Builds 4508 - Ultra4 Racetruck Build (1 Viewer)

[snivilous]

I finally made it home last night, my girlfriend and I spent a few nights in Cedar City UT looking around and talking to the university there--turns out we're moving there!!! I tried to find some shop space to rent but didn't find anything except a pimped out storage unit. Could fit 3, maybe 4 vehicles tight with the exception there is only one garage door and there's two columns (that I can't tell if they're important or not since they're kind of janky) in the middle. I ended up leaving the 80 there along with everything else I had on the trailer and in the bed of the truck. I have some business trips in March, so after March the plan is to pack up our camper and move there and then look for a house and move my little business. Pretty stoked! Awesome location obviously with tons of wheeling and camping spots within an hour drive. Besides just answering questions and posting more pictures as they come up, obviously no wrenching will occur until we move to Cedar City and I reunite with the 80. In the mean time I might work on my 40 series or my long parked 4Runner...

Continuing the KOH story...

I forgot to mention, at tech they weighed the truck and it weighed in at 5114lbs and that was for all practical purposes completely dry. There was like 5 gallons of fuel in the cell, literally no parts or tools or even a storage box on the truck and no people in it. So figure another 150lbs of fuel, ~320lbs of people, and then 100lbs of tools and then also jacks, spare driveshaft we grabbed, and some other odds and ends and the truck loaded is easily well over 5500lbs in race configuration. Heavier than I expected, though I've seen plenty of decked out rigs claim they are near or over 6000lbs, so being under 6000lbs and having a full cage and beadlocks and full size spare and 32gal of gas, etc. I'd say really isn't too shabby. Not light by any stretch, but for an 80 fits the bill. Also interestingly, the truck is rear weight biased. In the front I'm now running 200/200 spring rate and the rear I want to say is 250/300 (might be a bit less than that) and around 1" of preload give or take everywhere. When I built the rear tire carrier and loaded it up it REALLY moved the CG back. I'm not complaining though, not like it's massively rear biased, so is actually around where you would want it to help keep the nose up at speed.

Sunday we worked on getting the truck to pass tech. I took 25ft of fuel line and did a full loop of the fuel cell at roof level and then down and to the fuel cut offs, etc. We also took the truck over to Esab and used their welded and welded up all the tube end caps which was awesome. The last few items were a couple minute fixes at camp, which while we were at it I went in and tried to clean up a lot of the wiring under the dash which I hadn't had time to tuck up before I left originally.

Also for the record, which I think I said it, this tire carrier took about 6 hours, maybe 8ish, to do. Started it one night and finished it the following day. It's nothing pretty, and it's honestly one of the crappier pieces of the whole truck which bums me out--there's a lot of poor tube fitment where I just went in and filled it in with weld. I'm not sure if I will build a new one and scrap this one, or try to pretty it up, but I'll be frank in saying it's a pile. It's a pile that can hold the whole weight of the truck on it and you can lift it up from a chain hoist by, but what I wanted my standard of quality to be for the truck it is well below. Again, time crunch issues though. What I will say though is I ended up liking the layout more than I thought I would. The spare is an absolute bitch to get in and out of the hoop because there's about 1" of total clearance so any angling jacks it up plus you have to drop it down so it engages 3 studs that the wheel bolts to the carrier, so trying to keep everything lined up and then line it up with the studs is a pain at best. But I like the concept, the folding down is a lot better than most tire carriers I've seen, specifically on race vehicles. I'm a small and weak dude, and lifting what is probably a 150lb tire/wheel setup 4ft into the air onto a normal side swing out or up onto the "bed" of the truck would be impossible for me and probably most people. While this isn't perfect, only having to throw the tire up about 3 ft and onto a table like surface that you can massage around is really nice actually. And when the tire is mounted it turns into a nice table top and you can stand on the tire with it folded down and it's no issue. So for how simple it is I like it. It also has those two arms which butt up tight against the cage so any force that hits the carrier is dumped into the primary cage structure. Unless a weld fails or the 2" tube deflects like 8" there isn't any real chance of the radiator being hit. I then have some little tabs on the arms and on the cage and two hitch pin type things slide in so it's super quick to drop and put back up.

Moving on, we got the tech stuff quickly fixed and ran over to tech at like 4:45pm and the dude looked the truck over and got us banded!!! It was pretty funny too since we needed "survival supplies" even though we didn't have anywhere to put anything since the truck wasn't loaded down, so right before heading over I grabbed some Little Debby brownies and a water bottle and threw them in the middle and that ended up counting! The tech inspector thought it was awesome that our survival supplies was a box of brownies--that and luckily he didn't notice that our front driveshaft wasn't installed. That was huge and a major victory and something I had been stressing about for a long time. With the truck banded, that meant we had prerunning, swapping the birfield in, and tuning and that was really in before the race on Thursday.

The whole shock tuning/prerunning thing is kind of a mental cluster. We ran the truck a lot and got a bunch of footage from my codrivers RZR of the 80 which we then took to ADS to have them suggest changes. With my timeline out of wack, on like Friday we had gone to ADS and they fit us into their schedule and changed our springs out (from 175/150 all around to the 200/200 front and 250/300 rear I mentioned) since once the tire carrier was added and fueled up the truck was REALLY ass sagged and rode on the bumps constantly. I decided to bring the ride height up to around 8" of up travel where as I originally was figuring like 6" up. More up travel in the whoops made a REALLY big difference. I thought 6" up would be fine, but for going fast it's a way different setup than crawling. The body roll was/is HORRIBLE too. I might of talked about this awhile ago, but the body falls over even on little corners...actually it's almost only on corners when you go slow. I think the stock rear suspension geometry is where I'm having issues, plus it weighs a lot and low spring rate and no sway bars. I tried to get a sway bar from TK1 Racing in time but they were out of stock. I also realized the body roll is a lot less with an axle missing, which I think is since it's dual full time locked so when you corner the inside tires are pushing against each other and the suspension compresses there and pushes the body over. At speed the body roll is there but it's nowhere near as bad as going slow and for anyone who saw it in action, we got looks EVERYWHERE and comments from everyone since it looked like it was gonna roll over driving at 3mph through town. That is super high on the agenda of things to fix though should be pretty easy. Anyways, we tried playing with the crossovers to take the truck out of dual rate faster but that just ended up in it feeling way too stiff so I moved the crossovers out and decided to just live with how much it rolls. Like I said, slow speed is the issue, at speed it really doesn't roll a ton, the body moves but it's not as crazy as the driving through town body roll is.

There were some good sections at the base of chocolate thunder and north of hammertown that we did most of the tuning at. Most of the whoops in those sections were probably 12-24" tall. A lot of people crack me up (like my codriver) since they hardcore exaggerate whoop size. Maybe they're measured differently than I would, but I would call it the trough to the peak, and at least at Chocolate Thunder which was wicked smooth, in the videos we are skipping across the top of the whoops, not by a lot but there's an inch or two under the tire at full droop in the whoops and we have 14" of travel so I would say those are around 14-16" tall whoops. But then there's people who are like "yea the section with the 4-5ft deep whoops is gnarly!" Like yea dude.... I'm sure we were in whoops that the whole height of the tire could fall into. I don't think we ever even hit any 3ft deep whoops, I would say max 24" in some of the super super deep s***. Here's a little video my buddy at SRQ Fabrications took, nothing big at all, just some small bumps at like 50ish mph:

The bumps originally were at 100psi since they were pretty clanky originally and that helped, afterwards we bumped them to 125psi. Otherwise just lots of bypass adjusting. Make a run, adjust some tubes, make a run, adjust, run, adjust, run, adjust, etc. By the end the thing was pretty dialed, even ADS said they didn't think it could get much better. On the section near Chocolate Thunder I was consistently in the high 50s according to GPS.

Area I would guess 14-16"(?) whoops:

Also as you may notice, Matt from SRQ Fabrications who has helped me a ton on the truck, decided that our little single LED lights we had near the winch weren't cutting it so bought a pair of Baja Designs OnX 10" bars (I think all of that was right) and threw them on. Those bad boys put out some serious fxxxing light for being just two 10" bars, you could have three 50" cheapo lights and I would take these any day over those--so shout out to SRQ Fabrications for giving the 80 enough light to see clearly a foot field away!

Truck was running really nice, I could go as fast as I wanted over essentially anything. It was weird actually and cool at the same time since it's so capable. I would come down whoop sections and there might be a huge bump or dip or whatever and I would have to tell myself to just not worry about it and the 80 would just float over everything. I've never been in anything that had even half the capability of this truck. My buddies RZR obviously can do a lot, arguably more, but I've never driven it or any other side by side so doesn't really count much and even then, the 80 is immensely smoother than my buddies RZR. It's really cool to drive something that can handle going faster than I mentally can. Literally the only real limit is the stock engine just can't push it much past 60mph.

Monday my girlfriend showed up with the parts needed to run the axles from Cruiser Outfitters, so we pull the passenger side apart, new (used) parts in, put a metric ass load of grease in since all the seals are blown everywhere and then rtv the s*** out of the knuckle gaskets, button it up and I go to start it and it just cranks. Obviously a fuel system issue--what more can you expect from this truck? The only thing that goes wrong is the fuel system. We were planning to go run the truck since it had 4WD again and wanted to see if any shock changes were needed with the front end pulling, so in a big rush we go through everything. As usual I end up shoulder deep in the stupid fuel cell. Well long story short the fuel pump s*** itself. With nothing attached to the outlet the pump would spin (or the motor would) and nothing would even come out. I don't know if it was clogged, or the turbine blew apart, or the motor shaft was slipping, but it wasn't flowing anything at all. Luckily I had bought a spare pump a month ago and had that, never ran it though and it was a different pump, so fingers crossed we put that in and then that didn't work. Finally we figured out that the new pump needed to be primed and wouldn't seem to pull enough of a vacuum like the old pump. So after a lot of trouble shooting, new pump in and she fired right up! So that was kind of a heart stopper, we looked for a (new) backup pump around town but no one had any cheap ones so we just ended up running that the whole time and with no issue! It actually seemed to help the engine too, which was doing that high rpm starvation before (it wasn't the rev limiter after all) and now I can just floor it and hold 4000rpm and she's happy. Still acts weird sometimes, like if the truck downshifts and revs to 4k then it'll starve, but if it slowly revs up to that point then it's fine...

With that fixed go out and run the truck more and everything seems great!

Go to bed, it's Wednesday morning now, no plans to even run the truck really since we have tech/contingency (they just look at belts and safety gear, the other tech was a full inspection since it's a new truck and wasn't banded) later in the day and the race is the following day. Maybe drive around a little but don't want to risk breaking anything. So I'm walking around it and see it:

Blown axle seal, that sucks but big deal right? Just kidding, the whole fxxxing axle shaft is missing. Now some of you may remember I had a similar ish thing happen in Moab where I blew the passenger side studs and the shear pins fell out, shaft almost fell out, well this is like that but on steroids for the driver's side. We looked around and couldn't even find the shaft anywhere, no one knew where it had fallen out or when. The studs AND shear pins had all sheared. The theory with the passenger side was the studs loosened up so the shaft backed out a bit and then the studs sheared and the pins bent over--well this time everything including the pins were sheared on the hub. Now one thing I will admit is that I had torque checked all the hub studs every day, and one stud on that one axle had sheared just from checking the torque on it a few days prior. I find it hard to believe that Toyota has such small design margins that it wouldn't run fine on 5 studs and 2 pins, but obviously I was pushing the stock gear past what it was capable of regardless.

So there's two issues, we need to extract the studs in the hub as well as the shear pins (or redrill holes for them, thankfully from Kurt I had spares when the other side blew, as well as spare studs) which is either a easy or complete pain in the ass job and then we need a new shaft. Well my girlfriend's dad had brought new shafts for the rear that Jim's Yota Yard had donated in the event we needed one! Oh just kidding, they're semi float shafts...

I have no solutions at all at this point, I make a post on instagram that I lost an axle and have a jacked hub assembly and then give Kurt a call. Kurt tells me to talk to Rock Solid Offroad who happens to only be an hour and a half away, I call him up and we're in luck! He has a shaft we can use and says he'll lend his whole shop and talents to fix the hub since there is about a 1% chance with the tools we had we would be able to fix the hub. Course then there is logistics issues, we have tech in like 45 minutes and then have a driver's meeting at 6. So we stuff a bunch of paper towels in the hub so it's not obviously s***ting itself since you're not supposed to be leaking to be race legal, and drive through tech and contingency in 3WD which I'm now pretty prepared might be how we actually start the race.

Pass tech, get the emergency beacon and sticker and we're now fully legal to race!

Get back from that, and a guy who I know (but never met) from my 4Runner days had seen my instagram post, couldn't get in contact with me but then messaged my buddy from SRQ Fab since he had service, and it turns out he has a full 80 series axle set and is willing to pull it apart and bring us a full hub and axle assembly! He hadn't left his house yet, but he was in Phoenix so like a 5 hour drive. That then becomes our main option with RSO being the back up. Park the truck, pull the hub assembly off so we're ready for later that night--oh what's this small side issue?

The panhard/track bar is JACKED. No idea how/when/where/why this happened, but we are less than 24 hours from racing and have 3 wheels on the truck, a fxxxed up hub, missing an axle shaft, and a panhard bar that could be used as a boomerang. My theory is that the rear end has so much suspension travel that at full droop the panhard gets really steep, and when the suspension is quickly bumped (like in whoops) the panhard wasn't stiff enough to shift the body/axle to the side as it was swung upward. Either that or I somehow hit the rear end insanely hard, which I'm pretty sure I never did and pretty sure the truck would roll if I hit the rear axle that hard... any theories are welcome!

But not to worry, Ruff Stuff is here with a s*** load of steel!

Boom, 1.75" OD 0.25" wall panhard! Get it back in and time for the driver's meeting. Go to that, yada yada, we have no idea what's happening and my codriver is s***ting himself. Got two free pizzas, that was nice. Come back to the truck, 4Runner bro brought all the parts so we throw on the new hub and shaft and we are set! Take her for a little drive and everything seems to be working great! It's dark now, need to be lining up to race at 6:30am and on the line at the latest and suited by 7:30am and first car leaves at 8am. The truck is not loaded down AT ALL, but it is running! So we head to bed early to try and get some sleep, with the plan to wake up around 5am to load the truck and head over to the lineup at 6:30am.

 

[AFinn]

This is a great read. How did the rest go. I was pitting around the corner on gen right. Meant t stop over but was pretty busy with our cars. Broke the end off a d60 rear end on the 4500 car. Got another sent out from Phoenix, but it needed all the shock and suspension mounts fabbed and welded on. After that joy, got the rig on the road to discover the brakes had failed. Sent a guy down the mountain who bought a new master and vacuum booster as the store closed, then spent till 3 am installing and adjusting t all. Got up at 6 and headed to remote pit 2 for the day. Race went ok till they bent their steering ram. Ended the day.

Our 4400 car didn't race. Had a bad misfire during qualifier. Didn't mind though as this was the first year I was actually able to spectate. Spent most the day working on a couple friends rzrs, then watched. Sounds like we may start building an independent front car now......

 

[nukegoat]

Thanks for all the detail. I love it. Love the adventure and awesome response and everything! Just amazing.

Im glad you went to more uptravel. I knew 4" or whatever you were thinking earlier wasnt gonna cut it. The rear geometry does suck when lifted like that. Fix it and add a few sway bars and im sure itll be even more capable.

 

[RustyNailJustin]

I just read through your race story. Enjoyed it, I totally get the amount of work it is and on raceday ending up having to totally piece the day together for a chance at a finish. I always chalk it it to "paying for my education".
I understand why you decide to go to 4500 class, I too considered that at one point. But after the years in 4400 and 4600 I am happy just racing 4600 and having to get really creative to stay inside the rule book. We just bought an 05 4Runner that we are considering do a bunch of R&D on to be an IFS 4600 car.
After seeing your story, and your competitor sticker I thought about just our KOH/EMC races and how much fun all that work is. I will be back, maybe for the Fallon 250.
In our 12 KOH/EMC races we only have 6 finishes. It's a hell of a race! We have alot of blood sweat and tears in this sticker hahahaha!

 

[snivilous]

I started writing about the race and wrote a bunch of stuff and found some pictures from during the race. I need to write more and have a lot of work I'm catching up on so that's why I've been delayed posting about the race itself! But don't worry I should have it posted in the next few days when I find time! Thanks for all the comments everyone, really cool to get feedback and support and thoughts!

----

This is a great read. How did the rest go. I was pitting around the corner on gen right. Meant t stop over but was pretty busy with our cars. Broke the end off a d60 rear end on the 4500 car. Got another sent out from Phoenix, but it needed all the shock and suspension mounts fabbed and welded on. After that joy, got the rig on the road to discover the brakes had failed. Sent a guy down the mountain who bought a new master and vacuum booster as the store closed, then spent till 3 am installing and adjusting t all. Got up at 6 and headed to remote pit 2 for the day. Race went ok till they bent their steering ram. Ended the day.

Our 4400 car didn't race. Had a bad misfire during qualifier. Didn't mind though as this was the first year I was actually able to spectate. Spent most the day working on a couple friends rzrs, then watched. Sounds like we may start building an independent front car now......

That sucks but is awesome too! Even the worst breaks are a ton of fun in retrospect. Hopefully we run into each other next year! We probably walked and drove past each other a bunch and never even knew haha

Thanks for all the detail. I love it. Love the adventure and awesome response and everything! Just amazing.

Im glad you went to more uptravel. I knew 4" or whatever you were thinking earlier wasnt gonna cut it. The rear geometry does suck when lifted like that. Fix it and add a few sway bars and im sure itll be even more capable.

Trying to keep it as detailed as I can remember it! I keep seeing posts on instagram and facebook about people's race stories and it's like 1-3 paragraphs, and I'm like dude... I could go on for pages about everything that happened just the day before the race! Figured it would be worth while to take some time writing everything instead of just a quick post, especially since I know before I went to KOH and before I raced KOH everything was behind this veil of secrecy it seemed like, so if I can show to one person that this whole experience was a lot more down to earth and that anyone can do it that'd be cool! Even the cheap race rigs always look like they have $50k at least into them, so to come along and tell people that we passed tech because I threw some brownies in the center console at the last second I think would make a younger me be like "he had no idea what he was doing and was able to enter the race, so I can do it too!"

I just read through your race story. Enjoyed it, I totally get the amount of work it is and on raceday ending up having to totally piece the day together for a chance at a finish. I always chalk it it to "paying for my education".
I understand why you decide to go to 4500 class, I too considered that at one point. But after the years in 4400 and 4600 I am happy just racing 4600 and having to get really creative to stay inside the rule book. We just bought an 05 4Runner that we are considering do a bunch of R&D on to be an IFS 4600 car.
After seeing your story, and your competitor sticker I thought about just our KOH/EMC races and how much fun all that work is. I will be back, maybe for the Fallon 250.
In our 12 KOH/EMC races we only have 6 finishes. It's a hell of a race! We have alot of blood sweat and tears in this sticker hahahaha

Dude you are like a legend down there! There were at least 3 groups of people I talked to who brought you up and were like "Do you know Justin" and I'm like no... "His forum name is RustyNail" --oh yea, I know who you're talking about! Essentially anyone who is, or had, raced a Toyota knew who you were! I've thought, and seen it mentioned quite a few times, how ideal a v8 4th gen platform would be. I think in the future it would be cool to get some wicked stock platform like that that has the suspension and engine to make a seriously mean 4600. I'd like to try 4400 eventually, I've even started kicking around the idea of designing a chassis for 4400 and once the 80 is at a good level and stopped being modified start building the 4400... we'll see though, so many plans change in a year or months.

I'm signed up for the west coast series, so hopefully we will run into each other sooner or later!

 

[nukegoat]

Living the dream. And I love the lil debbie tech inspection

 

[snivilous]

Alright, time for the finale post to wrap up the KOH experience! This will probably be a lot more text than photos since there wasn't a lot of photos (that I've found yet) from during the race itself.


Thursday morning I woke up around 5:15am with the goal of leaving camp by 6:30am and needing to be in the truck by 7:30 for the start at 8:00. I was the only one up, and after banging on my codriver's roof top tent he finally was wandering around in a daze. Since I hadn't put a lot of time into storage, my plan was to use the same yellow tote that I've kept in the truck and load it up with everything and then strap my Craftsman toolbox to the top of that, and hose clamp anything I could to the cage. A lot of stuff that you would think we would bring I decided not to, for example no spare axle shafts because if a shaft blew, that was not a catastrophic failure. The spare rear driveshaft though was one item we strapped down, with my thinking being that if the driveshaft bends that could render the rear end without any power; if an axle shaft blew, we could still run in 3WD plus have the winch, and have it swapped at a pit. Other things we packed were of course a breaker bar, both snatch straps and D-rings I had, winch controllers, spare fluids, food and water, a scissor jack, tons of electrical repair stuff (wiring, crimps, dikes, electrical tape, etc.), tire plugs, fuses, etc. I noticed a similar pattern in other cars I saw, and it's somewhat counter-intuitive, but you don't want to pack every possible thing. If you can limp your vehicle with one part failing, then there's no real reason to carry that part. In my opinion, a bunch of straps, electrical gear, and a basic tool kit is the most important things. With those you can rewire the entire truck, fix anything, and should be able to limp it with the straps and tools. Figuring out where to put spare parts is a hassle, adds weight and complexity, and is plain faster and more efficient to have the pit repair something (a lot of buggies, well like all of them, don't have storage tots and stuff but have a few quarts of fluids, some tools, maybe a shaft or driveshaft, and that's about it and it's all completely bolted or strapped to the cage itself). It's a lot different outlook than I would've thought when I chose to start racing last year--just because you CAN do a trail repair, SHOULD you do a trail repair.


Moving on, the truck got loaded up, and we drove it around Hammertown to the entrance gate and went through the vendor area until we found our spot. We were to start 84th, which when we showed up the guy lining the cars up said we were 85th it turned out, so moved the truck over and then parked it and went back to camp to suit up and snack. I thought we would have more time after parking the truck, but everything was moving pretty fast and I didn't want to leave the 80 by itself in the event it wasn't in the right spot. We also needed to sticker the truck still of some companies (Eibach, Jim's Yota Yard, and my personal TJ Harvey Racing) that I hadn't put on yet. Threw those on the truck, and around 7:30 I got in the truck and started strapping in. Kind of premature, but in the past we always seem to be in a rush to strap in and since it's like...well sitting in a racecar, it's not exactly the simplest or easiest thing to strap in.

Around 7:45 I fired the truck up to let it warm up--having 7 gallons of coolant takes awhile for everything to reach normal temps. At 8 o'clock the line up started moving. There are multiple streets in Hammertown in the vendor area and the racecars all park down the streets, so one street starts moving and once it empties the next one over starts moving, etc. We were a bit more than more than half the cars back, and they were actually moving pretty fast so by 8:15 or so our line started moving and we pulled onto the main street that lead to the starting line, body rolling as we went.

And here starts the more stories than photos part.


We were on the right lane and moved up, every car length or so there was another person guiding us. A few car lengths from the start there was a dude who checked we had neck restraints on, a few after that we went under the starting arch and a guy told us good luck which was cool. We kept moving up and finally we got to the start/finish arch. The start of the course was go straight a little, then almost immediately a 90 degree right, then a bit and a 90 degree left, and then a little jump (if you could go faster than we could), and off into the desert we went! Off the start of course we were slow as s***, on the first left hand turn she was body rolling HARDCORE. People told us they saw it body roll and were like "we'll see how far they make it!" Well luckily we didn't roll (apparently someone before us HAD rolled in that corner it turns out, though was clear by the time we started). Considering how slow we were we kept up decently with the guy who started next to us, he was moving faster than us but he didn't just leave us in the dust like I expected.


Fast forward a bit and we hit the first steep hill, which we had to drop into low range but the 80 made it up without hiccup. By now we're like a mile in, and have already passed two people who were pulled over and had broken down. Once over the steep hill, back to high range, and we were heading towards the start of some baby rocks. Around like race mile 2 or 3, we hit this little sand hill. Like not huge at all, just a slight grade, and us and essentially everyone else got stuck on it. Back up, floor it, try to get up, sink in the sand, etc. We were at 20psi and she just could not make it up. After about 4 or 5 attempts ranging from trying to get on some rocks to flooring it for 100ft in low range, I went perpendicular across the course (which was sketchy, since I had to slam on the brakes right when I decided to do this since 4 cars came hauling tits around the corner before the sand hill). I climbed a small hill to the left of the big sand hill, got up that and then it was a lot shallower of an incline to get to the level of the top of the sand hill so we were finally cruising again! Which was good, since I was really worried we couldn't get up that hill at all. On the side route we took, there was even a buggy parked with their engine smoking hardcore--so we were still doing better than some!


After the sand hill there was a mile or so of little rocks, which was annoying since there wasn't room and distance to pass anyone and there were like 3 cars in front of us who wouldn't get out of the way. Walked through all that and then we were into the wide open desert again for miles. We chugged through that, maintaining maybe 35-40mph for most of it. There was this one car, I think his number was 8100, and he had started next or in front of us originally and in the desert the two of us ended up passing each other a lot (actually for most of the race). The 80 was interesting since it was faster than most trucks in the desert purely because we had spent so much time dialing the suspension in. We passed lots of 4600, 4500, and 4800 cars, I don't even remember if anyone besides the 8100 car ever passed us in that section before/after the first time we went through remote pit 1. I was pretty stoked that 200hp and 6000lbs of Land Cruiser could hold it's own against a lot of the cars out there with double or more horsepower!

We got to remote pit 1 (which we would stop in twice, once on the way to the Notches at Cougar Buttes and then once more on the return trip to Main) and were told the tie rod had bent a little. We checked lugs and torques really fast and I finally was able to get a drink of water from my camel back, and then we were off again! Knowing the tie rod was already on its way out again we didn't try to push the truck very hard, though I would guess still 40mph ish, maybe even into the 50s in sections. The part from remote 1 to Cougar Buttes felt really long, but there was lots of cool scenery. We climbed mountains, drove down river beds, went past cacti and through G outs and jumps, nothing gnarly but just good paced easy driving. There was this one cool saddle we drove up and over, and when we got on top of it you could see 5 cars out in the distance and the whole valley was super dusted out. I remember how weird it was, since we were in the middle of nowhere, Hammertown was like 30 miles away from us, and we cross some mountains and the dustiest valley just happened to be there where the only thing driving by was a race car every now and then. There was lots of super sandy sections, I don't know if I would call it silt like in Baja, but we had lots of passes where you literally couldn't see anything, not even 15ft from your helmet, and you're just going along hoping you don't run into something or someone and then eventually you would get close to the guy in front of you so that the dust wasn't billowing up fast enough to completely blind you until you could pass him. Seemed like lots of cars had their chase lights off, or maybe they just weren't bright but you could never see any lights through the dust and just eventually see a cage pop through the dust.

This was really the first time obviously I had really been pushing and experienced this in a desert race, at the first race there were one or two times where someone would pass and lots of dust would be thrown up, but this was a lot different especially passing people in it and trying to figure out where the clear air was and getting around them. We saw light bars laying on the course, body panels, metal, plastic, but the weirdest thing is we saw a beadlock that was literally split in half--and not in the "normal" direction, but like was split into two half circles (like if you laid it down on the ground and cut a line down the center through the hub) and then a few hundred feet later there was a car to the right changing a tire and a car off to the left that was just parked. I'm guessing the guy on the right got T-boned by the other car and that's how the beadlock got split? Knowing when to stop and help was a confusing and hard judgement to make. Every vehicle was given a "yellow brick tracker" which was a GPS tracker that in our case, was zip tied to the front V brace. We were told if something happens to use to open it and hold a button for 10 seconds, and if we found someone injured to activate theirs (not ours). There was also a lengthy part in the driver's meeting to be courteous and help each other and everything; but when you're out there it's hard to tell what is fine to pass and what isn't. We saw a wheel blown apart, and one car with guys swapping a tire and another just parked--were the guys who were parked okay? Were they just sitting there talking? Were they knocked out and just rolled to a stop right there? It's tough to decide, we kind of decided that unless someone flagged us down or there seemed to be something obviously wrong then we wouldn't stop. We weren't the fastest obviously, so we weren't racing to win, but we were racing to finish and stopping to help someone with a mechanical failure for instance would cost us a lot of time that we didn't have to spare. Decisions like those are things I never thought about until we were out there, and there is LOTS of cars you pass. As long as you're moving at all, you're passing people who are parked or broken down for whatever reason.

We eventually made it to Cougar Buttes which was essentially the half way mark for lap 1 and for the outer loop that started and ended at remote pit 1. We were kind of confused, since we had heard a place called the Notches and a place called Cougar Buttes and thought they were different things, but found out it was the Notches at Cougar Buttes, so going in we thought this was the first of two potential rock sections. Pulling up, there was a spectator area off to the left, and then a few dudes with vests standing around (this was the first time seeing any officials on the course, though there are supposed to be marshals and stuff sprinkled through the course but we never saw any). As we pulled in there was a line of cars--going back a bit, this guy Jeff who had camped next to us and was racing 4400 had told us that there is no reason you should ever be in a line waiting for everyone else. He said that winching up a hill or around a horrible obstacle is faster than sitting there waiting for the traffic jam to one by one winch their way through. So with that completely in my mind, we got there and I instantly went to the left and around the line to try and see what the deal was. Off the bat it looked like there was a dip everyone was trying to go through, but there seemed to be a buggy tied to another buggy and both spinning there tires, and then at least 4 cars waiting to go through that same line. So with the intention of fxxx that, I had my codriver hop out and what looked like a pretty easy spot to the left of the jam, we headed that way! He seemed to think it wouldn't be possible, but as far as I could see (which is barely anything) it looked fine for me so with me easing forward until my codriver accepted I was going that way, I dropped down between these two big slick rocks and climbed up and we had just passed 6 cars!

My codriver quickly evolved in this section, he didn't have a lot of "hardcore" wheeling experience--granted I wouldn't call this area hardcore, but for both of us who didn't really know the limits of the truck and hitting stuff a lot bigger than he had probably done before (at least in something other than a rzr) it was a bit of a learning curve. I obviously had some idea of the trucks capabilities in the rocks from wheeling at Sand Hollow, again I wouldn't say anything super gnarly but I did some 7-9 rated trails and the 80 had obviously done mostly fine when it was stock on 40s, so with that in mind on that first little rock valley to pass everyone I figured whatever was there the 80 could tackle it since I have no approach angle and tons of travel so it couldn't be THAT bad. I don't think my codriver thought the 80 was as capable though which is why I had to just go for it until he accepted where I was going and then we were fine! After that moment it seemed like he had a grasp of what the truck could do, since he would spot me through stuff I couldn't see but everything else it was like we had a mutual agreement of "the truck can do this, and the driver can see where he's going, so the codriver will run ahead and figure the rest out". Which seems kind of intuitive, but again it was one of those things where the truck is so capable that you kind of point and shoot and unless there's something pretty crazy it'll just go where you want.

My codriver was an animal in this section, I cannot give him enough credit. The truck is super capable, but there were still a lot of spots like I said where I couldn't see anything. The seats are lowered so my head is far enough from the roll cage, and then the shock resis stick through the hood, then there's window nets so you can't see easily out the side, and the worst part is you're strapped in so you cannot move AT ALL. So every time we went over a rock hump, I was 100% relying on him for my eyes since I had no idea what I was dropping into. We were on the live feed for like 5 minutes too actually, and the announcers talking about how hard the codrivers work which I thought was really cool my codriver specifically got quite a bit of screen time and recognition.

During the rocks though, at one point the tie rod got completely bent and we were stuck in this pseudo crack. My codriver thought we were done for, I thought we were pretty screwed from the sounds of it, so we decided to try and get onto a flat area so we could see if it was fixable. Fortunately, I guess some cars had been following us because two dudes drove by/over the passenger tire and when I went to drive to the flat spot the tires were aligned again! According to my codriver the tie rod was completely bent, but after the second guy ran into us it somehow unbent the tie rod enough to drive! So we kept chugging along and made it through the rocks after that! At the end of the rocks was our first check point too which was super cool and we got the little 'E' sticker on the hood! And back into the desert and climbing hills and going through lava rocks!

This was the worst part of the race, and not only because I had had to piss for like an hour and a half already and I didn't want to pull over until we got to pit, but we knew the tie rod was completely destroyed at this point so we were just limping it. To make matters worse, the front diff was puking fluid, in the rocks we even had one of the volunteers tell us the front diff was leaking and we're like "yea, it'll be fine". I felt bad for leaking gear oil everywhere in the desert, but what else could we really do? So we know the front axle is like totally empty of fluid, the tie rod is totally bent and slightly unbent now, AND the rear end (we thought) was making a horrible clicking noise--that noise was what scared me the most. Driveshaft? Links? Diff? Axle shaft? We didn't feel like stopping since "fixing" any of those wouldn't have helped anything anyway and just wasted time. So for 20+ miles we drove at 15-20mph. We even passed one dude who had hauled ass past us super early in the race! Actually passed a few dudes, again weird things you see, like we drove through this river bed where the sides are like 20ft high--super eroded out--and there's a racecar parked up on the left. The course never even went up there or on a trail that would lead above the river bed. Why were they there? Should we stop? How would we even get there? Weird things...

We had no radio communications at all either. My codriver kept trying to ping them forever too. With the tie rod fxxxed we wanted to get the original tie rod (that was bent) and have it get taken back to main pit and have it cut up and sleeved so once we got to main we could swap it in, but we couldn't contact them. We barely saw anyone for that stretch back to the remote pit. One guy passed us and then completely missed a corner, and then turned around and passed us again since we actually turned. Another dude passed us, then got to a slightly steep (like not even low range steep) hill and went half way up, pulled over, and then waved us down and asked for us to tow him up it. Did that, disconnected, kept going, and 15 minutes later he passed us--not sure if he was stuck in 2WD, or no low range, or his engine wasn't working, but he was moving out and then couldn't make it up that little hill which was funny.

Not sure where these photos were taken, but it was somewhere around this part of the race we think. These are the only pictures besides the live feed from the race we've actually gotten. Being slow means the camera men have already left the obstacles once you get to them.

No idea where this was specifically, and I never remember it body rolling this bad but maybe I was just accustomed to it by then but it's pretty crazy! Looks like I'm even 3 wheeling it!

We FINALLY made it to remote pit 1 (again)! Couldn't talk to them at all until we were like a mile away, which we never could figure out why. Pulling in was a great feeling, since we had limped it for hours to the remote and finally we could drink, piss, and relax for a bit and have an awesome team of people go to town on the truck and have all the right tools to get it done!

Not sure how long the pit stop took, but it felt super fast considering everything they did. Apparently the rear links were totally loose which is where the clicking noise was coming from; the front diff was literally falling out and the top was split away from the housing, they had to replace bolts on it since some were missing and some were sheared off inside the housing; and then they stuck a jack under the tie rod and were able to bend it back pretty close to straight. It was super cool watching everyone working on it, I never would of thought a year ago or even 6 months ago that I would be pulling into a pit at King of the Hammers and have my own team of people ripping into the truck! It was epic!

Ate some food, drank a ton of water, and with the truck nearly back together (and the old tie rod already being run down to main pit in a buddy who had a long traveled 4runner) we strapped in and turned it on! --And smoke starts coming up from the dash. Master kill switch flipped, fire extinguishers grabbed, we're ready to fully unhook and spring the hell away from the truck. Go back through the boot sequence, and the wires to the ignition had melted... seemed like maybe some electrical tape had come off and shortened? Fix that. Do it again---and she starts smoking. We narrow it down to the fuel pump switch (which is directly tied to the ignition switch) is what is causing the short. So the guys follow the wires---well it turns out that the hand crank for the trucks scissor jack had originally been hose clamped to the cage (I did that), and I specifically made sure it was UNDER the wires. So when the jack was pulled off (and thus the crank) to bend the tie rod, when it was strapped back to the truck someone wasn't aware that the fuel pump wiring harness was routed down the C pillar so it was hose clamped to the cage. So the short was happening when the fuel pump was engaged, which was also tied to the ignition switch, which is the two things that started smoking! --yes yes, there should of been a fuse, and I thought there was but I guess it wasn't inline anymore after I rewired the dash (don't worry too much, there is a master fuse that the entire truck's electrical (minus winch) goes through including the starter, so if something super gnarly shorts out everything goes off).

Anyways, get that fixed and we're set to go and we're off! Get onto the course and start moving and finally we are in some nice whoops, like the kind of stuff we tuned in. Another thing I learned from shock tuning, is you can tune to your hearts content but if you dial in one section of whoops the other sections aren't as smooth. In the beginning of the race we were faster than a lot of people, but it didn't feel as smooth as it had during tuning (granted we weren't pushing the truck so going slower)--but this section of the course, oh baby!!! Nothing super deep, though much deeper and I would've needed to go faster or slower to smooth it out, so guessing maybe 18-24" deep whoops for most of it? And she was DIALED. I didn't want to push the truck obviously, but she was totally happy in like 3rd or 4th gear at a little over 2000rpm. Just cruising. This was the kind of stuff I had spent so much time on, and it was paying off! This one 4800 car we passed and we went flying past him. Course at this point our GPS had died because the stupid 12V outlet decided to not work (even though the LED was still on so it had power...) so we had no idea how fast we were going, but after the race someone told us that the live tracker online had shown us going over 60mph! There's a reason I did suspension first and put all my money towards it, and I am/was so excited!! We didn't even know it but we were going faster through 1.5 to 2ft deep whoops than we were even able to go floored during our first race in Utah last year (granted it's regeared and bigger tires now).

But all good things come to an end, maybe 3 miles after RM1 the power steering went out. I tried to hold onto it for awhile, but especially with no steering damper it was almost impossible to hold the wheel through the whoops. We pulled over and the whole driver's side engine area was covered in fluid. We poured a little in the power steering reservoir and luckily it poured out through the hose--the hose had just gotten a tear in it! And luckily I had plenty of spare hose that happened to be the perfect size! I was really worried this was going to take us out of the race and the steering box had just blown it's guts out, so seeing that it was only a ripped hose was a huge relief. Buttoned that up and we were off again! Another few miles and through another check point.

 

[snivilous]

This was now the last part of lap 1, where you go down the lakebed and then up the back side of back door and down back door and then to the main pits! I was getting super nervous leading into backdoor, like REALLY nervous. This part had me the most worried of any part of the race, even at the start line had nothing compared to the adrenaline of preparing to go down back door. Of course, this wasn't helped by the fact that four jeeps showed up going the opposite direction down the race course and one dumb s*** even decided to pull over right where we were heading to go to backdoor. Again, weird things you see, like a group of non-racers literally on the course and then they stop ON the course when we are doing 50-60mph past them with our horn on and lights on, etc. We called that into pits and they relayed it to KOH main which apparently had already been notified. After that dumb sequence of events, we were climbing the hill behind back door and then down the rocks that go into backdoor.

For anyone who doesn't know what backdoor is, it's a super steep rock waterfall that I would guess is about 10ft tall. Probably like a 80-85deg angle and no little steps really, just sheer rock. Going down it we had been told was worse than the obstacle itself, which was somewhat true (a UTV guy had told us that so....) we never had to move or reposition navigating the rocks going down but there were some big ass rocks! And of course we hadn't prerun or ever even been on this trail before.... We caught up with some cars that were on their way down; we even had a volunteer run over and talk to us who said he had followed us on Instagram which was super cool! Watching people go down was worse than just doing it ourselves I think. There was a 4600 car, then a 4800, and then us. There's this pretty big rock ledge right above backdoor, which is pretty deep and undercut, I would guess 3ft or more. The 4600 (a blue Grand Cherokee) had his spotter out and stuff, and on that ledge even did a nose stand. Though the 4800 went over the ledge fine, and we just crawled it and I don't think we even hit anything going over it. Then we're there waiting on backdoor, the grand cherokee lines up and does a nose stand. Then the 4800 goes and does a nose stand. So I'm convinced at this point that no matter how slow you go, you're doing a nose stand and better pray your front wheel drive works! We line up on the right side (going down) which is the "normal" line and looked the easiest, I backed up a little to get us lined up better and then started creeping down it. About half way down we got to the point of sliding down it, and I was just like "fxxx it!" and floored it. May of been a little premature.... but it worked! We essentially went full throttle down a 5ft vertical rock slab, did a nose stand, and then the front grabbed and pulled the nose forward and had the ass slam down. It was all kind of a blur, but in retrospect I think I can distinctively remember running into the ground and just sitting there like "are we about to roll over to the side?" and then the ass coming down which I think the tire cage hit the rock, but not sure. From the sounds of it the tie rod may of been bent already prior to going down the ledge, since some people I guess were pointing at it my codriver said--and if it wasn't bent already, I guarantee running into the ground did bend it! That was (arguably) one advantage of having a 89deg approach angle, when you fall off back door you know your front tires will hit and you won't just go ass over head and rotate around your bumper!

After that we kept moving, got to the bottom of everything and we thought we were supposed to go right at this fork, that's what the driver's meeting made it sound like but of course they're saying names of all this s*** like "short bus" which we have no idea at all what that refers to. So we get to a fork, go left since the 4800 in front of us went that way and go like 100ft and turn around since that was the wrong way. We then climbed the back side of the qualifying hill, down the other side, and THAT was where we were supposed to go left since there was a course marker for left and a blue marker for right (meaning the 4600 stock class cars would bypass this section). So we go left, and it's this steep as s*** rock hill. We climb up about halfway without issue and are staying on the left, since there was a huge ass rock kind of in the middle/right side half way up. Once we passed that it looks like the right line up this steep rock water fall is probably the best way, but I don't think I can reposition where we are. So I push us forward a little and try to crawl it---no traction at all. Time to give it a little bump and see if I can get the front to hop up and grab, and that's when we did a 3/4 roll. The driver's front tire came up and then the passenger front sunk and we started rolling.

Coincidentally, my girlfriend's mom was filming us right at this instant:



I was figuring we would roll all the way down this hill, like it was really steep and we were halfway up it, but luckily we kind of fell into a hole and stopped on the driver's side (so went over passenger side, then roof, then stopped with my side on the ground). By the way, this is literally the LAST obstacle before main pit and the end of lap 1. We are like 300ft from the short course and Hammertown. Anyways, we just sit there for a second since I'm like expecting someone to come help us I guess. And then my codriver is like, "I think I smell smoke" and I'm like yea fxxx this, I'm out of here! Unlatch and through the windshield I go! Nothing was smoking though, and all my time plumbing and making sure all the check valves and stuff on the fuel cell worked paid off since it didn't spill anything even though the fill tube was on the bottom of the truck now. I tried to help my codriver out since he's kind of dangling in the air and that didn't really work at all, luckily though, that center diagonal I put in worked to help him not fall across the truck when he unbuckled!

So now we're out of the truck, and this other 4800 comes up next to us and asks if we need anything and I'm like, dude if you can try to push us over that'd be great! Well that didn't do anything except bend part of the roof in. After that I told him screw it and don't worry about us. We then unhooked the winch and hooked it to his big rock above us, with the idea that if we could drag the truck up the rock waterfall the passenger side might fall farther into this hole and we can try to roll it all the way over. Well the harbor freight winch didn't like that at all and over heated or just couldn't try any more after like a 20 second pull--last time I get a harbor freight winch! To be fair we were trying to drag a 6000lb truck that is laying on its side UP a steep ass hill, so not totally surprised a 9000lb winch didn't like it.

Then some dudes came over and offered assistance, and we're like "if we accept help are we disqualified?" And they said no, that Ultra4 had told them to come help us. So with their winch and like 100ft of snatch straps to a Bronco at the bottom of the hill they pulled it over. During this chain of events, another car rolled over in the opposite direction right next to us too.

At this point we have like 15 minutes until the lap 1 closes and we need to be to main pit. So we still have time, and we're like fxxx this hill, we'll just skip and get penalized but we can still start lap 2! Well that was the plan until I put it in reverse and it made a ton of ticking noises and could barely move itself. From what my codriver said only one front and rear were spinning, and even one front was questionable. So at a minimum a rear shaft and a front shaft, and maybe the front diff are blown. We couldn't back up off the hill at all, plus we even had to hook a strap to the cage and have some guys and my codriver hold it as they hooked a winch up and slowly helped me back up since it was so steep we thought the truck might start rolling down the hill again. Once we got to the bottom a course marshal (I think) came over and asked what we wanted to do, and we said we'd call it. The truck was too beat up to keep going and we didn't have the parts to fix it. What really sucks though, is if we had gone another 1/8 of a mile we would of gotten to check point 3 and gotten more points for the season (I got 611 from this race out of a possible 1000, if we got to the end of lap 1 we would've gotten like 723).

We drove to the pit, where our main pit team had all watched us roll a few hundred feet from them. What sucks is if we had skipped that rock pile (or I knew how to drive better) we would've gotten to main, fixed the tie rod with the new beefy one that was waiting, and kept going and been doing really well! Oh well....


We drove it back to our camp site in Hammertown, and this is how she still looks sitting in storage in Utah right now waiting for me to move there and fix her:

Top window net bar got jammed or the body bent and locked it in position or something:

Bumper bent and tire carrier bent, presumably from hitting on backdoor:

State of the diff after being repaired and 5lbs of RTV shoved in it at RM1:

Shock resi got hit when it rolled and bent the resi mount over and even sheared a section of the hood out where the resi got shoved back and opened it like a can opener (resi seemed fine though!):

And that concluded the racing segment of the 2018 Every Man Challenge for the 4508 Land Cruiser!

 

[snivilous]

To reiterate, the Land Cruiser has been left in Utah at a storage place because my girlfriend and I are moving back to Utah (this time South West Utah) in a month or so, and it made more sense to leave it there than tow it across the divide to my parents house in Colorado then tow it back. This means there will be no build updates until probably the end of March which is when we head back.

I have a lot of races potentially planned. I am doing the whole Ultra4 west coast series which is two races in California (next is May 11th), one in Oaklahoma, and then Nationals in Reno, Nevada. Additionally I will be racing in Utah a lot (hopefully) doing a few of the Bonneville Offroad (BOR) races which was the same guys I did my first race with; additionally I have a buddy setting up a Ultra4 class for Lucas Oil short course racing in Salt Lake City that I will probably be doing, and then finally I might do a Dirt Riot or two. It's pretty busy, once May rolls around there is a race almost every or every other weekend until August. It'll more be a function of IF I want to race and IF the truck is prepped. Ultra4 is the main goal, everything else will depend on how the truck is doing and if I feel like driving that much instead of chilling in Southern Utah.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped, supported, given ideas and feedback, and just generally followed along! It's really cool to share this and to get people's thoughts. If I ever meet any of you, don't hesitate to ask for a ride! Most people's trucks on mud are more built with more money than I have into this, but I think it's super cool and love to show and bull**** and give people ride's who have the same passion I have.

I have already been talking to Cruiser Outfitters and getting quotes on axle components to prepare myself for the money to spend depending on what broke. I want to buy a house this year, and since all the races are desert or short course, I think I will just get RCVs and/or new diffs (depending on what is broken) and then gusset/truss these axles and make them last. Then once I have a house and some money saved up (hopefully by the end of the year) I will go ahead and get either 1 tons or custom fabricated axles and hopefully a new powertrain. But we'll see, all depends on what happens when I pull it apart in 5 weeks!

And one closing picture my codriver took that I didn't see until a few days ago:

Thanks for the support everyone!

 

[Ronny Grady]

That’s a hell of a run for it man! Good stuff!

 

[snivilous]

Well I had to feel like I was making SOME progress so I just ordered RCVs for the front and Chromoly Nitro Gear and Axle shafts for the rear

Thanks to Kurt and Bryce at @cruiseroutfit for enduring all my questions and phone calls and emails! With any luck when I get to the 80 in 4 weeks I'll be able to just swap all the shafts and some seals and be good to go! If that's the case then there's a chance that the weekend of the 7th I might run over to Moab for a few days and meet a bunch of cruiser guys. If the diff(s) turn out to be jacked up then I'll have to rethink my plans and fix/get new 3rds before the next Ultra4 race on May 11th. So fingers crossed in 5 weeks the 80 will be hauling ass again (minus a potato chip shaped hood)!

 

[darthyota]

the front 8"diff is for sure going to be a weak link if you want to keep it toyota i would look into a ruff stuff 9.5 80 front along with their hellfire knuckles

 

[snivilous]

the front 8"diff is for sure going to be a weak link if you want to keep it toyota i would look into a ruff stuff 9.5 80 front along with their hellfire knuckles

Oh yea, I completely agree. If the front diff is blown I think I'll get a new one with an ARB or some kind of selectable and I think that would do what I need and help keep it alive. I'd like to go to fabricated housings in the future, but that won't happen until the end of the year at the earliest. I'm definitely not married to Toyota gear, right now I'm just trying to put minimal money in to keep it doing what I want and I think (hope) the stock diffs will do what I want with the low horsepower I currently have.

 

[darthyota]

i just think that with racing and your tire size that your just moving the usable link in the front from axle shafts to the ring and pinion by going to a chromo axle shaft, as thats the next weak sport on an 80 front axle

 

[snivilous]

i just think that with racing and your tire size that your just moving the usable link in the front from axle shafts to the ring and pinion by going to a chromo axle shaft, as thats the next weak sport on an 80 front axle

Yea, for sure. But it's a lot cheaper to upgrade the shafts and be aware the diff can fail, and hopefully it fails a lot less--versus spending thousands and thousands of dollars on custom stuff. Even if it's 80 series gear on a custom housing that's a lot of money. Not to mention my biggest issue is time, which is why I'm not just getting 1 tons. I don't want to go through and have to build new axles and put links and bump pads and limit tabs and shock mounts and brake line routing, etc, etc. that I did 2 months ago. That's why I'm waiting until the end of the year to go to different axles.

 

[baldilocks]

Your courage and ambition is outstanding to say the least and what you have done with, actually, a very stock 80 is amazing and proof of the 80 series grit. Seriously, other than your suspension, everything else that determines whether you race or not seems to be stock. I'm surprised the stock tie rod and drag link survived as long as it did. I'd say you beat that rig ten times harder than any of us on Mud ever do, yet, many members have, indeed, spent way more time and money on durability upgrades. I say man, truly inspiring and fun to read! Looking forward to the next chapter.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Thanks for the RCV order Toby!

 

[snivilous]

Got the Nitro axles in from Cruiser Outfitters!

And also found this photo yesterday I hadn't seen before. This was on the same trail that I broke the birfield on, though I didn't break it on this rock:

 

[nukegoat]

The truck is super capable, but there were still a lot of spots like I said where I couldn't see anything. The seats are lowered so my head is far enough from the roll cage, and then the shock resis stick through the hood, then there's window nets so you can't see easily out the side, and the worst part is you're strapped in so you cannot move AT ALL.

This is what I think a lot of people forget. Some guy in his beat up 85 pickup will line up to backdoor and manage to make it, but there's zero pressure from spectators, there's complete visibility, etc. Everything is harder when you're racing, and significantly harder when you're strapped in properly. The 80 has a horrible hood line too for visibility. Kudos for doing as well as you did

and not only because I had had to piss for like an hour and a half already

You didn't opt for an external catheter?

We had no radio communications at all either.

Did you guys have intercoms between each other at least?

Another thing I learned from shock tuning, is you can tune to your hearts content but if you dial in one section of whoops the other sections aren't as smooth

Yeah, from my understanding there's only a few things that are pareto improvements - reduced unsprung weight, for example. Otherwise you're optimizing for one thing potentially at the expense of another. My first trip to the hammers was a great on-road experience getting there, but a pitching festival in the whoops. I could go maybe 15-20mph through some of those sections you describe. Sucked. This last time, in the sections heading out to clawhammer (and in that canyon) I was WOT and maxing out at around 4500 rpm in 2nd gear. Ran out of power but the suspension was accepting it

During this chain of events, another car rolled over in the opposite direction right next to us too.

This is just absurd. Nice job on the cage though - you definitely used it

What sucks is if we had skipped that rock pile (or I knew how to drive better) we would've gotten to main, fixed the tie rod with the new beefy one that was waiting, and kept going and been doing really well!

Maybe. I think you know what you're doing behind the wheel but the limit was going to be the vehicle, not your driving. I don't think any number of spare axle shafts would survive what you would have run into in the 2nd lap. Granted, the vehicle did really well, but I think it would not enjoy outer limits and spooners and jack and sledge etc etc etc with the kind of driving that racing demands. I mean this in a complimentary way.

 

[snivilous]

This is what I think a lot of people forget. Some guy in his beat up 85 pickup will line up to backdoor and manage to make it, but there's zero pressure from spectators, there's complete visibility, etc. Everything is harder when you're racing, and significantly harder when you're strapped in properly. The 80 has a horrible hood line too for visibility. Kudos for doing as well as you did

Thanks man!!! Definitely a different way to wheel.

You didn't opt for an external catheter?

It's sad, I honestly thought I was going to break so much it wasn't needed hahaha! My codriver and I talked about it, and I'm like dude, the first race we did we broke like every 5 miles, I doubt we're gonna be stuck in the car that long..... maybe I jinxed myself in a good way since I only got out of the truck once when we weren't at a pit haha. Definitely running a catheter next time!

Did you guys have intercoms between each other at least?

Yea, definitely! And we were able to talk to a 4600 car/team a bit and heard their chatter but for whatever reason our pit didn't pick up. I think my codriver even asked the 4600 team to go find our team since they weren't doing anything, but at that time our team finally got on the radio. We thought the antenna had broken off but it was still there so idk what the deal was.

Maybe. I think you know what you're doing behind the wheel but the limit was going to be the vehicle, not your driving. I don't think any number of spare axle shafts would survive what you would have run into in the 2nd lap. Granted, the vehicle did really well, but I think it would not enjoy outer limits and spooners and jack and sledge etc etc etc with the kind of driving that racing demands. I mean this in a complimentary way.

I completely agree! I want to go back before KOH and run all those trails just to see how they are with no pressure and taking my time. A 4400 guy that was next to us (had Bill Baird's old IFS car) said spooners and outer limits is hard, so we definitely would of gotten wrecked trying to go through all that and with no prerunning. Will be interested to see how next time compares to this time!