Latest update on the season, managed to finish all the laps in the July race, but the old girl paid the price with some pretty well destroyed rims, cracked frame at the left rear trailing arm and tore that side's rear caliper off when the arm kicked inward and made contact with the engine mount framework. and broke both my thumbs. Finished 7th out of around 18.
I've had a very busy summer with work, fixed up the above items in time for the final race on Sept. 17
cut out the worn out and bent trailing arm mounts, welded up the crack in the tubing they attach to and made new/plated everything with 1/4-in.
Running the 2/5 backspace golf cart rims reversed like i have to makes them very susceptible to rock hits so i made rock rings using sections of the trashed rims and 3/16ths x 1 1/4 flat stock.
We've been running the UTV class at 8:30 am start time with 10 second timed intervals, no longer mixed in with the quads and bikes.
That deal gave us 30 minutes to finish lap one which was 8.5 miles this year, with 1.5 miles of new trail added in.
I had planned on an easy lap one, then beating the hell out of her on lap two, but the 30 minute time frame killed that plan.
So, for the first time, here's video of the Rockhound actually running on course at close to the pace i've designed it for. i went at it at about 75-85 percent. was a little afraid for my thumbs LOL.
My start was a little inauspicious to say the least
but i began to pick up the pace more and more until my boo boo at the end of part 1.
It took me about 15 minutes to extricate her from that mess, and knowing I'd like missed the 30 min cutoff i started hitting it even harder so part 2 is pretty cool ... until i flatted a tire (a new tire that i had a shop put on and i forgot to air up to 15 psi like the rest) and then cracked the steering arm off the spindle enough that the right wheel was pointed right and she wouldn't turn left.
Tried using reverse to finish the lap, with 1 mile to go i got it turned around but must have broke something in the transmission cause she got stuck in neutral.
20 minutes part 1 of lap 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEwvNuglzTw
10 minutes part 2 of lap 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr34rDEtwu8
despite some of the setbacks, over the 4 races of the 2016 season, she brought me home to 7th place overall out of 30. The only homebuilt, only 1 of 2 with no power steering (my buddy's teryx being the other) and running against some pretty heavy GNCC series racers running heavily modified XPs, YXZs and can ams.
This winter looking forward to a new rack with shortened steering arms and a new location for it involving a lot of heavy front end cutting and fabbing, electric power steering and possibly converting the air shocks to coil overs.
This race is just too brutal for direct manual rack and pinion and the air shock's progressive spring rates aren't helping matters any on the big hits. very nice in the mild to moderate sections, but the big hits are too hard deep in the travel.