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.
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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.
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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.
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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).