race prep

The past two months I have been working to the buggy getting it ready for LCQ. It is taking me more time then I thought it would. But here is a few changes we made for the up coming year.
A few weeks ago


Some of the paint was stipped to repair tube from the holes and a dent from when I rolled it on the comp course. Tech guy said the screws holding the roof wouldn't pass



All last year the rig would be on the verge of over heating and if we pushed it hard in the rocks it would over heat so we up graded to a bigger radiator. We also turned the gas tank for more storage for tools and parts, added hilift mount and moved the shocks up to match the bump stops I moved earlier in the year




A few races we had issues with fuel. One issue we had was clogging the fuel pump. Then vapor lock, the fuel was being restricted in the lines by debris enough that it would heat up. It was getting hot enough and flowing back to the tank that you could actually feel the tank getting warm. well stupid me didn't have a prefiter at the pick up. This cause both issues and the engine would loose power at anything above idle. So we then added walbros as prefilters. That created another issue. We only had three in the tank. two were in the front of the tank and one in the back. when we were less then a quarter of a tank and the walbros would either not close and suck air or would close up and not allow enough fuel. This shut the car down and was hard to start. We went from 4th to 6th sitting on the side of the trail trying to get it started on our last lap. To fix this and hopefully any other issue we added a forth walbro, so now we have 2 in front and 2 in the rear one of each has the weep hole. move the pump to inside the tank and added a second pump. The second pump just has a sock on it as the prefilter. If there are any issues with the walbros or the first fuel pump you just have to hit a switch and go the the second pump



Old exhaust was cracked and dented from rocks and links smashing it. This was a bitch because it is bigger then the old exhaust so it took some work to fit



The front bumper was rebuilt because it had some tree damage, and I tried to get more up travel. After I cut everthing off I only got like a half inch. The limiting factor was the upper link into the idler pulley so can't get more then that. Front just needs some tabs for the grill, some paint and remount the coolers and winch. pics to come

I moved the lower link mounts lower to be level with the belly pan and inboard to combat axle steer a little. Still need to add some support tubes to go from the sub frame to the outer rail.

Hopefully won't be bending these. They are actually lighter then the aluminum links. Just replacing the front uppers


Had to build new mounts for the larger heims and one of the tabs was ovaled out.





New sway bar location

Short story for lcq. We rolled the night before prerunning. The same place bunny rolled in their run that day. We got ahold of Ron and Matt happick who were waiting for us at the end of the course. They came and rolled us back over and towed us back to camp. We were probably upside down for 20-30min, so my poorly run vent lines had filled the catch cans and were pouring fluid everywhere. So we were up late cleaning the oil and gas up from the car, getting oil out of the cylinders, and prepping the car to run the next day. We got the buggy running and almost everything done and decided to call it a night. I woke up early even though we didn't have to be inline till 11. I went through my mental check list to finish prepping then tried to start the buggy but it wouldn't start. There was no power getting to the coil. R2 and Mike from Dnd (they were in bunny's pit crew) came over to lend a hand and ended up finding a bad fuse holder. eazy fix but i would have never found it. We own them big! We finish prepping and ran the buggy around a bit. Belt was squealing because of oil on it, and the engine wasn't running right, be we had to line up. we got to watch 3 people not make it up gate keeper then 2 that did. After watching them i thought I knew what I had to do. We pulled the winch out just in case. Ran our run slow in the rocks, engine stalled out 4 times, then out of control on the back side to make up time. We slowed down at the sandy turn because thats where we rolled then had issues getting up the sandy hill because of no power. Turns out one of the spark plug wires was unplugged. Considering the issues not too bad of a time of 7 min 28sec. I have watched the video a hundred times and wish we would have preran it more, could have done a lot better. But when we lined up on friday there were a lot of fast cars behind us. I am not sure if i would have wanted to be closer to the front

sweet

thats awesome stuff

Looks good, Matt....great work!! Can't wait to see it in person again.