Wild West 100 Race Recap.
This years YORR Wild West 100 was a good time, gnarly course but a great break-in for the new RCLT HD kit.
We showed up Thursday night with friday as a pre-running day. We had a very small amount of work on the car to button up when we got there, check fluids, reinstall front diff skid and just go over everything to make sure we didn't miss anything on final assembly.
We got everything buttoned up and headed out for some laps around the 10ish mile course.
This year we ran reverse of last year so the first part of the course is a fairly fun but slick hill climb that has some blind crests. No big deal, just need to remember course directly over the rises to carry good speed through it. This would prove to be a bottleneck on race day.
The course winds up the hill and opens up on the top. It was much rougher than it was the previous year, but the new front end and most recent tune on the Locked Offroad shocks were handling it very well. The main thing we were noticing as we made our way around the course was how deep all the ruts were and noticing where all the solid axle vehicles were dragging their axles and plowing dirt. We were able to ride the tracked out ruts and have good traction while you could see a few vehicles were having to push through the deep sand and silt to keep their axles from dragging and spinning tires. IFS advantage for sure, and the clearance on the RCLT surely helped here.
We made a good clean lap and rolled into pits to check everything over as this was the first good miles since the rebuild. Only finding a couple of small things, we snacked a bit and headed back out for some final course marking and testing with a more aggressive pace to find g outs, corners, obstacles of importance. We were making a really good time until we noticed a clunk coming from the rear end. It was in sync with drivetrain rotation so we jumped out and inspected the driveshaft, ujoints, felt the axle housing to see if it was in the axle. We noticed the passenger side rotor hat had separated from the rotor. The trail gear breaks we run have a two-piece design which is kind of a bummer and the bolts had backed out/sheared off. We pulled the rotor, shut off the line to that caliper and made it back to pits.
We didn't have a spare rotor so we kept the line clamped and just used the left break to run the whole rear axle, which worked well with the spooled rear end. The disc brakes had no issue stopping the car. So we ran without it!
The night before race day.
I have been waiting on some photos from race day but the photographer there ended up working a forest fire so I haven't been able to get them yet. Will update this with them when I can.
We shot off the line in 7th place and set into a pretty aggressive pace to make time on the leaders. This course has very little opportunity to pass so moving quickly and getting up behind people to find your opportunity is a must. We made a really fast time on the car in front of us. They ended up getting stuck on a sandy climb with no way around them and had to push them through it and they let us pass right after. The next few cars were making good time and had a good pace. The majority of the lap was cruising by and all we were seeing was residual dust from those in front. Till we suddenly round a corner and the next 3 cars were right in front of us. One stuck on a sandy climb and the others working their way around them. We made time on the two who got past and past the one who was stuck. That means we are in 5th before lap 1 was even over. We kept our pace and pushed on.
The track opens up for a bit and we pushed harder. This is when I noticed on full droop in the front right I could hear a binding/clicking and feel it a bit in the wheel. First thought was a broken limit strap and the CV axle was binding up. Thankfully it didnt seem terrible and we were able to baby it the next 3 miles and get into pits.
They found a broken clevis mount and had it swapped out in about 5 minutes and we were back on course running hard. We had to pace up a good bit to make time on the leaders. We were blazing through the course and the car was handling it very well. We were feeling good about our pace and hearing about a lot of other vehicles that were dropping pace or having mechanical issues. This race had high attrition last year and I expected it to be the same. So we decided to pace down a bit and find a groove.
About 2/3rds through the second lap we were hearing a metallic light clunking sound on the rear of the car. It sounded light enough to not be a major component so we kept pushing on. Till I started to feel like the rear of the truck was getting sloppy. First thought was a flat tire. It was walking side to side a bit but no sounds. We pulled off and Will jumped out to check. No flats. So I told him to start crawling around the rear end and look for anything weird. I shifted into reverse and the whole body shifted. I knew immediately the upper link or mount had broken or had play. Will saw then that the whole upper mount had ripped out of the frame.
At this point, we did a quick inventory of what we had and deemed it stupid to keep racing so that we could keep the car in better shape and do less damage before Ultra4 Nationals.
We called it there and started working up a recovery strategy.
We ended up using our spare tire strap and some other straps we had to center the rear axle and we were able to limp it off the course.
Here is where we sat and watched the rest of our race!
Here is the hole in the frame and the fix we did. This was also replicated on the other side as well.
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Vs what it used to be
Always build stronger than you think you need to was the lesson learned here haha!
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