u00a0news reels of their antics.<\/p>\n