Seven Sisters closed for good

[Bowie69]

Looking a bit lean-y there!

[FridgeFreezer]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:52 AM, Daan said:

I have always thought 35" diameter should be the bar for comps and possibly pay and play; beyond this land rover axles are not reliable, and you will need something stronger, which gets expensive very quickly. But people said it stops development so it fell on deaf ears.

Dare I say it was nothing to do with it "stopping development", but more that it would stop those with the biggest chequebook from being able to buy their way to trophies as per so many competitions across almost all manner of sports

Can't have the proles turning up in cheap motors and beating the guy who threw 100k at his truck but never learned how to drive it!

[miketomcat]

How many times have you seen a marshal in a relatively standard truck drive around a stuck monster to extract them. For instance my ibex has completely stock land rover suspension and drive line but I regularly get accused of having a tricked up truck.

Mike

[Jon White]

IMHO tyre size and pattern should be the limit and there is a precedent for this set in many of the competition formats.

I’ve seen it first hand, where somebody with a tricked up truck with massive tyres has cut the ruts in a track so deep that anybody on anything smaller just ends up beached on the axle tubes with all four wheels spinning. This then just starts an ever increasing circle of people wanting larger and larger tyres etc.

The trouble with play days is that they attract anything from a freelander on road tyres right through to full on challenge trucks. The challenge truck boys soon get bored of driving round the tame tracks and go off piste.

I dont see limiting tyres as limiting development. Think of F1 - there is a huge amount of development done around a fixed set of tyres. I see little clever development done with 4x4’s - it’s all about locked up diffs, massive tyres and burying the throttle mad max style. One of the few i have seen (some years ago now) that did something different was Mitsimog which had some thought put into the suspension on it which allowed it to do all sort of different things. I’m not sure how well it worked or not, but at least it was good evidence of somebody trying something different.

For those who followed ladoga years ago think about the Frogs too - how different were they to anything anybody had ever seen before?

We never had any of these problems with 7.50 SAT’s were the biggest and most aggressive tyres you could get!

Jon

[Ed Poore]

It might limit the target audience somewhat but for a Shire event how about restricting it to vehicles with an MOT? There's already precedent for that in the preexisting rules you just remove the "or roll cage" requirement.

It wouldn't stop the likes of @Stellaghost and @landroversforever with their silly awesome vehicles but it would fairly quickly cut out the vast majority of ridiculous competition only trucks.

The fact that there's an MOT requirement would mean there's at least a reasonable amount of consideration to safety etc., gone on.

[FridgeFreezer]

Without wanting to re-litigate a discussion that's been had many many many times within the club committee (Miketomcat will be getting PTSD reading this thread, I know I am!) - while a lot of this stuff sounds sensible, and can work for more regulated stuff like race series where trucks are built to hit the regs, it never works in practice in the "club" environment where people turn up in anything and everything. There are very good sensibly driven trucks that arrive on trailers with no MOT and there are total sh*tboxes that have a hooky MOT and get driven like banger racers because they're going in the crusher on Monday morning anyway.

Tyre size/pattern is a tedious one to enforce - people in non-competition clubs fit a vast range of size & patterns to their toys as they get used on road, off road, green laning, farming, whatever - as well as usually going to events held by 3 or 4 different clubs, so if one club says "you can't have bigger than X or more aggressive than Y" they just won't bother turning up, the other clubs will still rent the site and let them tear it up just the same until we ALL get banned, a bit like 7 Sisters...

Also my 37's measure at about 36" so are they 36 or 37? Is a Maxxis Creepy Crawler more or less aggressive than a BFG Mud or a Simex or a Trepador or the 15 different Chinese remould copies out there...??? Some poor b*st*rd on the gate has to try and go round looking at people's tyres with a tape measure in hand and have the argument about what's an aggressive treat pattern or not... oh we let your mate in last month with what you're sure are knobblier tyres than this so now you're going to kick off, fun times! Half of them don't even realise which club they've turned up at - our events officer was greatly amused by the chap who turned up on Monday with no membership and said "Oh I didn't realise there was more than one club?"

Unfortunately people at the club level are not going to switch a £500-£1000 set of tyres just to please one club or site on a truck that they use for other stuff - and the challenge boys are going to fit whatever's the "best" thing within the rules of the challenges they enter.

Also ultimately 7 Sisters is a bit too big to have marshals sat on every track or to tape off every cut-through - hell, we've been going there 18 years now and there's always tracks that none of us have driven before that we'd never have known to tape off in the first place... the land owners would have to do it themselves or issue a very detailed map to stand any chance of catching all the potential problems.

[elbekko]

9 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Also ultimately 7 Sisters is a bit too big to have marshals sat on every track or to tape off every cut-through - hell, we've been going there 18 years now and there's always tracks that none of us have driven before that we'd never have known to tape off in the first place... the land owners would have to do it themselves or issue a very detailed map to stand any chance of catching all the potential problems.

Could it work to turn it around? Designate a few areas that are OK, with clear entry an exit routes, a bit like a P&P site but within the arena.

The issue remains that it needs to be mapped out and policed, though, which is pretty much impossible.

Either way nothing is going to happen without the people at Walter's Arena being willing to entertain the idea again. So probably better to focus our efforts into finding other sites instead of pointing fingers at each other.

The tyre size/pattern discussion is pretty much akin to the "anyone faster than me is a maniac" mindset IMO.

[Stellaghost]

3 hours ago, miketomcat said:

  For instance my ibex has completely stock land rover suspension and drive line but I regularly get accused of having a tricked up truck.

Mike

I know exactly what you mean.......

Hell, I've only got a lightweight............

Regards Stephen

[Stellaghost]

3 hours ago, Ed Poore said:

It might limit the target audience somewhat but for a Shire event how about restricting it to vehicles with an MOT? There's already precedent for that in the preexisting rules you just remove the "or roll cage" requirement.

It wouldn't stop the likes of @Stellaghost and @landroversforever with their silly awesome vehicles but it would fairly quickly cut out the vast majority of ridiculous competition only trucks.

The fact that there's an MOT requirement would mean there's at least a reasonable amount of consideration to safety etc., gone on.

Oh dear.......... It would of for last years event.....cough......

regards Stephen

[Ed Poore]

3 minutes ago, Stellaghost said:

Oh dear.......... It would of for last years event.....cough......

regards Stephen

But you didn't need one then. I suspect if you'd had the requirement it would have happened.

I mean why make more work for yourself when you don't have to...

[Bowie69]

Isn't it 40 years old? 

[JLM]

2 hours ago, elbekko said:

Could it work to turn it around? Designate a few areas that are OK, with clear entry an exit routes, a bit like a P&P site but within the arena.

The issue remains that it needs to be mapped out and policed, though, which is pretty much impossible 

I think that mapping the site in detail, while useful to a small number of punters who can read a map (and then actually do so) does little more than demonstrate that we've tried.

Marking / taping areas similarly: even where we have taped stuff off I often go round at the end of the event and pick up torn tape off the deck.

Fundamental issue, which FF has already called out is that are a set of punters who are responsible (who can be let loose unsupervised) and a bunch who aren't (for whom only a free-range no rules site or highly marked and marshalled track is suitable). The huge challenge is working out which group each punter falls into: you can't tell from their truck or tires and its a brave club official who simply tells certain people they're not welcome at an event based on subjective criteria / gut feel...

Members of this forum, by virtue of being folk who can read, write and take advice are going to almost all fall into the former category!

[Stellaghost]

25 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:

Isn't it 40 years old? 

Built in 73 but did not get released until 86 40yrs old on the reg doc in 26

regards Stephen

[Stellaghost]

42 minutes ago, Ed Poore said:

But you didn't need one then. I suspect if you'd had the requirement it would have happened.

I mean why make more work for yourself when you don't have to...

Absolutely.....

Regards Stephen

[Bowie69]

17 minutes ago, Stellaghost said:

Built in 73 but did not get released until 86 40yrs old on the reg doc in 26

regards Stephen

I *think* if you can prove build date you can apply for mot/tax exemption. 

[Stellaghost]

I'm aware of that, however a couple of years is not long to wait.....

Regards Stephen

[Nonimouse]

On 1/6/2024 at 4:33 PM, simonr said:

That's the one!  Shame it never took off here.

It got put into hibernation when I stopped running stuff 

Be easy to go back to it

[bishbosh]

Sad to read this. The "Man Machine and Chequebook vs Nature" event up there was probably the highlight for me. That and the night we all spent watching Moglite having its chassis ears straightened to disco toons and light show!

Oh, and the BBQ chicken that was black on the outside and pink on the inside 🤮

 

Sad to read about Selwyn too. 'suppose I should delete his number from my phone now. 😕 

[miketomcat]

Interestingly I saw on faceache that the awdc have run an event at Walters. It looked like a comp safari so I guess they only want rally style events there now. I suspect this is because it's easy to rattle a grader down the main tracks after an event.

Mike

[Nonimouse]

I think that was a pre booked pre-booked event Mike, with Walters AM honouring those who have paid up to a cut off date.

Interestingly WAM isn't the only site closing it's doors to 4x4 events. I know of two others going the same way. I know the owner of one site very well and I've been trying to find out why...

[landroversforever]

5 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

I think that was a pre booked pre-booked event Mike, with Walters AM honouring those who have paid up to a cut off date.

Interestingly WAM isn't the only site closing it's doors to 4x4 events. I know of two others going the same way. I know the owner of one site very well and I've been trying to find out why...

It would certainly be interesting to know the reasons. If it means that other sites can be saved based on the knowledge it can only be a good thing. 

[steve b]

My guess would be spiralling insurance costs for play day style events, it's the reason a couple of places here in the east have shut to "open" events. Private event hire still happens (usually by invitation to known clients)

Steve

[Nonimouse]

39 minutes ago, landroversforever said:

It would certainly be interesting to know the reasons. If it means that other sites can be saved based on the knowledge it can only be a good thing. 

A site has to hold TPL, just for possible trespass/ injury issues, but the event holders will hold TPL for the event, so the site site TPL won't be crazy money and trespass liability is greatly reduced by the correct signage.

Site maintenance is chunk of moolah, but not crazy, especially for WAM, who are owned by Walters Mining.

Environmental issues are often troublesome, although generally unfounded, unless the site is of some form of protective interest. But Environmental isn't just ecology, so noise, pollution and water contamination are high up on the list...

Planning is the big boy for WAM. There is a strong rumour of some events getting the green light by the local council thanks to brown envelopes. I'm wondering if that rumour is being investigated.

However site like Binegar don't have the above issues. Newton Abbot has just closed due to it becoming houses in the near future. Two of the quarries up the Mendips have major water issues after this last year so can't get TPL (although Binegar hasn't had issues with this and they have an area flooded to just below the roof line of a D2).

In my work wanderings, I'm always looking out for site, even in Ralph's part of the world. With quarries being the most sought after and landfill the next. But I will admit to struggling now

[FridgeFreezer]

1 hour ago, steve b said:

My guess would be spiralling insurance costs for play day style events, it's the reason a couple of places here in the east have shut to "open" events. Private event hire still happens (usually by invitation to known clients)

Given the quality of punters you get at the free-for-all P&P events I'm not surprised, I wouldn't want to insure them!

I think a lot of sites it's fear of problems - land owners don't want the potential hassle from locals / the council or to get sued over an event that realistically doesn't make them a lot of money.

[Nonimouse]

6 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Given the quality of punters you get at the free-for-all P&P events I'm not surprised, I wouldn't want to insure them!

I think a lot of sites it's fear of problems - land owners don't want the potential hassle from locals / the council or to get sued over an event that realistically doesn't make them a lot of money.

I was chatting to Adrian form 4x4days about this a couple of Sunday's back.  We used to MOT check the vehicles on line, at the event. However he had a chat with his brief about the legality of turning up in an non MOT'd vehicle. The brief said that signature of the acceptance form put all liability onto the punter, if an accident was down to lack of MOT, as he/she/they had signed to accept that they had an MOT'd vehicle.

The TPL is more for something done by the organisers/marshals when undertaking recovery, setting out a course, allowing the use of a certain are etc. As marshals, if we don't want to attach recovery equipment to a vehicle, because it's  a death-trap , we have the right to refuse. Or we can get the punter to attach their kit to their vehicle. If said death-trap launches it's self off a hill and wipes out three vehicles at the bottom, no matter whether it's got an MOT or not, it's the individual drivers responsibility, although they can take a civil action out against the owner of the death-trap. Very few P&P organisers actually get legal advice