GoFastBroncos.com

Wrightracing.net wrote:Hey Chris, do you race with the hubs locked? Also, how are the those locking hubs holding up so far?

We have a few areas in need of further development. I've been using D50 crossover axles which have a larger u-joint but the yoke is short on one side.
In order to clearance the short D50 yoke to get the travel we want, we have ground away so much material that we have weakened it.
We have broken two of these now, one in testing so we have been racing with hubs unlocked. When the truck rolled off the mtn at the SF250, they used 4wd to get out.
But broke the D50 axle again in the process. I think I now understand the issue. For the IV250 I've gone back to D44 axles and will race with the hubs locked.
So far no real issues with the Yukon hubs other than you need to rock the truck a bit to get them to unlock fully.

I've procured two more sets of D50 bolt-in axles and will be trying a new approach to clearance them. Basically I'm going to use two sets to make one set.
I'll use the long ear yoke on both sides by cutting off the short year yoke and mating a long ear yoke in it's place. The two parts will be machined to fit into each other then weld.
Not sure when I'll get to this, maybe before the Baja 500, maybe after. Meanwhile I'll keep racing on the D44 parts until I have a good test with the new D50 setup.

The other area we are working on is leaf spring bushings. Since switching to Fox our speed in the whoops has doubled and now we are tearing up leaf spring bushings.
The National leafs are working great. Have tried a few types of bushings with them. We put new poly bushing in to test last weekend and destroyed them in 40 miles.

We are putting in delron and will use the truck to prerun and race the IV250. Will be a good test for them.
We have a friend making some nylatron bushings for us also, and hope to have those in for the Baja 500.
Expecting the Nylatron to be what is needed to finish the Baja 1000. But time (and miles) will tell.

Whats involved in making delrin or Nylatron bushings? Machine to fit in leaf, maching center hole for sleeve bolt goes through? (correct widths of course). I'm just curious.

yup.

pretty simple

A couple pictures from the San Felipe race. That's Dan and myself, photos taken at about race mile 16 and 35 by Art Eugenio.

Had to resize the second photo.

Well that didn't work. Why the heck is edit disabled on this website? PITA.

Looking forward to seeing you guys at the IV race!!

baja-chris wrote:Well that didn't work. Why the heck is edit disabled on this website? PITA.

Couple douche bags went all willy nilly on us & the management decided it was needed. Wish they woulda just banned a few more instead & left us our edit. Oh well.

Here are some post SF250 pictures showing off our steel bodywork and wing details. It's just metal. We made it and we can fix it. Just takes time and cosmetics are at the bottom of race prep list.

More carnage.

The drivers rear corner took the worst of it. It was so bad that it had to be removed up on the mountain in order to continue the race. It was left behind as a souvenir. It was pushed in above the rear tire and wrapped around the tire and into the suspension. Was not easy to get it off of there even after unbolting it. The steel is thick and heavy on these old school trucks, not all easy to pull out by hand. Takes a port-a-power to pull them out.

How are the repairs coming Chris? Are you and Glen building a new wing?

The wing is rebuilt and repaired. The missing rear quarter has been recreated but still needs finishing. And the other corners have been pounded back into rough shape. It will have to race IV250 like this.

More repairs.

Here are some wing repair photos. The truck flipped clear over, munched all four corners and the drivers front side of the wing and yet the rear wing elevator was untouched.

More wing repairs. The ribs are fabricated from thin steel sheet, the skin is aluminum. The leading edge has a thin wall steel tube behind the aluminum to provide some support for tree branch hits.

This truck will be used on the IV250 prerun today, with new Delron bushings in the leafs and shackles.
We bought the bushings from ORW. We have to shorten them because we are using the narrower 2.5" wide leafs.
After that, the shackle bushings fit as-is but for the leafs, we had to shave about 0.050 from the shoulder to make a good fit.
The 1" dia chromoly sleeve protrudes just enough so everything swings with minimal effort after all bolts tightened to max torque.
The bolts are 5/8" so the sleeves are fairly thick wall, so as to take the high torque and loads and not mushroom out.

Looking good, did the new driver's rear quarter come from same era truck or Eb?
Too bad Moss isn't headed down to race you, but have a blast anyway.

Broncodawg wrote:Looking good, did the new driver's rear quarter come from same era truck or Eb?
Too bad Moss isn't headed down to race you, but have a blast anyway.

I bought an EB carcass from a yonke in Phoenix. Had a friend with a freight company drop it on a westbound LTL drop deck.
I went up to the freight depot to pick it up. Not sure what year EB the carcass was from, it was drivers side A-pillar to taillight.

To stretch the EB to fit our 1991 chassis, we splice in 2" in the middle of the front wheelwell, splice in 6" in the door rocker panel, then splice in about 8" in the rear fender.
You can see how we do it in the photo that shows the backside of the fender. We separate the upper and lower fender at the factory seam (drill out the 40 year old spot welds).
For the top rail, we just form some sheet metal to match the contour and splice it in. For the lower fender we use two to make one.
We add the length in the middle of the wheelwell. This, along with the width of the body, allows us to stuff 37" tires inside the stock profile fender.
When combined with the widening we did it all proportions out rather nicely.
For the width we added 14" at the cowl and 13" at the headlights, 6.5" each, making it dual headlight to get the width while retaining a stock grill.
We just shape sheet metal to fill in the gaps, weld it, grind it, sand it, and finish it.

The lack of entries in class 3 in SCORE is a real bummer. When we started this project class 3 was pulling more entries than class 8.