700hp, 40s, bypasses, tube chassis rock buggy build

Amazing!!!! Looks like you had some major fixes going on!

Glad you were able to get er back together and out where it belongs!
Awesomeness!!! very cool! still cant get over what the machines are capable of doing.

 

Some more wheeling yesterday after work

 

WOW!!

 

Are you going to take it out and put it through its' paces now that you have it all braced up? When is the next race?

 

Yea, it's been decently put through it's paces the past few trips just running to the trail entrances, but no long trips or gnarly high speed stuff yet. Im not sure if I'll race it again, but I probably will just need to chill pushing it so hard, at least most of the Utah race series courses don't have a lot of whoops which is what killed it. The 2025 schedule hasn't come out yet, usually the first race is like April.

And if we go to King of the Hammers this year I'll take it for sure, but it won't race that since the rules for cage size are getting stricter and it doesn't comply.

 

First up, my buddy sent me all the video clips of when we did Dutchman Draw, which were many, and I threw them together here. Nothing particularly exciting but if you're bored and wanted to see that trail: https://youtu.be/TKzdlqWQzbE?si=54uiEMKBDGpj70le

Last weeks modifications and improvements were converting the buggy back to trail mode. The last time out the spare tire got absolutely railed and was breaking the studs off that were holding it on, so even though I like the spare on it, I pulled it off. Pulling that much weight that far back I had to lower the rear significantly so I jacked it up and removed a few inches of preload from the coilovers.



That dropped the belly height to ~19", which feels a bit low. That's ~7" of uptravel. We'll see how it feels sitting this low. I also backed off the bypass tubes quite a bit.



The big excitement was getting new tires.







40" sticky Black Label Milestars. I was able to pick them up locally and paid cash and got a screaming deal. I've always had a stigma with the Milestars, it seemed like only sponsored influencers ran them. But I wanted to get new tires and I wanted stickies, and after reading as much as I could it sounded like they have a new compound and improvements, some WE Rock comp guys are running them without being sponsored, and they're literally 1/3 the price of a sticky Trepador. Worst case if they end up being horrible, I'm out the price of one fancy tire. Or I could buy a dozen Milestars for the price of a set of other tires. I'm also coming from DOT Procomps, so the bar is pretty low of how they need to perform.

I picked them up on Friday, Saturday I took the beadlocks and old tires to some tire stores to get the inner bead popped off (one beadlock I had to take to a second tire store since the first one couldn't get the bead to break). And Sunday was wheeling!

But before that, both rear axle shafts were working their way loose. The driver's side was fully gapped. Locktighted the shit out of the bolts, we'll see if they stay put better but that'll be something I start checking.



Sunday we went back to Chain Reaction again since we didn't have time to finish it last weekend. Right off the bat my buddy rolled, 1st obstacle, 1st attempt!



He ultimately couldn't make it this time, though he was able to last week. It seemed like there was a lot more sand on the rocks this time so he kept sliding off the line.

I wasn't able to make it last time, but this time I did! It took a good bit of working. My buddy puts his driver's tire way high on the shelf and leans the front all the way over and tries to walk through, I haven't been able to get very far doing that but I was able to climb the right side so the driver's tire ends up in the undercut of the shelf, and then somehow was able to get the driver's tire to climb out of the undercut and pull over. This was the first time I've ever been able to do this obstacle so I was very stoked.



Other guy tried a bit more but to no avail and eventually bypassed it (after flopping it one more time).







These two waterfalls I struggled on last time, the one nearest to the camera I tried and couldn't make and felt totally traction limited since it seemed like I was lined up right. This time the buggy walked both of them without issue. The tires made a very considerable difference I could feel all day. Granted, the spare tire is gone, but even stuff as simple as getting the front to pull up a ledge or maneuver around before the rear is lined up and I could feel a big difference from the same spot a week ago. Made it feel like the buggy didn't suck at rock crawling as much as usual!



We finished the rest of Chain Reaction, turned out where we bailed last time is a good spot to bail since there's nothing too exciting after that. But ironically the very end my buddies rear diff decided it didn't want to diff any more so he limped his buggy back to the truck.



I had some Toyota friends that were running trails, so went and tagged along with them in a few spots.



They did the Fallen trail which is easy, but there were a couple side obstacles I was worried about but with some spotting the buggy walked through.

This random obstacle at the very bottom was not one of those though.



I did have some weird fuel pressure issues at the end though. The fuel pump had been making some weird noises the last time out, which was probably the same thing. I pulled the pre-pump fuel filter and that seemed to help but at the end it still wasn't happy if it I gave it full power. I'm wondering if the pickup in the tank is having issues or clogged. I have a hydramat which I know are known to break down, and this one is like 7 years old. I'll pull the post-pump fuel filter too, blow both filters out, and then pull the hydramat and see what's up. It has proper fuel pressure at idle, but when it was first acting up almost any throttle would make the pressure drop a ton so there's a flow issue and the pump noises sound like it's struggling to stay loaded up so something upstream of it is blocked I think.

Otherwise the buggy did absolutely awesome, and I am beyond happy with the performance from the Milestars so far and they are a big step up over what I'm used to.

 

After the first trip the black label Milestars were looking wild!



The only thing I really had on the todo list was to fix the fuel pressure issue I was having. I replaced the filters, these were the two that came out of it. The right side is the 100 micron pre-pump filter which looked fine, the 10 micron post-pump filter was pretty nasty though.



I pulled the pickup out of the tank to inspect it and everything looked fine? I've read about the hydramats disintegrating over time but mine still seems fine and it's 7+ years old. Maybe it's not doing anything but I put it back in the tank. I also had a check valve on the pickup that I had totally forgot about, and looking into plumbing diagrams it should be after the pump. Not sure why I had it inside the tank, maybe to try and help the pump always have fluid so it wouldn't have to suck so hard when first building pressure? Regardless I moved the check valve after the pump and post-filter. And lastly I had a rubber hose for the pickup tube, which seemed fine but since nothing so far was conclusive to causing my issues I replaced it. I had read about people running hardline pickups to avoid any issues with fuel hose falling apart, so I made a solid pickup with a female AN on one side and an NPT to direct thread into the hydramat on the other side.



Some throttle blips later and seemingly fixed, and we also put new gears in the Toyota 8" my buddy blew two weeks ago so it was time to go back out!

Today we initially met up with another guy with a Rock Lizard and his friend with a Jeep. Did some trail called "Papa Smurf", which was pretty easy though one spot was a bit steep and sketchy and took some work to get up.









After that we did "The Fallen" trail, which I had done last time but some of the people with us hadn't.



I was in the front initially and tried going through the big crack/hole that I made it through last time, but since I was at the front no one was spotting me this time and ended up too far passenger so the driver's back tire fell in as the crack turned to the right.



I ended up laid on the side pretty good and couldn't drive out since the top of the chassis was in this pocket where I could only drive forward and back maybe a foot. Once I was in a spot that I lost oil pressure, we put a winch on the chassis to pull the top out of the hole a bit and then I was able to drive it back up and out.



And found some other side obstacles that were fun and I hadn't tried.



After that the other buggy and the Jeep bounced out so we went down to do "Nasty Half". I haven't had the buggy on it this year, between the new tires, sharper steering, better braking, and just in general having a lot better feel it ended up being a cake walk.







Was absolutely perfect weather all day. Light breeze, mid-60s. No one had any issues (besides me falling into that hole). The fuel pressure issue from last time seems fixed too, ran like an absolute champ and was screaming again!

 

I have a few friends running the Milestar MT, AT and XT. All have nothing but good reviews a bit soft but deal with the shorter tread wear. I'm contemplating running the XT in 295/65r20. Nice to see your rig running well!

 

Are you running fuel pucks in your fuel cell?

 

What is a fuel pucks? Definitely not since I have no idea what that is I just have a Holley hydramat and that's it.

 

A while ago I picked up 3 walbro fuel pucks for the tank. Was planning on having them in the middle and rear in case of fuel starvation/air on my modded fuel canister.

 

Decided to take today off and do some more wheeling.



Went back to Chain Reaction, I didn't pick it. We've done it 3x in a row now.











But to spice things up I tried to stay above the crack I normally slide through, but I wasn't as wide as I thought and the front right dropped more than it looked from the top.



Its been a minute since I've her over!









But you don't know unless you try! I was pleased to see my fluid containment upgrades earlier this year worked great. Lost a little ATF I think, but the transmission rear main is in an endless state of leaking so could've just been the normal leaking it does. Otherwise all the fluid stayed inside!

On the way down ran into these guys we had seen the other day on Nasty Half.



The little Toyota, a rear steer car with a Nascar engine, and an Ultra4 prerunner. When we were about to leave the little Toyota fell over and since we were looking down threw the winch down. Same repeat as last time winching my friends buggy over in the same spot on both ends!



After that we went to the next canyon over, Arrowhead Canyon. I've been wanting to do this for awhile. Though at this point it was sprinkling rain so the tires were covered in sand when you'd first hit the rocks. We had to take this bypass up around the sand on one obstacle, which for the lower horsepower guys took a bit of fucking with.





Cool little canyon. I like how there's spots like this that you can't see when driving by or driving around unless you snake into it.



The bottom part of this obstacle I struggled a bit at first and got the chassis B pillar wedged into a rock lip, but some front digging around and I finally got free enough to reposition and get higher on the left side. It's cool to see how the different buggies go through stuff differently. Mine has a lot wider chassis than most (10" wider than my friends buggy), but I have wider axles and nearly 10" longer wheel base and slightly larger tires, so some stuff I totally struggle on and he walks through and vice versa. Mine also has a lot worse visibility than the little rock buggies, with full interior paneling and floors and exterior panels I have to do a lot of driving by braille and memorizing where stuff is--the visibility is good compared to other things I've driven, but compared to something with no floors that you can look over your shoulder to see the back right tire, it's a lot different. If I can't make the obstacle after a few tries feeling it out, we usually get on the radio and they spot me through and then it's a cake walk! This obstacle was an example of that.



I wasn't the only one that had issues, the crack on the upper half he fell in pretty good and had to get winched out. I didn't need winching, but I did need people telling me where my tires were!





This trail wasn't very long, but had a lot of fun spots and there's a much higher rated trail that snakes through it so there's a lot of harder obstacles where you climb out of the canyon and drop back in. It'll be fun to go back and try some of those.





The sides of the buggy are getting well worn in! That's where that 58" chassis width has its drawbacks sometimes and I have to lay the whole side in to pivot around where the other guys might not even touch or be able to rotate around the bottom. But that's what she's meant for and it adds some character! My buddy has like 3/8" steel rod welded to the slider and the roof bar specifically for this, I think I'll copy that since mine certainly gets rubbed on!



And that wrapped up today!



And when I got home I washed it off a bit.



No issues today though! I do think I'll change the oil again since I ran the engine with no pressure for a couple seconds in a few spots. I also think I might run an extra quart in the engine to try and get a bit more range of laying it over before it runs out of oil. Overall very happy with how it performed and glad that nothing spills when it falls over!

 

If one is in the air will it stop sucking from that one and go to the other? I've been wanting to find something like that but haven't yet, nor sure how that would work exactly but it seems like a common issue people must have. With that said, I've never had fuel pickup issues with the hydramat. As long as a corner of the mat is still in the fuel it apparently will suck from there. The hydramat is pretty small compared to my tank size, but I have a 32gal tank and always top it off before going out so never had issues.

 

Changed the oil and filter on the buggy after the last trip, I put an extra 1.5qts of oil in after doing some measuring (and modified the dip stick accordingly). The oil pan should be be pretty full now up near the windage tray compared to just the sump being full. That puts me at 8qts+oil cooler. I was on some decently tippy and sideways stuff today and it never lost oil pressure so I think it definitely helped.

Today we started out going through this canyon we found, I was the first through and in typical fashion of not being able to see anything and driving by braille I got a little bound up. Somehow this resulted in the outer shaft on my passenger side RCV getting ejected out of the axle? At first I thought people were saying I broke a U-joint which I suspect is the weak link in the drivetrain, then said the shaft broke which seemed weird since it wasn't that bound up and I wasn't giving it a lot of torque.



It turned out the cap, drive slug, and outer shaft all fell out of the hub. On the RCV shafts I have they're a three part assembly where the inner and outer shaft both slide into the CV joint and are locked in with a C-Clip, and the outer portion I guess came free and pushed everything out along with it. This was a good thing in that nothing was actually broken, the shaft splines were a little chewed up but otherwise nothing was actually broken. When I put the axle back together when I did the diff I do remember the outer shaft stub falling out and pounding it with a hammer and it seemed to lock back in so I installed it, but evidently that wasn't enough.

After cleaning it up and expanding the C-Clip a bit more we slid the stub shaft back in through the hub and put the drive slug back in. There's this big spiral C-Clip that holds the drive slug in, and it's an absolutely horrible fit and really loose so I bent the shit out of it to make it a tighter fit too.









The same Lexus/Samurai buggy from last time went with us again, and another buggy and a dude with a Jeep (that maybe owned Teraflex?).

After that little canyon and debacle, the Lexus/Samurai buggy had to leave so we went down to Nasty Half to mess around. At the bottom of Nasty Half the buggy decided to become 3WD again, but this time the cover for the shaft/hub had not fallen off. Now the outer stub shaft had worked itself loose enough to disengage the CV but still be retained inside the hub. This time we pounded it in, and crushed a water bottle and shoved it inside the hub to press between the stub shaft and the cover (which seemed to be holding itself on better now the spiral clip had been bent and expanded). After that it seemed temporarily permanently fixed!



After Nasty Half we fucked around on some climbs near Double Sammy and some other trails.







And that wrapped up today!

Besides the axle shaft issue the buggy ran great, we drove quite a few miles through the sand dunes which I thought was a blast, it's been a minute since I've played with the buggy at speed and it just ate everything up and got to give it all the beans and air the engine out. I'm going to talk to RCV, the guy with the Lexus/Samurai buggy said he had a similar issue awhile back and RCV sent him some square C-Clips that were an absolute bitch to install but completely locked the stub shaft into the CV. But at least the axle shaft is still intact and was an easy "fix" and more annoying than anything. At least the stub shaft didn't eject itself in the dunes and become lost!

 

Amazing!! One picture it looks like the crevice could swallow the vehicle whole! HA!

 

Today had a turn of events while checking things to go out tomorrow.

First yesterday was fix the stub shaft falling out. How convenient the axle shaft can pull through the knuckle...



Splines a little fucky, but I don't want to fuck around with customer service so we'll run it till she blows.



I was picturing a C-Clip that's literally a square shape and the corners get bent down, but a square cross section makes sense too.



I took some measurements, but they seemed a bit off so I put a little pressure from the press just to make sure it was seated as far as possible.



I also used some 1" Hydroturf from my jet ski parts which ended up being a good depth to shove into the dust cap, it can squish down really far and squishes maybe 1/4" just to install it so will always keep pressure on the inner shaft just to be safe.



I bought some chonker retaining rings but they are a bitch to work with so for now kept the shitty spiral ring that holds the lock outs in.



We were tentatively going wheeling tomorrow so I drove to the gas station, something driveshaft like was making a noise at 20mph or so. When I got back I threw it up on jack stands and got the tires spinning. It had made some similar noise last trip for a short span and then went away, I figured the carrier bearing bolts or a U Joint was unhappy. After some fucking around with the front driveshaft, came to the conclusion the front axle was the source of the noise. I should've started there since I have the peep hole I added, and some weird shit is at play!



The pinion seal was also leaking like a bitch. Two trips back someone had mentioned that, didn't think much about it besides that the seal is nearly new so weird it'd be leaking. Turns out the pinion has a ton of radial play! Turns out the pinion nut is hand tight! Sick.

Pull the cover, play detective here:



Pinion is a bit chewy on the leading edge of the teeth but otherwise looks fine. And the ring gear looks fine too!



Pinion definitely had a love affair with the carrier though. And I hadn't even realized it at first but this picture tells a lot of the story!



And if you haven't figured it out by now, one of the bolts that holds the Detroit together left the chat and got eaten by the gears (missing bolt shown above):




You might have also noticed that in every photo all the Detroit bolts are completely loose. I'm not sure what is going on or what the chain of events was here...

Going back a few weeks, when we put the front end together you may recall that the Detroit bolts were loose then so we took the whole thing apart to inspect it and put it back together. We cleaned everything with brake clean, blew it out with air, lock tited the shit out of the bolts, torqued them, and they all still popped out. I don't think it was a side effect of the pinion nut coming loose considering the Detroit bolts were loose last time and the pinion was still tight. Maybe the pinion nut got loose or the pinion stretched and lost preload during the adventure of eating the bolt? Is this chain of events what caused the axle stub to get accelerated hard enough to push the spiral clip and everything out of the hub?

I tightened the pinion nut and spun it, it doesn't feel bad, but feels a little off. I'm thinking of pulling the carrier out to check everything, and assuming the gears and bearings seem happy enough I'll probably just bolt it back together. I'd rather run it and worst case it has some issues and I replace parts either way, instead of prematurely replacing parts that still have some life left. Especially since it went through this adventure with some of the hardest binds I've put the buggy through and multiple trails last weekend and I didn't even know anything was wrong besides a couple minutes of the chatter (probably the bolt being eaten).

Pull carrier, probably pull ring gear to get the bolt chunks out, clean out the threads again, and fuck if I know what to do about the Detroit bolts. Safety wire them? And then inspect the pinion and bearings, replace pinion nut and seal. Send it and go wheeling next weekend with some luck. And put it on my list to buy some spare bearings and gears for the front... The front axle has seen some shit and been a learning experience if nothing else hahaha. It's getting back at me for telling people how reliable the ole girl has been.

 

One of the bolts I pulled, so two had become ejected:



Inside looks fine



The other bolt was in the puddle of oil!



The pinion slinger saw some shit. The leading edge of the pinion are all cracked off a bit but I think a little flappy disk love and she'll work again!



Ring gear looks and feels fine too



The bolt that was lodged in the ring gear:



Carrier has seen some shit



Pulled the carrier apart to inspect it, looks about the same as before on the inside. Between the pinion tiger strips on one half and the bolt imprint on the other half it has seen some shit!



Ace only had stainless bolts, going to order some good ones from McMaster and then tack weld all the bolt heads. Flatten the oil slinger a bit, clean up the sharp spots on the pinion, new pinion seal and pinion nut, and we'll be back together in no time!

 

The perfect amount of lock tight

 

Well!!!! It looks like you fixed that loose bolt problem. That looks like that super duper special patacky loctight!
Very cool to see all that but WOW! A lot of metal was getting banged around in there!

I still think it is very cool to see what you all do with those machines! Very cool indeed!!

 

Let's see them little buggas crawl outta there now!

 

And since I'm paranoid about the diff now I decided to be preemptively tack the ring gear bolts too



There's a handful of other bolts on the buggy that are tack welded, some link bolts, steering, etc. So this isn't the first time, if it's super critical and I don't trust lock tite I tack weld them just to be safe. An extra minute to grab the grinder is worth it to not worry the tie rod falls off the steering, or now that the locker blows itself up

 

Keep this updated before I start getting too many photos.

After I rebuilt the front axle, I took the buggy for a test drive and everything seemed great! The next day I went to load it up, and the transmission was done for! No gears, no forward, no reverse, nothing. Drove around the block, parked and said I'm not moving! Two days over the holidays I pulled the transmission out.





I ended up finding a local guy and dropped the trans off with him, and then talked to a guy at Figspeed in Las Vegas and they spec'd me a custom torque converter. I got both back last week.





I had looked at getting a fancy transmission, but this was literally a $100 used transmission that never even had 4th gear and it lived through multiple races and lots of rock crawling and trails, so in my mind just having it even refreshed would probably be fine. The local guy rebuilt it for $2100 and that included a shift kit, upgraded clutches, billet forward drum, dual feed line pressure, and swapping some good parts from another transmission I had that had an upgraded pump and some other stuff. For the torque converter I knew that had been a problem because in low range it would push through the brakes on a steep descent, I could usually roll over decent sized rocks just in idle since the engine makes so much torque and the converter was so grabby. The guy I talked to at Figspeed took the buggy weight, gearing, engine setup, tire size, etc. and configured the converter so it should fix the low speed issues. I spent $1000 on the converter, so a bit over $3k for essentially all new and upgraded transmission.

New torque converter is a little guy compared to the old one. New one is like 10.5" in diameter. It has a 3x and 6x bolt pattern on it, but the 6x pattern doesn't line up with my 6x bolt pattern flex plate, but the 3x pattern does line up so I just used that.



Transmission installation went smoothly.



It looks like a cluster fuck, but actually wasn't bad to put back together considering it's in the heart of everything. The Atlas side adapter was finger tight so cleaned that up and lock tite and back together.



Center console back in and some tweaks to try and make it easier to pull in the future.



I had unbolted the headers which I didn't actually need to do, so bolted those back up and other miscellaneous things.



I decided to add some more sensors, and if I'm running wires may as well try to clean up the cluster fuck in the center console.



Day or two later and she's looking a LOT better!



I didn't tear the harness entirely apart, and mostly left the engine harness intact, but I cut out probably 10ft of wiring from the switch pros controllers, depinned the loose wires from the switch pros and the Holley, added new pins in the Holley for the new sensors, and redid a bunch of wiring that was janky, had weird fuse locations, combined sub-harnesses that ran to the same spot, etc. Last year at KOH I had a huge cluster fuck when my main fuse (since deleted) blew and it was buried in the harness, so I figured this was important to clean up to make it easier to troubleshoot and work on in the future. I also added sensors for brake pedal activation, actual trans line pressure, and two temperature sensors for the power steering/intercooler cooling circuit (I'm thinking one temp sensor after the power steering cooler, and one after the intercooler so I can see how much heat the steering vs intercooler is putting out).

There's a few more things left to button up. I bought another 10 micron filter (same as my fuel filter) that will go on the transmission cooler return line. I need to pull both transmission cooler lines and blow them out and will shorten them to clean up their routing. Otherwise it's mostly installing panels and then tweaking the ECU for the new features. I'm also going to weld some rods as rub rails on the rocker panels and roof bars since they've been getting pretty banged up. Hoping to take it for a rip in the coming days!

 

She's back!



Interior is cleaned up a TON. Need to add the driveshaft cover.



Did a test drive and some tune tweaks. The biggest thing that eased my worries was lowering the idle and letting it warm up so the idle dropped, now in low range it barely wants to creep forward like a normal vehicle so I think crawling will be a lot better. 4th gear also works which the buggy has never experienced! Didn't get much of a feel for the converter otherwise. Steering temperature sensor is working. Trans pressure sensor is fucked so I ordered a good one from Motion Raceworks and should have it next week.





Next up will be a test in the rocks!

 

Little wheeling trip today, only got one photo and pretty short just to get everything warmed up and make sure it's working.



And my god what a difference! Crawling is way better, I have to actually give it some throttle now to move so it's not as sensitive right off idle. It doesn't push through the brakes at all now and we did some pretty steep drops and it felt way better. I'd still like to try a slightly smaller brake master, but it's a huge improvement and feels like I have braking to spare now. The WOT performance is noticeably better too, it takes off and pulls pretty good and then when it hits the 1-2 shift it pushes you back even harder and is so much fun! WOT is a ton of fun and feels a lot more like what I'd expect with the engine setup, and yet off idle is more chill and relaxed, a great mix and a huge drivability buff across the board.

With that said, not all perfect. Near the end of the first trail I noticed the trans temp was really hot. I need to spend some time configuring the dash more (was going to do it before I left but ran out of time) so it's more obvious when there's issues, and now that I've learned how it likes to operate I can set alarms at more reasonable levels--however in this case when I saw the yellow flashing gauge the trans temp was up to 270! And it had been chilling at like 140-150 earlier. I'm not sure how long it was that hot, hopefully not very long, and based on some testing afterwards it probably was pretty fast I caught it since the trans temps were climbing insanely fast even at idle.

I felt the trans cooler and one side was hot and the other totally cold, and the filter was cold too. I ended up pulling the filter I had just installed, and lo and behold that was the whole issue and temps fell right back down to 140.



These are two different filters, but figured I'd throw it up. The left filter is the brand new (literally 30 minutes of run time) 10-micron filter, and the right is a brand new 100-micron filter. The filter seemingly got clogged instantly, and I didn't have a bypass valve since I figured it couldn't possible clog THAT fast and just changing the filters every few months would be enough. So now the question is, is 10 microns just too much filtration for ATF and I should run the 100 micron filter? Or throw the 10 back in and keep swapping them out until it cleans up? Or go to a filter with a bypass design? One of my friends suggested going to the 100 micron and filter out the big stuff, and stuff smaller than that he seemed to think the transmission wouldn't really care about.

Another thing that has happened before and happened twice on this trip is the power steering reservoir cap can't hold the pressure if I run into a rock and hold the wheel to stop it from turning, and then the cap pops up and sprays fluid everywhere. I thought the little vent hose was supposed to be for that? Maybe I can install a stiffer spring for the cap (it appears to just be a radiator cap) to stop it from happening?



On the plus side, the temperature sensor for the power steering was working great. Granted it was cold out and a short trip, but the steering only saw 89deg! Very curious to watch that and see when it gets hot and how fast it cools down.

Overall a very successful trip. I seemed to have gotten lucky and didn't fry the transmission on the first trip out, but I do need to figure out the filter setup to run. Check things on the buggy, clean up and prepare the semi, and off to King of the Hammers next weekend!

 

^^ and fun will be had by all^^^!!!

wiring does look a whole lot better, not to bust your chops but that was a mess and trouble waiting to happen!

now I can't wait for the next run.
Nothing for rock climbing in there! HA!

 

Lots of photos from KOH, all of it has been summarized in a different forum, so if you want all the details I'd say just go here: https://irate4x4.com/threads/rock-l...-tons-bypasses-etc.91389/page-16#post-2050893

But I'll give a quick recap and some photos.

The buggy got some upgrades in the week or two before KOH, and then the day before leaving I found a huge exhaust leak so pulled both headers off and did some repair work.

Engine skid added:



Here is the exhaust crack I found:







Then loaded up and off to KOH with Tiny, my semi.















Broke the winch drum during that recovery process. Hard side pull separated the case, broke the flange, gear teeth disengaged and sheared.





Also broke the U bolts for the rear driveshaft.



Was an easy fix though and I carry spares. Not sure what killed it, I think backing over one of the rocks in the following picture. But once it was fixed I was able to drive out of it without much hassle.





Tires are working awesome, they're so soft! This is like a dozen trips on them.



On the return I picked up a friends FJ40 which I'll be rewiring and reworking the suspension on in the next few months. The other buggy with me rode back in a friends enclosed.



And here's a couple scars from the week!









New winch drum on order, cost $100 (hopefully it's correct). Front diff cover decided to start leaking after parking in the shop. Rear radiator or some connection was leaking coolant out back on the way home, but now in the shop isn't leaking. Rear caliper slide pin bolt needs to be replaced and has a 1/4-20 shoved into it. I think that covers everything that went/is wrong? Work is busy this week and next, so might be a minute to fix things. The coolant leak is the only thing that might actually be a concern, though I suspect it's leaking from a spot I know of. Next planned upgrades are SKIDS and MUFFLERS. Took a week of wheeling like a champ, and didn't miss a beat, I could not be happier with its performance!

And here's a couple short clips that people took:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Con9tWPH1ec

 

Sweet video clips!

 

That last clip of the drag race, the other buggy makes 430whp through 40s from a built 418ci LS. I was pretty stoked how well mine did against that!