What a crazy weekend!  We just got back from Utah last weekend at the Ultra4 race and only had four days to prep the car and build a new front wishbone for the suspension and try to resolve the cooling issues.  Jonathan Dawes took the car to his shop and Jesse and I worked on both of them there just south of Indy.

 

After a day and a half, we rebuilt the front wishbone and added a larger fan for the cooling.  We were prepping for Werock on Saturday and Sunday and the TREK race on Saturday night.  It required changing tires, setting up shocks differently, removing all the ultra4 hardware in case we rolled, etc.

 

We ran on Saturday and ended up in fourth after the first day, not bad at all considering the car is wide, long, only one cutting brake, spools front and rear, and no rear dig(the way the shofters are made)!  This is with Josh Wilson spotting for me!  He is a longtime friend and spotted for me for a couple of years in Promod and at my first KOH.  Saturday afternoon, we remounted the radiator again(up high this time), changed to the 35" tires, and prepped for trec race.  We led most of the race only to blow a water pump fitting with about 25 mins to go!  I heard someone say we now have the record for jumping the longest!  lol.  With only 25 ins to go, I decided to just put it on the trailer and get ready for We-rock on Sunday.

 

We battled all day in the pouring rain and tried to just not make mistakes and finish courses.  It paid off going into the shootout in third after a big roll on my last course of the day before the shootout.  In the shootout, I decided to take all the bonuses and try to not lose position as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th were only 12 points apart!  I lowed scored the shootout between both pro mod and unlimited!  We finished the weekend in 2nd place!  A great finish for our team and Torchmate racing considering I haven't competed in rock crawling in two years! 

 

The car is already coming apart today and pulling everything out.  The transfer case was knocking all weekend, so I've got to figure out what that is and get it fixed.  We have TREC coming up and the Stampede in September!

 

Rusty Bray

#4498