badassmav
Well-Known Member
And I have my dear Watson. Elementary, I say ol' chum
Cost of Winning: The Monster Mav Chronicles
- Thread starter badassmav
- Start date
crazywatson
#13 - UTVUnderground Approved
Lol
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
The aftermath from the Baja continues. In preparation for raising the motor to get to the frame repairs that are needed, I drained the oil and noticed an extra strong scent of gasoline. A compression check of the motor revealed the #1 cylinder was down 25% from the #2 cylinder. 125 psi vs. 165 psi. A leak down test indicates that the breech is in the exhaust valve. I am pulling the head early a.m. and hoping to find nothing else. Hopefully, just a valve job on #1. Seems like I am a fireman as of late. Putting out fires here, blazes there! Good night.....
BiggJim
I Hate Rules - UTVUnderground Approved
You better look at the rings as well, Fuel in the bottom end wont be from an exhaust valve.
Bajaxp
SXS Racer Extraordinaire - UTVUnderground Approved
Agree...sounds like he sucks in dirt! Bore scope time.
crazywatson
#13 - UTVUnderground Approved
Might as well just do the whole top end since your budget from Can Am is unlimited. Lol Or screw it another engine!
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Marc and I decided that we are going to replace the piston and rings as well as the valve job. When running, Nate will get us on the dyno so we can properly tune it. I have a feeling that besides the silt, my exhaust has something to do with it. The #1 (front) cylinder always runs hot on our car, and I should have put more discs in the supertrapp for the front cylinder to decrease the back pressure. Coulda-woulda-shouda, I know. We barely won that race! Think I'm gonna' take a week off..............not!
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
Yeah, my mind is working on a pre air filter and raising the Unique/Donaldson canister to facilitate efficient air filter changes during a race. Meanwhile, my hands are working on frame repairs, motor repairs, a arm modeling, and this f-ing keyboard. It's like crack!!. I gotta get back to work.
sand shark
Well-Known Member
You guys are killing those Rotax motors. I am impressed the motor made it through the race.
crazywatson
#13 - UTVUnderground Approved
Donaldson sells a pre-filter if your using the housing. It goes on the intake of the airbox.
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Marc and I decided that we are going to replace the piston and rings as well as the valve job. When running, Nate will get us on the dyno so we can properly tune it. I have a feeling that besides the silt, my exhaust has something to do with it. The #1 (front) cylinder always runs hot on our car, and I should have put more discs in the supertrapp for the front cylinder to decrease the back pressure. Coulda-woulda-shouda, I know. We barely won that race! Think I'm gonna' take a week off..............not!
Good thing it was a Rotax motor with that sand blasting it got, spark plug looks like it's a 100 years old. Might have some more internal bearing issues with that much dirt. Evolution motorsports can Tune the computer and Add OR do anything you want , like timing, fuel probably close to what Can Am has in the race box. Dyno testing different pipe configurations trying to eliminate the factory collector never gained any power and actually lost Hp , cat delete and some aluminum high flow cans made the best power. I know you made your own setup but it's probably hurting your Hp.
badassmav
Well-Known Member
Yep. The exhaust makes way more noise than horse power. I met with Alba Nate today, and when it is all back together, we'll dyno tune the bitch. Adjust the fuel mixture at full song, or wherever it's done at, and tune the exhaust back pressure as well. And if I can have enough of his time, we'll tune the clutch too! I'd be happy if we can run prolonged speeds of 75 mph. Then, knock down those 6:1 odds MP, 'cause we gonna' be averaging lots of mph's, and if the new 3.0's are ready
, oohweee, y'all gonna be in a world of hurt! and if frogs had wings.......... Ah, what am I sayin'. We'll be happy to just make the race .
badassmav
Well-Known Member
Finally getting to the meat and potatoes of the damaged sway bar tube. Instead of cutting out 100% of the housing, I chose to splice it near the ends, and will replace it with .090" wall thickness tubing (Factory is 12 gauge, or .105" wall).
The black connector bar in the center was added just days before the race because I was concerned that the hard bottoming we've been suffering from would push the bottom floor pan into the case of the motor, damaging it. The upper tube it connects to, is the tube that houses the rear motor mount, and now moves up if the pan of the car is pounded up, which is exactly what happened in Baja. Without the spreader, the sway bar would have surely broke, causing the link arms to fly out, 1/2 attached to the lower arm, and the other 1/2 flailing dangerously in front of the rear tires. The square tubing formed itself around the sway bar, and made removal of the bar a pain in the ass!.
I will sort out this whole "saggy ass" syndrome before the V2R, as it has been a limiting factor on how the car can be driven, and how much sleep I get.!
The black connector bar in the center was added just days before the race because I was concerned that the hard bottoming we've been suffering from would push the bottom floor pan into the case of the motor, damaging it. The upper tube it connects to, is the tube that houses the rear motor mount, and now moves up if the pan of the car is pounded up, which is exactly what happened in Baja. Without the spreader, the sway bar would have surely broke, causing the link arms to fly out, 1/2 attached to the lower arm, and the other 1/2 flailing dangerously in front of the rear tires. The square tubing formed itself around the sway bar, and made removal of the bar a pain in the ass!.
I will sort out this whole "saggy ass" syndrome before the V2R, as it has been a limiting factor on how the car can be driven, and how much sleep I get.
!Attachments
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badassmav
Well-Known Member
I love living in the hills, away from the masses in the city. It's peaceful and spacious. Unfortunately for my doggies, it is also full of rattle snakes! Nearly stepped on this guy today. Looks like he was looking for a place to rest and digest his meal. Not 1, but 2 large rats in his belly! That's about as exciting as things get around here.
I've been sick the past week, but did manage to get shop progress, although not much to share. Pretty much just trying to get the mundane things taken care of. Digital files, o/s labor quotes, hardware and mat'l ordering. Send out the motor for a new top end. Boring, but yet still necessary. Last week, I got a bad staff infection, immobilizing my arm. Now, I've come down with the stupid flu! Maybe if I took better care of myself.........not!
Oh, I just saw today on SCORE'S website that we are 3rd overall in points behind Rob Mac and Vildosola. Yay! These honors are usually taken by the 10's or 1-2/1600's and TT's, due to the additional points awarded based on a higher number of entries. I'm proud to say that we accomplished our rankings by a little thing called............podiums! Yeah, brr brrr !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
! That's about as exciting as things get around here. I've been sick the past week, but did manage to get shop progress, although not much to share. Pretty much just trying to get the mundane things taken care of. Digital files, o/s labor quotes, hardware and mat'l ordering. Send out the motor for a new top end. Boring, but yet still necessary. Last week, I got a bad staff infection, immobilizing my arm. Now, I've come down with the stupid flu
! Maybe if I took better care of myself.........not! Oh, I just saw today on SCORE'S website that we are 3rd overall in points behind Rob Mac and Vildosola. Yay!
These honors are usually taken by the 10's or 1-2/1600's and TT's, due to the additional points awarded based on a higher number of entries. I'm proud to say that we accomplished our rankings by a little thing called............podiums! Yeah, brr brrr !!!!!!!!!!!!!!Attachments
badassmav
Well-Known Member
My Race Report:
Usually, my 4 a.m. posts are reserved for the end of a long and productive work day. This one however, is thanks to the flu. I hate napping throughout the day, and waking up in the wee hours over rested. Being wide awake, I thought I would outline my week leading up to the Baja 500. It was the most aggravating roller coaster I have ever ridden. Be it on the tracks, or in ones psyche, the ups and downs and last minute twists were more than I've ever gone through in such a short period of time. I want to share the story before it escapes my short term, peanut brained memory. Although, most of it was covered through daily entries in my Baja 500 thread, I wanted to summarize it here.
The 18 and 20 hour days started about a week and a half prior to the race, and got worse as the race drew closer. On the Friday before contingency, Marc had to fly out to announce one of his freestyle events, and upon his leaving, we agreed that the car would be ready to test on Monday. The new motor was already sitting in place, and I needed only to hook up the plumbing and wiring, as well as zip up the main harness, install the dash, main gauge console, and install the body work. The driveshafts and diffs also needed to be installed, then a 4 wheel alignment. I will preface the rest of this story here by saying that I have a problem with obsesssive/compulsive behaviors, as well as a lack of confidence in who I am and what I do. I always fear that I am forgetting something, and it really slows down the pace at which things do and do not flow. Redundancy runs rampant here in our Jamul shop. An example would be checking that I have the keys multiple times before locking a door.
On Friday or Saturday, I lobbied for the help of my brother Rick, to assist with the wiring and body work installation. He ended up giving way more than that, and is responsible for helping get the car on the trailer in time to make a 4:30 Friday arrival in Ensenada. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll stay on point here. As Sunday evening approached, It became painfully obvious that the car needed attention more than I needed to sleep, so I worked through the night. When the sun came up, I knew I was not going to be ready to test that day (Monday), and told Marc that it would need to be moved to Tuesday. At 3 p.m. or so on Monday, I grabbed a couple of hours of needed rest, knowing that I would still need to work through the night to have the car ready for Tuesday. So, I get up at 5:30 p.m. or so and begin to get back at it. It wasn't until almost 11 p.m. Tuesday night that the car was ready to test, and it was 11 p.m. on Tuesday night that we trailered the car to P.C. to break in the new motor for a few miles, then 50 miles of punishment to make sure everything really was race ready!
A good friend of ours who helps Marc out by sometimes driving one of his tour buses on the Freestylemx.com tour was invited down from Oregon to attend the race as and be an integral part of our crew. He had never rode in the Monster Mav before, and went with us to test. It must have been about 1:30 am Wednesday morning when the tires finally hit the dirt. I unloaded the car, not even confident that all systems and hookups had been attended to, and left it running to warm up the factory stock Rotax engine. After gearing up, Marc and Tommy head out on a planned hour and a half driving stint at mellow speeds and accelerations to introduce the new motor to the car. I will add here that we were also testing a brand new spring combination in the rear, in hopes of keeping the ass end up off of the deck. Marc made a small loop of a mile or so, and came back in saying that we missed badly on the spring set up, and the car was bottoming so badly, it was not even able to be driven like it used to be. We decided to continue on, if only for the purpose of breaking in the new motor.
As I sit on a dark and quiet early morn, sipping on an icy Guinness Stout (I finally had time to enjoy my beer, after a hustling day) and watching the stars, Marc;'s voice comes over the radio, "It's done! Load up the truck and come pick us up. The motor seized, and we're stuck on Evan Hewes Hwy, a couple of miles down from you". As I felt Hurricane Sandy brewing in my stomach, I loaded up and headed down the highway, thinking of what our options were for the 500, and ready to defend myself against a pissed off driver! Upon arrival, Marc was calm and had little emotions other than utter disappointment. !4 miles into the run, the motor began losing revs whilst Marc mashed down harder on the Gas pedal, until it just quit. It was fun loading it back on the trailer with no power or winch at 2:30 in the morning. Mac Gyver could have taken a few lessons!
It was a pretty quiet ride on the way back to the freeway, then marc spoke up, "I'm ovet it!" He was already juggling difficulties in other areas of his life, and had no room for it. We then began a long brainstorming session that lasted all the way home, and decided that , after discussing what seemed to be endless dead end solutions to the problem at hand, that we would tag team and remove the engine from one of our 4 seat Max's, and use it in the race car. It only had a few hours on it, so off we go. We returned to Jamul at 4:30 a.m. and I unloaded the car. I hit he sack, and woke up at 9 a.m., ready to start what was to be a hectic day, to say the least.
After eating breakfast, I headed off to the shop where Marc already had 2 guys working on tearing the motor out of the Max. I worked all day on Wednesday, and again through the night, and finally had a new motor back in the Monster Mav by early Thursday morning. It is usually a couple of days at this point to ready the car to race, but I had only 1. Rick jumped back in and we went to town. Marc left in the early afternoon on Thursday for Ensenada, and I stayed to thrash on the car until it was done. There was no stopping. No sleeping allowed. It lasted through the night again, and finally, on Friday at 1 p.m., the car was ready for contingency, and I was not! There were a few small things for me to wrap up, but we had to hit the road. Finally crossed into Tecate at around 2:30 Friday afternoon, and got the car into contingency at around 4:30. I was just exhausted, and relieved that my long hours were behind me and I could get a good nights rest before the big race. Then the talk started flying. People were all abuzz about the 6 and 8 hours of time it took them in line before making it to tech. I thought, "No way! It's the end of the day, and things should surely move along a bit faster now, right?" No such luck. We made it into the tech area at a little past midnight on Saturday morning. Finished up about 1 a.m., and drove back to the compound to crash, and crash hard. Then the moment of discovery! We found out that we had no 4wd, and as a result, the alternator that runs off of the front drive shaft was not charging the 2 batteries. We could not race w/out it because of the lighting and other power hungry systems on the car. I still had small things I planned to wrap up once we arrived as well. F_ck, another all nighter!
I again worked through the night to solve the problems, and by the time that the sun arose, I got the 4wd issue solved. I didn't get the fork arm inside of the actuator properly positioned when mating the tranny to the new motor at the shop. Now that it was solved, I took the car on a quick test run to check the results of my efforts. No alternator still!! Aaargh! Not only did the alternator not work, but there was a clunk in the tranny when accelerating hard. It was at this point that Marc looked me in the eye and said, "What do you think? I dont want to race a car that we can't win the race in." After all of my shit talking in the underground, we had to perform well, or not at all. He left it up to me. At that time, one of our crew that was well versed in alternators arrived and offered his two cents. He gave about an hour and a half of his time to the problem, and solved it! Another test drive confirmed that the alternator was putting out finally. It was around 9:30 a.m. by this time, and I still had my small things to wrap up before the race. I don't remember how many things I came across that were overlooked, but it was alot. As everyone is now loading and preparing to leave for their support of our race, I am again thrashing on the car to get it ready for the start line. Marc and Fern finally are suited up, and get in the car to head to the S/F line. A radio check as they are driving away from the compound reveals that the passenger's push to talk button was not working. (I could have swore that I tested the complete radio system at the shop but.......) The inability of Fern to communicate with me in the pits was debilitating to say the least. I'm used to hearing him call out the mile markers every mile so I know their progress, and average speed relative to what part of the course they are running. This is how, besides Fen's reporting back to the pits, that I know if there are problems or not. It's simple. On the flats and high speed sections, he should be chiming in once every minute, and in the rougher areas, once every 2 minutes , +/-.
I was chasing Marc (in our Ford Explorer pre runner that is equipped to the hilt!) down the coast side to RM 165 where it cuts inland on that rough section heading towards the Diablo dry lake. In Santo Thomas, at RM 77 or so, we waited for Marc to arrive at the Baja pits, where we would look the car over, and help gas him up. Marc came through within 5 or 10 minutes of my guestimated ETA, was serviced, and tore out of the pits on his way to his favorite part of the course, the fire type roads along the coast, where he is awesome at hanging the rear end out around the high speed corners. We waited in Santo Thomas for the next car to come through, and it was at least a 10 minute wait! As we headed out, we saw Alba Nate, and he gave us kudo's! Yep. That's Marc for ya'. Drive it like you stole it! Marc will profess however, that he wasn't even driving the car hard. Ol' Money bags was running well here on the coast, as well as was Branden in the #1913 car. At RM 155 or so, the Explorer let us down. Alex mashed the gas pedal and down shifted to pass a slower car on the road and............nothing. The transfer case just let go!
Suffice it to say that I was just overwhelmed by more shit being tossed in my direction. Now, I am stuck, and won't be able to make it to the other side to assist Marc after he is coming out of the dry lake, nor follow him home. One of the chase vans that were in front of us gassed Marc up at RM 165, and headed back to pick me up. We left Alex with the Explorer to protect it, and couldn't get back to pick him up until the following morning! He said that in the early morning hours, a truck with a trailer and 4 guys pulled up. He surprised them, and they tore out of there without the bounty they hoped to steal. Boy, was he pissed! In all fairness though, I told him on more than one occasion that he was driving the pre runner too hard, and should back off a bit. He didn't, and so there he sat. I waited for Marc to come through Ojos near the end of our journey, and he did. Still in first place, but now running no faster than 35 mph due to silt clogging the air filter, and the front drive shaft dangling around, minus one of its u joint caps. Branden came through about 15 minutes later. Flying. Man was on a mission, and he was closing fast. Too fast. I radioed to Marc with that fact, but the car was too crippled to respond. We made it to the finish line, with 10 minutes or so to spare, and for the second consecutive Mexico race, grabbed top honors. The victory felt hollow for me. They always do, and I'm not sure why. On the way back to the hotel, I was pretty happy with a cool g in my pocket, and another to come soon thanks to Money bags! I stopped at Agua Caliente and blew off a hun before making it back to the compound, where I immediately passed out. Cold. Three hours of sleep, and I had to head back out to pick up the broken down pre runner 3 hours away!
Another successful race for the Monster Mav, after another doubtful preparation of the car. I keep telling Marc that it eventually will not turn out so good, but until then, we are proving what I have bragged about over the airwaves for the last year. That the car and Marc's ability to drive it, is BADASS!!
Now, the long road to V2R. The car has been badly abused, and so have I! It's no thang for me though, for I am a martyr, and can't stand prosperity!
Congratulations to Johnny in the #1920 UTV Inc. car. You proved you are a serious contender, and able driver. Good job buddy! And congrats also to the man who will be on top soon. Branden Simms. I've been saying all along that he is right up there , and is our major threat. Look forward to racing with him wheel to wheel. That would be priceless helicopter footage, for sure!
Usually, my 4 a.m. posts are reserved for the end of a long and productive work day. This one however, is thanks to the flu. I hate napping throughout the day, and waking up in the wee hours over rested. Being wide awake, I thought I would outline my week leading up to the Baja 500. It was the most aggravating roller coaster I have ever ridden. Be it on the tracks, or in ones psyche, the ups and downs and last minute twists were more than I've ever gone through in such a short period of time. I want to share the story before it escapes my short term, peanut brained memory. Although, most of it was covered through daily entries in my Baja 500 thread, I wanted to summarize it here.
The 18 and 20 hour days started about a week and a half prior to the race, and got worse as the race drew closer. On the Friday before contingency, Marc had to fly out to announce one of his freestyle events, and upon his leaving, we agreed that the car would be ready to test on Monday. The new motor was already sitting in place, and I needed only to hook up the plumbing and wiring, as well as zip up the main harness, install the dash, main gauge console, and install the body work. The driveshafts and diffs also needed to be installed, then a 4 wheel alignment. I will preface the rest of this story here by saying that I have a problem with obsesssive/compulsive behaviors, as well as a lack of confidence in who I am and what I do. I always fear that I am forgetting something, and it really slows down the pace at which things do and do not flow. Redundancy runs rampant here in our Jamul shop. An example would be checking that I have the keys multiple times before locking a door.
On Friday or Saturday, I lobbied for the help of my brother Rick, to assist with the wiring and body work installation. He ended up giving way more than that, and is responsible for helping get the car on the trailer in time to make a 4:30 Friday arrival in Ensenada. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll stay on point here. As Sunday evening approached, It became painfully obvious that the car needed attention more than I needed to sleep, so I worked through the night. When the sun came up, I knew I was not going to be ready to test that day (Monday), and told Marc that it would need to be moved to Tuesday. At 3 p.m. or so on Monday, I grabbed a couple of hours of needed rest, knowing that I would still need to work through the night to have the car ready for Tuesday. So, I get up at 5:30 p.m. or so and begin to get back at it. It wasn't until almost 11 p.m. Tuesday night that the car was ready to test, and it was 11 p.m. on Tuesday night that we trailered the car to P.C. to break in the new motor for a few miles, then 50 miles of punishment to make sure everything really was race ready!
A good friend of ours who helps Marc out by sometimes driving one of his tour buses on the Freestylemx.com tour was invited down from Oregon to attend the race as and be an integral part of our crew. He had never rode in the Monster Mav before, and went with us to test. It must have been about 1:30 am Wednesday morning when the tires finally hit the dirt. I unloaded the car, not even confident that all systems and hookups had been attended to, and left it running to warm up the factory stock Rotax engine. After gearing up, Marc and Tommy head out on a planned hour and a half driving stint at mellow speeds and accelerations to introduce the new motor to the car. I will add here that we were also testing a brand new spring combination in the rear, in hopes of keeping the ass end up off of the deck. Marc made a small loop of a mile or so, and came back in saying that we missed badly on the spring set up, and the car was bottoming so badly, it was not even able to be driven like it used to be. We decided to continue on, if only for the purpose of breaking in the new motor.
As I sit on a dark and quiet early morn, sipping on an icy Guinness Stout (I finally had time to enjoy my beer, after a hustling day) and watching the stars, Marc;'s voice comes over the radio, "It's done! Load up the truck and come pick us up. The motor seized, and we're stuck on Evan Hewes Hwy, a couple of miles down from you". As I felt Hurricane Sandy brewing in my stomach, I loaded up and headed down the highway, thinking of what our options were for the 500, and ready to defend myself against a pissed off driver! Upon arrival, Marc was calm and had little emotions other than utter disappointment. !4 miles into the run, the motor began losing revs whilst Marc mashed down harder on the Gas pedal, until it just quit. It was fun loading it back on the trailer with no power or winch at 2:30 in the morning. Mac Gyver could have taken a few lessons!
It was a pretty quiet ride on the way back to the freeway, then marc spoke up, "I'm ovet it!" He was already juggling difficulties in other areas of his life, and had no room for it. We then began a long brainstorming session that lasted all the way home, and decided that , after discussing what seemed to be endless dead end solutions to the problem at hand, that we would tag team and remove the engine from one of our 4 seat Max's, and use it in the race car. It only had a few hours on it, so off we go. We returned to Jamul at 4:30 a.m. and I unloaded the car. I hit he sack, and woke up at 9 a.m., ready to start what was to be a hectic day, to say the least.
After eating breakfast, I headed off to the shop where Marc already had 2 guys working on tearing the motor out of the Max. I worked all day on Wednesday, and again through the night, and finally had a new motor back in the Monster Mav by early Thursday morning. It is usually a couple of days at this point to ready the car to race, but I had only 1. Rick jumped back in and we went to town. Marc left in the early afternoon on Thursday for Ensenada, and I stayed to thrash on the car until it was done. There was no stopping. No sleeping allowed. It lasted through the night again, and finally, on Friday at 1 p.m., the car was ready for contingency, and I was not! There were a few small things for me to wrap up, but we had to hit the road. Finally crossed into Tecate at around 2:30 Friday afternoon, and got the car into contingency at around 4:30. I was just exhausted, and relieved that my long hours were behind me and I could get a good nights rest before the big race. Then the talk started flying. People were all abuzz about the 6 and 8 hours of time it took them in line before making it to tech. I thought, "No way! It's the end of the day, and things should surely move along a bit faster now, right?" No such luck. We made it into the tech area at a little past midnight on Saturday morning. Finished up about 1 a.m., and drove back to the compound to crash, and crash hard. Then the moment of discovery! We found out that we had no 4wd, and as a result, the alternator that runs off of the front drive shaft was not charging the 2 batteries. We could not race w/out it because of the lighting and other power hungry systems on the car. I still had small things I planned to wrap up once we arrived as well. F_ck, another all nighter!
I again worked through the night to solve the problems, and by the time that the sun arose, I got the 4wd issue solved. I didn't get the fork arm inside of the actuator properly positioned when mating the tranny to the new motor at the shop. Now that it was solved, I took the car on a quick test run to check the results of my efforts. No alternator still!! Aaargh! Not only did the alternator not work, but there was a clunk in the tranny when accelerating hard. It was at this point that Marc looked me in the eye and said, "What do you think? I dont want to race a car that we can't win the race in." After all of my shit talking in the underground, we had to perform well, or not at all. He left it up to me. At that time, one of our crew that was well versed in alternators arrived and offered his two cents. He gave about an hour and a half of his time to the problem, and solved it! Another test drive confirmed that the alternator was putting out finally. It was around 9:30 a.m. by this time, and I still had my small things to wrap up before the race. I don't remember how many things I came across that were overlooked, but it was alot. As everyone is now loading and preparing to leave for their support of our race, I am again thrashing on the car to get it ready for the start line. Marc and Fern finally are suited up, and get in the car to head to the S/F line. A radio check as they are driving away from the compound reveals that the passenger's push to talk button was not working. (I could have swore that I tested the complete radio system at the shop but.......) The inability of Fern to communicate with me in the pits was debilitating to say the least. I'm used to hearing him call out the mile markers every mile so I know their progress, and average speed relative to what part of the course they are running. This is how, besides Fen's reporting back to the pits, that I know if there are problems or not. It's simple. On the flats and high speed sections, he should be chiming in once every minute, and in the rougher areas, once every 2 minutes , +/-.
I was chasing Marc (in our Ford Explorer pre runner that is equipped to the hilt!) down the coast side to RM 165 where it cuts inland on that rough section heading towards the Diablo dry lake. In Santo Thomas, at RM 77 or so, we waited for Marc to arrive at the Baja pits, where we would look the car over, and help gas him up. Marc came through within 5 or 10 minutes of my guestimated ETA, was serviced, and tore out of the pits on his way to his favorite part of the course, the fire type roads along the coast, where he is awesome at hanging the rear end out around the high speed corners. We waited in Santo Thomas for the next car to come through, and it was at least a 10 minute wait! As we headed out, we saw Alba Nate, and he gave us kudo's! Yep. That's Marc for ya'. Drive it like you stole it! Marc will profess however, that he wasn't even driving the car hard. Ol' Money bags was running well here on the coast, as well as was Branden in the #1913 car. At RM 155 or so, the Explorer let us down. Alex mashed the gas pedal and down shifted to pass a slower car on the road and............nothing. The transfer case just let go!
Suffice it to say that I was just overwhelmed by more shit being tossed in my direction. Now, I am stuck, and won't be able to make it to the other side to assist Marc after he is coming out of the dry lake, nor follow him home. One of the chase vans that were in front of us gassed Marc up at RM 165, and headed back to pick me up. We left Alex with the Explorer to protect it, and couldn't get back to pick him up until the following morning! He said that in the early morning hours, a truck with a trailer and 4 guys pulled up. He surprised them, and they tore out of there without the bounty they hoped to steal. Boy, was he pissed! In all fairness though, I told him on more than one occasion that he was driving the pre runner too hard, and should back off a bit. He didn't, and so there he sat. I waited for Marc to come through Ojos near the end of our journey, and he did. Still in first place, but now running no faster than 35 mph due to silt clogging the air filter, and the front drive shaft dangling around, minus one of its u joint caps. Branden came through about 15 minutes later. Flying. Man was on a mission, and he was closing fast. Too fast. I radioed to Marc with that fact, but the car was too crippled to respond. We made it to the finish line, with 10 minutes or so to spare, and for the second consecutive Mexico race, grabbed top honors. The victory felt hollow for me. They always do, and I'm not sure why. On the way back to the hotel, I was pretty happy with a cool g in my pocket, and another to come soon thanks to Money bags! I stopped at Agua Caliente and blew off a hun before making it back to the compound, where I immediately passed out. Cold. Three hours of sleep, and I had to head back out to pick up the broken down pre runner 3 hours away!
Another successful race for the Monster Mav, after another doubtful preparation of the car. I keep telling Marc that it eventually will not turn out so good, but until then, we are proving what I have bragged about over the airwaves for the last year. That the car and Marc's ability to drive it, is BADASS!!
Now, the long road to V2R. The car has been badly abused, and so have I! It's no thang for me though, for I am a martyr, and can't stand prosperity!
Congratulations to Johnny in the #1920 UTV Inc. car. You proved you are a serious contender, and able driver. Good job buddy!
And congrats also to the man who will be on top soon. Branden Simms. I've been saying all along that he is right up there , and is our major threat. Look forward to racing with him wheel to wheel. That would be priceless helicopter footage, for sure!Great Report Reid
Thanks for sharing it with us this racing prep is way more work then racing !!
I was going to post up some pictures of our in house Laser, Water Jet, Powder Coating, CNC Machines, ect but didn't wana see a grown man Cry.. keep up the good work and Ill keep gunning for you TOP DOGs ...
Thanks for sharing it with us this racing prep is way more work then racing !!
I was going to post up some pictures of our in house Laser, Water Jet, Powder Coating, CNC Machines, ect but didn't wana see a grown man Cry.. keep up the good work and Ill keep gunning for you TOP DOGs ...
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