Lets Go Racing! Daily Driver/ Ultra4 TJ

We spent the rest of Saturday just running around between Hammertown, Chocolate Thunder and the entrance to Sledge and Jack, coming back to check that nothing was coming loose. Sunday morning we got up and pre-ran the qualifying course on Chocolate Thunder. I ran up the left line at the start over the 2 ledges and one shotted it. The day and night before I watched everyone struggle with cutting across and getting around the pinch rock so decided it was not our ideal path. We came back to Hammertown and loaded up some more snack and water and started to head out to Spooners to pre-run some rocks. I stopped by Matt Walravens pit, and the first thing someone said when we pulled up was "I smell ATF".

We climbed out of the jeep and sure enough it was pooled up in the belly skid and starting to run out. We pulled the skids off and it was soaked underneath. Eventually we traced the leak back to the hose clamped on the hard line out of the trans. We spent about 2 hours wandering Hammertown looking for a flaring tool and getting it back together. At this point I was almost covered head to toe in ATF from laying under the jeep. I brake cleaned it the best I could and fired it up to test for leaks. My co-driver immediately yelled for me to shut it off because, in his words "It is like a fountain under there". Eventually we found that when working the hose over the flare I had cut one of the lines. A little trim off the end and we had the leak resolved.

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By this point it was already getting late, so our chances of pre-running were done. We decided to put the jeep back together and when bolting the skid back on, I look over and notice the driveshaft was bent, which upon further investigation found it was actually twisted. Almost a half revolution. Another problem to fix. We spent the rest of the night walking around hammertown and pulling together enough parts to put another driveshaft together for qualifying. A trip down to the fab school to get everything welded up, and then re-install it the next (Monday) morning.

The driveshaft parts we scavenged with our original CV ready to weld

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Fab school student welding it all together
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My wife also flew in Monday, it was her first time ever coming to KOH, so I took her on a quick trip across the valley to Chocolate Thunder and watched some UTV qualifying
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We met up with Randal and decided to go pre-run the desert lap together. We headed up the valley, dropped onto the course by backdoor and took off over the hill and across the lakebed. We had been following them for about 5 miles when I look down and the trans is pissed. The temp gauge was buried past 260. We couldn't catch a break. By this time we had made it onto the military base so we cut across the desert and picked up the racecourse again to keep from being wrong way on course limp back to the pits.

We ended up stopping 3 or 4 more times to let the trans cool down. Once back the only thing we could really do was tape around the coolers and make sure air was drawing through both. We gave the jeep a once over and hoped it would stay together enough for qualifying the next day.
 
Tuesday was finally here and we were scheduled to qualify in the 2pm hour. We had almost no seat time in the jeep and had only ran the qualifying course once, which they then changed due to the sketchy line dropping into the top of Idle Issues. We had almost flopped end over end there during pre-running so I wasn't too sad about it, the problem was the new route was the big sandhill next to Her Problem that had been swallowing cars to the frame.

To say I was stressed is an understatement, when it was time to get suited up I was a mess and wondered what I had gotten myself into.
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We got geared up, and headed to Chocolate Thunder
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Once we were at Chocolate Thunder it was clear that there was a disaster. The course was eating cars. There were 2 broken 4800 cars winched off to the side in Idle Issues, there was another car on its lid in front of the pinch rock in Chocolate Thunder. We parked the jeep in staging and spent the next hour and a half watching car after car run into Chocolate Thunder, only to be turned away and back down the sand wash. They had set a 5 minute time limit to clear the 1st rocks due to how long qualifying was taking. The cars that did get through only got denied the climb at the sand hill. My confidence was shrinking with every car that failed to even finish the course.

We finally were told to get in and line up. I thought I was going to be sick. We were 5 cars back, then 4, then 3, then 2, now we were next.

The green flag waved, and it all melted away. No more nerves, I only saw what was in front of me. We ran up the sand wash and stayed on the line we pre-ran. I one shot both ledges up Chocolate Thunder with a generous application of throttle. I turned up the ridge and we we kept on moving.

Dropping down into lasernut alley I see we have a problem. We have caught the car in front of us and they are backing down the sand hill. I tell my co-driver Scott to start getting on the horn. We end up coming to a stop to let them back down, I pull out to the left and mash it to the floor. We shoot around them on the high side of the hill and let it eat. The jeep does great and we one shot the hill.

We continue on, turn into Idle issues and drop down through the rocks. Coming across the beams I feel the jeep start to pitch forward too fast for comfort over the last ledge. I mash the gas to drive out of what felt like an endo and come down hard on the back. I can only assume that a large loose rock had gotten rolled up under one of the rear tires/ link/ axle and pitched the rear up in the air.

We make our first appearance coming up the hill about the 7:00:30 mark
 
I pull off the qualifying loop and park the jeep. We climb out and can't believe we just ran through the same course that we just washed deny so many others. My wife runs up and I ask her how we did and she has no clue lol.

We take a moment to look at the jeep and immediately have a problem. The right rear axle seal is pouring gear oil. I thought I had broken or bent an axle shaft.

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We stand around (and drink a much needed adult beverage) when Scott gets a text of a screenshot from his wife. We had qualified first in the 4500 class and 37th overall with only power hour to come. I was officially the fastest qualifying rookie in the 4500 class. I was in the process of trying to confirm this when I heard Ian Johnson announce it over the Jumbotron. I both couldn't believe we had done that well, an immediately realized we were going to get passed by so many cars in the desert.

After power hour we would fall to 6th in class and 44th overall. Still not bad if you ask me.

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We limp the jeep back across the lake bed and pull the rear axle. It is bad. On top of that, the slip in our front driveshaft is rattling as well. We now have 2 problems to try and resolve. I talk to several vendors with no luck on either end. The Genright crew tells me of a driveshaft shop in Hesperia to try, but still no luck on the axle.

Just send it????
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I get up Wednesday morning and call Currie Enterprises down in Corona. I tell them what I need and they said we will start cutting it now, do you want us to ship it to the lakebed or come pick it up. I say I am on the way and hit the road. We swing by Hi Desert driveline and drop off all the driveshaft parts I had accumulated and he said I will see what I can do, call me when you are heading back this way.

By the time I make it to Currie 2.5 hours after my call, the new shaft is already waiting for me in the lobby. I really can't say enough about how great my experience was with them and their service.

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We head back up the mountain to Johnson Valley. I call the driveshaft shop when we are 15 minutes away and he says "I am balancing it now". Another win, and a monster upgrade to 2 inch .250 wall tubing.

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We get back to the lakebed and put the jeep back together, its dark, cold, and the rear axle Won't. Stop. Leaking.

We pull it apart and put it back together 4 times. We clean everything with brake clean, paper towels and q tips. We finally give in and RTV the crap out of all sides of everything, jack up that side and let it sit overnight.

The next morning is Thursday and the start of the UTV race so we go see our friends off the line and come back to get ready for contingency later in the day. It looks like the axle is going to be alright.

We pull around to the contingency line after lunch, hop out and see a puddle of gear oil under the right rear from the 2 minutes we have been sitting still. It is at this point I begin to think I may have bent an axle housing, not an axle shaft.

We stuff a rag in the wheel to try and soak up what we can as we wind through Hammertown. We pop a bluetooth speaker on the hood and play my friend Troy's guilty pleasure playlist, a disturbing mix of 90's boy bands and obscure 80's one hit wonders follows us through the line while everyone around the jeep is signing and dancing along as we drink Tecate, eat pizza and tacos and continue to pass through the checkpoints with ease.

We make it through contingency and are cleared to race, at this point we have less than 12 hours until it is time to stage.

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We pull the axle apart one more time to clean everything again and inspect the bearing and race. Everything still looks brand new with no sign or wear or damage. We put it back together (sans RTV this time), fill the diff, and it stays dry. We cross our fingers and go to bed.

Race Day. 5 am. I can't tell if I slept great or am already running off adrenaline. Everything is a blur as I get myself ready. We fire up the jeep and pull around to staging. I get out and the axle is dry, I can't believe that there isn't a puddle. I begin to think we may be alright after all.

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Time flies by. We staged at 6:45 and before I know it we are pulling through the arch onto the short course.

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Before I can even collect my thoughts we are waiting on the flag
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And next thing I know, we are off. I am officially racing King of the Hammers. I can't believe I made it this far with all I had to overcome in the past week.

We decided to take it easy and just keep making it to the next goal. From the starting line, that was remote pit 1. We made our way across the short course and into the sand wash heading up to Backdoor.

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And that is when all the cars that got stuck in qualifying started passing us lol. I knew we had qualified way above what my comfort level and abilities were. I knew there was about 100 cars starting behind us, and about 75 of them most likely faster than me in the desert. But it was fine. I was here to be safe, run my pace and try to get the jeep across the finish line (or atleast to the next point on course)
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We keep plugging along at 45-50mph through the smooth stuff and what we are comfortable with in the rough. We bought the notes from waypoint nav since we had 0 prerunning miles in and they saved us several times and gave us more confidence than we would have otherwise had. Also good because the dust was insane. I had 0 experience with this before, but it is indescribable. I could barely see past the dash bar, the end of the hood was invisible to us.

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Everything was running smooth. About race mile 15 I looked down, and the trans was pissed yet again. Our temp problems had returned. We backed off a little bit but they kept on climbing. We decided to pull off course and let the temps come down.
We got back on course, and kept moving. We entered a hairpin turn and I saw a coil spring laying in the ruts. I pointed it out to my co-driver and said whoever left that behind must have been rolling along pretty good. About this time we had to stop again due to trans temps, there was another car off course up ahead so we decided to roll up to them and see if we could help while the jeep cooled down.

Turns out it was Randal and he had sheared a shock shaft, we pointed him in the direction of his lost coil and decided to have a snack, and add gear oil to our again leaking axle.

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We kept plugging along as fast and far as the trans temps would let us. We seemed to be able to get 5 or so miles in a shot. If I pulled it down into 2nd gear and let the engine wind out to 3500-4000 rpm it seemed to do much better. I think I need a bigger cooler, with better airflow, and a trans tune to keep the engine rpms higher and converter locked up so it isn't slipping and building as much heat.

We started getting on the radio once we had remote pit in sight. We originally did not plan to stop, but wanted to come in for a splash of fuel and add some gear oil to the diff. We got no answer. We rolled into the pit and kept hitting the radio, we passed team after team looking for either my spare tire, gas can or someone to waves us in with no luck. I should have pulled up to anyone and asked for fuel but thought we had more than enough to get us back to main.

About 2 miles out of the Pit we had to stop yet again for trans temps. This time we decided to hop out of the jeep for an impromptu photo shoot. Due to us constantly working on issues, we never had a chance to get out in the desert or rocks for pictures. What better time than sitting on the side of a hot racecourse. I knew @REDLYNER would be proud.

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We got back in the jeep with the goal of finishing lap one and kept on moving and counting off the race miles. By this point we had passed 2 dozen cars down on course. We eventually came over a ridge and dropped back down onto the dry lake bed. Only 6 miles of desert and Turkey Claw were between us and Hammertown.

We pulled off to the side one last time to let the trans cool down. We were just past the cut in where lap 2 came back onto the course, and downhill from the course marshal. He drove down to check on us and we said we were fine. As we pulled away, the jeep started to stutter. We were running out of fuel. I turned a sharp right and drove as far off course up the hill as I could. The course marshal helped us out by towing us further out of the way. Our day was done just a few miles from finishing lap 1. A result of sitting and idling and running at way higher RPMs than we had originally intended to in an attempt to mitigate trans temps.

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Some spectators camped at the top of the hill walked down with an armful of beer. We got enough cell service to call back to main pit and let them know. We sat for about an hour and a half and then watched the leaders come back in as they finished lap 2. Eventually another course marshal came along and gave us 2 gallons of gas. We cut across the valley, over the ridge and came back down into our pit. My amazing wife met us there with beer and pizza and we started telling them the story of how our day went.

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This was by far one of the greatest adventures and experiences in my life. Looking back I can't believe what we did over the past 4 months to get ourselves and the jeep ready, and everything we overcame in the week and half on the lakebed to make it as far as we did.

We have already started talking about what to do different next year, what needs to change on the jeep etc.

I have a long list of people to thank as well. My wife for everything she took on to let me chase this dream. My co-driver Scott for all the work he did on the wiring, jumping into this with no experience, driving across the country with me, and trusting me to take care of both of us every time we climbed in the car. @REDLYNER @FSU Off-Road and @BRUISER for all the help, advice and support both here and on the lakebed. And all the countless others who reached out with messages or stopped by to work on the jeep.

The biggest take away's from my first KOH:
1 - Race catheter glue is no joke. Pretty sure you could put a roll cage together with it and be ok in a crash. Be prepared to lose some skin or wear it for several days post application
2 - You have may more people behind you than you know. I can't begin to thank or list everyone that helped me out both here and there, and none of it was possible without their support
3 - Overbuild and bring spares. I wasn't able to get to all of the upgrades I wanted, and those are what caused me to be laying in the dirt every night covered in ATF and gear oil
4 - Shock tuning is essential. I went with just a rebuild. Had I been able to get a proper tuning session in I think our comfort level and overall speed would have been much better
5 - Have fun. Yes I was stressed, but every time it got to be too much, I remembered why I was there and tried to let it go

Damage Report:
I still need to unload the jeep from the trailer and start a tear down/ inspect. But so far the list is
- Rear axle leak (potentially bent housing or damaged cup)
- Front passenger bumpstop is wasted. Bottomed out so hard it blew the pad off the end and blew out the seal

Upgrade List:
1 - Rear axle straighten/ truss and change to full float with 05+ super duty unit bearings
2 - Cooling - Both trans and radiator. Need both a bigger radiator and trans cooler with more capacity and better airflow to both
3 - Interior - After sitting in the car I want to do some re-arranging of switch and shifter locations
4 - Front axle truss and change to 05+ super duty unit bearings (it currently has the 99-04 on there and want to have common with the rear so I can carry 1 spare)
5 - U joints and drive shafts - go to all 1350 flange stuff with heavy thick wall shafts
6 - More spares

Also the jeep made it back home yesterday, so whos ready for mall crawler version whatever?
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It's not the best quality but was able to pull together pretty much our whole qualifying run between the video my wife took and screen recordings from the live stream

 
Dude, this was an awesome read! I felt like I was there with you every step of the way. Thank you for sharing your experience. Glad you were able to do this, have fun, and make it back with a story to tell.
 
Bebop said:
Congrats on the accomplishment.

You can't get 05+ unit bearings in 5 lug pattern.

Wouldn't it be better to convert the rear to 99/04 UBs to match the front instead?
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Thanks for pointing that out. I just started looking into this and it seems the 05+ stuff is way more prevalent. Do you know if the 2 different styles have the same 4 bolt mounting pattern? Haven't seen any axle ends specific to the 99-04
 
Kickdeez said:
Dude, this was an awesome read! I felt like I was there with you every step of the way. Thank you for sharing your experience. Glad you were able to do this, have fun, and make it back with a story to tell.
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Thanks. I still need to pull together something for YouTube summarizing the whole thing too. I have like 200GB worth of video to go through and edit together.
 
Mojones915 said:
Thanks for pointing that out. I just started looking into this and it seems the 05+ stuff is way more prevalent. Do you know if the 2 different styles have the same 4 bolt mounting pattern? Haven't seen any axle ends specific to the 99-04
Click to expand...
They aren't compatible.

The 05+ is much much bigger.

You'd have to change all your outers in the front axle to make front and rear unit bearings match. I mean Cs, Knuckles, brakes, wheels etc.

On the other hand you could get some spidertrax weld on cups for the rear housing and put 99-04 unit bearings on your rear axle no problem and match both front and rear.

I even happen to have some spidertrax 99-04 unit bearings in 5x5.5 I could give you a good deal on ;) they are 40sp though so a locker upgrade would be in order.

If not you could get some Currie 35sp or Spidertrax 35sp and never touch them again.

In all cases you'd reuse your brakes etc.
 
Bebop said:
They aren't compatible.

The 05+ is much much bigger.

You'd have to change all your outers in the front axle to make front and rear unit bearings match. I mean Cs, Knuckles, brakes, wheels etc.

On the other hand you could get some spidertrax weld on cups for the rear housing and put 99-04 unit bearings on your rear axle no problem and match both front and rear.

I even happen to have some spidertrax 99-04 unit bearings in 5x5.5 I could give you a good deal on ;) they are 40sp though so a locker upgrade would be in order.

If not you could get some Currie 35sp or Spidertrax 35sp and never touch them again.

In all cases you'd reuse your brakes etc.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all the info. I have only ever dealt with 14bolt or dana 60 stuff so most of the super duty/ unit bearing is all new to me. I was just going to give Branik a call and tell them what I was trying to do. I think that is who the unit bearings on the front is from.

Are these the cups you are talking about that fit the 99-04?
3-1/2 in. Housing Ends, Mild Steel
 
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