Archive for Team WP Racing
Recap: Baja 1000 Race
Words by Jason Roy
We recently took our shot at the 44th annual SCORE Tecate Baja 1000. The race was exciting and full of adventure; and we’re happy to have been part of this great race even after solving several issues to then fall victim to mechanical failure at RM 350.
Early in the race, probably in the first 10 miles, our driver Tom and co-driver Randy lost the display in our Lowrance GPS. Tom and Randy were able to find their way to the first pit at RM 80 despite no GPS. At this pit, I stole a GPS from our Ford F250 chase truck and made it fit into the race car so we had a race course display in the car. We lost about 5 minutes in the pits, but we were again on our way without any major issues.
From the first pit to RM 190, we had co-owner Cliff in the car who fought one of the roughest sections down to Borrego in the dark. The car showed up at the Borrego pits with some issues with our tiptronic shifter. It seems that the shift lever was giving us troubles when too much dust and silt built up in the car. A little fidding with that and it was again working properly.
At this point, we handed the car off to drivers Rob and Andy to race the southern loop through the night. Knowing that I would take over early in the morning at RM 433, I decided to sneak to a San Felipe hotel and get some sleep. Waking up to not knowing where the car was or what was going on was a little disturbing. But, after a few minutes on the radio, we learned that the car was at RM 320 and things seemed to be going well.
After that, silence…
The car ended up being stopped for several hours at RM 350 according to IRC tracker. Unfortunately, it was a spot that no chase truck could reach. A relay via Weatherman wasn’t successful either. Finally, we had to send a chase truck in deeper, which is when we got the bad news.
A leaking axle seal left the diff running dry in the rear. This, over time, melted the teeth from our pinion gear. Several hours of trailering back to Ensenada ended our run.
We’ll get’em next time!!!
Recap: Vegas to Reno, Our Debut Race
A very long weekend in the deserts of Nevada leave us all recovering at home. The wrap up of the 2011 BITD Vegas to Reno race leaves us with a DNF in our debut race, but we can’t be discouraged and we’re pressing on.
Morning, August 18th, 2011
We arrive at the Aliante Station host hotel and slowly work our way through registration lines, t-shirt lines, free Tequila lines and eventually out to contingency row. As we drift through contingency picking up decals, getting an IRC tracker and making new friends the day gets hotter and hotter as temps hit 106 degrees. In the heat of the day we arrive at the end of the row and begin our tech inspection. Right away, our tail lights do not function, but the rest of tech goes by just fine and after a quick sidebar to do some last minute emergency wiring we are good to go.
Afternoon, August 18th, 2011
We have a driver’s meeting at 6pm. This gives us a few hours to go back to our hotel and program our new race radios in all of the chase vehicles. While we did have most of the programming done, we did have a few that we wanted to add. Since it was so hot, I took a minute to jump in the pool and cool off…smart, right? The driver’s meeting went well and after a team dinner we all hit the pillows so we’d be ready to race our hearts out in the morning.
Morning, August 19th, 2011
The team assembles at the staging area of the longest off-road race in the United States. Drivers are suiting up. Crews are checking tire pressures, fluid levels and making sure the car is ready to run. 11am rolls around and we are just about to start our race. 11:11:11 we are off the line. Tom takes the wheel first with Cliff navigating their way to the first pit.
Pit 1
We arrive as the 6th 1700 of 6. This is our first driver change. We had several driver changes because we wanted to give all of the Baja 1000 crew some seat time before that big race. This was our learning race, so we were merely concerned with learning the car and finishing. It is time for me to take the wheel with Scott navigating for me. At Pit 2 we take fuel. A quick stop into the Baja Pits and we’ve got a tank full of 100 Octane and some cold water in our mouths. We’re off again racing toward Pit 3. At pit 3 we did a quick switch to get Scott in the driver seat and finished our leg at Pit 4…in second place. Not bad.
Pit 4
At pit 4 we lose our second place position back to fourth as we once again switch drivers. We’re aware of this and had accepted that our driver changes would hurt us in standings pretty badly. Regardless, Rob and Andy jump into the car and come into Pit 5 again in the second place position. At this point we were pretty sure that there were only four 1700 cars still running on the course. Rob and Andy left Pit 5 in third and headed on to a later pit where they’d trade off with Tom and Randy.
Pit 8
Tom and Randy jump in the car and head toward Reno hard. Their drive time goes well and they race into the dark. HID’s blaze through the dust as they safely and quickly arrive at Pit 11 and hand the car over to Nick and Cliff for the last legs of the race.
Pit 11
At this point, Nick and Cliff take the drive and head north. They quickly make pit 12 and 13. Unfortunately they met with serious issues shortly after. A broken distributor left them limping over 20 miles with the engine barely firing.
When the car arrived at Pit 14 barely running, our crew made quick evaluations and our broken distributor was not something we were prepared to replace. It was at this time we had to retire from the race.
We all had a great race and had a ton of fun. Rob is working his magic on his video footage and the rest of the crew is chasing parts, upgrades, and wrenching away to get ready for the Baja 1000. We can’t wait to hit the desert again.
Racing the BITD Vegas to Reno
Words by Jason Roy
Well what do you know? An adventure at home…
When our team heard that the Terrible’s Primm 300 wouldn’t be running in August we were quick to make the decision to push up a week and run with the Best in the Desert series at the Vegas to Reno. This of course means that we have one less week to prep the car and get ready to race.
After sending the car to be stripped and repainted, we began our prep by rebuilding some drivetrain parts. The front end received new brake rotors, calipers, and pads. The knuckles got new ball joints, new unit bearings and the shafts got new U-Joints. We also rebuilt our front bump stops, added an inch of travel to them, and upped the nitrogen pressure in them as they looked to be bottoming out.
At this point, it was time to send the car over to Seubert Machining to have the other half of the team tackle some prep work too. Over there, Rob jumped in and fixed leaks, rebuilt motor mounts, labeled switches, fixed every wallowed out suspension mounting hole, changed fluids and installed new side windows. He also had all 4 of our drivelines rebuilt and installed our new Hella Twin Super Tone Horns.
Recently the car came back to us and we began more prep. Welding some of Rob’s new mounts went first. While his mounts did press in tight, we did choose to lay some heavy tack welds to keep them from spinning out of place during racing. We also re-gusseted some worn mounting brackets. Early on we found that the skid plate on the bottom of our Currie 9″ rear end had some damage, so we welded in a new skid as well. Our primo welder, Joe Hope handled all of the welding with excellent finesse.
Last Wednesday, Randy and myself began eliminating some more of the details. Axle breathers replaced and moved to good locations along with a valve cover catch can breather system that made sense were installed. The AC pump was relieved of duty and a bypass pulley was installed with a new belt. The cork valve cover gasket was removed, and a nice Fel-Pro rubber gasket was installed. We dropped the suspension once more and installed our freshly rebuilt bump stops. Randy dove into the car, removed the driver seat and installed the new Optima batteries. We ended up very happy that he removed the seat; when he did a cracked mount was found.
Everyone on the team has already put out tons of effort and the car is developing by leaps and bounds. We hope to have all of the major repairs and prep done soon so that the first week of August we can send it to PDX Wraps to have all of our decal work done.
Stay tuned to www.warriorproducts.com/racing for even more news. My next Adventure will take me to the Jeeper’s Jamboree on the Rubicon Trail next week so watch here for some great event coverage and videos from our Media Maniac, Rob Shoffner!
Vegas to Reno Prep Begins!
With the announcement that the Primm 300 would not be happening on the weekend of August 26th- 28th, we quickly had to scramble and figure out what we were going to do. After a short deliberation we have decided to run the Best in the Desert Vegas to Reno race on August 18th – 20th.
With the announcement that we’ve increased our deadline by a week, we’ve jumped into the prep work. Wednesday night Randy Peterson and myself spent a good total of about 6 hours working into the night trying to knock out our list of items to fix, replace and install.
The longer we worked, the longer the list seemed to get of course. Attached here are a bunch of photos from our night of prep work.
Banging Out the Dents
One of the very first things we did when we got the race car back to our Tualatin, Oregon facility was take a close look at the body. Because we wanted a bit of a fresh start there was some dent repairs and fresh paint to be done.
Here are a few images of the car up close when we first got it, and as it was being worked over. We fixed some of the major dents and had the shop put a fresh orange coat on the exterior.
Team WP is brake Savvy
We are pretty happy at how Savvy we are with our brakes on the race car. So how did we manage to acheive this and how can you? The answer; Savvy Off Road.
After questioning how well the OEM brakes would function on our race car we started talking to Gerald over at Savvy and he was quick to generously jump in as a sponsor and supplied us with his Vanco 15″ Big Brake Kit. This kit boasts bigger rotors, new reinforced knuckles, and twin-piston calipers to really beef up the stopping power!
Come check this kit out in person at the Primm 300, Baja 1000, or at the 2011 SEMA show in Las Vegas!
You can find this kit online for purchase by visiting this URL:
Savvy Big Brake Kit
About the Kit:
This is a bolt in larger front disk kit for the following Jeep Models-1990-2006 Wrangler, all Comanches, all Cherokees 90-2000 and all Grand Chrerokees up through 98.
The kit includes modified knuckles, dual piston calipers, new pads and rotors. We’ve built this system to fit most 15 inch rims that have 4.5 inches or less of backspacing when run with an ideal tire size of 37s or smaller. In a lot of cases the unit bearing flange may have to be ground down slightly to fit inside the rotor hat, the rest of the kit is bolt on and requires no other modifications to the rig. It can be used with most after market steering kit that bolt brackets to the knuckle, call for details on any particular steering kit you plan on installing or have installed.
The kit was designed to do away with inherent weaknesses in these Jeep front brake systems while reinforcing the knuckle to be able to handle the pressure of a Hydroboost.. The cast iron sliders that hold the brake pads tend to flex under heavy braking loads. The ears on the pad backing plates rubbing against these cast iron sliders tend to cause divots. Those divots will catch the pad and only allow part of the pad to be used. If you’ve applied your brakes in a hard stop situation and felt the pedal going down and the vehicle wouldn’t come to a faster stop like normal vehicles you’ve probably experience one or both of the problems mentioned above.
Due to one side flexing more then the other, or divots on either side they’re can be lesser braking on one side of the vehicle. One of the symptoms of this is the vehicle pulling to one side or the other when you stop. There’s no guarantee that is why your Jeep is pulling but this kit has solved the problem on over 50% of the vehicles using it at this time.
We incorporate dual piston caliper to evenly distribute the clamping forces over the swept area of the pad. The current single piston calipers have a tendency to lock one end of the pad in the divot and then bow the pad inwards in a uneven manner. Rotor size has been maximized to allow fitment into most 15″ rims. The caliper bracket mounting area on the steering knuckle has been strengthened and reinforced to endure the higher forces generated by the larger brakes.
