Cost of Winning: The Monster Mav Chronicles

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
182
63
60
Jamul
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> Well, here we go friends! Today I will begin documenting the tear down, repair, and re-assembly of the 2014 Baja 500 class 1900 winning Monster Energy/GT Tires MB Motorsports Can-am Maverick. I will show detailed pics of the damage sustained and methods used to repair said damage. I will also expose the car more intimately than before, in an effort to be concise and as accurate as possible in sharing our journey with you. I am open to ideas, constructive criticism, and any questions you all may have. I will not however respond to any malicious attacks here, as I get enough of that in the other forum areas. I am 100 % self taught, and have gathered a wealth of knowledge in the time spent building and designing off road cars. I am currently a one man show in regards to the maintenance and preparation of our car, and am learning about race car preparation as the races fly on by!

So, come on in and see what I've got to share. I promise it will be educational and enlightening. I will be as open as I possibly can with the tricks and "secrets" our car has waiting for you all to learn about. There is no subject that is off limits, but areas of current development will be protected as Marc deems necessary.


The car took a pretty good beating while competing in this years 500. We started the race with some components that were at the end of their service life, such as the axles and front differential. Some parts were not as ready as we would have liked, namely a bent rear toe link. For the most part though, the car was prepped and fresh as can be to take on one of the baddest races in the sport. The Baja 500. You can read the race report, and about our journey to the 500 here
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marc-Burnett-MB-Motorsports-Offroad-Racing/138769959531924
I am starting the tear down today, so stay tuned!

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BrArmor

Scranton Boys Racing OG
Oct 5, 2011
280
8
18
Lake Elsinore, Ca
www.imgms.com
I was wondering if you have a different rear hub design. Al our friends that race with Mavericks or Wildcats break their rear stub axles very frequently, since they drive very hard. This is mostly on short course so I was wondering if you guys had the same issues? When I looked them over to help them out it seems that the rear hubs do not slid inside of the rear bearing to take some of the load off of the axles stubs. Do you have this issue or at least understand what I am trying to type lol...

By the way congrats on the win! I have noticed lately that "everyone who wins is cheating" or at least that is wht people are telling us after a couple wins in LOORS... haha. I believe in your theory and it is more about the set up and the prep and still some damn good driving skills...

I can't wait to see more info on your teardown...
 

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
182
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Jamul
I was wondering if you have a different rear hub design. Al our friends that race with Mavericks or Wildcats break their rear stub axles very frequently, since they drive very hard. This is mostly on short course so I was wondering if you guys had the same issues? When I looked them over to help them out it seems that the rear hubs do not slid inside of the rear bearing to take some of the load off of the axles stubs. Do you have this issue or at least understand what I am trying to type lol...

By the way congrats on the win! I have noticed lately that "everyone who wins is cheating" or at least that is wht people are telling us after a couple wins in LOORS... haha. I believe in your theory and it is more about the set up and the prep and still some damn good driving skills...

I can't wait to see more info on your teardown...
AReed from carolina truggies and myself had a lengthy correspondence regarding this problem, and no, I have had no issues at all breaking stub axles. Evidentally, your closed course racing is applying loads differently than our desert racing does. More corners and narrower track widths seem to be all I can blame your misfortunes on. Talk to AReed about it. He is much more schooled in that area. We use the red Loctite, increased torque, and larger hub nut remedy, and it works for us. I will elaborate on it in detail if you would like. Thanks for the congrats! We are on a tear this year.
 

Blue Coyote

Member
Jul 31, 2009
254
19
18
Eugene OR
www.NWOffroad.net
Great job on your Baja 500 win!
It takes a LOT of hard work, dedication and planning to make that happen.
Will be taking notes of your prep.,,

Not to get off track, but as far as this issue below;
AReed from carolina truggies and myself had a lengthy correspondence regarding this problem, and no, I have had no issues at all breaking stub axles. Evidentally, your closed course racing is applying loads differently than our desert racing does. More corners and narrower track widths seem to be all I can blame your misfortunes on. Talk to AReed about it. He is much more schooled in that area. We use the red Loctite, increased torque, and larger hub nut remedy, and it works for us. I will elaborate on it in detail if you would like. Thanks for the congrats! We are on a tear this year.
It has to do with that volitile mix of race course, prep and metalurgy. AReed, BAM and I have had many conversations and PM's about this.
As of today, the best possible resolution we found is the Gorilla Axle. The threaded stub is larger, and per Gorilla the metalurgy/ heat treat is better. BAM will have a zillion technical questions for me, and I do not know, just going off what they told me.
UPS just dropped these off.

You can see the difference. What you cannot see is the hub to spline fit is much tighter. As we have broken 3 so far, ours is now going back together with NEW hubs (with BAM style race prep), NEW axle CV's, NEW nuts, NEW fat washers, red loctite, a SnapOn torque wrench.
CT Racing is a vendor for these as well.
Okay, now back to Mr Reids classroom:
 

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
182
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Jamul
Hey Wiley, does Gorilla give a torque spec for their larger hub nut/thread diameter? Thanks for the congrats and the contribution to the thread.
 

BrArmor

Scranton Boys Racing OG
Oct 5, 2011
280
8
18
Lake Elsinore, Ca
www.imgms.com
BAM, do you guys run custom exhaust or did someone make it? I notice the Maverick's headers are a lot different from others with their locations and cat. Do you have equal length? Cat- delete? I also heard of a couple people making carbon fiber molds for plastics and shaving weight there... you do anything like this?
 

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
182
63
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Jamul
BAM, do you guys run custom exhaust or did someone make it? I notice the Maverick's headers are a lot different from others with their locations and cat. Do you have equal length? Cat- delete? I also heard of a couple people making carbon fiber molds for plastics and shaving weight there... you do anything like this?
I built it myself using flowmaster series 10 baffled mufflers. They are not equal length, and are designed with scavenging properties in mind. Alba Nate told me not to focus as much on the lengths, but rather the proper pipe diameter and scavenging feature. It was louder than crap for Marc, so I added supertrapps to the tail end.
 

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Kalop

XP900
May 3, 2013
393
56
28
Love threads like this.. Sub'd and thanks Reid for willingness to post it up.
 

AReed

Member
Oct 2, 2012
234
2
18
Blue Coyote covered the stub thing pretty well.

I read Marc's write up on FB this morning. You worked your ass off getting that thing done through a bunch of different issues and it paid off big time. Congrats!
 

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
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Jamul
You bent the rear radius rod?
We actually bent it slightly at the IV 250 race. With all of the problems we faced with the engine, I just didn't have time to make a new one. The Baja bent it for good! Since our car always starts a race accurately aligned, it is easy to do a quick visual at any time, and check for deformation based on comparing the wheels relative to one another.

I see that you are offering a kit soon that relocates the Maverick rear diff. similar to our set up I assume. I expect that you are maintaining all of the stock pivot points. When doing so, the only component that does not benefit from the new geometry will be the radius rod (I call it a toe link-same thing). Just as lining up the cv's increase their ability to efficiently transfer power, adding more mis-alignment to the radius rods decrease their ability to resist a load. To further complicate matters, they are loaded in compression which makes them even more prone to bend (the mathematical function of this problem can be expressed as the sin of the angle) <sin).
<sin).
I am currently using 1" x .095" wall tubing, and will most likely continue to do so.</sin).
</sin).
 

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AReed

Member
Oct 2, 2012
234
2
18
That's what I was leading up to. I'm building the arms as we speak but I'm going to flip the hubs from side to side and run the radius rods on the front instead of the back so I don't have to put any bends in them, keep them out of the way and keep all the stock mounting points. It sounds ideal but I don't know what the geometry is actually going to do until I cycle it hopefully later today if not tomorrow.
Since your car is LT and mine is stock width you may be able to do that easier than I can.
 

badassmav

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2013
1,379
182
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Jamul
That's what I was leading up to. I'm building the arms as we speak but I'm going to flip the hubs from side to side and run the radius rods on the front instead of the back so I don't have to put any bends in them, keep them out of the way and keep all the stock mounting points. It sounds ideal but I don't know what the geometry is actually going to do until I cycle it hopefully later today if not tomorrow.
Since your car is LT and mine is stock width you may be able to do that easier than I can.
Assuming you are extending the rear wheelbase, what it will do is cause excessive toe out as the suspension bumps. This is because you are moving the pick up points for the upper and lower arms, as well as the cv joints back, but moving the pick up point for the radius rod forward, in essence, greatly reducing its pivot arm length. It appears that you have clearance concerns with the axles and radius rods and wish to solve the issue by keeping the radius rod in front of the axle. You will do this at the expense of greatly increased bump steer.

Also, pay close attention to the plunge capacity of the inner cv joint. If you align the cv joints to operate on the same plane (i.e. square with one another), the distance that the axle now plunges will increase, so if you are not significantly widening the track width, be sure to check that the plunge of the cv joint is enough not to bind the axles. Using stock cv's, I had 1/4", maybe 3/8" of plunge left over from full droop to bump. That is with the outer cv 5 1/2" farther outboard than stock.
Are you aligning the cv's perfectly, or just getting them closer to 0 degrees sweep? Are you extending the wheel base also? I ask because as you by now have noticed that due to the rear most pivot bracket (the one currently used to thru-bolt into the diff) you either move the diff back 8" to 8 1/2", or not at all in order for the inner cv body to clear said bracket. Consequently, the axle center line needs to move back 4 to 4 1/2" in order to achieve proper alignment. If you choose to keep the radius rods from passing underneath the axles, you will have to make the connection from the radius rod to the hub on the front side of the hub to clear the outer cv.

Your biggest dilemma is when you swap the rear uprights from side to side. The stock brake caliper will no longer function properly due to the lead slider pin is now the trailing one and the floating slider now assumes the role of the stationary or lead pin. Because it floats, it will bind when the brakes are applied causing uneven wear on the pads, greatly reduced pad life, and most importantly, a reduction in performance that is painfully obvious the first time you mash on the brake pedal. If you exchange the brake calipers to accommodate a lead pin criteria, the bleeder will be facing down, and make bleeding the brakes a maintenance pain in the ass.

Be cautious also of the factory caster settings on the rear upright. It is around 8 degrees. Changing that geometry too much will cause excessive wear on the rod ends or what ever type of articulation joint you choose to go with. I'm still not certain what causes this dilemma. I only know it exists.
 

AReed

Member
Oct 2, 2012
234
2
18
Wheelbase is moving back 6" but stock width. The axles won't be exactly in line but they'll be close. I may be able to move the radius rod frame mounting points which the rules allow.
Good heads up on the brakes though. I haven't thought that far yet but that's something that I'll need to address. Tight deadline for this build but I'll see what happens.
I'm going to play with the radius rod mounts and see what I can do. I don't want to high jack your thread but maybe some of this will help us.
 

mearsman

Active Member
Nov 2, 2011
459
55
28
52
Reid, I just completed the covert mission that I've been working in with your help. It was a complete success!!!! Thanks for all your help. I couldn't have tackled it without you. You my friend are a dying breed in this world. Hopefully someday I can help pass along the knowledge that I've gained and educate people as you do


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Blue Coyote

Member
Jul 31, 2009
254
19
18
Eugene OR
www.NWOffroad.net
Hey Wiley, does Gorilla give a torque spec for their larger hub nut/thread diameter? Thanks for the congrats and the contribution to the thread.

Lots if great tech flying around the UTVUG lately - love it!

So some measly tech from the Coyote's shop:
Called Gorilla and spoke with Technician Jamie. He stated torque on the outer stub was 65 ft/lbs. He told me that on the Gorilla axles it did not need to be the 166 like the stock ones. He said it seems low compared to what we are used to, but thats all it needs.

I can hear BAM scratching his head right now....
 

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