Jps1145's Little Baja - Build Thread

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Good to hear you are OK. What about the car???? It looked pretty good before....

[jps1145]

Nope, no one hurt. The roof of the car is a little worse for the wear, but I think I can knock most of it back out.
My GPS is the only casualty of the roll over.
I do have some front end parts to replace though. Looks like a new left spindle and left lower trailing arm are in order. Oh, and one more new tire. I'm really getting my money's worth from Discount Tire's road hazard...
I'm not 100% pleased with the new suspension though... I got everything pretty well dialed in, but the shocks faded after the first lap. That, or the track got REALLY rough, or a combination. I'll rebuild them and use some better oil and see what happens.
let's see if this works:
http://youtu.be/K5_KwtAma9E

[Ol'fogasaurus]

That's and Aw $#it type of roll.
any idea of what caused the sudden veering/pulling to the left side of the road?

What shocks are you using also and the front travel.

Just curious.

[jps1145]

That's and Aw $#it type of roll.
any idea of what caused the sudden veering/pulling to the left side of the road?

What shocks are you using also and the front travel.

Just curious.

Other then the driver just running out of talent?
I lost the front right brake line earlier in the race so I only had front brakes on the left. When I would brake, it would veer left hard. Hard enough here to get me sideways.
I have FOA 2" x 10" coilovers in front (175 over 300 springs). 3" x 14" 5 tube bypass' in the rear with long 27mm racing torsion bars.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

"I lost the front right brake line earlier in the race so I only had front brakes on the left. When I would brake, it would veer left hard. Hard enough here to get me sideways."

Ahhh! I missed that on the first read through . That 'll do it every time. Kind of caught between the devil and a hard spot very quickly isn't it.

[TimS]

Your car sure looks great, even when it's on it's top. Glad to see you out enjoying it, I hope the damage is easily fixable. Are you going to hammer it out or replace the top?

Good info about the belts. I have a spare lap belt that was recertified last year, I may do some testing on it to see if it gets stuck.

[Steve Arndt]

Factory type push button to release belts are also hard to open with your body weight on them (by design somewhat). I rolled my baja with four people inside. Doh.
Good luck with the re build / repairs.

[CentralWAbaja]

Here is what you do to try and practice getting out of the belts upside down.

Mount a seat to a small steel frame, then mount your belts to that accordingly..... Still with me?

Then chain that frame to the cross bar of the kids swingset, red neck A-frame engine hoist, big ass tree branch...you get the idea?

Set the frame and seat in the bed of the pick up truck and strap in with your head and neck restraint on and a pumper hose hanging off your helmet...yeah?

Have your buddy hold your beer while he drives the truck out from under you.

[TimS]

Have your buddy hold your beer while he drives the truck out from under you.

I wish you lived closer... I have some spare belts, some spare tubing, a neck restraint, and a pickup truck.

[bajaherbie]

Have your buddy hold your beer while he drives the truck out from under you.

I wish you lived closer... I have some spare belts, some spare tubing, a neck restraint, and a pickup truck.

be sure and post pics. we like pics around here.

[bajaherbie]

make that a video. don't forget the gopro mounted on the helmet.

[TexasBaja]

Here is what you do to try and practice getting out of the belts upside down.

Mount a seat to a small steel frame, then mount your belts to that accordingly..... Still with me?

Then chain that frame to the cross bar of the kids swingset, red neck A-frame engine hoist, big ass tree branch...you get the idea?

Set the frame and seat in the bed of the pick up truck and strap in with your head and neck restraint on and a pumper hose hanging off your helmet...yeah?

Have your buddy hold your beer while he drives the truck out from under you.

HAHAHA!!!!

[Big Dave]

Putting this train back on the tracks...

It sounds like a broken brake line resulted in the DNF.
At the Mint this year, several vehicles had brake line problems. That got me to thinking, why don't people either carry extra brake lines (hard and flexible) or just run redundant hard brake lines, so one could basically switch the fittings around and fix it up right. I know you'd have to bleed the system, but in a two seat race car, that isn't an issue.
Another option occurred to me, it seems like plumbing the whole system with flex lines, would allow you to just carry a couple spares, and they could be swapped in quite quickly.

For example, my car has DOT braided lines at all 4 corners. I also carry an extra braided line (cheaper non DOT legal) that could replace any of those lines.

[rickosuave1987]

I think carrying spare brake lines is a good idea. We plan on it. But just the flex lines. All the hard lines are above the skid plates, and should be well protected from rocks. Just the flex lines on the arms will be exposed.

Where did your brake line catch John? Close to the caliper or somewhere else?

[jps1145]

I have a long flex line from the center of the car along each tie rod to each caliper. They are roughly 42" long each (probably about 6" too long). I broke the right front one right at the crimped fitting and hose intersection. I'm adding it to the collection of small parts that ended my race days... I have a few of them.
It could have caught on a rut, or was over extended somehow.
I have a straight -3 AN fitting going into the caliper so the line sticks straight out of the caliper then routes up to the tie rod. There is a small amount of line that is a little exposed and vulnerable to damage.
I was actually thinking of re-doing this and running a hard line the length of each tie rod and short flex lines at each end and carrying a couple of spares along with a small bottle of fluid. That would have saved the day for me in this case.
The broken line was absolutely the cause of my many misfortunes and ultimately the DNF. Well, and some driver error mixed in...