well were do i start i would like to thank everyones wifes and girlfriends because it was stress full on both ends, irc didnt work for a will so everyone was wondering wat happen phones would work in and out. Lets start at the beginning we go to start the rzr to go to tech & the battery dies, i guess thats when we should of realized it was going to be a long day. I meet joey for the first time sorry it was short but we were running so behind and we still had to pick up craig at the airport. The start of the race was our best part we passed jagged and others i want to say we were running 3rd or 4th by the 1st pit alot of teams pitted. Then we got to pit2 running 2nd or 3rd we gassed checked the car over and jagged beat us out of the pit.Then the long wait at pit3 as we sat there waiting the radio started to work not good. The belt or clutch were stuck in high so they pulled over to check it. It would come down to the seconddary clutch, the four bolts that hold the helix in broke off. Luckly they broke down right by a volunteer and our phones were working. So we meet the guy at the highway and sent him with all the parts. So we headed back to pit3 and waited. When they finally arrived we were dead last so we new we were in our own race. When this was all happening we had got a stock secondary clutch from jagged. thank you jagged x for that clutch. we only had secondary clutch that was experimental and we had 430 more miles to go and we didn't want to take the chance. So again thank you jaggedx. Now its my turn to get in and drive. When we took off clutching way off but it was still moving but will your driving the car would break off left or right felt like alingment or rear end was loose. So we head to the next pit and found the rear axle was going in and out of the rearend so we put another axle in and headed down the road car was just loose the rest of the race i think we bent something in the rearend. when we arrived at pit5 i want to say that is were most of the utv class was broken at. So we motored on almost to pit6 the axle comes out again, so we get back out fix it and start moving again we get to the pit change the axle again. Then we have every top team come to us and says here comes the cars they are about 5min out. So me and jeff get back in the car with our butts a puckering we motor on. Before we are even a mile out the first car catches us. we learned if you pull about 20yrds off the road and point so your co-driver can see, wait until you cant see the dust ball coming its clear to get back on course. I like to call the dust ball, "hell fire" because there were time 2 to 3 cars right on each other at times. We just ran our own pace tell about mile 250 we ripped a brake line, out came the vise grips,tape and zip ties. We get back in the car all buckled up and there is no fuel pressure. I think the fuel system vapor locked so i put a new fuel filter on released all pressure and it started working again. We motorted on again to pit at mile 281. jerome and craig take over duties they get about 5 miles and the axle comes out again. they put it back in get to the pit we take the axle back out and put a new clip in break the clip bend the next one down to last clip. I was thinking about welding a wrench across so stupid axle wouldn't come out. On the last clip we would get the axle in but wouldn't stay in so i found a oil ring put it on then clip the axle never came back out. they motored on to next pit you can say we were racing the 1938 car but us and them were just trying to get to the end. At pit13 we got them ready for the long trip we couldn't get to pit14 in time so we were skipping that pit and goining to meet them at pit15. As we waited with irc on the laptop we see the 1938 car stop then about 10min later we see us stopped right before pit 14 now we have to wait. 45min later they start to move now with no communication we have to see if they are going to stop at pit14 or keep going. They keep going which was good because the only way to get to pit14 from pit15 was a 88 mile drive. As we waited me & jeff new we were getting back in the car so we napped and waited for them. When they arrived to pit15 they told us they broke an upper a-arm bolt. They were going through a silt bed and couldn't see the bottom and hit something. We learned our little guy craig turns into a human jack. He laid down and used his legs to lift the front end. Now it was mine and jeff turn to get in and finish this race. I want to say casey saved the roughest part of the course for the last 10miles. when we crossed the line about 4:00 am i was out of it. I want to thank my dad for being our head crew chief and putting up with my shit, i dont think he slept the entire time. jeff daugherty for being my co-driver and all the hard work he put in. Craig hein from ATD co-driving and fixing the car on the race course. Jerome vinagro/ acs racing for his attitude and support of all the crap that went wrong, we actually had all the tools and parts to make it to the end. rito from the stripping shop thats me making it to the end on our second try. kroyer racing for the motor that didn't miss a beat. Full circle auto body for the paint job. glendale steel for the metal. hpd racing for the rear end. We did this whole race with 5 guys and one truck i think that was the greatest accomplishment ever.
vegas 2 reno race stories
- Thread starter the stripping shop
- Start date
congrats for finishing. sounds like desert racing is full of suprises and much needed MacGuyver tricks to make it to the end.
what an awesome story!!! Great meeting you out there Rito!! And thanks for repping the Underground!!
i forgot to say we had 2 flats too we will always rep you. great stories and willing to go to these grueilling races.
Good Work Rito!! Man I can honestly say we've change axles that many times at the last V2R and it isn't any fun. Jason and I seen you at pit 6 (BFG pit 2) workin away on the car, you guys were busy and we were fuelin some wide open baja cars at the time. Glad you finished. This is one race, I hope to conquer some day. Its just brutal..
we did get bumped by a class one car but they were just letting us know they were back there. It was rocky area we had to wait tell we got to the top of the hill to move over it wasn't a bad bump. I couldn't figure out how everyone new about it we didn't tell anyone tell we got to a pit everyone was coming over to see if we were ok even offical were checking on us.Then yesterday i found out the whole story it was the arkansas boys yancy's team. I was told they blew a belt had a race truck bringing them one. Well the race truck through it out to a quad which happen to need a belt, probally thought a belt came from heaven i guess that got the quad going. Then yancy finally got a belt got going then broke a again in bad spot and truck that was following another truck in the dust moved over to get out of the dust ran into yancy car with his wife still in it. I was told she was ok just bruised up pretty good.
thank you i hope you guys had fun at the bfg pits wish i could of seen you guys.
We started off great in the 1938. Third off the line and moving up quick. By pit 4 Brian Thomas was ready to step out of the driver seat so I stepped in. As we were coming out of the pit, I thought we had to wait til the road crossing to increase speed so 1919 took advantage and flew by us. We think he may have just clipped our front tire with his rear and next thing I knew, we were off the track out in the desert. We got out and found a broken tie rod! Bummer, but luck would have it that we still had good radio contact and were not far from the pit area. My crew found an Ironman Quad rider that was willing to let them tape a tie rod to his bumper and stop for me so I could take it off. Thank you, thank you, thank you to # 674! We put the tie rod back on and even though we had a broken axle and scary toe out we continued on in 2 wheel drive sliding around on the slick desert sand like we were on ice. I began to worry about the up coming Trick Trucks. I knew they were not far behind. We tried to keep our speed about 40 mph to make it 30 miles to pit 5 before they caught us. We made it!!! The crew ended up having to rebuild the entire front of the RZR. That put us down a little over an hour. Driver change and we were back on the trail! At pit 9 our third driver, Robert, said he thought the belt was slipping , so, we change it out. By now the top 3 side x sides were about 100 miles in front. We knew we were probably out of contention but just wanted to finish this race! We pushed on. At pit 13, I and my crew chief and husband Eric as my co-rider got back in the car and vowed to just cruise and finish the last 140 miles. It was at aprox mile 405 I began to hear a strange noise coming from the engine. We still had power, so we continued on until almost mile 409 where a loud rod knock and loss of power ended our day. We over came a lot that day and were very sad that we couldn't cross the finish line. We had a great time and a great adventure. We will be back next year to conquer our nemesis! Thank you to all our sponsors: OMF, MTA, Tire Balls, Baja Designs, Joel's T's, Parker Oil, and Rockstar Custom Motorsports. A HUGE thank you to the #674 for helping us out in that pit. We will pay it forward! Thank you to BITD and TSCO for putting on this great event.
Congrats to all those that finished! You guys are awesome! We will see you at the Desert Challenge.....
Congrats to all those that finished! You guys are awesome! We will see you at the Desert Challenge.....
Being the only Sportsman of the bunch we figured it was our challenge to catch as many Pro's as we could. Started out dead last off the starting line. Picked off a few and drove into pit one, found a loose upper heim bolt so a few minutes to tighten (as a few passed us), we were back in last place (first to us). Hit the trail and not long after had a flat, fixed quick and off we go. Kawasaki was running good down the lakebed at 68-69MPH according to the GPS. We continued to battle past people slowly making ground and loosing it with more tire problems, maybe a bit too aggressive for running without tireballs but oh well we're just a class of one. Slowly worked our way to Pit 8 for a driver change and fuel right where the Big guys were starting to catch us. Had a pretty good battle going on with 1917 along the way.
Got to 13 for another driver change, fill the fuel, add the light bar, top off the oil, strapped an extra tire on for good luck and off we go in a chase for 1950 and 1917, caught them quickly and never looked back. We did not pit at 14 (cause we forgot to pay for remote pits) and made it to 15. When they got there the driver was telling me they ran for about 15 minutes on the race course Vorra just did for the Fallon 250, it was perfect we knew it like the back of our hands from running 6 times a few weeks back. We averaged 40 mph from 13 to 15.
After we launched him off at 16 we were pretty sure we were home free, as I told them to take it easy and see you at the finish line, the closest race car was 1.5 hours back, so thats what he did, 16 hours later we made it to the finish line in 2nd overall with smiles on everyones face. No flats from 13 on, probably from the extra good luck charm we strapped on the tire rack.
I was running chase during the last couple pits and my 15 year old boy was co-pilot. There was a super rocky section somewhere after 16 where they were doing 1.5-2 MPH so the driver decided to pull up to a mile marker, drop his window net and pretend it was a TacoBell drive-up window, "Ya i'll have 2 Quesadillas, a couple taco's and a couple drinks" my kid almost pee'd his catheter.
The after race evaluation showed 9 tires blown and about 2 hours of time. Might have been a close race of a Pro Vs a Sportsman
Thanks to all, we tried to meet as many as we could, good race to everybody and we'll see you next year!!
Got to 13 for another driver change, fill the fuel, add the light bar, top off the oil, strapped an extra tire on for good luck and off we go in a chase for 1950 and 1917, caught them quickly and never looked back. We did not pit at 14 (cause we forgot to pay for remote pits) and made it to 15. When they got there the driver was telling me they ran for about 15 minutes on the race course Vorra just did for the Fallon 250, it was perfect we knew it like the back of our hands from running 6 times a few weeks back. We averaged 40 mph from 13 to 15.
After we launched him off at 16 we were pretty sure we were home free, as I told them to take it easy and see you at the finish line, the closest race car was 1.5 hours back, so thats what he did, 16 hours later we made it to the finish line in 2nd overall with smiles on everyones face. No flats from 13 on, probably from the extra good luck charm we strapped on the tire rack.
I was running chase during the last couple pits and my 15 year old boy was co-pilot. There was a super rocky section somewhere after 16 where they were doing 1.5-2 MPH so the driver decided to pull up to a mile marker, drop his window net and pretend it was a TacoBell drive-up window, "Ya i'll have 2 Quesadillas, a couple taco's and a couple drinks" my kid almost pee'd his catheter.
The after race evaluation showed 9 tires blown and about 2 hours of time. Might have been a close race of a Pro Vs a Sportsman
Thanks to all, we tried to meet as many as we could, good race to everybody and we'll see you next year!!
Our trip started out in Southern Cali. Myself, Chip "Frankie Two Toes" Boldin and Dan "Fear Factor" Fernandez all piled into our truck before the truck. We picked up Joey D's truck from the Lasher compound on Thursday afternoon. About 1 mile into the trip we realized the A/C was acting up and we were headed for death valley.
The ROAD TO HELLS KITCHEN!!!!!!! 115 at night.
We hit a spot called Badwater (lowest point in North America 282 feet below sea level) and the GPS quit working and it was super hot. When over the radio a song came on titled "Hells On Fire". At this point we thought we were dead.
We hit a fork in the road that said Beatty this way. So we headed for Beatty. We pulled into town around 10:00pm and went to the 1st bar we could find. Happy Burro Chilli & Beer.
20 minutes after arriving in Beatty Joey and Lasher called to see if we wanted to meet them at the start line. On our way to the start we almost clipped a couple burro's that were just standing in the street. We pulled up to the Lasher Motorsports base camp and figured out the plan for the race. Then we headed to the Phoenix for a couple hours of sleep.
4:30am BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ!!!!!!!! I hate that sound. We jumped up and headed for the Lasher camp. We unloaded the car and started the race day program.
The cars were set to leave the line around 6:20am. With all the cars staged at the line we had a chance to watch the bikes take off.
The Monster Kawasaki #1924 was the 2nd car off the line. We watched the rest of the cars leave the line and then we headed for pit 1.
Once set up at Pit 1 Lasher radioed in to tell us they had a flat and to be ready. We had all the tool we needed in the back of the UTVUNDERGROUND/MONSTER ENERGY Chase Truck. Car 1938 also came in with a flat. Here is there team in action.
At about race mile 68 Lasher radioed again with a problem. The car has lost power. We were in route to pit 3 when we got the call. I turned back and headed for Pit 2 hoping we had a part we could give to someone and have it delivered. When we arrived at Pit 2 all the vehicles had already passed. I got permission to drive up an access road just outside of race mile 68. The officials made it clear we could not touch the car. We finally made it to the car and after 1.5 hours of trying different things it was off to the trailer for 1924 and we were off to finish the day chasing and pitting for a Trophy Truck.. More to come on that later.
The ROAD TO HELLS KITCHEN!!!!!!! 115 at night.
We hit a spot called Badwater (lowest point in North America 282 feet below sea level) and the GPS quit working and it was super hot. When over the radio a song came on titled "Hells On Fire". At this point we thought we were dead.
We hit a fork in the road that said Beatty this way. So we headed for Beatty. We pulled into town around 10:00pm and went to the 1st bar we could find. Happy Burro Chilli & Beer.
20 minutes after arriving in Beatty Joey and Lasher called to see if we wanted to meet them at the start line. On our way to the start we almost clipped a couple burro's that were just standing in the street. We pulled up to the Lasher Motorsports base camp and figured out the plan for the race. Then we headed to the Phoenix for a couple hours of sleep.
4:30am BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ,BUZZ!!!!!!!! I hate that sound. We jumped up and headed for the Lasher camp. We unloaded the car and started the race day program.
The cars were set to leave the line around 6:20am. With all the cars staged at the line we had a chance to watch the bikes take off.
The Monster Kawasaki #1924 was the 2nd car off the line. We watched the rest of the cars leave the line and then we headed for pit 1.
Once set up at Pit 1 Lasher radioed in to tell us they had a flat and to be ready. We had all the tool we needed in the back of the UTVUNDERGROUND/MONSTER ENERGY Chase Truck. Car 1938 also came in with a flat. Here is there team in action.
At about race mile 68 Lasher radioed again with a problem. The car has lost power. We were in route to pit 3 when we got the call. I turned back and headed for Pit 2 hoping we had a part we could give to someone and have it delivered. When we arrived at Pit 2 all the vehicles had already passed. I got permission to drive up an access road just outside of race mile 68. The officials made it clear we could not touch the car. We finally made it to the car and after 1.5 hours of trying different things it was off to the trailer for 1924 and we were off to finish the day chasing and pitting for a Trophy Truck.. More to come on that later.
Great stories everyone!!! By thw ay Rusty...its dan FEAR FACTORY Fernandez....LOL....Thank you to Synergy Graffix for lacing up the UTVUnderground chase truck with the new Monster Energy graphics!!!
thanks for the inside info from the racers mouth guys. it really lets a non racer know what actually goes on during a race.
Well first i have to say that this was the first race that the IRI track actually worked great for us. We had someone back in PHX tracking the race and then texting us updates all day. It really worked good. We never tried to get on IRC from the chase trucks so we eliminated that frustration. We had good cel service most of the day on verizon. As fo the race, WOW! if you have ever seen the old show the A team you remember when George Pecaard said "I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER" Well that is what happened for the Jagged X Polaris racing team this year. Brandon settled in with a good pace early on and just stayed consistant all day. The car was absolutely perfect all day. knock wood! We had one tire leaking a bit at pit 12, We changed it and that was it for the day. We got really lucky! i was happy to see the great finish rate. It says alot about the overall quality of vehicles racing in the class.
Thanks to all our sponsors and everyone who helps our racing efforts. We could not do it without you all.
We are looking forward to a very exciting wind down to our season. thanks to all who support UTV racing. See You all in Parker!
BSJX
Thanks to all our sponsors and everyone who helps our racing efforts. We could not do it without you all.
We are looking forward to a very exciting wind down to our season. thanks to all who support UTV racing. See You all in Parker!
BSJX