Glad you guys had a good time at KOH 22', sorry about the breakdown. You would hope the alternator might be the only bad luck for the race.
Have heard about the front diff mounting brackets being weak. Wonder what can be done to strengthen that up.
Hope the remainder of the season goes well!
We actually already have some cool stuff in the works, I just wish it was done sooner! It'll be a good testing point for the new to come parts. Hopefully we can get them in before our next race.
Been super busy with life and the business and the race car, so haven't had time to come share the recap on the forums!
Hammers went well, we found new problems, old problems, new limits and had a great time pushing this car to the edge as usual. The trip went well logistically, with no major hiccups and that's a win in itself.
We started out our trip by loading the race car onto the trailer with a no-start issue.
We drove to Vegas where we celebrated one of our pit members' Birthdays and made a stop at our friend's Battle Bord Offroad where we got the car running.
We ended up needing to replace the crush washer and fuel dampener as the air was getting into the system and causing it to die.
After that, we headed out to California and got with Marvin at Beyond Wraps to get the wrap finished in just a few days! Marvin knocked it out of the park as always! We also got a new set of Fiberglass from Mcneil Racing.
Once the wrap was buttoned up we shot down to San Diego and got with Magnaflow for a custom Y pipe and muffler.
After the exhaust, we loaded up and headed to the lake bed!
RACE REPORT
2022 KING OF THE HAMMERS EMC - TBD - 4600 CLASS
Round 2 against the toughest off-road race in America with an IFS Toyota.
LAKEBED PREP:
This year we had a better understanding of what would go into getting the car ready for race day. This year the car was pretty much completed when we showed up with the exception of a leaking shock on the trailer. We pulled the shock and got it rebuilt and found a few other small issues. We took the car out to test/tune the shocks and immediately blew our right rear. Knowing how important it is to have the shocks dialed, we spent a good bit of our time working with Rock & Road performance to get them squared away. We ended up blowing the same rear again, which forced us to hunt down a pair of shocks out on the lakebed. One of our pit guys had a set of 14” King Smoothies that we swapped on to the car and had them tuned. This all took roughly 3 days and ate through nearly all of our pre-running time, but the car was running fast in the whoops.
RACE DAY:
Right out of the gate the car was performing better than it ever had. We were 4th from last off the line and we had quickly passed a handful of cars by the time we reached Turkey Claw a few miles into the race. We sat through a line of cars there and made a few passes coming out of the canyon. The car was chewing through the desert and it was a blast passing cars that were in the classes above us. We found Atteberry and settled into a pace right behind him so we could pick our way through the pack.
Just outside of Cougar Buttes we started noticing some power loss issues in the car and we lost our lowrance. We thought the issue was tied to our relay under the hood being bumped again so we stopped to check it. Sadly when we went to restart the car we had no battery power. So we jumped it so we could make it through Cougar Buttes. We had super clean lines through nearly all of the rock section here. On a couple of the climbs Will had to climb out and jump the car when the battery died. On the last rock section heading back out, the car died and we had to leave the jump box attached so we could get out of the way. It was clear at this point we had lost our alternator.
It turns out the alternator is not a quick and easy swap on a 2004 4Runner. Alex found himself having to go as far as pulling the power steering pump apart to have enough room to sneak out the alternator. The repair took us about an hour and we watched every car we had passed go right around us. We jumped back in the car determined to make up time and stay in the race. We made it back through to pit 1 with the car feeling good. The quick stop revealed that our limit strap mount was ripping out of our shock hoop and hanging on by a thread. We limped it back the 22 miles to main going as slow as we could allow ourselves in the smooth desert. At main pit the guys from True North Fabrication went out of their way to get us welded back up and in the race again. We made good time back to Turkey Claw and zoomed right through it. As we were exiting we started to notice a vibration in the front end from binding. We assumed we might have blown a CV axle so Will got out to inspect. The CV boot was torn but the CV was still intact. After a quick shake, we realized that all of the stock front differential mounts had broken.
At this point, we called the race. We knew there really wasn’t a way to fix it and the car needed to be 100% for the rocks.
Hate to hear about the shock troubles... Were those the Locked Offroad shocks that were failing? Interested to know if there was a root cause diagnosis and the results?
Hate to hear about the shock troubles... Were those the Locked Offroad shocks that were failing? Interested to know if there was a root cause diagnosis and the results?
We were running into issues after a fresh rebuild. We failed to install the snap ring on the seal housing properly and it pulled out damaging the shock body. it was to no fault of Locked Offroad's product. The bummer and reason why we have made the switch is it was nearly impossible to find parts out on the lake bed in a pinch. Everyone had King, Fox, ADS parts but nothing for our shocks.
Outside of that, the Locked stuff has been great, especially at the price point. Would not hesitate to use it on a recreation rig, crawler, or daily driver. We are also keeping their bumps on our rig as well.
We were running into issues after a fresh rebuild. We failed to install the snap ring on the seal housing properly and it pulled out damaging the shock body. it was to no fault of Locked Offroad's product. The bummer and reason why we have made the switch is it was nearly impossible to find parts out on the lake bed in a pinch. Everyone had King, Fox, ADS parts but nothing for our shocks.
Outside of that, the Locked stuff has been great, especially at the price point. Would not hesitate to use it on a recreation rig, crawler, or daily driver. We are also keeping their bumps on our rig as well.
Awesome. That's great to know it wasn't an issue with the Locked Offroad product itself.
Maybe one day once Locked builds up a customer base like the brands above it'll make it a no-brainer to switch back for race purposes.
Kings makes awesome stuff, but I love when a new brand/manufacturer enters a market and makes the market leaders pay a bit more attention. Competition is only good for us as consumers. Hoping Locked Offroad becomes a big name some day.
We finished off the '22 Season with some serious punishment on the car. We learned a ton, and we had some great racing that usually would end up in breaking the car pushing so hard. Through that we found a lot of the weak points and we were able to beef up where we needed and keep pushing.
We had our first ever First Place Win at the Big Sky 200 racing with a rooftop tent of all things.
We finished the season off top 10 in points but sadly the DNFs stacked up pulling us out of the run for national points.
Moab, Utah
Prairie City
Broadview, MT
Mid America Offroad in Oklahoma
Strugis, South Dakota
Disney, Oklahoma (Nationals)
Then, full teardown for hammers prep. Pretty much gutted everything!
Motor came out to fix a lot of frame/tube damage from the prior season.
We also built new solid motor mounts and raised the motor 1/2" to better clear the 200 series steering rack.
The rear axle got a refresh, new unit bearings from Spidertrax as well as shafts.
As you can also see we switched everything to ICON as well. We are running their CDEV tech in our new shock package and it is mind-blowing!
We got it all together and took it down to get wrapped with Pureblind Studios
We also had the entire car rewired by Blaze Offroad and he killed it!
Lastly, the new wheel and tire package. Rocking Raceline bead locks and Kenda tires! We ran the Klever R/T and then the new M/T 2 and both performed insanely well. Ended up sticking with the MT for Hammers!
Be sure to watch our Youtube, which is the most up-to-date information and shows all the detail of what's going on with the car!
Since Hammers we have done one race with the car which is the Ultra4/YORR Big Sky 200.
We took home a 2nd Place finish with minor issues, the big setback was a fueling issue which cost us the number 1 spot.
Youtube Video for Big Sky
Prepping for Ultra4 Nationals in Havasu at the end of October.
The car is in good sorts, the only major upgrade is a whole new fuel system. We have been having starvation problems with our current system all season, and we believe it is our current fuel cell or baffles breaking down and repeatedly clogging our fuel filter. This is somewhat normal as the tank bladder and baffles have a shelf life, it just happened sooner than we expected.
We have new billet upper rear links in the car now as well as some gorgeous new Nomad Sahara Forged Beadlocks!
Follow along with Hammers Prep on Instagram
@Sherpa
Motorsports. I will update here once we get closer to leaving or maybe even after the race depending on how much time we have.
The Motor is cleaned up and getting valve cover gaskets, fresh pulleys, a new manifold stud, DC Power alternator and a good once over.
The new engine cage is mostly done, all 1.75 .120 wall DOM tubes.
Also, Starting to work on the Boatside Rocksliders and prepping the body for the new wrap from Pureblind.
A LOT more work to do!
Awesome build. I had to binge watch all your youtube content after seeing this at KoH this year. We were guests of Greg Neff and were rooting you all on.
Linear Mode
