What's new
By:
Filters
  • Check out our new Group Buy Program! We're kicking it off with Baja Designs! $10 Flat rate shipping no matter how much you order!

Future of KOH 4400 chassis/car development?

Jeffh555 said:
At one point Scherer had a separate motor for short course and KOH. Back when they ran at Prairie City and Reno, he’d run the hot motor in short course, and a more conservative lower power motor at KOH. I would venture to guess those days are gone, and he wants all the power he can get at KOH.
Click to expand...
I’d forgotten about that part of the “old car”.
 
SLOWPOKE693 said:
I'm kind of shocked at how high the lower "ball joint" is on that upright. I was thinking there was going to be more of a spread than that. Intresting.
Click to expand...

Considering those are 42s, that's roughly 18"? Of separation, maybe a little less, but still a lot.

Most desert stuff I've seen has the lower pivot in the center of the hub, portals allow that to happen even with the CV trying to get in the way.
 
Great notes on how Scherer used to do it, and honestly makes sense. Horsepower gets you a lot on some short courses like Prairie City and Reno. Damn I wish Reno was still around, great venue. Even if he transitioned back away from that, I could see it making a revival if the sponsor dollars for pole position increase. Who knows though.


SLOWPOKE693 said:
I'm kind of shocked at how high the lower "ball joint" is on that upright. I was thinking there was going to be more of a spread than that. Intresting.
Click to expand...

Honestly with it being a portal, that LCA is right in the ballpark of the hub centerline. Which brings a lot of the "thrust" anti squat/anti dive geometry (but not "torque" geometry due to 4wd) in line with the experience of 2wd trucks over the generations
 
With the use of high stall converters to minimize the "Motor stopping" feedback to the motors, they have become much more reliable. At $50k+ a pop and countless hours of tuning and talking to other parts on the car (shocks, etc) I think it is getting more difficult to change one out like we did in the driveway last afternoon. For years, and mentioned above, it is about power to weight. Rigs should be stripped of any excess weight not needed during a qualifying run.The stance is generally lowered. A pre-run check should tell what the highest speed could be obtained and then all gearing changed to reflect that. Softer pads are installed. Sometimes those will only last the few qualifying miles. (Bill B__________) Teams now have 2 days to change the rigs back to KOH trim, and tuning reconfigured for a more controllable throttle. They really are/should be a different beast. Edit: If you watch Robbies in-car video in the UFO, listen to his Race throttle control. Exceptional. Same with Jason.

A check with a de-liar (tape) during contingency might find J below 90" ....Depending on wheels and tires. Tire size and backspace. J has a thing about minute details, but he has realistically stopped with Titanium bolts...and nuts. As far as I know........? Actually, I don't think we saw the weight of UHMW this year either. But only Keith knows the combination of the bottom rails to absorb the hits. Seats are lightest weight and designed to absorb the abuse to the body. in all directions. I would not be surprised that the onboard electronics can sense and log the forces. A TT truck, recently outfitted, saw 9G's in chassis vertical crushing. KOH hits could be greater.....

Good info being captured in one thread. Cheers.
 
AgitatedPancake said:
What I do think we're nearing (~5 years), is a pretty interesting inflection point on affordability of IFS. Like any technology it first has to be done painfully and brutally expensive, but everything about the current way it's done is ripe for advancement and simplification. Now I don't think it's going to reach some tipping point of becoming the majority over solid axles, but I think it's going to find its way into more "low budget" race cars, along with portals
Click to expand...
IFS will not become affordable until there becomes one or two designs that people use. So long as every part is basically custom per car it can never be affordable.
 
ridered3 said:
Monkey with a Knife (Bailey Coles rental for 4400) and NorthShore Racing both run a form of Live Valve shocks on their solid axle cars.
Click to expand...

That's Brave Motorsports old chassis. I believe when he sold it they added a full Motec system to it. Not sure if thats what they stuck with though.
 
arse_sidewards said:
IFS will not become affordable until there becomes one or two designs that people use. So long as every part is basically custom per car it can never be affordable.
Click to expand...
What is affordable and how many IFS kits does that amount to?

Since there are/were only 100 rigs in 4400, the max sellible would be probably 100. Thee is nothing, that I am aware of that can be bought at a wrecker or a parts store. Maybe the diff yoke? And now you have the option of portals. Bill Baird didn't sell even one at $40k several years ago. I thought that was a good number considering it included the labor in bulkheads and just a basic 9" center diff. I have not been following prices of parts lately, but the build options are all purpose built parts with a market of less than 100. I think about that also with transfer cases. In the scheme of selling AA Race Cases, the market might be 100/year. Probably a minor fraction of a standard case and would probably satisfy 60 of the 100 4400 rigs out there. It is a no brainer to let SCS have the smaller one-off market and develop other volume products for the "masses" that don't require special customer service time.

In addition to the IFS, thee is steering costs. Racks, TT pumps, filters, coolers, valves, etc. Right thee is over $8k.

I think IFS is just one of those "Bite the bullet purchases" in the name of "Lets go Race'in." Your choice of build. And in most cases the IFS or newer SA fronts will allow you to go faster than you can handle. I know that is the case here, and 5 year old tech is fast enough. I just don't like white knuckles....... Which is where 4400 was before engineered 4 bars and IFS.
 
Isdtbower said:
Since there are/were only 100 rigs in 4400, the max sellible would be probably 100. Thee is nothing, that I am aware of that can be bought at a wrecker or a parts store. Maybe the diff yoke? And now you have the option of portals. Bill Baird didn't sell even one at $40k several years ago. I thought that was a good number considering it included the labor in bulkheads and just a basic 9" center diff.
Click to expand...
And that's the problem. 100 units isn't enough to justify the expense of hammering out the details. Whatever someone comes up with also has to serve the high end non-racing customers.

I think what's gonna happen is someone is gonna come up with a family of IFS stuff that uses a mix of factory and aftermarket parts and is on the same level of cost and complexity of install all the desert TTB kits places like Solo and Autofab sell and I think from there it will filter into racing as a replacement for many solid axle builds.

Not that long ago pretty much every tube chassis car was custom. Now there are builders cranking them or subsets of them out. I think we'll eventually see that with IFS.
 
arse_sidewards said:
And that's the problem. 100 units isn't enough to justify the expense of hammering out the details. Whatever someone comes up with also has to serve the high end non-racing customers.

I think what's gonna happen is someone is gonna come up with a family of IFS stuff that uses a mix of factory and aftermarket parts and is on the same level of cost and complexity of install all the desert TTB kits places like Solo and Autofab sell and I think from there it will filter into racing as a replacement for many solid axle builds.

Not that long ago pretty much every tube chassis car was custom. Now there are builders cranking them or subsets of them out. I think we'll eventually see that with IFS.
Click to expand...
None of that stuff matters. I can design, cut, and weld together my own IFS system. I can make the bulkhead, A-arms, upright and make my own swing set steering system. I might even be able to spline my own shafts. What I can't do though, is make my own CV joints, and I can't find any in a junkyard that even have a chance of holding up.

If you want to lower the cost of IFS, you have to lower the cost of good CV joints. Currently it seems like RCV has a monopoly on the offroad CV market. It would be nice to see more serious players in the offroad CV market. This is one spot that the UTV development and market might actually help.
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
None of that stuff matters. I can design, cut, and weld together my own IFS system. I can make the bulkhead, A-arms, upright and make my own swing set steering system. I might even be able to spline my own shafts. What I can't do though, is make my own CV joints, and I can't find any in a junkyard that even have a chance of holding up.

If you want to lower the cost of IFS, you have to lower the cost of good CV joints. Currently it seems like RCV has a monopoly on the offroad CV market. It would be nice to see more serious players in the offroad CV market. This is one spot that the UTV development and market might actually help.
Click to expand...

RCV has a monopoly on the UTV side as well. There are a few companies making aftermarket axle assemblies for UTV's but 99% of those are complete shit and the stock CV's are far superior. Except in the case of Polaris, those fuckers break factory axles and joints like it's their sole purpose in life and even the shit aftermarket ones are an improvement. :laughing:

My Talon has HUGE CV's F&R. Like car sized, and they hold up well to abuse. They are so good that Jamie Campbell of Raceco-USA only replaces the shafts themselves with RCV 300M shafts and keeps the stock CV joints on all his Baja 1000 builds. I've yet to hear him say that they broke a stock Honda CV joint. :smokin:
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
If you want to lower the cost of IFS, you have to lower the cost of good CV joints. Currently it seems like RCV has a monopoly on the offroad CV market. It would be nice to see more serious players in the offroad CV market. This is one spot that the UTV development and market might actually help.
Click to expand...
There are other sources but they are super high end and much more expensive than RCV.
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
None of that stuff matters. I can design, cut, and weld together my own IFS system. I can make the bulkhead, A-arms, upright and make my own swing set steering system. I might even be able to spline my own shafts.
Click to expand...

There are very few of you though.

Ghetto Fab. said:
What I can't do though, is make my own CV joints, and I can't find any in a junkyard that even have a chance of holding up.

If you want to lower the cost of IFS, you have to lower the cost of good CV joints. Currently it seems like RCV has a monopoly on the offroad CV market. It would be nice to see more serious players in the offroad CV market. This is one spot that the UTV development and market might actually help.
Click to expand...

Nobody has made cheap good CVs because the market isn't there. There's not enough volume to be worth investing the kind of money one would need to invest to start undercutting RCV.

IFS needs to start going under offroad vehicles in more volume (which means moving down market) before the numbers are there to be worth building for.
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
If you want to lower the cost of IFS, you have to lower the cost of good CV joints.
Click to expand...

Bebop said:
There are other sources but they are super high end and much more expensive than RCV.
Click to expand...

Wisconsinite said:
Like what? Shooooot, I thought RCV has high end. Haha
Click to expand...

Bebop said:
ProAm, Fortin, Sadev come to mind
Click to expand...

It doesn't support your argument, you thought RCV was high, when actually they are the lower priced company out there, so they've brought you a lower priced big CV. It just shows that big CVs cost big $$$ and now it is more in perspective.

As far as RCV is concerned, we all think of RCV as just building performance parts for us 4x4 peeps. In reality, the RCV we know is a small division of Rockford Constant Velocity (Rockford Constant Velocity - Manufacturer of Driveline Parts, Front and Rear). They are a big corporation, they can buy the materials in bulk, have the machines and operators that can get the price down. They build a ton of CVs for the modern car market. And they are a division of the Aircraft Gear Corp. that builds parts for Apache helicopters and other aircraft like Boeing 767s.

If you want to talk about mass-producing CVs from an even bigger manufacturer, go talk to these guys: CV Joints

They build the big Lobro series CVs that many of the desert race companies buy and then add chromo internals for.
 
SLOWPOKE693 said:
My Talon has HUGE CV's F&R. Like car sized, and they hold up well to abuse. They are so good that Jamie Campbell of Raceco-USA only replaces the shafts themselves with RCV 300M shafts and keeps the stock CV joints on all his Baja 1000 builds. I've yet to hear him say that they broke a stock Honda CV joint. :smokin:
Click to expand...
I am like 90% confident that the Talon CVs are made by Neapco, and Honda R&D had a lot of input in the design.
 
AgitatedPancake said:
I actually don't know the rules on if you have to enter the same chassis for every event for championship points, but I do believe almost all of the field do run the same car for every race. I agree that race team budgets are getting to the point where they could field multiple cars throughout the season, but I genuinely don't know if it's happening at the moment.
Click to expand...

I dont think the same car has to be raced the whole season. The rules may have changed since mid America took over U4 but I know the rule used to be that either the car or driver of the team had to race to collect points. There have been instances where a driver couldnt make a race so they use a substitute driver to collect the points or drivers with broken cars put their number on a rental car. (Just like bailey did with Shirley's car last week).

As for the multi car teams, I know of two that have different cars for the season. Loren's first car with the Ford sponsorship a few years ago was one of horchels original single seat cars. He raced this car in all the U4 short course races the last few years. He then had the two identical IFS/SA portal cars built by triton for him and Vaughn. Not sure what the deal with it was though, I feel like it may have been for marketing reasons because he did not race it much. The last time I saw it, Martin Barkey raced it in a couple U4 race last year and may have bought it. Then not long after those cars he had the IFS/IRS 2 seat triton car built. So for the last 2 maybe 3 seasons he has had a single seat car for the short course races and a 2 seat for KOH.

Same thing with Paul, he has gone back and forth over the years but he has pretty much always had 2 cars throughout the season. One for short course sprints and another for KOH and desert races. He built the 2 seat IFS/IRS last year and before that it was the 2 seat that Changeorder has now.


SLOWPOKE693 said:
$10k? :lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao: I bet its more like $50k + engines for the top dogs in 4400
Click to expand...

Horschel's 900HP Danzio in his single seat and now the IFS/IRS is 80k+. And he has blown a couple of them up in the last year or two.

SLOWPOKE693 said:
$250k car sounds kinda cheap, even for a SA...
Click to expand...

I talked with a guy about 3-4 years ago that races and he got a price on a Miller car. 250k Turn key or 25K for tabbed and welded chassis. This was 3 years ago so I would imagine in todays money it is 300k+
 
arse_sidewards said:
There are very few of you though.



Nobody has made cheap good CVs because the market isn't there. There's not enough volume to be worth investing the kind of money one would need to invest to start undercutting RCV.

IFS needs to start going under offroad vehicles in more volume (which means moving down market) before the numbers are there to be worth building for.
Click to expand...
Any one can do it. Whether or not it works well is a completly different story though, but the more that experiment the more knowledge everyone gains.
Tech Tim said:
It doesn't support your argument, you thought RCV was high, when actually they are the lower priced company out there, so they've brought you a lower priced big CV. It just shows that big CVs cost big $$$ and now it is more in perspective.
Click to expand...
It does support it though. I'm well aware of RCVs position in the market and where they come from, and even at their price the costs are too high for most to want to deal with it and experiment around with IFS. Do you invest in trying to make IFS work and hope it works out, or use the tried and true. CVs are just one of those hard parts that is expensive to make, they are engineering and machine tool intensive.
 
93blackxj said:
I talked with a guy about 3-4 years ago that races and he got a price on a Miller car. 250k Turn key or 25K for tabbed and welded chassis. This was 3 years ago so I would imagine in todays money it is 300k+
Click to expand...
Unless we know the same guy, I can confirm, my buddy got a quote on a turn key Miller car and it was the same price about the same time.
 
That honestly doesn't seem like a bad price considering what you are getting and the track record of those cars. And compared to an IFS/IRS car seems like one hell of a deal. Rumor has it that Jasons car was in the $600k range and used some parts he already laying around and Horschels was in the neighborhood of $750k all in. I wonder what a UFO car goes for complete?
 
vetteboy79 said:
I'll do you one better, the Blylers bring 4 complete cars out every year, one each for the main race and one for prerunning and sometimes qualifying depending on the course and how the week goes. Why bother swapping engines on the lakebed when you just have an entire spare prepped car on standby?

Plus, they're gonna have a spare drivetrain waiting in the trailer too.

$50k motor (they're actually more than that, closer to $60k+) vs a spare $250k car...
Click to expand...

This is impressive, but when you have Gomez showing up with 7 UFO's and 2 TT's it has you contemplating what you are doing wrong in life.

Not to mention the 250-300k they spend on pit support
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Back Refresh