This Booger is the king of the boggers (15 photos)

John Quinton’s Mud Booger dominated at Runway Park on Saturday.

Quinton’s bright, perhaps 'booger green' custom bogger kicked off the mud bog racing season at Runway Park, winning most of its racing categories and being an impressive vehicle to look at.

In the early 1990s, Quinton came across the body of a Rolls Royce-looking 1947 Morris Oxford, fused it with a 1972 Bronco Chassis, stuck a 351 Engine it, and voila: after three months of work The Mud Booger was born.

His nine-year-old daughter named it.

“After a race, there were big chunks of mud and she said they looked like big boogers,” said Quinton.

Quinton, a mechanic by trade who’s also interested in vintage snowmobiles, tours the mud bog racing circuit every summer heading out of town to races in Sudbury, Echo Bay, Laird, and Blind River.

He also goes into the states, but pretty much cut that out since he started getting a hard time at the border for having mud on his vehicle.

“They’re worried about bacteria spreading. So it’s a real hassle to spray the whole truck down because mud gets everywhere and they’ll turn you around for even just a little bit,” he said.

The mud bog races are organized in different categories based on tire-size but that’s no problem for Quinton who travels to each show with five sets of tires and pit crew so that he can go in every race.

He travels with 33” , 35” , and 38” super swamper boggers, 36” tractor tires, and paddle tires with 2” scoops.

Quinton figures if he’s going to race, he might as well go all the way.

“They used to tease me because I tried to race so many classes. They said if I put a dress on I’d try to run the women’s powder puff class.”

Over the years in the mud pits, The Mud Booger has had three wheels off the ground, raced with a broken rear axle, and driven on two wheels so the audience could see the under carriage for most of the race.

He’s always having to fix things on the fly.

One year during a race in Kinross, a rock went the through the radiator.

He didn’t have time to rebuild the radiator for another race the next day.

“So I remembered a story that an old guy said that if you take a raw egg, get your temperature up, and put it in the rad it will plug the hole. Well I put about a half a dozen in and it still wasn’t stopping so I also put a bunch of black pepper in.“

The makeshift solution seemed to work; the black pepper was fine enough to seal the smaller holes.

The next day, the announcer at the race kept wondering why he smelled breakfast every time Quinton raced.

Quinton said his biggest concern is safety, but once he’s sure that’s taken care of its no-holds-barred.

“I do it for the pure adrenaline and it makes me feel like a kid. Once I’m sure the course is safe I’ll just go full throttle and I actually bent the firewall from pressing so hard once,” he said.

Last year, Runway Park had two mud bog racing events.

But owner Ryan Nolan said the turnout was so good it warranted him setting up six events this season.

About 15 different trucks and ATV’s competed in Saturday’s race with about 200 spectators coming out to watch.