Class 5 only

[bajabird]

Hey guys, looks like my 2 years old son Brody found his way to class 5 thread. He is a big fan!

LOL,, (joke)

and he already speaks Wheezy :-)

[SPONSOR]

Membership in the largest desert racing community has its advantages - Participate in Forum Discussions - Send and Receive Private Messages - Maintain Public Photo Albums - Access to Groups - User Profile in our Social Network - Increased Access to more Sub Forums - Reduced Online Advertisements Join our community today

[Class5]

Ok first off I have been having a hard time remembering my password lol.. My bad sorry guys!

I have talked with Jim Varshay and he told me about this thread, I have read about half of it and am still working on the rest. It sounds like so far there are a few discussions that are going on, I apologize in advance if I am kicking the dead horse in any of my message! Here are my thoughts..

1. Rule changes
I have never felt this is a good idea; it takes away from the class and allows everyone to reinterpret the class. This can lead to major changes to cars designed in the original rules, making those cars built before the rule change can make them obsolete. To stay competitive we always need to build things to the limits. If there are major changes to the rules it can result in scrapping cars and starting over.
Although I will say if someone comes out to race against me I would allow an exception that is in agreement with the race organizer to allow someone to run a eco tech, subaru, ect.. I am not close minded to changing some of the engine rules; I just think this would need to be looked at in more depth.
The beam cars are great. To go to a-arm its scrap the chassis and start over, the beam is more work but works fine and is strong; I am still running my original arms from when I built the car in 2004!

2. Engines
On my car we ran a 2600cc for 3 years and a 2900cc for two years. I had some stupid learning curves at the beginning with engines. Items that caused failures were from external issues, a bolt coming off the air cleaner extension that found its way in the cylinder.
For the most part I have lost two engines in a race. First was a cracked piston the day before, we rebuilt the engine on the side of the track the night before the race and had a bad cylinder wall. Did our best to make things work and ending up starting the race going 4 miles and lost the engine. All that was able to be salvaged was the heads. That was expensive! The other engine was at the dune buggy 400 we had 5 races on the engine 1400 race miles, + 400 testing. We knew the engine was tired and we had killed the rings in one of the cylinder after one lap in the race, this led to a normal rebuild and were back up and running the next weekend.
What I’m getting at I have had great luck with the type 4, I would go through the engine and transmission every 1000 race miles just to be safe. It’s a lot cheaper than having a catastrophic failure. My engines were under 500 to rebuild after each 1000 miles.
I feel that having the fuel injection helps save the engine, two rev limiters makes a huge difference. When we were rolling the coalition strong we had a type 4 engine package made up by one of the sponsors, I think it was 3k for a 2700cc with all the goodies, I see if we can pull it up again or get it updated. It may have been 4k but it was a great price.
I think of class one when Ron Brant was one of the first to a v8. Dealer crate engine 10k cheaper than the Porsche 6 cylinder. Runs on pump gas, lasts a full season, what a deal! Sounded great!. Now they are all running race gas, 20k+ engines, rebuilds after each race.. So if we think we are going to go to a different engine for fuel savings cost, it won’t happen. If we go to different engines because they can run 10,000 miles with no maintenance and have good hp and are 500 bucks it makes it more interesting. But I know if I get an ecotech for 500.00 I am going to rebuild it, up the compression, port polish, rework the valve train, Cam, etc... etc... etc.... This would be the same with any engine. I just don’t think I would go racing on any engine that is not prepped due to the cost of entry fee, and getting to the race etc. To me the engine expense is in all the goodies that keep them alive, better rods, lifters, valve springs and keepers, buttons for the pistons etc.. But once again if some people would like to run different engines I won’t complain! Engines don’t win the race. I heard Score is allowing the VW 4 cyl "new bug" engine? I like the Scat V4.. If we do go down the road of different engines, I fell that they would have to be limited on CC to keep things fair.

3. Racing
I have been out of the loop because I bought a home, got married and had a child. Once things stabilize I will be back out racing, but the car is prepped and ready to go!
The main reason I slowed down in racing is that in the cost, I had some good support and sponsors working things were looking really good, then had some falling outs and some broken promises that cost me quite a bit of money and loss of sponsors. I have had to take a few steps back to move forward again.
A lot of the posts on here seem to talk about cost of building and maintaining. The hardest thing is maintaining from racing! The build of the car is the cheap part! I have spent more in tires, tip ties, trailer tires, and gas, food etc getting to the races than anything else. If the cost of race gas is causing entries to be low in the class, I know things add up but a drum of race gas is my last concern.

So I guess in so many words I am open to looking at anything in the class that will help per-mote more entries and make things more affordable. We tried this with the coalition and we had the backing, but at the time the field diminished rapidly after a few races. This was embarrassing to be honest. Then to top it off to not have the main sponsor back out at the end of the year – ridiculously absurd!!
If I can’t race my car due to my expenses, I will commit to reworking the coalition and driving forward with things again if that’s what we would like to do. Matt Meed deserves credit due to keeping the website alive! We don’t need to go into details but there have been a lot of people that have spent their personal money to keep things going with the coalition just in case things pick back up! Let’s make it worth their while!
Learning from our mistakes, Meeting as a group is next to impossible, so the website will be the best for communication. Also I will set up a e mail for the coalition that we can start getting ideas on ways to move forward etc….etc…..
Its up to us to succeed, any support will help this happen, so think outside the box and lets all work as a team to enjoy our sport!
Temp e mail for while web site is being worked on
[email protected]

[bajabird]

This could cause a lot of problems for some teams that think they're above the law out there. I wonder how long until some enterprising young lad starts taking high resolution telephoto pictures for profit? Haahaa. In all seriousness, it'll never be what it used to be in the US.

Even Red SOLO cups are just about banned from use. SAD

There are other creative options.... the new ecotec oil can...... with easy pour spout!
The new RONCO Multi Pit Tool; only to be used behind the HOT PIT LINE........... Keeps your cheering team chilled until fried.

[pjc]

Sounds awesome. MORE always puts on a good race and the last SNORE race we ran in was very well orginized. Glad we found this out now. We were not planning on prepping for a night race. Looks like we better get busy on mounting and testing some new lights

Lights (many, many) are fine.. Just a re-aim after prep and good to go..

[wheezy]

Class 5 only = Wheewww That's a Relief V2

[pdailey]

Class 5 only = Wheewww That's a Relief V2

Only 178,000 more posts to go

[Matt Mead]

Ok first off I have been having a hard time remembering my password lol.. My bad sorry guys!

I have talked with Jim Varshay and he told me about this thread, I have read about half of it and am still working on the rest. It sounds like so far there are a few discussions that are going on, I apologize in advance if I am kicking the dead horse in any of my message! Here are my thoughts..

1. Rule changes
I have never felt this is a good idea; it takes away from the class and allows everyone to reinterpret the class. This can lead to major changes to cars designed in the original rules, making those cars built before the rule change can make them obsolete. To stay competitive we always need to build things to the limits. If there are major changes to the rules it can result in scrapping cars and starting over.
Although I will say if someone comes out to race against me I would allow an exception that is in agreement with the race organizer to allow someone to run a eco tech, subaru, ect.. I am not close minded to changing some of the engine rules; I just think this would need to be looked at in more depth.
The beam cars are great. To go to a-arm its scrap the chassis and start over, the beam is more work but works fine and is strong; I am still running my original arms from when I built the car in 2004!

2. Engines
On my car we ran a 2600cc for 3 years and a 2900cc for two years. I had some stupid learning curves at the beginning with engines. Items that caused failures were from external issues, a bolt coming off the air cleaner extension that found its way in the cylinder.
For the most part I have lost two engines in a race. First was a cracked piston the day before, we rebuilt the engine on the side of the track the night before the race and had a bad cylinder wall. Did our best to make things work and ending up starting the race going 4 miles and lost the engine. All that was able to be salvaged was the heads. That was expensive! The other engine was at the dune buggy 400 we had 5 races on the engine 1400 race miles, + 400 testing. We knew the engine was tired and we had killed the rings in one of the cylinder after one lap in the race, this led to a normal rebuild and were back up and running the next weekend.
What I’m getting at I have had great luck with the type 4, I would go through the engine and transmission every 1000 race miles just to be safe. It’s a lot cheaper than having a catastrophic failure. My engines were under 500 to rebuild after each 1000 miles.
I feel that having the fuel injection helps save the engine, two rev limiters makes a huge difference. When we were rolling the coalition strong we had a type 4 engine package made up by one of the sponsors, I think it was 3k for a 2700cc with all the goodies, I see if we can pull it up again or get it updated. It may have been 4k but it was a great price.
I think of class one when Ron Brant was one of the first to a v8. Dealer crate engine 10k cheaper than the Porsche 6 cylinder. Runs on pump gas, lasts a full season, what a deal! Sounded great!. Now they are all running race gas, 20k+ engines, rebuilds after each race.. So if we think we are going to go to a different engine for fuel savings cost, it won’t happen. If we go to different engines because they can run 10,000 miles with no maintenance and have good hp and are 500 bucks it makes it more interesting. But I know if I get an ecotech for 500.00 I am going to rebuild it, up the compression, port polish, rework the valve train, Cam, etc... etc... etc.... This would be the same with any engine. I just don’t think I would go racing on any engine that is not prepped due to the cost of entry fee, and getting to the race etc. To me the engine expense is in all the goodies that keep them alive, better rods, lifters, valve springs and keepers, buttons for the pistons etc.. But once again if some people would like to run different engines I won’t complain! Engines don’t win the race. I heard Score is allowing the VW 4 cyl "new bug" engine? I like the Scat V4.. If we do go down the road of different engines, I fell that they would have to be limited on CC to keep things fair.

3. Racing
I have been out of the loop because I bought a home, got married and had a child. Once things stabilize I will be back out racing, but the car is prepped and ready to go!
The main reason I slowed down in racing is that in the cost, I had some good support and sponsors working things were looking really good, then had some falling outs and some broken promises that cost me quite a bit of money and loss of sponsors. I have had to take a few steps back to move forward again.
A lot of the posts on here seem to talk about cost of building and maintaining. The hardest thing is maintaining from racing! The build of the car is the cheap part! I have spent more in tires, tip ties, trailer tires, and gas, food etc getting to the races than anything else. If the cost of race gas is causing entries to be low in the class, I know things add up but a drum of race gas is my last concern.

So I guess in so many words I am open to looking at anything in the class that will help per-mote more entries and make things more affordable. We tried this with the coalition and we had the backing, but at the time the field diminished rapidly after a few races. This was embarrassing to be honest. Then to top it off to not have the main sponsor back out at the end of the year – ridiculously absurd!!
If I can’t race my car due to my expenses, I will commit to reworking the coalition and driving forward with things again if that’s what we would like to do. Matt Meed deserves credit due to keeping the website alive! We don’t need to go into details but there have been a lot of people that have spent their personal money to keep things going with the coalition just in case things pick back up! Let’s make it worth their while!
Learning from our mistakes, Meeting as a group is next to impossible, so the website will be the best for communication. Also I will set up a e mail for the coalition that we can start getting ideas on ways to move forward etc….etc…..
Its up to us to succeed, any support will help this happen, so think outside the box and lets all work as a team to enjoy our sport!
Temp e mail for while web site is being worked on
[email protected]

He's alive! Thanks for the phone call man, good to see you back in the game!

[wheezy]

With this crowd, it's totally doable.

[bajabird]

Why don't we keep it on RDC?

http://www.race-dezert.com/forum/group.php?groupid=76


There are lots of other 5 guys that I've talked to that aren't online often.... you know them, they are the ones that race most races, keep their type 4's running along with their albins and preps after each race....

Keeping it simple.... one place for everyone to meet up online, when not at the CA, NV, TX or Baja races.

[Wendell #527]

The big HID's make a lot of sense for a big unlimited Class 1 car. The ONE time I ran them on the 5 car with the type 1 I felt a noticeable difference in top end speed. It was like having a sail on top of the car. I picked up a small LED bar to replace to the 3 smaller HID's I had down low for daytime running / dust light. I'm considering picking up a 40" for main lights to reduce load on the alt/electrical system and the obvious reasons of weight and wind resistance. Pretty sure I can't out drive the output from that combo either.

Any other 5 guys make the switch?

I made the switch for one race. Last year's MORE Freedom 250. I had a 48" Ridgid bar on top with two fuegos on the bottom. I sold the light bar after that race. Now I'm back to all HIDs--two 75 watters on top or 70 or whatever they are and two 35 watters on the front. I tried the LEDs for the same reasons, wind resistance and lower amps for the alternator. They worked great unless I wanted to go fast. I sold them on RDC classifieds...