RadialDynamics
Yellow Skull
It's time to start documentation of my latest major automotive undertaking. For the past 5ish years, my personal motorsports projects have largely taken a back seat to growing the business. Any free hours that I previously would have spent working on buggies or race cars turned into R&D on steering pumps so my personal buggy has gotten nothing more than oil changes and basic maintenance. Now that the business is in a healthy and steady place, it's finally time to dive into a new project that will also support R&D and marketing of my latest high voltage power steering pump system.
First a little history, back in 2015 (2 years before Radial Dynamics was even a concept) I had a habit of collecting too many projects, like most people here. I was in the middle of building a new chassis for my Toyota truggy and had just finished building a Bro Lite Ford Ranger short course truck when this 2WD Hayabusa powered rail/mini buggy popped up on Craigslist a few hours away for short money. The want was strong so I jumped on it, ultimately selling off my Toyota project to a local guy that I was glad to see finished it and still wheels it today.
I could tell the buggy had been originally built professionally but the previous owner that I got it from was a major hack and it took years to eliminate most of his half assed fabrication. It was a kick in the pants to drive and there was a lot of cleaning up to do but I eventually fixed it up to the point of prepping it for the Mint 400 in 2017. The motor was too large (1300cc) to be considered a UTV and it didn't fit into any car classes so I ended up racing in Unlimited Sportsman. The Mint was a bucket list item for me, absolutely brutal but the experience of a lifetime. Ended up with a DNF after blowing the motor and catching on fire around race mile 80. What a trip!
I spent the following year tearing the buggy down to bare chassis to clean up more of the PO's hack fabrication, got a replacement junkyard engine, and re-wired most of the car. In the meantime, I was doing a lot of motorsports photography and one event that I shot that year was the Mt. Washington Climb to the Clouds (CTTC) hillclimb race which got me wondering if the buggy could even remotely be a hillclimb car. When I got it back together in 2018, I slapped some Hoosiers on it and brought it up to a New England Hillclimb Association race at Burke Mountain in Vermont. I had no idea what to expect for handling on pavement but the buggy exceeded my expectations and I was instantly hooked on hillclimb racing.
Mt. Washington CTTC is only run every 3-4 years and I was fortunately able to get an invite to the next race in 2021 which was without a doubt the most intense thing I have ever done. This was also two weeks after I had just left my job to go full time with Radial Dynamics so it was a pretty big moment in my life.
First a little history, back in 2015 (2 years before Radial Dynamics was even a concept) I had a habit of collecting too many projects, like most people here. I was in the middle of building a new chassis for my Toyota truggy and had just finished building a Bro Lite Ford Ranger short course truck when this 2WD Hayabusa powered rail/mini buggy popped up on Craigslist a few hours away for short money. The want was strong so I jumped on it, ultimately selling off my Toyota project to a local guy that I was glad to see finished it and still wheels it today.
I could tell the buggy had been originally built professionally but the previous owner that I got it from was a major hack and it took years to eliminate most of his half assed fabrication. It was a kick in the pants to drive and there was a lot of cleaning up to do but I eventually fixed it up to the point of prepping it for the Mint 400 in 2017. The motor was too large (1300cc) to be considered a UTV and it didn't fit into any car classes so I ended up racing in Unlimited Sportsman. The Mint was a bucket list item for me, absolutely brutal but the experience of a lifetime. Ended up with a DNF after blowing the motor and catching on fire around race mile 80. What a trip!
I spent the following year tearing the buggy down to bare chassis to clean up more of the PO's hack fabrication, got a replacement junkyard engine, and re-wired most of the car. In the meantime, I was doing a lot of motorsports photography and one event that I shot that year was the Mt. Washington Climb to the Clouds (CTTC) hillclimb race which got me wondering if the buggy could even remotely be a hillclimb car. When I got it back together in 2018, I slapped some Hoosiers on it and brought it up to a New England Hillclimb Association race at Burke Mountain in Vermont. I had no idea what to expect for handling on pavement but the buggy exceeded my expectations and I was instantly hooked on hillclimb racing.
Mt. Washington CTTC is only run every 3-4 years and I was fortunately able to get an invite to the next race in 2021 which was without a doubt the most intense thing I have ever done. This was also two weeks after I had just left my job to go full time with Radial Dynamics so it was a pretty big moment in my life.
