Tractech brought out a fully loaded Liberty!

The phrase, "kid in a candy store" comes to mind every year that I
enter the halls of the Off Road Expo. This year was surely no
exception. The Off Road Expo has already shot up to being rated (by consumers) as the 10th best expo (of any kind) in America to date. This show had 40,500 people in attendance this year, as well as 260 vendors!

Larry McRae of Team All-Pro Racing brought out this rock crawler.

Walking around the several different halls, each packed with
vendors from all over the country, you could definitely feel the buzz
from the crowd. Each row of vendors was assigned a popular trail or off road destination as their address, like "Rubicon Trail" and so forth, just to keep in theme. The booths get more and more elaborate each year, some bring in huge inflatable Rhino's or tires, some bring show rigs, and others just dangle off road toys high above your head. Of course, there is always tons of free posters and stickers handed out as well. Thankfully, many of these companies have also realized that gorgeous women signing posters is also a draw. Another big upside to the expo is the tons of different opportunity chance drawings for
everything from tee shirts to full blown tricked out off road toys.

Attending this show not only immediately makes you a much cooler person, but it gives you the profound ability to see into the future! This show is where lots of companies come to show off their brand new products before they actually hit the shelves. You get a rare chance to not only talk directly with company officials about this new product, but you actually get to see and touch this new item before all your
buddies have even heard about it. This year I noticed some new goodies from Crane including high steer arms for Dana 60 and 44 front ends. Also some brand new center sections they're going to start making.

The new Crane Dana 60 center and diff cover.	The New Crane High Steer arm.

The new Long arm 4 link rear kit from Full Traction for the Wrangler Unlimited.

Full Traction was showing off their 6" lift that has been adapted for the new Jeep Unlimited, and brought a full display so you could actually see the kit articulate in person.

Dynatrac came to the show with some serious 1 ton goodies like these new 40 spline stubs!

Dynatrac was showing off some new 40 spline stub shafts for their 60 front ends on top of their already drool worthy product line.

The new Black Hawk shock from Bilstein.

The Bilstein crew also unveiled their new Black Hawk shock that looks like something off of the space shuttle. This shock had lots of people worked up into a full froth right there on the show floor. Walking around you would occasionally see a tube buggy or off road truck with a set of these new shocks already just to make things exciting.

A company called Hardcore Racing Components built a pretty large off road track outside of one of the vendor halls and was racing around some 1/10th scale and 1/8th scale off road R/C cars and trucks for the
crowd. This was a pretty popular place to stop, I noticed. Just goes to show that this Expo covered every possible part of the off road world.

Here's an R/C car landing a jump with a large crowd watching. A few T-Maxx trucks were also showing off for the crowd.

This little sport of Off Roading sure has become quite popular over the past few years, and I think we owe a fair amount of this new found attention to great shows like this Expo and to the staff that run them. I can't wait till next year's Expo, and I hope to see you there too.

Till then, check out our photo gallery of some more of the highlights from this years 2004 Off Road Expo!