Off Road Racing

There was a tragic accident at an off-road race this weekend out in Lucerne Valley. A driver lost control of his truck over a jump and crashed into spectators, killing 8 people. I asked Randy about the California 200... it's not a scheduled JeepSpeed race but they do use that race course.

We're still nowhere near finishing our truck build so I've never driven fast off-road. I've also never been to a race yet but watching videos from Baja 500/1000, I saw how spectators like to stand right next to the track. I always thought that was crazy; one big bump or rock can cause the driver to lose control of the truck and take out lots of people.


Baja 1000 down in Mexico

Crashes, rollovers, and other accidents happen a lot at races so I'm not sure what could have been done differently at the race. They probably marked off the start/finish area and the pits but not sure how they would block off the entire 50 mile course to keep spectators back. In the end, people have to use common sense and stay away from speeding cars/trucks, whether at an off-road race or just on the street/freeway.

There's talk that BLM (Bureau of Land Management) may suspend all off-road races on public land which would probably kill off the sport. Something probably should be done to encourage/enforce safety standards but I fully expect politicians (most likely Democrats from an urban district) to get involved and make things worse -- increase the cost of racing with no safety benefits.

JeepSpeed Front Suspension Build

So Randy and I are beginning to think that we should have bought a truck instead of trying to build our own. Not only is the truck fighting us, we had lots of problems with the after-market parts as well.

Anyway, we were supposed to do a lot of stuff today but as usual, we only got part of one thing done after 9 hours of work... at least Josh showed up this time so it wasn't just the two of us. Long story short, we installed the trac-bar mount and also the control arm mounts from Full Traction. It was supposed to be a bolt-on kit but we ended up drilling and cutting all sorts of holes in the frame; The pre-drilled mounting holes did not match the stock bolts/holes exactly. I think we need to work on the truck every weekend if we want to race by September.

Pictures:


Replacement control arm mount. These mount further back on the truck to give the front wheels more travel. Full Traction (manufacturer) put their stickers upside down.


Wheels. Randy bought eight of them for our truck. Now we just need tires (and a lot of other stuff).


"How does this fit together?" The instructions are pretty sparse. There are about 10 pages of instructions; we only ended up completing one page today.


Woohoo! First after-market part installed!


Since we want to weld on the new control arm mounts later, we needed to clean off the frame around the mounts. I'm not too good with high-speed rotating tools; this is ~20 minutes of work. I ended up covered with powdered road grime, rust, paint, and primer.


Drilling holes into the frame to further secure the control arm mounts. It was more difficult than I thought and definitely more involved than the one line instructions: drill hole and insert bolt.


Both pieces of the mount installed. I wasn't very much help... even sprained my neck at one point, so I just took pictures.


Even though the bolts were supposed to be self-tapping, Randy decided to tap the holes manually to make sure the bolts fastened correctly and didn't strip the threads.


New trac-bar mount. Josh installed this piece in the morning. Since it used existing mounting holes and bolts, it was quite uneventful, not like the rest of the day.


The existing canopy was ripped during a rainstorm a few months ago. Since it was quite sunny today, Randy's dad put up a temporary tarp to give us some shade. I think I got sunburned in the face nevertheless.

JeepSpeed (half) Build Day

I received a text message from Randy yesterday asking if I wanted to work on the truck this morning. Since we're so far behind, I figured we should work on it as much as possible so I headed off to his parents' house at 8:30am. It's been about 20 months since we acquired the Jeep.

We were supposed to work on the front suspension today. As usual, we grossly underestimated the time requirements, mainly because the car wouldn't cooperate. Our first mistake was buying an out-of-state car. This particular Jeep Cherokee came from Illinois so the bottom has a lot of rust. We're not really worried structurally since we're replacing a lot of pieces but a good percentage of the nuts and bolts are corroded and very difficult to remove. So instead of mocking up and installing some of the front suspension pieces, we spent 4 hours removing the original shocks and springs. Throughout the entire time, I was worried that the spring (under tension) would fly out from the suspension and kill/maim me or something. Fun.

Oh yeah... it was just Randy and me again. Well, his dad, like always, was a huge help. Without his expertise and tools, we probably wouldn't even have the car stripped even.


Front suspension at ~9am. We moved some of the jacks around and removed the front tires. Did I mention that the car has 4 different brand of tires?


Front disc brakes. Lots of original rust and grime plus new rust from the car sitting outside. There was also a lot of spider webs and rodent droppings. Randy's parents live in La Habra Heights so maybe there are field mice running around. I hope they didn't decide to build a nest anywhere in the car.


It's all about the tools. We couldn't remove the steering linkage until Randy's dad let us use his puller. it attaches above the linkage and a bolt underneath pushes against the output shaft from the power steering box. Even with the tool, it took both of us pulling/pushing on a 4 foot long bar attached to a socket wrench to get it to move.


More tools. The steering linkage was attached with a 1-1/2 inch bolt. Randy's dad brought out a set of huge sockets which included a 2-1/2 inch socket. The socket in front is a 15mm metric socket. Crazy.

Even though this was an American car (Jeep Cherokee), a lot of the bolts were metric (13mm, 15mm, 18mm) instead of Imperial (9/16", 1/2", 5/8"). Weird.


One of the bolts underneath the car was heavily rusted. After 30+ minutes, we managed to move it but the welded nut in the back broke free. There was no way to loosen the bolt so Randy's dad pulled out his acetylene torch and basically melted off the top of the bolt. Tools... very important.


Another stubborn bolt was the one attaching the front left shock. It didn't look rusted but it wasn't coming off. Since we didn't need to save anything, we decided to slice off the top using an angled grinder. I tried for ~30 seconds and let Randy finish.


Bolt removal FAIL. The two bolts we cut. The torch basically melted the top off the offending bolt (gray slag pile). Now we have to find some replacements but at least we were able to remove the bolts.


My hands after ~4 hours. Since we were working on the front suspension, everything was super dirty and my hands, arms, and pants were covered with black grease/dirt/grime stains. This was before we "rubbed" WD40 all over the roll cage to stop it from rusting further. Hmm, that probably made my hands a bit cleaner.


Rust on the roll cage... my Z is parked in the back. BTW, WD40 is awesome. It probably helped us remove most of the nuts/bolts. Auto mechanics must go through gallons of this stuff.


End result. The shocks and springs are out but I had to leave. We'll try to attach some of the new suspension pieces from Full Traction next week (yup, $1800... though we didn't get the coil springs and leaf springs so it may have been a bit cheaper).

Off-Road Swap Meet, Again

I woke up this morning at 2:30am(!) to go to the Curt Leduc Off-road Swap Meet out in Cabazon with Randy and his friend Steve. We went to this event last year as well; we spent the night last time sleeping in Randy's truck... it was really really cold. This year, we decided just to get there early on Sunday instead of camping out... I wasn't going to do that again.

We got there a little after 5am and the sky was still dark.

Looking north, the San Bernardino mountains were covered with snow from the rainstorms on Saturday.

I didn't take as many pictures this time because I was carrying the big Sony camera instead of my point-and-shoot (my parents took it to Canada) and it was very much the same as last year... a lot of the same people with a lot of the same junk. We didn't get anything again since our shocks need to be custom made so they're hard to find at a swap meet. Randy's friend Steve, who is building his 5th JeepSpeed truck, did buy a bunch of stuff and filled up my 4Runner. We haven't done much to our truck yet so I doubt we will be able to enter any races this year.

JeepSpeed – Transfer Case Upgrade

It’s been over a year since we stripped down our JeepSpeed Cherokee. We got someone to build our roll cage since then so now it’s time to start building the truck. Randy purchased a whole lot of stuff for us to install and yesterday was the first build day.

We started at 8:30am at Randy’s parents’ house. I was a bit disappointed that no one else showed up. We had a lot of enthusiasm when we decided to start this project but mostly it’s been Randy and I so far, both money and labor. The first task was to get the truck off the trailer and into the work area (under a canopy in the driveway). Since the driveway was on a slope and the truck is not running, we ended up towing the trailer down the street to a flat section, unload the truck, then tow it using a rope back up to the driveway. It was weird “driving” the truck without a seat and trying to steer without power steering.


The truck sitting on the trailer. The rear end is up so high becuase the racing leafsprings have already been installed and there is no weight in the back w/o the fuel tank.

Our original goal was to do a couple of things today, including work on both the front and rear suspension. However, since the truck had so much rust (originally from Illinois), it took forever to remove the nut and bolts holding everything together. The first item on the agenda was to upgrade the 4WD transfer case with a shorter and stronger main shaft. We also ended up removing the exhaust pipe/catalytic converter/muffler to get better access to the transfer case.


Extra 4WD transfer case that Randy bought along with an upgrade kit. We ended up pulling apart the one under the truck so he will probably reselling this one.


Back of the truck after we pushed it into the workspace. The big hole is where the fuel tank used to be. We have to replace it with a fuel cell for safety reasons.

The transfer case upgrade looked simple on paper: remove from car, open it, take out old main shaft, replace with new main shaft and tail housing, reassemble the case, and reinstall. After 8 hours of work (with a lot of help from Randy’s dad), we managed to replace the shaft and reassemble the transfer case but didn’t get to reinstall it back under the truck.


Rear driveshaft. One of the retention clamps was missing where the axle joins to the rear differential. From the amount of dirt and rust, I think it's been missing for awhile. Good thing the drive shaft didn't fall off while driving on the freeway. I also noticed that all 4 tires were from different brands... I've never seen that before. We're going to replace all the wheels and tires (probably with BF Goodrich tires so we can get pit support from them).


The current transfer case under the truck. It would take forever to disconnect both driveshafts and the transmission.


We sawed through the exhaust pipe to get rid of this section. We'll probably build a new exhaust to the side... just like Jesse James on Monster Garage!


The JeepSpeed truck sitting on jackstands. It was easier to work underneath with the truck up on stands but it was also a bit nervewracking. Randy brought out a wheeled "creeper" for me so it was easier for me to move around on my back under the truck.


Open transfer case with both shafts removed.


Randy holding on to the new main shaft while his dad tried to figure out how to remove some needle bearings without a hydraulic press. We ended up just pounding them out of the drive gear with a hammer. :)


Nightfall (1 second exposure at f/3.5). After all this work, we only managed to replace the main transfer case shaft. This truck build will probably take a lot longer than we planned.

I was so tired at the end of the day even though I didn’t do much since I don’t have much experience working on cars. I can’t imagine doing this everyday as an auto mechanic.

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BTW, the original post was created in Windows Live Writer. Typical of Microsoft, the preview only works with Internet Explorer. I tweaked with the formatting until it looked right under preview but after posting, I viewed the page with Safari (Mac OS X) and it was all messed up. I had to use the basic HTML editor in Blogger to fix everything. The photo uploading tool was pretty good though so I may use Writer to upload (not sure where the photos are stored though) then edit the text online.

Desert Pre-run, The Movie

During a smooth section (relative to the rest of the course), Randy decided to floor the accelerator. The track was covered with sand and since we were in 2WD mode, the truck was fishtailing all over the place. At one point, we came pretty close to hitting a piece of wood on the side of the track. I'm not sure how fast we were driving but the V8 engine was growling pretty loud. During a real race, our JeepSpeed should be able to hit 70-80 mph on terrain like this.

Desert Pre-run

A group of people from NewSong met up this morning and drove out to Barstow to drive off-road. The goal was to drive our street trucks to see how they would handle off-road. There is a race (Mojave 250) next week out behind the Tanger Outlet in Barstow so we can check out the actual course.

We met this morning at Denny's in Brea and decided to take two trucks. I left my 4Runner behind since it only had RWD instead of 4WD. Sam drove too but he was bringing his off-road motorcycles. The weather was good, not too hot nor cold, and after an early lunch at Del Taco, we arrived at the off-road area at around 11:30am.


There was some kind of muscle car meet at the Denny's this morning. There were a lot of mustangs and someone brought a Shelby Cobra. We're guessing that it's a replica since the real ones are really rare and auction for >$1M.


Sam's truck loaded with two motorcycles. We thought he was driving kind of slow, especially over the El Cajon pass; it turned out he only has a V6 in his F150 so it was a bit underpowered.


Sam and Ben stayed behind in the starting area to ride their bikes while the rest of us went to pre-run the course.


Randy's Toyota Tundra and Ed's Toyota 4Runner. Both had a 4.7L V8 and 4WD (the 4Runner was really AWD since you could not disable the 4WD).

Initially, I was in Ed's 4Runner and the course was a lot bumpier than I had imagined. However, the driving was pretty easy with the 4Runner's AWD. Later in the course, we swapped cars so I was driving Randy's Tundra in 2WD mode and it was a lot tougher. I got stuck several times and had to back up and try again (and again). Our JeepSpeed has 4WD but the plan is to replace the front axle to make it a 2WD truck for most races to save on weight. The course was in pretty bad shape since it's used for many races. In a lot of places, the track was really rocky and bumpy. It took us close to 4 hours to complete one 26 mile lap; there is an 8 hour limit for the 9 lap race. Randy said we should be a lot faster in our race truck since it has much better suspension/shocks.


Ed's 4Runner coming down a short hill then a uphill climb to where we were.


Taking a short break at the top of a small hill.


The course was dry and dusty. Both cars will need a good car wash afterwards.


Randy's Tundra climbing up a steep hill in 2WD. He lost traction the 1st time so he had to back up and try again. In the JeepSpeed, we should be going much faster and the extra momentum should carry us over the hill easily.

After the long 4 hour drive (the last 8 mile section of the course was really bumpy and slow), we met up with Sam and Ben. They were still riding around so Peter borrowed some safety equipment and rode a bit on their 80cc bike. It looked fun but since none of the helmets available fit me, I didn't want to risk riding around without one. I also didn't quite finish my MSF riding course so I'm not very confident in my riding skills... probably fall and hurt myself.


Pastor Peter


Rear disc brakes on Sam's 250cc Kawasaki

It was a pretty fun day. I think I'll bring my 4Runner next time since Randy was able to navigate the course in 2WD about 99% of the time. I drove Ed's 4Runner for about an hour on the way back home on the freeway. It handled about the same as my 4Runner but the power difference between the 4.7L V8 (235 hp/320 lb-ft) and my 3.4L V6 (183 hp/217 lb-ft) was quite noticeable.

Off-Road Swap Meet Results

I got back from the swap meet this morning and immediately crashed for six hours. It was a really tiring 24 hours, mostly because we walked around a lot and I only got about 2 hours of sleep. We didn't find the shocks we needed but did score a rear axle.


Morongo Casino. It's one of the many Indian casinos in California trying to take business away from Las Vegas. The swap meet met in the parking lot at the old casino building which is now used for bingo and bowling. The new casino/hotel is at the tall building in the background. It's the only high-rise building for miles around.

It was pretty windy the whole time. As you keep driving east on the 10 freeway towards Palm Springs, there are many windmills. From an old news article, the Cabazon Wind Project has 62 windmills generating 41 MW,

We arrived at the parking at around 1:30pm and bought a space for $45. Regular admission for Sunday is $10/person so we spent an extra $25 to get in early. Randy brought some used racing seats to sell and actually sold them within a few hours. There were a lot of tires for sale. Our spot was near the entrance and I saw many trailers overloaded with huge tires.

The swap meet was a family affair. A lot of people drove their motor homes towing trailers of stuff to sell. Here is a kid playing in a metal tube frame ($100). The family that parked next to us brought their 2 young daughters and a golden retriever. Some of the motor homes were very nice, costing over $500k. Randy and I went the rustic route, sleeping in the back of his Toyota Tundra.

Swap meet parking lot at dusk. Seeing the big yellow Penske truck brings back memories of loading/unloading sound equipment at Newsong NOC

We had lunch at the buffet in the main casino. The food was decent, comparable to a mid-range buffet at Las Vegas (better than Circus Circus but not as good as The Mirage). It was $10.95 for lunch but dinner was $19.95 since they have prime rib on Saturdays. We ended up at the food court for dinner (Panda Express, Fatburger, Nathan's hot dogs, and some Italian place). It was really expensive ($7.25 for 2-items at Panda Express); I thought they would have cheap food to keep people at the casino. Since it was Saturday night, the main casino was packed full of people. It was bingo night at the old casino building and that was full of people too... and surprisingly not just old people. I really don't see the fun factor in bingo but maybe there's not much to do in the middle of the desert.

A few sellers brought fiberglass body parts. All this came out of one 24' truck.

Night view from our "booth." Since Randy sold his seats early, we had nothing under our tent except the 5 gas cans he bought.

As we were finishing our expensive Chinese dinner (Panda Express), Randy spotted someone unpacking their truck. He jumped up and went across the parking lot to check out some stuff. Next, I see him waving at me and pointing at a rear axle on the ground. We quickly measured it and bought it for $600. There were at least two other people eyeing the axle. I don't know much about car parts but this was a rear axle built by Currie (in Anaheim) that housed a 9" differential gear; it is supposedly the gold standard for racing, used for NASCAR and all sorts of race cars. We saw a new one earlier for sale at $1800. It was really heavy though. With this purchase, we now have five axles for our race truck, including the original two axles. The plan is to swap out both sets for the heavy duty axles and keep the extra 2WD front axle for less grueling races. Maybe we can bring the two stock axles back here next year to sell.

The swap meet officially started on Sunday morning at 6am. Overnight, a lot of people arrived with their stuff and filled up the parking lot. Randy and I went to sleep around 10:30pm Saturday night in the back of his pickup truck. There was a camper shell but it was definitely not weatherproof... it was freezing cold inside. I ended up sleeping with my jacket and jeans inside the sleeping bag since it was too cold and cramped to try and change. At around 12:30am, I woke up and wasn't able to fall asleep again for the rest of the morning due to Randy's snoring. I also needed to pee but didn't go outside because it was too cold.

Since we didn't have anything to sell on Sunday, we packed up our tent and let someone else use our space. These guys brought several truggies (truck + buggy since the engine was in the back) to sell. This one was parked right next to us. It was brand new and completely hand built from the ground up even thought it looked like a Ford. The engine was a Chevy LS1 from a Corvette so it should be pretty fast. They're selling it for $100k so if you're interested, call Scott.

Even though we didn't find the shocks we needed, we ended buying the 9" rear axle, two gas cans, and a helmet air pump for the truck. I also bought a new double-layered Nomex driving suit for $200. It is really thick and heavy but will keep me safe in case our truck catches on fire. If nothing else, at least I can wear it for Hallowe'en. I tried to buy a helmet as well but could not find a XXL; the XL sized helmets still feel too tight and gives me claustrophobia. We also tried to look for shocks for our personal cars (Randy's Tundra and my 4Runner). The plan is to use our own cars as chase trucks during races since we only have money for the one race truck. After our Barstow pre-run trip on March 28th, we'll see if my 4Runner needs a suspension upgrade; everything is stock except for bigger wheels (P265-70R16).