Huh huh... you said "tool bag"...
FT's Baja Buggy Build?
- Thread starter stoney
- Start date
Yup. Joe from J.Paks is the man with the plan on this stuff. His bikepacking bags are super-baller, totally custom, and really trick. If you're in to bikepacking or just wanna check out a frame bag I highly recommend looking in to his stuff. Yeah, that's a shameless plug for a buddy who's getting a small company off the ground and is helping me out.
He sent me pictures of the oil quart caddies he sewed up for us last night, simple but rad. We'll bolt or rivett these to the body of the car just below the spare tires, and they should keep spare oil bottles from flying all over the vehicle as we race. He's working on that custom tool bag as well as mesh door pockets for us this week as well, I'll post those when they get installed.
That's so pimp, seriously.
Yeah man, we're stoked to have Joe from J.PAKS in our corner for sure. A couple other things he worked up for us...
Net riveted to the door to create a 'map pocket' that will carry miscellaneous small spare parts like clutch cable, throttle cable, gaskets, etc.
Custom roll-top tool bag that fits in the nose of the car, securely ties down, and is removable:
Finally found the extra transmission mount we had welded up a couple-three years ago, and finished it by pouring the urethane into it:
Also got some patches that we'll iron on to a bunch of clothing, gear, and race suits.
We also inventoried everything we're taking, packed up the trailer with everything except refrigerated food, and put the race car in there last Saturday evening. Basically, we're ready for departure on Thursday late morning minus a few small things to wrap up. Getting stoked!
Super stoked for these guys.
When in doubt, moar speed and pull up.
I'm glad you came out Nick... and not only because you conveniently left a single Modus in the fridge for me to pilfer after you left.
Dammit. All I ever wanted for was stevew to CARE.
Awesome, can't wait to see some action shots.
Amazing good luck and have tons of fun.
We leave tomorrow mid-morning-ish for Vegas, gonna try to hit Barstow to test on the way to San Diego on Friday. Tune and wrench friday evening / Saturday morning, then possibly run the car in Plaster City desert OHV area Saturday if we have time. Sunday is mandatory driver / racer meetings in San Diego for our pit service, BFG Pits, then it's ON! Headed to Ensenada Sunday evening! Test, prep, tune, repeat Monday-Tuesday maybe pre-run or pre-inspect certain sections. Wednesday safety and tech inspection, then Thursday starting line.
I got no more prep pictures or news to share. It's fvcking go time. JFF.
I got no more prep pictures or news to share. It's fvcking go time. JFF.
Thanks homie!
Word up ya'll. We're locked and loaded, pulling a race car in a trailer behind a Ford Excursion we've lovingly dubbed the Canyonero. Figured I'd post the links to follow along if you want before I'm out of the country and have limited cell/email service. We go off the starting line next Thursday Nov. 13th sometime after 12:30pm Pacific. We'll have a SPOT Tracker on the car and you'll be able to follow the dot for pretty much 49 straight hours as we wind our way down the BajaPeninsula. Links below:
Live Race Tracking:
http://score-international.com/
http://score-international.com/score-international-official-race-tracking-program/
Live Race Webcasting:
Wednesday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Contingency. Friday, Race Day - Motorcycle/Quad start at 6:00am and Trophy Truck, Class One and 4 wheel Starting at 12:30pm. All will be live webcasted at www.score-international.com and www.dirtlive.com. Check the SCORE website for updates to the broadcast schedule.
My Personal SPOT Tracker Page (will be in one of the chase vehicles):
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0C1eQOPHZDehqTYoQIQRVJ4zhqSavg0nS
Live Race Tracking:
http://score-international.com/
http://score-international.com/score-international-official-race-tracking-program/
Live Race Webcasting:
Wednesday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Contingency. Friday, Race Day - Motorcycle/Quad start at 6:00am and Trophy Truck, Class One and 4 wheel Starting at 12:30pm. All will be live webcasted at www.score-international.com and www.dirtlive.com. Check the SCORE website for updates to the broadcast schedule.
My Personal SPOT Tracker Page (will be in one of the chase vehicles):
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0C1eQOPHZDehqTYoQIQRVJ4zhqSavg0nS
Had a few "delays" in San Diego, nothing catastrophic just a couple things took a little longer than expected so we're on the way to Ensenada this morning instead of yesterday afternoon. Full report with pictures and stuff, worth a read if you're trying to jeep up:
http://projectbaja.com/2014/11/the-adventure-begins-san-diego-bf-goodrich-pits-and-el-blanco-diamante/
http://projectbaja.com/2014/11/the-adventure-begins-san-diego-bf-goodrich-pits-and-el-blanco-diamante/
Sell me your van.
Not my van, but the guy that owns it also runs Boulder Offroad Vans so I'm sure he could work something out for ya.Sell me your van.
Sweet, I got my notice as well! (yes I bought one of my own shirts... don't judge)
Thanks!
¡Muchas Gracias!
Just don't nerf either and we're good.
Good Luck. We'll be watching!
Yesterday was Contingency and Tech Inspection and we're happy to say that 1137 made it through with flying colors! We've got trackers and transponders installed and ready to go, and we're set to go off the line this afternoon. If you want to follow along with the race, here's those links again!
Live Race Tracking:
http://score-international.com/
http://score-international.com/score-international-official-race-tracking-program/
http://www.dirtlive.com
http://race-dezert.com
Live Race Webcasting:
Wednesday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Contingency. Friday, Race Day - Motorcycle/Quad start at 6:00am and Trophy Truck, Class One and 4 wheel Starting at 12:30pm. All will be live webcasted at www.score-international.com and www.dirtlive.com. Check the SCORE website for updates to the broadcast schedule.
Project Baja Social Media (as updated as we can):
http://www.facebook.com/ProjectBaja
http://twitter.com/ProjectBaja
Also look for the hashtag #ProjectBaja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for personal posts from the race and chase team!
Chase 1 (Raptor) SPOT Tracker Page:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0cRtdJrueEXyGFiBVdGKfvBW8EqGqszWK
Chase 2 (Explorer) SPOT Tracker Page:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0C1eQOPHZDehqTYoQIQRVJ4zhqSavg0nS
To wrap it up, check out a bunch of photos from Contingency yesterday, it was total maddness! Ensenada treats it like a holiday and it seemed like the whole town was out to see all the race cars parading through the center of the city. If you ever wanna feel like a total rockstar, signing autographs and being mobbed by people, this is the place to do it. It was a long and exhausting day though, being on your feet for the better
Live Race Tracking:
http://score-international.com/
http://score-international.com/score-international-official-race-tracking-program/
http://www.dirtlive.com
http://race-dezert.com
Live Race Webcasting:
Wednesday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Contingency. Friday, Race Day - Motorcycle/Quad start at 6:00am and Trophy Truck, Class One and 4 wheel Starting at 12:30pm. All will be live webcasted at www.score-international.com and www.dirtlive.com. Check the SCORE website for updates to the broadcast schedule.
Project Baja Social Media (as updated as we can):
http://www.facebook.com/ProjectBaja
http://twitter.com/ProjectBaja
Also look for the hashtag #ProjectBaja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for personal posts from the race and chase team!
Chase 1 (Raptor) SPOT Tracker Page:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0cRtdJrueEXyGFiBVdGKfvBW8EqGqszWK
Chase 2 (Explorer) SPOT Tracker Page:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0C1eQOPHZDehqTYoQIQRVJ4zhqSavg0nS
To wrap it up, check out a bunch of photos from Contingency yesterday, it was total maddness! Ensenada treats it like a holiday and it seemed like the whole town was out to see all the race cars parading through the center of the city. If you ever wanna feel like a total rockstar, signing autographs and being mobbed by people, this is the place to do it. It was a long and exhausting day though, being on your feet for the better
Why... oh, why has someone not scrawled "Free Candy" on the side of that van yet?
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/the-original-free-candy-van-is-for-sale-1655478041Why... oh, why has someone not scrawled "Free Candy" on the side of that van yet?
Tracker shows 269 miles in, but no movement. They didn't break it already did they?
*edit: FB makes it seem they missed a cutoff.
*edit: FB makes it seem they missed a cutoff.
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Holy. Crap.
I seriously don't even have words to explain what the hell just happened, but I'll try a little bit. I got in 1137 around Rm 80 and the car had already started to take a beating. Rear fenders were dented, engine was boggy, missing a piece of headlight trim, front fender had been run over by a 10 car, but overall we were (and still are) super impressed with how our little race car runs. Night dropped on us ridiculously quick once I got in the car as co-driver, but we made both checkpoint 1 and 2 fairly uneventfully. With the race car bogging we re-jetted the carburator to try and get more power, and finally sorted that the air filter had become clogged with sand and silt. We cleaned it out at the next fuel stop and instantly our little race car, who by now has affectionately been dubbed "Tope", came roaring back to life. The terrain in Baja is unreal, I can try to describe it but until you're IN it I just don't think it can be understood. There where whoops as tall and deep as the car itself, rocks, alien plant life, rutted out goat paths, sand, impossibly steep hills, and silt.
Oh, the silt. Eff that sh!t.
Running at night we were full-on tunnel vision mode, often only being able to use the low mounted lights on the car. Silt bed after silt bed we would get stuck, dig out, have a random Mexican show up out of nowhere and push us out, get towed out, or whatever. We were advised by our pit service, BFG Pits, that all SCORE checkpoints were closing and that we weren't going to make cutoff times. In addition the BFG Pits, which had the majority of our race fuel, were closing along with the checkpoints. We acknowledged that at this point were were ~2-3 hours back on closing times but knew we had some seriously long stretches of highway and smooth farm road coming up that we'd be able to maintain a much higher average speed and possibly make the time back up going in to Baja Sur. We decided to run.
After getting stuck in yet another long stretch of silt, the sun started to come up and we got going on some really fast, wide-open dirt road and were feeling good about life. We had been in the car from dusk until dawn and were just 15-20 miles from our next fuel stop with Josh hanging it all out and Tope singing at the top of her lungs. It was glorious. And then the road narrowed on us going nearly 70mph, and a couple of rain runnels and huge bumps jumped out what seemed like nowhere. Tope smashed into a ditch/bump thing and was pitched forward OTB style and all four wheels came off the ground. We were staring at dirt, convinced were were going ass over tea kettle. She came down nose hard, slammed the back end, swapped side to side a couple of times but miraculously Josh kept his foot in it and we eventually straightened out without losing much speed at all. After another couple of corners, we came up on a busted irrigation pipe spilling water all over a big corner on the course, and the only way around was to cut the corner through a ditch. After a couple run ups I convinced Josh that Tope could handle it and we were through the ditch and off, slowly getting back up to speed.
And then what felt like the entire back end fell out of the car.
We called out to our chase crew and let them know we were down and needed to assess the damage. Turns out we sheared the end of the stub axle clean off and lost the left rear wheel, with the brake drum still attached. We got our chase teams gathering necessary parts and headed towards us for a repair. It took several hours to get Tope back in to running shape, and even then it was only with half of the brake shoes in the wheel that fell off. We were 8+ hours behind checkpoint closing times at this point, everyone had been awake for well over 24 hours, and we had decisions to make. Technically we could decide to keep running, basically self-supported and without the safety protocols that SCORE has in place to keep you alive in the middle of the desert of a third-world country. This would add heaps of stress to an already ragged crew, as they'd have to be not only sorting fuel for the chase vehicles but also for us since the BFG Pits were closing and no way to make up the time.
The decision came hard, but I think we made the smart choice. We had a hell of a run, and it exceeded all of our expectations in so many ways we cannot count. We put the other driving team back in the car to run her out to where the next chase vehicle was parked so the guy who co-drove the first leg had at least a few miles behind the wheel. Then from that point the course did a 20-mile dog-leg out then back to the highway, so I got back in the car with the other driver so I could get at least a few miles of wheel time as well. This put us up to around Rm 300, not quite a quarter of the entire course.
Unreal. I'm still overwhelmed.
I seriously don't even have words to explain what the hell just happened, but I'll try a little bit. I got in 1137 around Rm 80 and the car had already started to take a beating. Rear fenders were dented, engine was boggy, missing a piece of headlight trim, front fender had been run over by a 10 car, but overall we were (and still are) super impressed with how our little race car runs. Night dropped on us ridiculously quick once I got in the car as co-driver, but we made both checkpoint 1 and 2 fairly uneventfully. With the race car bogging we re-jetted the carburator to try and get more power, and finally sorted that the air filter had become clogged with sand and silt. We cleaned it out at the next fuel stop and instantly our little race car, who by now has affectionately been dubbed "Tope", came roaring back to life. The terrain in Baja is unreal, I can try to describe it but until you're IN it I just don't think it can be understood. There where whoops as tall and deep as the car itself, rocks, alien plant life, rutted out goat paths, sand, impossibly steep hills, and silt.
Oh, the silt. Eff that sh!t.
Running at night we were full-on tunnel vision mode, often only being able to use the low mounted lights on the car. Silt bed after silt bed we would get stuck, dig out, have a random Mexican show up out of nowhere and push us out, get towed out, or whatever. We were advised by our pit service, BFG Pits, that all SCORE checkpoints were closing and that we weren't going to make cutoff times. In addition the BFG Pits, which had the majority of our race fuel, were closing along with the checkpoints. We acknowledged that at this point were were ~2-3 hours back on closing times but knew we had some seriously long stretches of highway and smooth farm road coming up that we'd be able to maintain a much higher average speed and possibly make the time back up going in to Baja Sur. We decided to run.
After getting stuck in yet another long stretch of silt, the sun started to come up and we got going on some really fast, wide-open dirt road and were feeling good about life. We had been in the car from dusk until dawn and were just 15-20 miles from our next fuel stop with Josh hanging it all out and Tope singing at the top of her lungs. It was glorious. And then the road narrowed on us going nearly 70mph, and a couple of rain runnels and huge bumps jumped out what seemed like nowhere. Tope smashed into a ditch/bump thing and was pitched forward OTB style and all four wheels came off the ground. We were staring at dirt, convinced were were going ass over tea kettle. She came down nose hard, slammed the back end, swapped side to side a couple of times but miraculously Josh kept his foot in it and we eventually straightened out without losing much speed at all. After another couple of corners, we came up on a busted irrigation pipe spilling water all over a big corner on the course, and the only way around was to cut the corner through a ditch. After a couple run ups I convinced Josh that Tope could handle it and we were through the ditch and off, slowly getting back up to speed.
And then what felt like the entire back end fell out of the car.
We called out to our chase crew and let them know we were down and needed to assess the damage. Turns out we sheared the end of the stub axle clean off and lost the left rear wheel, with the brake drum still attached. We got our chase teams gathering necessary parts and headed towards us for a repair. It took several hours to get Tope back in to running shape, and even then it was only with half of the brake shoes in the wheel that fell off. We were 8+ hours behind checkpoint closing times at this point, everyone had been awake for well over 24 hours, and we had decisions to make. Technically we could decide to keep running, basically self-supported and without the safety protocols that SCORE has in place to keep you alive in the middle of the desert of a third-world country. This would add heaps of stress to an already ragged crew, as they'd have to be not only sorting fuel for the chase vehicles but also for us since the BFG Pits were closing and no way to make up the time.
The decision came hard, but I think we made the smart choice. We had a hell of a run, and it exceeded all of our expectations in so many ways we cannot count. We put the other driving team back in the car to run her out to where the next chase vehicle was parked so the guy who co-drove the first leg had at least a few miles behind the wheel. Then from that point the course did a 20-mile dog-leg out then back to the highway, so I got back in the car with the other driver so I could get at least a few miles of wheel time as well. This put us up to around Rm 300, not quite a quarter of the entire course.
Unreal. I'm still overwhelmed.
You guys did something a fraction of the population will even consider. Congratulations on having the opportunity to live up to your dream and go on one hell of an adventure.
The team planning on trying again?
Also, looking back on things, is there anything you would have done differently?
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You know, I really thought this would be a one-and-done, check it off the bucket list sort of adventure for me. The other guys on the team and I talked about taking the car to closer domestic races once a year or so. But man... it's pretty fricken rad. We'll likely campaign another 1000 in 2016. Currently starting to plan on what it will take to convert my Tundra in to a proper chase rig. One thing is for certain, it takes a village to finish the Baja 1000... and a small army if you're in a Class 11.
Surprisingly (and thankfully) not bad. It was doing really well before I left, was at zero pain. And now it's just a bit achey in my hip. I was able to catch either a gnarly flu or Montezuma's Revenge the day before we left Mexico, so it's been an exciting 3-day drive from San Quintin.
Back wheel fell off. That right there is AWESOME. Well done. Pass along my congo rats to teh entire team.
Awesome.
We have a list started already.
For the car: play with lower tire pressure, maybe different front tires, smaller/lighter flywheel so the engine revs higher/easier in lower gears (to get through silt), better air filter system with a particulate filter, different ideas for digging ourselves out of the silt when we do get stuck.
I think we definitely need moar support/chase crew, it really takes a small army to get ANY vehicle to the finish line much less a Class 11. We also probably wouldn't use a pit service to do the fueling as it really locked us in to their locations which just weren't convenient really, we ended up doing a lot of fueling ourselves which is fine and one of the reasons we built our car to run on standard octane fuel.
Plus plenty of non-car related logistical stuff like food, lodging, etc. Yeah... lots of stuff to work on and make moar betterer.
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How'd that fart bag smell when you were done?
Dude, so bad ass. I could never consider it in a VW, but one of those stadium trucks, dear lord.
My girlfriend said "Couldn't you build something like that with the bug my brother has?"
Her brother has a '69 that has been chopped up with a ghetto baja kit. Single port motor, gutted interior and a rats nest of wiring. I told her if I was going to put effort into building something to run off road, it would be more like this
My girlfriend said "Couldn't you build something like that with the bug my brother has?"
Her brother has a '69 that has been chopped up with a ghetto baja kit. Single port motor, gutted interior and a rats nest of wiring. I told her if I was going to put effort into building something to run off road, it would be more like this
I put it in it's dedicated bag after I took it off, and it's still in there. Probably smells like a bucket full of Hell and I'm not quite ready to open it.
I feel a road trip to Portland coming up... sounds like a perfect starter for a 5-1600 car.Dude, so bad ass. I could never consider it in a VW, but one of those stadium trucks, dear lord.
My girlfriend said "Couldn't you build something like that with the bug my brother has?"
Her brother has a '69 that has been chopped up with a ghetto baja kit. Single port motor, gutted interior and a rats nest of wiring. I told her if I was going to put effort into building something to run off road, it would be more like this
That looks bad ass, My buddy Mark builds bomb proof VW bus 901 transaxles (http://www.markssandtrans.com)I put it in it's dedicated bag after I took it off, and it's still in there. Probably smells like a bucket full of Hell and I'm not quite ready to open it.
I feel a road trip to Portland coming up... sounds like a perfect starter for a 5-1600 car.
but he got away from the VW powerplants once he played with a turbo Honda based rail. I could see getting him to build me a Corvette LS based rail to race.
Braaaaaap
