Defying gravity and taking things to the extreme are normal for Brandon Johnson, owner of Sky's Extreme Offroad in Clearfield.
Johnson and his team spend their days creating Cinderella-type transformations for vehicles.
"We modify anything," said Chris McGee, technician and sales representative for SXOR. "We do Ford, Dodge and Jeep lifts, gears and lockers. But we also do custom jobs, roll bars, bumpers, body armor and rock sliders."
Lift jobs, like the one they are doing for Layton's Fire and Rescue vehicle to give it better clearance, are the bread and butter of the business, but their passion is the two rock crawlers sitting in the back stalls of the garage.
It was crunch day Thursday, Aug. 2, as the SXOR team raced the clock to complete overhauls on both of their rock crawlers. They had to be ready to leave Friday morning to compete in Cortez, Colo. on the weekend. Rock-racing competitions have replaced the slow-paced rock-crawling competitions.
"The audience would get bored," explained McGee." They loved it when a crawler rolled over, but rigs kept breaking and pretty soon they only had two competitors left in the competition. The rock racing is much more exciting for the fans to watch."
Installing lifts and racing rock crawlers was not what Johnson thought he would be doing when he first started the business. Johnson paused from his work, wiped the sweat off his face and began to explain the name and the reason he started Sky's Extreme.
Sky was Johnson's high school buddy. He shared Johnson's love for motors, gears and wheels. As kids they spent hours working on and riding motorcycles.
"My friend Sky died in a motorcycle accident when we were 19," said a somber Johnson. " We were riding up around Trapper's Loop." Johnson still feels the pain of that loss.
" I was the showboat, not him," said Johnson. "I was up ahead when the accident happened."
The loss of his best friend and his own motorcycle accident back when Johnson was 16, one week after he got his first bike, left him with a great desire to help others learn to ride safer. Johnson tried to get the funding to start Sky's Extreme, a motorcycle safety school, but his idea was before its time.
In the meantime, Johnson began helping his father-in-law restore vehicles. Restoration work led to working on Jeeps, which led to offroad vehicles and now the rock crawlers.
"They (crawlers) almost go against physics," said Johnson. " They can do things you just can't do in anything else. They can do 100 mph in the sand and still get a 100-to-1 crawl ratio."
Johnson has a friend in the military who is taking a serious look at the vehicles for military search and rescue use.
Johnson is too busy working back on the chassis to care about anything but getting the crawler back to racing condition.
Johnson's family is there to help get things ready, too. Johnson complains about the lack of time his business leaves him to spend with his wife Kelly and two sons, but they seem to be totally involved, too.
Sky, 10, and Cole, 7, spend summers and weekends helping out around the garage turning wrenches and cleaning parts.
"Cole will come down to work one day on the weekend, and I'll come down on the other," explained Sky. "It's our special day with Dad."
It's back to serious work for the team. They have a reputation of consistently finishing up in the top 10.
"If we had more time to practice, we would be a dangerous team," said McGee.
On Aug. 18 the SXOR rock racers will be competing at Rocky Mountain Raceway in the Elimination RockCross starting at 6 p.m. SXOR is located at 208 East and 200 South, Clearfield. For more information about SXOR call 801-825-6577 or visit www.skysextreme.com.
E-mail: dramsay@desnews.com