So, as some of ya'll know, I made the 35hr drive from Fort McMurray in Canukistan to co-drive for a 4x4 shop owner/operator based out of Edmonton, AB in the stock modified class at KOH this year.
I originally offered just to wire the 5.3L V8 up for Barry (Bear) and wound up wiring the entire truck up front start to finish
Took me nearly 3 months to finish it working on it every weekend. Literally put all my time off work into driving the 300 miles south, wiring all weekend, then driving 300 miles north again for work. Fortunately, I was single for 95% of that time, and had most of it finished before I started getting a bit distracted on the weekends 
Anyways, literally finished wiring it the day before it was loaded up and hauled down south to the Johnson Valley. I had to go back to work for a couple of days before I chased everyone down.
On my way down, I stopped in Great Falls and was treated to breakfast and a hot shower (thanks Cole!) after a freezing cold night in a camper without working heat. From Great Falls I made the rest of the trip down to Idaho Falls where I picked up Eric and his truggy Horton. From his place I drove down to Ogden, UT where we met up with Keith for supper and spent the night.
The next day we made for Las Vegas where we spent the night and waited for the rest of the guys to catch up with us after testing and tuning in Boise. They were supposed to be a few hours behind us, but wound up being very very late becuase of tire problems on one of the trailers.
After we left Vegas to make the rest of the trip, one of the toy haulers broke a leaf spring near Barstow. We managed to find a spring at a tiny little shop way out in the boonies and fixed it in their gravel parking lot. Finally made it out to Hammertown late that night. Other than Dave Cole and his friends / family, we were the first to arrive on the lake bed.
The next day we got camp all set up and took the truck out on it's first run. We were super impressed with how well it drove and things seemed pretty good. That was the only run that we didn't break something on
Joe from Bilstien was one of the first vendors to show up, and he came right over and really took us under his wing as we went out shock tuning. We thought that the thing drove well before we tuned the shocks, it was nothing short of incredible afterwards! While shock tuning, Joe told us to get into it a little bit more on the big whoops and suffered our first major failure of the week. The limit straps were a bit too long up front and allowed the front driveshaft to drop enough that it bound and locked up. The CV grenaded at 50mph and destroyed all kinds of stuff under the car... The carnage list included the transmission housing & oil pan, winch battery cables, vent lines and of course the driveshaft itself. We located a new transmission housing and got everything repaired over the next day or two, as well as got the front limit straps shortened to prevent a future failure. We also had the driveline shop clearance the CVs a bit to give that extra bit of angle. We worked on the car till 3 or 4am to get it going for the next day
After finally getting the car going again, we went out for some pre-running and very quickly found that the transmission was not working properly. We pulled it again and found that the intermediate band was burnt up and that the valve body was partially engaging two bands at the same time causing it to drag like crazy and big time over heat. Again, transmission came out and a brand new Art Karr went in. Of course, the new transmission had the wrong output shaft, so we had to tear it down and swap in the old stock shaft from the bad transmission. We were up till 3 am getting everything installed, again.
By the time we got it rolling again and ready for tech, we had not spent more than 30 or 40 miles out in the desert shock tuning and pre-running combined. 30 miles of that was shock tuning too. Tech went well, some goofy electrician hooked the alternator charge wire up to the wrong side of the kill switch, and we didn't have the rear marker lights on with the ignition so that had to be changed too. I also installed a backup camera becuase you couldn't see a bloody thing out of the inside of the car. We took the car out again and got the shocks / bypasses totally tuned up that afternoon.
When we ran the every man challenge, we made it approx 3 miles when we hit a bush during a last minute lane change and felt a funny vibration. We figured we had blown a tire and pulled over. When I got out to change it, I saw the front wheel had some serious camber issues, and quickly discovered that we had completely broke the bottom half of the inner C off the F9 Currie front diff
That was a race ending failure for us, unfortunately...
We welded the C back together to get the truck back to camp, and were figuring out how we could brace it to make it last when John Currie stopped by our pit and told us to take the diff to his shop in Anaheim to have his boys repair it with a new inner C. We had all kinds of bracketry welded to it, so it wasn't an easy thing to do. Currie replaced the inner C and welded all our brackets on, but didn't do any pre-heating or post heat treatments and almost all their welds cracked and split afterwards. We spent most of the night getting it welded up properly. Of course, we also had to replace the knuckle, ball joints and the heim on the steering arm as side damage to the C failing.
After getting the truck back together, we got Wayne Hartwig out to help us do some tuning on the PCM and went to check out the LCQ short course up Chocolate Thunder. We decided that we had to winch up the gate keeper and would probably be alright after that. When we ran LCQ, I got Bear winched up the first rock (shoulda tried the strap the night before, the one I brought was way too bloody big!) and as he was making it way up I heard a "tink" out of the rear end and one wheel stopped turning. Then another "tink" and he lost the other wheel. That ended our LCQ attempt in failure, and we spent 15 minutes trying to get our car off the course so the next guy could go.
Once we got it home, we discovered that we had broken the rear locker's side gears due to our axle shafts being too short and walking around due to missing retainer collars. Currie stepped up with new axle shafts, but unfortunately they messed up the machining on them and we could only use one. The other we jerry rigged up to make it work using two drive slugs and bolts / washers etc to keep it where it belonged
Of course, we thought we were out for good at that point until the sudden announcement that everyone who tried for LCQ was in. There was much rejoycing in the camp then a sudden realizeation that the rear axle had to be fixed, as well as new injectors for the 5.3L as it was falling flat on it's face at 4200 rpm when the injectors ran outta steam. We installed new injectors, got the rear axle patched together and had Wayne work his magic getting the car tuned up properly. We then realized that we had to pay the entry fee and that we were all pretty much out of cash. Wayne again stepped up to the plate and covered our entire entry fee
So the race was on! The first 30 miles went great! The co-driver for the Gen right buggy gave me his GPS info and totally gave us a good shot at making it out there. Our first trouble happened when bear missed a turn and went to back up. His shifter didn't work. Got underneith and discovered the shift cable had been melted by the exhaust. We installed a new Russell shifter on the truck, aka I got out and crawled under to shift it manually each and every time Since we were stuck in first gear, we were big time slowed down. After stopping at pit 1, we lost our rear brakes on the way down a hill. Then the fronts. Then we broke our sector shaft while running on Elvis and only had the hydraulic steering ram left. We drove the last 18 miles like that to make pit 2A where we finally had to call it and called our DNF in.
All in all, it was a really crazy experience! We broke a ton of stuff on the carI met a whole bunch of CK5ers too, which was really cool! I will definitely be back next year, but I am going to be coming down with my Tahoe and will just be spectating / volunteering Much less work involved, and a lot more wheeling too 
We earned a reptuation as a team that simply doesn't give up, regardless of the carnage, let downs or failures and have decided to re-name 4502 from "The Rental" to "Relentless". We had all kinds of people over helping us out, and it was simply awesome! I got to meet all the Gen Right guys, Joe from Bilstien, Wayne Hartwig, and a whole bunch of fans who stopped in the pits to say hello! Many thanks to the fellas from Texas who brought their service trucks (lemon and lime baby!) and totally stepped up to help us when their car didn't make the race. A very special thanks to Kota4by for bring us a TH400 when we broke our transmission the first time! That was really cool of you to do that for us!
We will be back next year for sure!
I originally offered just to wire the 5.3L V8 up for Barry (Bear) and wound up wiring the entire truck up front start to finish
Took me nearly 3 months to finish it working on it every weekend. Literally put all my time off work into driving the 300 miles south, wiring all weekend, then driving 300 miles north again for work. Fortunately, I was single for 95% of that time, and had most of it finished before I started getting a bit distracted on the weekends Anyways, literally finished wiring it the day before it was loaded up and hauled down south to the Johnson Valley. I had to go back to work for a couple of days before I chased everyone down.
On my way down, I stopped in Great Falls and was treated to breakfast and a hot shower (thanks Cole!) after a freezing cold night in a camper without working heat. From Great Falls I made the rest of the trip down to Idaho Falls where I picked up Eric and his truggy Horton. From his place I drove down to Ogden, UT where we met up with Keith for supper and spent the night.
The next day we made for Las Vegas where we spent the night and waited for the rest of the guys to catch up with us after testing and tuning in Boise. They were supposed to be a few hours behind us, but wound up being very very late becuase of tire problems on one of the trailers.
After we left Vegas to make the rest of the trip, one of the toy haulers broke a leaf spring near Barstow. We managed to find a spring at a tiny little shop way out in the boonies and fixed it in their gravel parking lot. Finally made it out to Hammertown late that night. Other than Dave Cole and his friends / family, we were the first to arrive on the lake bed.
The next day we got camp all set up and took the truck out on it's first run. We were super impressed with how well it drove and things seemed pretty good. That was the only run that we didn't break something on
Joe from Bilstien was one of the first vendors to show up, and he came right over and really took us under his wing as we went out shock tuning. We thought that the thing drove well before we tuned the shocks, it was nothing short of incredible afterwards! While shock tuning, Joe told us to get into it a little bit more on the big whoops and suffered our first major failure of the week. The limit straps were a bit too long up front and allowed the front driveshaft to drop enough that it bound and locked up. The CV grenaded at 50mph and destroyed all kinds of stuff under the car... The carnage list included the transmission housing & oil pan, winch battery cables, vent lines and of course the driveshaft itself. We located a new transmission housing and got everything repaired over the next day or two, as well as got the front limit straps shortened to prevent a future failure. We also had the driveline shop clearance the CVs a bit to give that extra bit of angle. We worked on the car till 3 or 4am to get it going for the next day
After finally getting the car going again, we went out for some pre-running and very quickly found that the transmission was not working properly. We pulled it again and found that the intermediate band was burnt up and that the valve body was partially engaging two bands at the same time causing it to drag like crazy and big time over heat. Again, transmission came out and a brand new Art Karr went in. Of course, the new transmission had the wrong output shaft, so we had to tear it down and swap in the old stock shaft from the bad transmission. We were up till 3 am getting everything installed, again.
By the time we got it rolling again and ready for tech, we had not spent more than 30 or 40 miles out in the desert shock tuning and pre-running combined. 30 miles of that was shock tuning too. Tech went well, some goofy electrician hooked the alternator charge wire up to the wrong side of the kill switch, and we didn't have the rear marker lights on with the ignition so that had to be changed too. I also installed a backup camera becuase you couldn't see a bloody thing out of the inside of the car. We took the car out again and got the shocks / bypasses totally tuned up that afternoon.
When we ran the every man challenge, we made it approx 3 miles when we hit a bush during a last minute lane change and felt a funny vibration. We figured we had blown a tire and pulled over. When I got out to change it, I saw the front wheel had some serious camber issues, and quickly discovered that we had completely broke the bottom half of the inner C off the F9 Currie front diff
That was a race ending failure for us, unfortunately...We welded the C back together to get the truck back to camp, and were figuring out how we could brace it to make it last when John Currie stopped by our pit and told us to take the diff to his shop in Anaheim to have his boys repair it with a new inner C. We had all kinds of bracketry welded to it, so it wasn't an easy thing to do. Currie replaced the inner C and welded all our brackets on, but didn't do any pre-heating or post heat treatments and almost all their welds cracked and split afterwards. We spent most of the night getting it welded up properly. Of course, we also had to replace the knuckle, ball joints and the heim on the steering arm as side damage to the C failing.
After getting the truck back together, we got Wayne Hartwig out to help us do some tuning on the PCM and went to check out the LCQ short course up Chocolate Thunder. We decided that we had to winch up the gate keeper and would probably be alright after that. When we ran LCQ, I got Bear winched up the first rock (shoulda tried the strap the night before, the one I brought was way too bloody big!) and as he was making it way up I heard a "tink" out of the rear end and one wheel stopped turning. Then another "tink" and he lost the other wheel. That ended our LCQ attempt in failure, and we spent 15 minutes trying to get our car off the course so the next guy could go.
Once we got it home, we discovered that we had broken the rear locker's side gears due to our axle shafts being too short and walking around due to missing retainer collars. Currie stepped up with new axle shafts, but unfortunately they messed up the machining on them and we could only use one. The other we jerry rigged up to make it work using two drive slugs and bolts / washers etc to keep it where it belonged
Of course, we thought we were out for good at that point until the sudden announcement that everyone who tried for LCQ was in. There was much rejoycing in the camp then a sudden realizeation that the rear axle had to be fixed, as well as new injectors for the 5.3L as it was falling flat on it's face at 4200 rpm when the injectors ran outta steam. We installed new injectors, got the rear axle patched together and had Wayne work his magic getting the car tuned up properly. We then realized that we had to pay the entry fee and that we were all pretty much out of cash. Wayne again stepped up to the plate and covered our entire entry fee
So the race was on! The first 30 miles went great! The co-driver for the Gen right buggy gave me his GPS info
and totally gave us a good shot at making it out there. Our first trouble happened when bear missed a turn and went to back up. His shifter didn't work. Got underneith and discovered the shift cable had been melted by the exhaust. We installed a new Russell shifter on the truck, aka I got out and crawled under to shift it manually each and every time Since we were stuck in first gear, we were big time slowed down. After stopping at pit 1, we lost our rear brakes on the way down a hill. Then the fronts. Then we broke our sector shaft while running on Elvis and only had the hydraulic steering ram left. We drove the last 18 miles like that to make pit 2A where we finally had to call it and called our DNF in.All in all, it was a really crazy experience! We broke a ton of stuff on the car
I met a whole bunch of CK5ers too, which was really cool! I will definitely be back next year, but I am going to be coming down with my Tahoe and will just be spectating / volunteering Much less work involved, and a lot more wheeling too We earned a reptuation as a team that simply doesn't give up, regardless of the carnage, let downs or failures and have decided to re-name 4502 from "The Rental" to "Relentless". We had all kinds of people over helping us out, and it was simply awesome! I got to meet all the Gen Right guys, Joe from Bilstien, Wayne Hartwig, and a whole bunch of fans who stopped in the pits to say hello! Many thanks to the fellas from Texas who brought their service trucks (lemon and lime baby!) and totally stepped up to help us when their car didn't make the race. A very special thanks to Kota4by for bring us a TH400 when we broke our transmission the first time! That was really cool of you to do that for us!
We will be back next year for sure!
