- Jun 12, 2014
- 12,933
- 32,607
Founding Member
Sorry I've been absent lately. Just got back from Cabo after finishing the Mexican 1000.
Many of you know I have been racing a truck in this race for years. I sold the truck several months ago and this year we did the race in a CanAm Maverick UTV, which is basically a high speed golf cart on steroids. It is a nimble machine that is powered by a CVT continuously variable transmission...in other words it uses a big ass rubber belt to drive the wheels. And its 4wd. That combined with its light weight makes it just about able to go over anything without getting stuck or even bogging down. And unlike my truck, the cockpit is wide open so the feeling of hauling ass is much more visceral that in a bigger, fully enclosed vehicle.
The race is 1350 miles long, with over 1000 of those miles in the dirt and the rest on transit stages between the timed rally stages. It takes place over 5 days. There are many vehicle classes and our class had 13 entries take the green flag on day 1. I have 5 buddies that helped me out this year and we all took turns navigating, driving, and chasing in the support trucks.
Day1, Ensenada to San Felipe: The first leg is 117 miles so we'll need some gas along the way. My tank is just over 10 gallons. I figured we would get about 9 or 10 mpg because I usually get upwards of 11 while prerunning. More on that later. I would start the leg with my buddy Max navigating and when we get gas my buddy Lance would get in the right seat. We were first off the line and other than a couple of very minor overshoots on some turns we had pretty much a perfect run. Nobody passed us and we in turn passed a ton of slower vehicles from previous classes. Some of our class got around us though when we pitted. It took too long with the dump cans to fill the tank, and it took too long for the navigator swap. I thought when we finished the stage that we would be either in the lead or very close to it, but as it turns out we were about 3.5 minutes behind the leader (PJ Jones of Indycar fame) and two other guys. I guess I didn't realize just how tight the racing would be with all these cars basically being identical. After the first special stage, my good friend Rudy drove the car with our friend Jack navigating and basically held position even though he was buried in a ton of dust on the dry lakebed going 30 when he should have been pinned wide open.
Day2, San Felipe to Bay of LA: Rudy drove first with "Leekster" navigating on a 20 mile sprint out of SF. He finished the leg in 19:39, which was 11 seconds behind the leader. Just to let you know how tight the racing was that was good enough for 4th place in class for the stage. The top 5 cars were within 15 seconds of each other. Then I let Lance drive with me navigating from there to the finish of the short day. This was Lance's first time racing in years and the first time behind the wheel of my car since a year ago when I first bought it and hadn't modified it yet at all. He did great, we lost a few minutes on the leaders but still within striking distance of everybody. At the end of day 2, we were in 5th place and only 8 minutes behind the leader, which I think is pretty darn tight for almost 300 miles of racing.
Mechanically the car is perfect at this point however we notice two things that seem off: First, the charging voltage seems to be lacking. With my two Baja Designs XL lights on the front operating, we're only seeing a little over 12 volts which tells me the car isn't keeping up with demand. The second thing is that the motor seems to be running hotter than I usually see, with 5 bars during most of the competition all the way up to 7 or even 8 bars when really flogging the car. We decided to take the lights off the bumper to try and get more airflow over the radiator, and that seemed to help bring the temp down a bit but still higher than I'd like. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the fan isn't working correctly and perhaps a single component like that is causing both the charging and the water temp issue.
Day 3, BOLA to Loreto: This is always the ass-kicker. Total mileage including transits is 438 miles, of which 348 are in the dirt. Rudy went first again with Jack navigating, his leg was 170 miles long with a highway crossing in the middle. During the first half of his stage he got a rock jammed between the rear caliper and the rim and it broke the wheel. They lost time changing that and we re-racked a good spare on the back of the car when they got to the fuel pit. We also put Max in the right seat and they took off but they got a puncture flat on the next leg so we lost a few more minutes. I got in the car for the second special, and this 177 mile leg is one of my favorites out to the Pacific, through Scorpion bay, and then back over the mountains to Loreto. I know damn near every turn on that leg and we poured it on. I have always made a bunch of time on my competitors in this leg and this day was shaping up to be no exception. The main Mag7 pit was supposed to be at 120 miles so we stopped at the Mag7 splash pit and they gave us about 3 gallons which should have been enough to get us to our fuel stop. The rest of the time we were just pinned. I've never had the car that fast for that long, and approaching 120 miles we were very low of fuel. I backed off and started just coasting to make sure we made it, but as it turns out the pit wound up actually being located at mile 135 which was very unfortunate for us because we ran out of gas at mile 128. This would turn out to ruin any chance we had of a podium in this race. It took us two hours to find half a gallon of gas from a local who was passing by and get to the pit for fuel. It was then that I noticed that the whole end of my muffler where the exhaust tip is welded on had blown out, and I could see inside the main can with all the baffles. I don't know if our poor fuel mileage was a result of this or if it was an unrelated failure, but it was hard to drive the car with it making that much noise. It was crushing our hearing. We dealt with it til the end of stage but basically we had now fallen all the way back to 10th place. Got into Loreto late that evening and tried to get some rest.
Day 4, Loreto to La Paz: I didn't want to drive the car with that broken muffler so we went into town to a fab shop and got a guy to help us make a new exhaust from the cat back. He had a muffler on the shelf so we bought that and welded the spring cup elbow onto it and fabricated a tip to clear the tire. We went to the starting line but our starting time had already passed and we had to start way in the back, which cost us not just another hour but put us physically behind every slow car in the race. I let Max drive even though he has little experience in Baja while I navigated for him. It was good for him to get some seat time since we were out of contention anyway. At one turn near San Javier he almost put the car on its lid but he saved it (with a little shouting from the puckered dude in the right seat!). The rest of the day was uneventful and we worked our way back from 10th to 6th place.
Day 5, La Paz to Cabo: Lance and Max did the first leg, and made good time. Rudy and Jack did the second leg and made good time, finishing 20th overall on their stage. I took Leekster with me on the last special stage of the race. This was a 22 mile sprint to the finish, and it was the only leg that had no GPS file to follow so everybody had to navigate solely by the use of the roadbook. I can't say enough about how good a job he did navigating and we crushed it....finished 10th overall on that section for all classes. We gained another lost spot back and wound up finishing 5th in class, 59th overall, and 3:17 behind the class winner. Of importance to me personally was the fact that the car was in literally perfect shape at the finish line. I don't know how many days we could do in a row in this car but I could get in it right now and keep racing at full speed. I don't put a lot of stock in the "shoulda woulda coulda" game but sometimes its really hard not to wonder how well you could have done with another 7 miles worth of fuel in the tank.
So at the end of the day I'm not happy with finishing 5th but I am happy at how fast the car is, and that we didn't wreck it or break anything important. So I'd have to say it was a successful first attempt at racing a UTV. Next year we'll change our approach a bit to match the capability of the car and the evenly matched competition.
Really looking forward to another run in this car soon. Still can't believe how fast you can drive one of these things.
Before anybody asks, yes the team did get Montezuma's Revenge. Except me. I have been training myself to eat crap for decades. Anyway I just got back last night after a 2 day drive back from Cabo so I'm recharging my batteries before getting back into my normal non-race routine.
Here are a couple photos and a video clip of a couple parts of the first stage of the race. Enjoy.
Many of you know I have been racing a truck in this race for years. I sold the truck several months ago and this year we did the race in a CanAm Maverick UTV, which is basically a high speed golf cart on steroids. It is a nimble machine that is powered by a CVT continuously variable transmission...in other words it uses a big ass rubber belt to drive the wheels. And its 4wd. That combined with its light weight makes it just about able to go over anything without getting stuck or even bogging down. And unlike my truck, the cockpit is wide open so the feeling of hauling ass is much more visceral that in a bigger, fully enclosed vehicle.
The race is 1350 miles long, with over 1000 of those miles in the dirt and the rest on transit stages between the timed rally stages. It takes place over 5 days. There are many vehicle classes and our class had 13 entries take the green flag on day 1. I have 5 buddies that helped me out this year and we all took turns navigating, driving, and chasing in the support trucks.
Day1, Ensenada to San Felipe: The first leg is 117 miles so we'll need some gas along the way. My tank is just over 10 gallons. I figured we would get about 9 or 10 mpg because I usually get upwards of 11 while prerunning. More on that later. I would start the leg with my buddy Max navigating and when we get gas my buddy Lance would get in the right seat. We were first off the line and other than a couple of very minor overshoots on some turns we had pretty much a perfect run. Nobody passed us and we in turn passed a ton of slower vehicles from previous classes. Some of our class got around us though when we pitted. It took too long with the dump cans to fill the tank, and it took too long for the navigator swap. I thought when we finished the stage that we would be either in the lead or very close to it, but as it turns out we were about 3.5 minutes behind the leader (PJ Jones of Indycar fame) and two other guys. I guess I didn't realize just how tight the racing would be with all these cars basically being identical. After the first special stage, my good friend Rudy drove the car with our friend Jack navigating and basically held position even though he was buried in a ton of dust on the dry lakebed going 30 when he should have been pinned wide open.
Day2, San Felipe to Bay of LA: Rudy drove first with "Leekster" navigating on a 20 mile sprint out of SF. He finished the leg in 19:39, which was 11 seconds behind the leader. Just to let you know how tight the racing was that was good enough for 4th place in class for the stage. The top 5 cars were within 15 seconds of each other. Then I let Lance drive with me navigating from there to the finish of the short day. This was Lance's first time racing in years and the first time behind the wheel of my car since a year ago when I first bought it and hadn't modified it yet at all. He did great, we lost a few minutes on the leaders but still within striking distance of everybody. At the end of day 2, we were in 5th place and only 8 minutes behind the leader, which I think is pretty darn tight for almost 300 miles of racing.
Mechanically the car is perfect at this point however we notice two things that seem off: First, the charging voltage seems to be lacking. With my two Baja Designs XL lights on the front operating, we're only seeing a little over 12 volts which tells me the car isn't keeping up with demand. The second thing is that the motor seems to be running hotter than I usually see, with 5 bars during most of the competition all the way up to 7 or even 8 bars when really flogging the car. We decided to take the lights off the bumper to try and get more airflow over the radiator, and that seemed to help bring the temp down a bit but still higher than I'd like. I'm starting to wonder if maybe the fan isn't working correctly and perhaps a single component like that is causing both the charging and the water temp issue.
Day 3, BOLA to Loreto: This is always the ass-kicker. Total mileage including transits is 438 miles, of which 348 are in the dirt. Rudy went first again with Jack navigating, his leg was 170 miles long with a highway crossing in the middle. During the first half of his stage he got a rock jammed between the rear caliper and the rim and it broke the wheel. They lost time changing that and we re-racked a good spare on the back of the car when they got to the fuel pit. We also put Max in the right seat and they took off but they got a puncture flat on the next leg so we lost a few more minutes. I got in the car for the second special, and this 177 mile leg is one of my favorites out to the Pacific, through Scorpion bay, and then back over the mountains to Loreto. I know damn near every turn on that leg and we poured it on. I have always made a bunch of time on my competitors in this leg and this day was shaping up to be no exception. The main Mag7 pit was supposed to be at 120 miles so we stopped at the Mag7 splash pit and they gave us about 3 gallons which should have been enough to get us to our fuel stop. The rest of the time we were just pinned. I've never had the car that fast for that long, and approaching 120 miles we were very low of fuel. I backed off and started just coasting to make sure we made it, but as it turns out the pit wound up actually being located at mile 135 which was very unfortunate for us because we ran out of gas at mile 128. This would turn out to ruin any chance we had of a podium in this race. It took us two hours to find half a gallon of gas from a local who was passing by and get to the pit for fuel. It was then that I noticed that the whole end of my muffler where the exhaust tip is welded on had blown out, and I could see inside the main can with all the baffles. I don't know if our poor fuel mileage was a result of this or if it was an unrelated failure, but it was hard to drive the car with it making that much noise. It was crushing our hearing. We dealt with it til the end of stage but basically we had now fallen all the way back to 10th place. Got into Loreto late that evening and tried to get some rest.
Day 4, Loreto to La Paz: I didn't want to drive the car with that broken muffler so we went into town to a fab shop and got a guy to help us make a new exhaust from the cat back. He had a muffler on the shelf so we bought that and welded the spring cup elbow onto it and fabricated a tip to clear the tire. We went to the starting line but our starting time had already passed and we had to start way in the back, which cost us not just another hour but put us physically behind every slow car in the race. I let Max drive even though he has little experience in Baja while I navigated for him. It was good for him to get some seat time since we were out of contention anyway. At one turn near San Javier he almost put the car on its lid but he saved it (with a little shouting from the puckered dude in the right seat!). The rest of the day was uneventful and we worked our way back from 10th to 6th place.
Day 5, La Paz to Cabo: Lance and Max did the first leg, and made good time. Rudy and Jack did the second leg and made good time, finishing 20th overall on their stage. I took Leekster with me on the last special stage of the race. This was a 22 mile sprint to the finish, and it was the only leg that had no GPS file to follow so everybody had to navigate solely by the use of the roadbook. I can't say enough about how good a job he did navigating and we crushed it....finished 10th overall on that section for all classes. We gained another lost spot back and wound up finishing 5th in class, 59th overall, and 3:17 behind the class winner. Of importance to me personally was the fact that the car was in literally perfect shape at the finish line. I don't know how many days we could do in a row in this car but I could get in it right now and keep racing at full speed. I don't put a lot of stock in the "shoulda woulda coulda" game but sometimes its really hard not to wonder how well you could have done with another 7 miles worth of fuel in the tank.
So at the end of the day I'm not happy with finishing 5th but I am happy at how fast the car is, and that we didn't wreck it or break anything important. So I'd have to say it was a successful first attempt at racing a UTV. Next year we'll change our approach a bit to match the capability of the car and the evenly matched competition.
Really looking forward to another run in this car soon. Still can't believe how fast you can drive one of these things.
Before anybody asks, yes the team did get Montezuma's Revenge. Except me. I have been training myself to eat crap for decades. Anyway I just got back last night after a 2 day drive back from Cabo so I'm recharging my batteries before getting back into my normal non-race routine.
Here are a couple photos and a video clip of a couple parts of the first stage of the race. Enjoy.
