This coming weekend is the Ultra 4/KOH qualifier in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Figure we show a bit of what goes on behind the scenes.
We pulled the front dif cover to check the ring and pinion, we have gone through 3 or 4 D60 gearsets in the last 2? years. They get looked at often.
This set was new along with the axle housing before KOH this year so we're glad they are still good
Nothing wrong there so a good washing and put the dif cover back on, then onto the hubs.
Pulled the drive slugs to check the wheel bearings, Hubs had no play in them, and rotated nicely so they were not torn totally apart,decided to put this nice new ORD product on while we were there.
New ORD labeled drive slugs and cover plates.
Working towards the rear we checked fluids in everything, change fluid in the transmission since it spent some time above 260 degrees at KOH. Fluid looked good, in fact I might run it in my Alison in my Dmax, Amsoil tech says we're good, we say we're good so this transmission gets the nod, 203 and 205 had oil in them with no leaks so their good.
On to the rear axle, pulled the drive shaft so we could install the lighter wall shaft for desert stuff, found the pinion had some weird rotational bind, pulled cover as we had intended and found some metal chunks and seemingly metal infused oil. Awesome we get to do a rear axle rebearing.
Start taking things apart can't find where the metal chunks were from, wheel bearings on the drivers side are a bit loose so we think that was the culprit but still can't find a "bad" bearing. Decided that since the wheel bearings were from 2003 when we put the thing together originally that we should just do full rebuild. As I'm cleaning parts Stephen finds that we have a few cracked teeth on the Pinion. This is now the most awesome thing ever, totally up planned 14bolt rebuild.
Picture of the torn down 14 bolt.
Then we decided that the ARB had something up with it so we are going to run a welded rear end for this race.
Picture of it getting welded
Picture of the final product
This should be plenty stout for one race.
Since we had welder out we needed to fix a few cracks in the chassis around the motor mounts. The car took a pretty nasty tumble/tumbles about a year ago and we think have finally found all of the cracks, we put a new roof on last fall, fixed both motor mounts and some misc. cracks in the belly structure before KOH and now these few minor cracks we hope that it's over.
When we started setting up the rear axle we finally found that a rock strike had pushed the bottom of the 14b up high enough that there was contact between the ring gear and housing bottom.
Little grinder work and it sounds like we're close to ready to go.
Expecting a new steering cylinder from PSC tomorrow and gear break in will start. We have found that for normal use gear break in isn't really needed. For racing it's extremely important so we go through great lengths to get them broken in before a race. Hope to get a hundred miles on it in the next few days.
This is an overall picture of how it was sitting mid day Saturday. Not many Pictures on Sunday but it's basically ready for tires and some gear lubes now.
We take the whole car apart every winter then do a good mid season once over so that for times like this we just have to look things over, check torques on every nut and bolt and go through fluids.
Figure we show a bit of what goes on behind the scenes.
We pulled the front dif cover to check the ring and pinion, we have gone through 3 or 4 D60 gearsets in the last 2? years. They get looked at often.
This set was new along with the axle housing before KOH this year so we're glad they are still good
Nothing wrong there so a good washing and put the dif cover back on, then onto the hubs.
Pulled the drive slugs to check the wheel bearings, Hubs had no play in them, and rotated nicely so they were not torn totally apart,decided to put this nice new ORD product on while we were there.
New ORD labeled drive slugs and cover plates.
Working towards the rear we checked fluids in everything, change fluid in the transmission since it spent some time above 260 degrees at KOH. Fluid looked good, in fact I might run it in my Alison in my Dmax, Amsoil tech says we're good, we say we're good so this transmission gets the nod, 203 and 205 had oil in them with no leaks so their good.
On to the rear axle, pulled the drive shaft so we could install the lighter wall shaft for desert stuff, found the pinion had some weird rotational bind, pulled cover as we had intended and found some metal chunks and seemingly metal infused oil. Awesome we get to do a rear axle rebearing.
Start taking things apart can't find where the metal chunks were from, wheel bearings on the drivers side are a bit loose so we think that was the culprit but still can't find a "bad" bearing. Decided that since the wheel bearings were from 2003 when we put the thing together originally that we should just do full rebuild. As I'm cleaning parts Stephen finds that we have a few cracked teeth on the Pinion. This is now the most awesome thing ever, totally up planned 14bolt rebuild.
Picture of the torn down 14 bolt.
Then we decided that the ARB had something up with it so we are going to run a welded rear end for this race.
Picture of it getting welded
Picture of the final product
This should be plenty stout for one race.
Since we had welder out we needed to fix a few cracks in the chassis around the motor mounts. The car took a pretty nasty tumble/tumbles about a year ago and we think have finally found all of the cracks, we put a new roof on last fall, fixed both motor mounts and some misc. cracks in the belly structure before KOH and now these few minor cracks we hope that it's over.
When we started setting up the rear axle we finally found that a rock strike had pushed the bottom of the 14b up high enough that there was contact between the ring gear and housing bottom.
Little grinder work and it sounds like we're close to ready to go.Expecting a new steering cylinder from PSC tomorrow and gear break in will start. We have found that for normal use gear break in isn't really needed. For racing it's extremely important so we go through great lengths to get them broken in before a race. Hope to get a hundred miles on it in the next few days.
This is an overall picture of how it was sitting mid day Saturday. Not many Pictures on Sunday but it's basically ready for tires and some gear lubes now.
We take the whole car apart every winter then do a good mid season once over so that for times like this we just have to look things over, check torques on every nut and bolt and go through fluids.
