Thread: Off Road Racer with SC3.8 from South Carolina

Here is our KOH story i wrote up:

Well our 2014 KOH story starts with a year long build of the new car. Seeing I had not qualified for KOH I would have to run the LCQ just to get into the main race, but what if I screwed up in the LCQ? I would hate to drive 2500 miles one way and not be in the main race, so I paid a 2500 dollar fee just in case we blew the qualifer that would get us into the main race. I arrived on the lakebed wit...h less than a hour of seat time in the car. Our 1st goal was to get the shocks tuned so we could run the qualifying course and pre run some of the course. Monday we started shock tuning which lead to us having to take coilovers off and have them revalved. We got the shocks back right after the drivers meeting that said no one could prerun the qualifying course after Monday night, so this lead to us running the qualifying course at night with the worse shock setup ive ever had on a car. Tuesday we were back shock tuning and got the car good enough for our qualifying lap on Wednesday. In order to race the main race without having to pay the 2500 dollar fee we would have to place in the top 10 of the 25 LCQ drivers. In our qulifying lap I blew a tire but was still 61st out of 163 drivers and 7th out of the 25 LCQ drivers. This was a huge relief as I raced my way in and did not have to pay the fee, and also this was the 1st time I had pushed the car hard at all. So now Thursday we did one final shock tune on the car that got us crazy fast in desert, we did a full prep on the car, and had to borrowed a tire for the race that way we would have a spare on the car in the race.

Race Day!
Our goal was just to finish the race and not destroy the car. We would leave 60th off the line with the 1st 70miles open desert. The 1st obstacle was a sand hill that had a bypass which we planned on not taking but took the bypass on accident following another car. Now we were in a pack of about 5 cars running the bypass when I think everyone relized we were all off course, this lead to a crazy
3 point turn fest in deep sand. Now we were back on track and pushing the car kinda hard when I hit a rock bank that instantly blew the tire. We got the tire changed and made it back to the main pits, and started lap 2 with no spare tire. Now we were into the rock sections with broke cars around every corner, we also seen 2 rollovers where people were trying to pass broke cars. We made it up Chocolate Thunder then had to winch up Wrecking Ball. It seemed like the rocks would never end! We got hung real bad with nothing to winch to but sharp rocks so the winch line broke, wound up stacking rocks and got free. Now we had made it to pit 2a were we got a fresh spare tire, gas and some food. More rocks and we were headed back to the main pit when the car just didn't have any power, I figured it was a throttle cable problem and radio the main pit and decided we would just fix the car at our garage. Started taking panles off to get to the throttle cable and noticed the aif filter was a solid mass of dust, cleaned it out and we were back out on our 3rd lap with plenty of power again. Winched up backdoor, made it back to the rock sections again(Damn Rocks!). By now it was getting dark and I was feeling like crap. We would get hung up a few more times having to winch off rocks, now I was tired of getting hung up and attacking all rocks at almost full throttle. Also instead of going around guys I would just pull them off obstacles and we would go though the rocks together hoping they would return the favor for us which some did! We made it to pit 2 at about 9:15 which by then we had timed out. This being our 1st KOH race I learned alot that will help us finish KOH 2015! #KOH2014

Thanks to Bill Dyson for Co Driving with me and working his butt off getting us out of plenty of jams.

Andrew Gilbert, Drake Winn, Brad Barnes, Rick Dyson and friends, Jennifer Porter, Troy Digby, David DeMoise and Josh Selig for helping in the pits.

Sponsors
TGC Chassis
Barnes 4wd
Carolina Driveline
Southeast Overland
Downsouth Motorsports
King Shocks
Maxxis Tires
Yukon Gear
Raceline Wheels

Here is a engine bay pic

Just updating with some photos. Raced all year being the only guy not running a V8 and held my own with them. Motor has been awesome!

Well if im gonna compete with the top dawgs im going to need about 600+HP but the 3.8 has done everything I wanted it to do. I am just now getting the hang of the new car and will rin the 3.8 again next year. KOH is February 6th and will be there

Well plans for next year are to get it on the dyno. I had planned to dyno it after the build but never got around to it. The thing runs awesome but is running rich (flames out exhaust when let off from WOT). May drop to a 2.7" pulley also?

Jims Performance did wiring harness and tuning. I have a snap on scanner I used to monitor KR and Air flow just making passes around the shop but none in the car. Just Water temp, oil pressure, trans temp

I want!

Thats about right I have about 51k in receipts no labor included

haha I could only wish to have one of these, the wife wont even allow me a crotch rocket ...

I bet this buggy is a blast! I have been watching a lot of comps lately and then seen this buggy with a 3800!!!! pimp status!