YouTuber Tears Up Ram TRX on a Low Jump

Ram TRX handled the damage surprisingly well, most of which was due to poor decisions by the owner.

The YouTuber who runs the StreetSpeed717 channel, whose real name is Mike, was one of the first people in the world to take delivery of a 2021 Ram 1500 TRX. This is the latest in a long line of high profile vehicles that the modern day court jester has purchased. In the past, when he acquired a truck, one of the stunts that he used to draw traffic to his channel was to hit a fairly large jump. Most recently, he jumped his Ford F-150 Raptor, so it only makes sense to put his TRX through the same paces.

That is really the last aspect of this video that makes sense. The YouTuber decides to put a bunch of poorly secured ballast in the bed and on the landing, the junk in the bed does a significant amount of damage to the truck. Also, due to the soft footing in the landing area coupled with a poorly designed jump, he noses-down on the landing, crushing the front bumper and the skid plate. However, the Hellcat-powered Ram lives to do some donuts before being driven home.

Brief Introduction

Like most YouTube videos, this one begins with the host talking to the camera about his plans to jump the 2021 Ram 1500 TRX. He has had the truck for a week and perhaps channel traffic is slower than expected, as he has decided that it was time to do something crazy. He heads to the property of another YouTuber and on that property, there is a big, open field with a natural “jump” over a small stream. On the other side of that stream is soft, marshy ground where he plans to land.

Before heading to the jump site, Mike puts several extra wheels with tires in the bed, running a tow strap through them to hold them in place. He also sets a box with a random dumbbell in the bed. The suggestion is that by putting this weight in the bed, it will balance out the front-end weight bias, helping to keep the nose up during the jump. As it turns out, that is a stupid idea. However, in the world of YouTubers, the stupider the stunt, the greater the potential traffic and revenue.

Jumping the Ram TRX

After 10 minutes of chatter, the video gets to the good stuff, as Mike prepares for the run-up to the jump with his Ram 1500 TRX. On his first attempt, the tires start to spin and he lacks the driving skill to keep it straight, so he has to lift and abort the first attempt. On the second attempt, he starts further back, allowing him to accelerate more gradually on his approach to the jump. He hits it at roughly 45 miles per hour, popping the truck up into the air and over the stream. It lands hard on the other side with a violent landing.

At this point, I should point out that I was involved with initial media testing of the 2021 Ram 1500 TRX. During testing, we jumped the TRX on an off-road race course. We hit those jumps with more speed, we got higher off of the ground and we flew further through the air than did this YouTuber, and we jumped the trucks over and over again for hours. The difference was that we had a jump that provided proper footing to get into the air and we were jumping onto hard-package dirt.

When Mike hit the landing in his TRX, the nose was already pointed downward when it hit the soft ground. That allowed the bumper of the truck to bury itself in the soft footing. That violent impact caused all of the junk in the bed to fly forward, with one of the tires hitting the back of the cab, breaking the rear window. When the tires slammed back into place, they did a ton of damage to the tailgate.

In the post-jump discussion, Mike claims that the jump didn’t end well because the TRX is too fast. He believes that he was going too fast when he hit the jump, so we went too far and landed too hard on the soft ground. If not for the junk in the bed, the only damage would have been up front, but it wasn’t severe enough to knock the Ram out of commission. Before the video ends, Mike does some muddy donuts with his wrecked TRX.

While this YouTuber obvious set this Ram 1500 TRX up for failure, the truck handled the stunt surprisingly well.

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Patrick Rall

"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.

"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.

"Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never “work” a day in your life," adds Rall, who has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now automotive journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular auto websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.

"I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.

"My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.

"Being based on Detroit," says Rall, "I never miss the North American International Auto Show, the Woodward Dream Cruise and Roadkill Nights, along with spending plenty of time raising hell on Detroit's Woodward Avenue with the best muscle car crowd in the world.

Rall can be contacted at QuickMirada@Yahoo.com

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