sand shark
Well-Known Member
He is going to need a week or two off for Christmas, once he gets both race cars done.
He is a welding machine.
He is a welding machine.
Red Lands Racing/Motive Engineering BITD build
- Thread starter motive
- Start date
Stroke of Power
Member
No time off for Thad, my cage is next. I can't wait, his fabrication and attention to detail is fantastic.
motive
Active Member
Race build or recreation? I have to say we have been very pleased with what he has done on the Redlands Racing car. I think the only part of our design he didn't build to spec was one bend that we speced as too tight of a radius to bend without wrinkling the tube. All the details he has added that we didn't design like the steering column mount are top notch. We have been able to trust him to come up with all those little details himself as we live 600 miles away. I was nervous about that and wanted a local fabricator but Ryan made the call to have Thad do it. He made the right decision. Thad just posted a picture on instagram of the start of the tin work. The detail looks like a higher class car than a UTV.
sand shark
Well-Known Member
The car is turning out great.
BRONCOBOY
Member
the stripping shop
RACER - UTVUnderground Approved
3 weeks to go better bust ass
So we haven't posted anything in a over a month. This catch up post is quite the novel (slightly off topic also), so if you decide to continue reading, hopefully you can laugh WITH us.
Things on the new car build have been progressing, albeit slower than we had hoped. The month of December was a blur, all three of us were busting it trying to have the car ready for the Parker. Hiccups with the suspension was the nail in the coffin that forced reality to sink in that we weren't going to make it. We needed plan B, which soon emerged as "Race the Wildcat" (Ryan's family UTV). After about 30 minutes of discussion this option quickly faded since it is tuned with an aftermarket turbocharger, didn't have a legal cage, didn't have the legal lights, and for that matter didn't have just about anything necessary to pass tech, much less have a fighting chance in a BITD race. So, we were on to Plan C, which goes as follows:
Step 1: Send the Arctic Cat packing. Surprisingly, this only ended up taking a few days to unload the car. We all shed tears of joy when it was gone because keeping it in one piece for more than 45 minutes at a time was a challenge. It was a fun car, but we spent more time fixing it than driving it.
Step 2: Find a Race-Legal-Race-Ready car. Having been working with Queen Racing we had noticed a car in his shop that was apparently for sale. This was Lucky 7's RZR two seater that Mark raced at V2R. A phone call or two later and it was a done deal, we had a Race-Legal-Race-Ready car...kind-of.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150115_134409_zps80122c24.jpg.html]
[/URL]
This is a nice little ride with a fully custom cage, fully built Queen Racing motor, lone star long travel suspension front and rear, fox 2.5's up front and 3.0's in the back, method wheels, ITP tires, Lowrance GPS, ViPec ECU, etc, etc. The car had been parked since V2R last year, and we knew that there were a couple tech issues that needed to be addressed, so Ryan went down a couple days early to bring it up to speed. Perhaps not surprisingly, the car needed more work than we had expected, which included significant cage mods, rebuilding the radius rod ends, rebuilding the axles, etc. By the time myself, Zane, and Nathan (the other Laidlaw brother) got into Havasu Friday at lunch time there was still a laundry list of little stuff to finish.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150109_151103_zps46034525.jpg.html]
[/URL]
This is 3:30pm Friday
We finally jumped in the truck at 4:00 and drove to Parker, hoping to make it to tech inspection. Luckily the bore and stroke inspection had put the process far enough behind that we were OK on time. Tech inspection was seriously hilarious because we were literally discovering what each switch did as we were passing it off. The guys at PCI radios had mercy on us and loaned us a roll of blue painters tape and a sharpie so we could identify the switches on the car. As soon as we cleared tech we hit up pizza hut, and then hauled it back to Queen's shop and to fix a few items that came up during tech. This wrapped up in the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday we got to the pit and finished up final prep. Ryan and I jumped in the car and headed off to the staging area as I programmed the hazards into the GPS. Pulling up to the start line was surreal, as this is first time we have driven this vehicle, ever. The scene from The Edge of Tomorrow was flashing through my brain where Tom Cruise is asking over and over, "How do I turn the safety off of my weapon?" before being dropped into the battle. The green lights flashed and we were off, a little tenderly at first because we wanted to be at least out of sight before it exploded on us
. Things were going well for the first 15-20 minutes, but soon we noticed the car was not making power like it should. We knew the Queen motor should be ripping, so we were perplexed. I thought to myself, "Too bad Mark isn't here to help us figure this out". Then we turned the corner and POOF! there is Mark, parked on the side of the course, standing beside his car. We stop and tell him whats up so he pulls his laptop out (he apparently checks email while racing), connects to the ViPec, adjusts the profile to give it more fuel on the top end, and off we went again. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem and we still were under powered. Our top speed was around 40 mph (downhill, with a tailwind). About that time we hit the second pit area and after debating whether we should continue, we decided that while it would be slow we might as well finish the lap. From there it was pretty much a Sunday afternoon drive, we waved as people went by. It was at that point I started lovingly referring to this car as "the Tortoise". Short, wide, round, lives in the desert, and kinda slow.
So, at first glance that first race was pretty much a disaster. But in retrospect, us newbs worked hard, learned a lot, and enjoyed the friendship and camaraderie that exists in this class. We can't say thanks enough to Mark Queen www.queenracing.com for letting us hunker down in the shop to at least get it across the starting line.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150110_104832_zps61de1ff4.jpg.html]
[/URL]
Lady luck wasn't with us this time. We're firing her as a mascot.
Fast forward to the present. The problem with the Tortoise was bad injector(s) and we just got it buttoned back together. We'll be testing it this week, and expect the Queen motor to tear it up once again. The new car (aka the Hare) is making progress as we get the wrinkles ironed out, although it looks like it will still be a race to have it battle ready by the UTV world championship. Status updates and photos will continue to trickle out (hopefully a little more often).
Things on the new car build have been progressing, albeit slower than we had hoped. The month of December was a blur, all three of us were busting it trying to have the car ready for the Parker. Hiccups with the suspension was the nail in the coffin that forced reality to sink in that we weren't going to make it. We needed plan B, which soon emerged as "Race the Wildcat" (Ryan's family UTV). After about 30 minutes of discussion this option quickly faded since it is tuned with an aftermarket turbocharger, didn't have a legal cage, didn't have the legal lights, and for that matter didn't have just about anything necessary to pass tech, much less have a fighting chance in a BITD race. So, we were on to Plan C, which goes as follows:
Step 1: Send the Arctic Cat packing. Surprisingly, this only ended up taking a few days to unload the car. We all shed tears of joy when it was gone because keeping it in one piece for more than 45 minutes at a time was a challenge. It was a fun car, but we spent more time fixing it than driving it.
Step 2: Find a Race-Legal-Race-Ready car. Having been working with Queen Racing we had noticed a car in his shop that was apparently for sale. This was Lucky 7's RZR two seater that Mark raced at V2R. A phone call or two later and it was a done deal, we had a Race-Legal-Race-Ready car...kind-of.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150115_134409_zps80122c24.jpg.html]
[/URL] This is a nice little ride with a fully custom cage, fully built Queen Racing motor, lone star long travel suspension front and rear, fox 2.5's up front and 3.0's in the back, method wheels, ITP tires, Lowrance GPS, ViPec ECU, etc, etc. The car had been parked since V2R last year, and we knew that there were a couple tech issues that needed to be addressed, so Ryan went down a couple days early to bring it up to speed. Perhaps not surprisingly, the car needed more work than we had expected, which included significant cage mods, rebuilding the radius rod ends, rebuilding the axles, etc. By the time myself, Zane, and Nathan (the other Laidlaw brother) got into Havasu Friday at lunch time there was still a laundry list of little stuff to finish.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150109_151103_zps46034525.jpg.html]
[/URL] This is 3:30pm Friday
We finally jumped in the truck at 4:00 and drove to Parker, hoping to make it to tech inspection. Luckily the bore and stroke inspection had put the process far enough behind that we were OK on time. Tech inspection was seriously hilarious because we were literally discovering what each switch did as we were passing it off. The guys at PCI radios had mercy on us and loaned us a roll of blue painters tape and a sharpie so we could identify the switches on the car. As soon as we cleared tech we hit up pizza hut, and then hauled it back to Queen's shop and to fix a few items that came up during tech. This wrapped up in the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday we got to the pit and finished up final prep. Ryan and I jumped in the car and headed off to the staging area as I programmed the hazards into the GPS. Pulling up to the start line was surreal, as this is first time we have driven this vehicle, ever. The scene from The Edge of Tomorrow was flashing through my brain where Tom Cruise is asking over and over, "How do I turn the safety off of my weapon?" before being dropped into the battle. The green lights flashed and we were off, a little tenderly at first because we wanted to be at least out of sight before it exploded on us
. Things were going well for the first 15-20 minutes, but soon we noticed the car was not making power like it should. We knew the Queen motor should be ripping, so we were perplexed. I thought to myself, "Too bad Mark isn't here to help us figure this out". Then we turned the corner and POOF! there is Mark, parked on the side of the course, standing beside his car. We stop and tell him whats up so he pulls his laptop out (he apparently checks email while racing), connects to the ViPec, adjusts the profile to give it more fuel on the top end, and off we went again. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem and we still were under powered. Our top speed was around 40 mph (downhill, with a tailwind). About that time we hit the second pit area and after debating whether we should continue, we decided that while it would be slow we might as well finish the lap. From there it was pretty much a Sunday afternoon drive, we waved as people went by. It was at that point I started lovingly referring to this car as "the Tortoise". Short, wide, round, lives in the desert, and kinda slow. So, at first glance that first race was pretty much a disaster. But in retrospect, us newbs worked hard, learned a lot, and enjoyed the friendship and camaraderie that exists in this class. We can't say thanks enough to Mark Queen www.queenracing.com for letting us hunker down in the shop to at least get it across the starting line.
[URL=http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/eric_a_laidlaw/media/20150110_104832_zps61de1ff4.jpg.html]
[/URL]Lady luck wasn't with us this time. We're firing her as a mascot.
Fast forward to the present. The problem with the Tortoise was bad injector(s) and we just got it buttoned back together. We'll be testing it this week, and expect the Queen motor to tear it up once again. The new car (aka the Hare) is making progress as we get the wrinkles ironed out, although it looks like it will still be a race to have it battle ready by the UTV world championship. Status updates and photos will continue to trickle out (hopefully a little more often).
the stripping shop
RACER - UTVUnderground Approved
that sucks balls on new/old car I guess that car is haunted. How is the new car coming any pics on progress.
motive
Active Member
Sorry for the lack of updates. We have been pushing really hard to get the car done. Between 10 hour work days, family, and working on the car into the wee hours of the morning there hasn't been much time for playing on the internet. Looks like with the new changes here at UTVUG I don't have to resize my pictures anymore to post them so one less step that I use as an excuse. My instagram account has had regular post though. I'll try to put more content on here.
So the suspension is just about done. After Ryan raced Parker he made the call that he wanted the tightest turning radius possible. As I designed everything around the uni balls mounted with the through bolt horizontal, that meant I get to cut off the uni ball cups on all the A-arms and weld them back on rotated 90*. It also meant that we would be unable to use the uprights that I designed and build so that had to be changed as well. It is disappointing to not use this design as I put a lot of work into it and it had turned out so good. A uni ball or a heim joint is much stronger in a radial load than one loaded axially. Ultimate strength and longer life will be sacrificed for the turning radius. But it is still stronger than a ball joint as long as they are maintained and replaced when they are due.
Speaking of joints due for replacement...the tortoise has been stripped down to the bare frame for paint and a complete prep. It is still questionable if the 4 seater will be ready by the UTV world championship as some critical components had to be shipped back to the manufacturer due to a mix up and not being build as needed. Anyway, besides needing all new heims and bushings, the tortoise has had several electrical issues that Ryan and Eric have been chasing and the wiring on it is a birds nest. There is also some frame damage that is getting fixed up. Once back together it should be a fine race car.
Sorry about the photos. No matter what I do it turns them sideways.
I'll let Ryan or Eric give updates as they see fit on the systems that they have been working on.
So the suspension is just about done. After Ryan raced Parker he made the call that he wanted the tightest turning radius possible. As I designed everything around the uni balls mounted with the through bolt horizontal, that meant I get to cut off the uni ball cups on all the A-arms and weld them back on rotated 90*. It also meant that we would be unable to use the uprights that I designed and build so that had to be changed as well. It is disappointing to not use this design as I put a lot of work into it and it had turned out so good. A uni ball or a heim joint is much stronger in a radial load than one loaded axially. Ultimate strength and longer life will be sacrificed for the turning radius. But it is still stronger than a ball joint as long as they are maintained and replaced when they are due.
Speaking of joints due for replacement...the tortoise has been stripped down to the bare frame for paint and a complete prep. It is still questionable if the 4 seater will be ready by the UTV world championship as some critical components had to be shipped back to the manufacturer due to a mix up and not being build as needed. Anyway, besides needing all new heims and bushings, the tortoise has had several electrical issues that Ryan and Eric have been chasing and the wiring on it is a birds nest. There is also some frame damage that is getting fixed up. Once back together it should be a fine race car.
Sorry about the photos. No matter what I do it turns them sideways.
I'll let Ryan or Eric give updates as they see fit on the systems that they have been working on.
motive
Active Member
Sunday night. Kids in bed. Too tired to go to the shop and work on the car so I'll take a few minutes to update everyone before crashing. Its been a lot of late nights working on both cars. And when I say late, I mean LATE. Its starting to catch up but a good sleep tonight and I'll be ready to for another long pull up to the UTV World Championship. The parts we have been waiting on for the new car still are not in so at this point we are committed to race the 2 seat car. With that in mind most of the efforts of this last week have been on getting it put back together.
After stripping it completely to the bare frame Ryan had the chassis blasted to remove all the rust, paint, and a fair amount of grease. At this point we were able to ascertain the true condition the chassis was in. We found several cracks, bent cross members, suspension mounting holes egged out and some questionable safety harness mounts. Part of the damage was due to the front bumper only attaching to the frame at the front bulkhead which meant any nerfing or impact was transferred to one of the most critical part of the chassis. The rear bumper was also so short that it would have been a dangerous endeavor for both us and our competition if anyone needed to give us a motivational tap to get out of the way. So Ryan called in some help with a tube bender to beef up both ends of the car as well as change the rear down tubes. This helped to lengthen the lines of the car which make it look a lot better. I also lit up my tig torch to weld up the cracks, weld on doubler plates on all the suspension mounting points, and mount up these sweet billet harness eyelets from Armada Engineering.
We used these on the new car and decided they are well worth the money for the safety they add with the large weld area they offer. We also made some other changes like the seat brackets. At Parker tech we had a dead battery due to one of the many wiring issues with the car. The battery was mounted under a bend in the rear firewall and could not be removed without pulling the seats and the firewall. After passing tech with a new battery balancing on a frame rail connected to jumpers, it took 3 of us 4 hours to replace the battery. The seat bolts were just impossible to get too. With the new seat brackets both seats can be pulled in under a minute. We also moved the battery to an accessible spot.
After stripping it completely to the bare frame Ryan had the chassis blasted to remove all the rust, paint, and a fair amount of grease. At this point we were able to ascertain the true condition the chassis was in. We found several cracks, bent cross members, suspension mounting holes egged out and some questionable safety harness mounts. Part of the damage was due to the front bumper only attaching to the frame at the front bulkhead which meant any nerfing or impact was transferred to one of the most critical part of the chassis. The rear bumper was also so short that it would have been a dangerous endeavor for both us and our competition if anyone needed to give us a motivational tap to get out of the way. So Ryan called in some help with a tube bender to beef up both ends of the car as well as change the rear down tubes. This helped to lengthen the lines of the car which make it look a lot better. I also lit up my tig torch to weld up the cracks, weld on doubler plates on all the suspension mounting points, and mount up these sweet billet harness eyelets from Armada Engineering.
We used these on the new car and decided they are well worth the money for the safety they add with the large weld area they offer. We also made some other changes like the seat brackets. At Parker tech we had a dead battery due to one of the many wiring issues with the car. The battery was mounted under a bend in the rear firewall and could not be removed without pulling the seats and the firewall. After passing tech with a new battery balancing on a frame rail connected to jumpers, it took 3 of us 4 hours to replace the battery. The seat bolts were just impossible to get too. With the new seat brackets both seats can be pulled in under a minute. We also moved the battery to an accessible spot.
motive
Active Member
After all the problems fixed, strengthened and improvements made the car was powdercoated. In order to distinguish the rebuilt car from its former self Ryan chose a nice bright orange. We are both fans of KTM dirtbikes and Ryan even had a sick KTM RC8 race bike for awhile. After awhile orange really grows on your and it replaces red as the color of fast!
When the car came back to our shop Ryan and Eric began reassembling the car and I got my first good look at the suspension. I knew it needed several new heim joints but is didn't realize just how bad a shape everything else was. All the bushing in the A arms were completely shot. They never even had any grease ran through the zerk fittings. Combine that with the wear on the mounting holes I decided it was time for an upgrade so I turned brand new bushings and inner sleeves that would accept 1/2" hardware. All the mounting holes with the doublers welded on were also drilled and reamed for a precision fit. Finally everything was assembled with grade 8 hardware of the proper length so that no threads were riding in the mounting holes. The increased surface area of the larger bolts, and the larger inner sleeves bearing surface should keep the front end fresh for much longer than if I had simple replace the worn out parts.
When the car came back to our shop Ryan and Eric began reassembling the car and I got my first good look at the suspension. I knew it needed several new heim joints but is didn't realize just how bad a shape everything else was. All the bushing in the A arms were completely shot. They never even had any grease ran through the zerk fittings. Combine that with the wear on the mounting holes I decided it was time for an upgrade so I turned brand new bushings and inner sleeves that would accept 1/2" hardware. All the mounting holes with the doublers welded on were also drilled and reamed for a precision fit. Finally everything was assembled with grade 8 hardware of the proper length so that no threads were riding in the mounting holes. The increased surface area of the larger bolts, and the larger inner sleeves bearing surface should keep the front end fresh for much longer than if I had simple replace the worn out parts.
motive
Active Member
By the time I got the A-arms sorted, Ryan had the spindles and brakes rebuilt. Actually the spindles that were on this car were from an 800 or something. They were not 1000 spindles. Ryan had bought new wheel bearing so he simple pressed them into the spindles from the 4 seater since we were not going to use them on that car. He also had to borrow a brake rotor and a caliper to replace a seized unit and a bent rotor. So now the new car has become the donor car!
While Eric put one of his expertise to use cleaning up the wiring (glad its not me), Ryan and I put the front end together. Luckily for us, this car was already equipped with hardware from several of our sponsors so we are able to reuse the Fox internal bypass shocks, Method race wheels and ITP tires. Fox confirmed our suspicion from the handling at Parker that the springs were way off so they are getting a complete work over and new springs later this week if we can finish up the car in time for Ryan to make his test and tune.
I know Eric already named the car the tortoise but with the new shape to the chassis and hopefully not being painfully slow anymore I think I'm going to start calling it Orange Overload. It should be a really good looking car once the new wraps are on. I'm bummed that the new car won't be ready for the UTV World Championship but I am still excited to be co-driving this car. Come the Mint 400 though, watch out for awesomeness of the Redlands Racing Polaris XP4-1000!
While Eric put one of his expertise to use cleaning up the wiring (glad its not me), Ryan and I put the front end together. Luckily for us, this car was already equipped with hardware from several of our sponsors so we are able to reuse the Fox internal bypass shocks, Method race wheels and ITP tires. Fox confirmed our suspicion from the handling at Parker that the springs were way off so they are getting a complete work over and new springs later this week if we can finish up the car in time for Ryan to make his test and tune.
I know Eric already named the car the tortoise but with the new shape to the chassis and hopefully not being painfully slow anymore I think I'm going to start calling it Orange Overload. It should be a really good looking car once the new wraps are on. I'm bummed that the new car won't be ready for the UTV World Championship but I am still excited to be co-driving this car. Come the Mint 400 though, watch out for awesomeness of the Redlands Racing Polaris XP4-1000!
PickupTrucker
Member
Looking good!
the stripping shop
RACER - UTVUnderground Approved
the tortoise just need some love.
motive
Active Member
The day after I wrote my last post, Ryan says to me "I'm thinking of calling it orange overload". We hadn't talked and he hadn't seen my post yet. It was just one of those things that made sence. We busted on the car today and got it all back together and running again. Right now Ryan is on his way to a test and tune with fox and will be getting the new wrap put on as well. I'm about to get caught up on some sleep.
I would definitely say it needed some love. Going completely through it was a quick education on what happens to a race car that is on a poor maintenance schedule. But I would say it is now on par with the other cars in the class that get rugular attention. Just building a car that is easy to work on is so important from the start or those little things that need to be addressed occasionally won't get done. We all like working with the space of the 4 seater far and above this car. Packaging in the 2 seater is cramped at best.
I would definitely say it needed some love. Going completely through it was a quick education on what happens to a race car that is on a poor maintenance schedule. But I would say it is now on par with the other cars in the class that get rugular attention. Just building a car that is easy to work on is so important from the start or those little things that need to be addressed occasionally won't get done. We all like working with the space of the 4 seater far and above this car. Packaging in the 2 seater is cramped at best.
badassmav
Well-Known Member
It's been a long journey guys. I hope to see your build make Laughlin. There is really no such thing as a great test session. Only great races will bring out the bugs for you to terminate. Your best move is to just start racing that thing, and watch it grow! Who says computers are so smart?! Out of the box, don't expect that your build will work even half as good as the one Mark sold you. It took us a year to dial in the Monster Mav. Ah, the Monster Mav. How I miss the Monster Mav!
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