KOH 2022 "from the right seat"

[CJKnoll96]

I wrote this up last year and wasn't sure what to do with it figured some of you might enjoy the read as we head into KOH 2023.
King Of the hammers from the Right Seat







King of the Hammers is one of those events that’s like a speeding bullet train, you can see it from miles out, you know its coming and fast but you always feel like you have more time until its right on top of you. For most people Hammers is an event, a destination. You turn some wrenches on your rig a weekend or two before maybe throw on some new parts before packing up the camper and telling the boss you’re taking the week off work for some burning man type shit. Sure you’ll will keep your phone on you just in case, knowing damn well you won’t get signal.

For a shop like Trent fabrication it’s a whole different story. Hammers for me starts around the beginning of November and doesn’t stop until everything is unloaded recovered and wash even now as I write this I’m still at hammers mentally. If you’re serious about competing at the hammers you need to be on the lake bed as much as possible from November to February. This year teaming up with Cameron Steele for the 3rd year in a row we got Woody Rose and myself’s car ready to be used as a pre runner while we finished building him an all new state of the art 4800 race car. Jeremey Jones AkA Docta Jones would also be making an attempt at the top spot for this year’s hammers so his car had to be ready for thanksgiving pre running. Once docs car returned to Reno we instantly tore into it getting a fresh motor, a rebuilt transmission, upgrading the shocks and fixing all damage sustained over the last season. At this point the plans simple go out one more time around New Years. Doc’s car will be almost 90% prepped for hammers. Shock tuning with the guru Wayne from Alltech would make for a perfect shake down run all while woody Rose and myself would exchange cars with Cameron Steele and do a little pre running/practice for ourselves. Look at any of the top 4400 drives program most of those guys dedicate weeks to spending time at the hammers running trails over and over again until they can do every line out there. Even guys like Eric Miller two time king of the hammers winner use to spend two weeks on the lake bed after nationals all in the name of domination come February.

I’ve been riding with Woody Rose, Lisa Trents son since June and being our first year we would be getting the short end of the stick. DSI Dave Schneider has plans to sell the car after hammers and it was already promised to cam Steele as a pre runner until the week of the race. Thankfully with the 4500 Trent fab car going into retirement as a trail rig it would be given to cam around the second week of January for me and woody to prep in the weeks leading up to KOH as long as we got the new car finished. Little did we know our race car would need some serious upgrades before the race such as completely updating the old drivetrain mounts. It’s around this time that Tyson shell who already had a 4400 ifs car on order bought Bailey Coles 4400 ifs car with the intention of racing it during the 2022 season. It didn’t take much to rally the troops behind making King Of The Hammers happen. I personally called in a few favors and got my friend Elvis in on the project. He’s been making a name for himself working with Armada Engineering and their top of the line prep program so it was an obvious choice to let him tackle this momentous project of taking a battle worn car and getting it ready for the toughest one day off road race in the world. Tyson the owner was also interested in sourcing a co-driver who knew the area. Having grown up at the Hammers and being that I was riding with Woody the day before in the Every Man Challenge I was the obvious choice and jumped at the opportunity… why not you’re only young once.

Fast forward two weeks and the dead line to leave is fast approaching as the clock ticks down in the wee hours of the night disaster strikes this tired crew of shop hands who have been working day in and day out pulling 12 hour shifts to get 3 cars prepped a whole new car built before the following Wednesday. Things are moving along well parts are showing up and the 4400 monster is slowing coming back together after a complete frame up rebuild. But the new snub nose chassis for Cameron Steele is leaking coolant out of the head before its even been fired. What do you do in that situation? Call it quits and let Cameron Steele race the car he pre ran with the last few weeks and give up your car or swap in the monstrous 457 LSX sitting in the corner out of the 4500 car before the boss get in at 9am? You’re damn right we did it, if you’re going show up late for a gun fight might as well show up with the most fire power. We never made our Wednesday deadline in fact we didn’t leave until 10:30 pm on Saturday night after a pinion bearing seized doing a few test laps around the building on the new snub nose chassis. Determined to get to hammer town we hit the road driving all night. Finally we made it! Race day was 5 days away.

Having no pre runner other than the 4800 car we were racing and being that we were still waiting on a few parts for the 4400 car cam was generous enough to let these two 20 year old crash dummies take his championship winning class 7 truck out to tour the desert loop. What a kick ass experience we spent most of the next 3 days bouncing between doing media shoots trying to get a 4400 car ready to race and pre running with whatever day light we could get not to mention qualifying. The goals were different between the 4400 program and the 4800 program we knew going into this race that me and woody had a good chance at a top 10 maybe even a top 5 finish if we played our cards right. So qualifying was really important we practiced our lines and were shooting for starting 10th or so. A failing power steering pump slowed us down to a 16th position start not to shabby. In 4400 being the new guys on the block with almost no time spent driving the car we just didn’t want to start dead last so we ran conservatively and would keep that plan through race day until we both got more comfortable with the car our goal was to finish and have a fun day in the desert. Un surprisingly we would start 83rd on Saturday.

 

[CJKnoll96]

Thursday night, this is my favorite time of the week the clock is ticking down to go time you’ve pre run what you can only thing left to do is check everything you can on the car and prepare for battle. Load waters, snacks, tool bag, charge the impact, torque the wheels and try to get some sleep. We thought we had it all figured out until we were pulling on to the short course to start the race, crap GPS isn’t getting a signal maybe it’s a loose wire? Bad antenna? Ohh well still not working play it by ear throw the play book out the window it’s time to go racing! We take off the line screaming like a bat out of hell just to miss the first turn into the desert, at least the guy we beat off the line was kind enough to follow us so we didn’t look stupid alone. After that we trying to take it easy all the way to remote pit one where we could take a better look at the gps figure worst case un plug the antenna and use the internal one. We still passed 5 or so cars on the way. Hammers is weird like that you think you’re going so slow until you start passing people then you realize you’re kind of hauling ass and you want to go faster. We were Stopped at pit 1 for what feels like 5 mins no gps fix, screw it just go. We cooked along for the next few miles picking of cars here and there until the car lost a cylinder. Probably a coil pack issue. I got out and sure enough the coil pack had fallen off the mount no big deal, few zip ties and we are back on the road. Barreling through the desert like some kind of mad donkey in the untuned car we came across Doc Jones with a blow shock I couldn’t help but chuckle as his co-driver Dan came over the radio “just pass us already!” I braked back “dude our car can’t go faster than this in the rough even with 3 shocks your ride looks smoother than mine.” Man that desert is rough sometime before the speed zone we totally blew a corner and had to back track a ways until we ran back into the course. We lost a few spots, but got them back fairly quickly after that we would have no issues all the way back to main pit. In main Brian Hartman from Dust Junkies found the issue with our GPS and got the internal Antenna working again. Sweet! Ohh wait brightness is turned down it works, but I can’t see it lets go! We didn’t slow down enough for me to fix the problem until we got to Spooners. Going down Outerlimits we made our first driving error of the day and got the car high centered forcing us to winch. it was at this time Cam Steele and Brian Wood would pass us having no idea he was behind us we figured we would do our best to keep pace with him as long as we could! Cruising through aftershock and over fisher mountain we were settled into our groove ready to make our move to the front of the pack after Sledge and Jack Hammer. Rolling up to plaque line in sledge hammer we watch Brian spot Cam through the line. I immediately jumped out of the car and did what I could to help everyone through the obstacle until it was our turn just like everyone else we got stuck I opted to pull winch line and get us out as fast as possible but the winch line had other plans and decided to get cut on a rock. New plan push it through! The 4500 car of Goodall Racing was kind enough to give us a nudge as we forced the tired race car through the line. I hoped back in the car confident that would be the last time getting out for the day we knew the course from here on out, we knew the trails and we were ready to turn up the heat and bring it home. Our world came crashing down moments later on jack hammer when we lost forward gears in our transmission. A fitting on the transmission had stripped out and we were hemorrhaging trans fluid. We tried valiantly to come up with solutions but nothing would help after making it to the main obstacle only to dump out all our tranny fluid again we sourced some more, helped a few people up the trail and drove back down to the spectating area. Our day was done. We didn’t over drive the car we were in a position to have good luck but the rock gods of the hammers were not shining on us this day.

After a quick nap and a shower it was time to get this ball rolling again for 4400 with soreness setting in it was important to keep moving so I did my best to look over the car and set up my side of the operation. We kept to our plan and actually having a GPS this go around we didn’t miss any turns on the way out of hammer town. Heading down on to Melville dry lake bed we headed into the abyss, a complete white out driving 30-45 miles an hour I guided Tyson shell in the dust. A little left, back to the right, there it is we are on the line keep going straight. We did that most of the way to pit one after that we started to get a little more comfortable with the car giggling all the way to cougar buttes. Shortly after we found a rock in the desert and caught a flat. Fully our fault but we changed that, took a leak and carried on. Heading into the speed control we passed 3 or 4 ifs cars all on their lid at this point I can’t thank Tyson enough. That could have very well be us if he hadn’t left the ego at home going in to this race. Heading back into main pit after stopping at remote pit one for a splash of fuel and a new spare tire we caught up to Eric Miller going out on his second lap, after keeping pace with him for a while we decided to let him go. Heading out on our second lap we cruised all the way in and out of Spooners and Outlimits with no issues heading over fisher mountain we started to get some smoke coming from the front of the car not enough to be concerned about but ill keep my eyes on it I thought. Dropping down jack north and heading up chocolate thunder we had our first issue of the day a PDM code caused by an issue with our number 2 radiator fan. Not a big issue yet cars still running happy at 200 degrees. We later found ourselves in a sticky situation going down hell to pay but Tysons keen rock crawling instincts got us back on 4 wheels even though we were on one wheel at the time. With a roar of applause from the few who witnessed it we carried on heading out claw and choose your own adventure missing remote pit 2 on accident. At this time dust junkies and the Trent fab team had assumed something was wrong having no radio communication and not checking in at remote pit 2 when we were suppose to. To everyone’s surprise we drove into main pit for the second time with a car overheating and damn near out of fuel. Turns out the smoke was from our oil cap melting and we had a torn CV boot both minor issues. We fixed them topped the car off with oil and though the fan issue had fixed itself after the car was turned off and restarted. From main pit to the check point heading out on lap 2 after leaving the marine base we were on rails driving faster than we had all day the impossible was finally becoming a reality we made it to lap 3. This is when the race started for us, could we beat the clock and make it back to Hammertown in time. We passed everything on 4 wheels in our sights making some of the cleanest passes all day having no push to pass since the first lap we had to earn it. It is was old school desert racing at its finest. Excellent driving and a capable car it made for a blissful afternoon in the desert. Sadly our overheating issue would catch up to us in spooners. Turns out a frame rail holding coolant had cracked robbing the 8 year old car of vital fuilds need to keep it cool. It’s the small things that end your day at the hammers 20 buck in total including tax and maybe a snickers bar at the local out parts store might have changed our fate on both days but that’s racing. You don’t know how it’s going to play out and even with the best placed plan you might as well throw it out the window and rip the radio out of the car. It’s anyone’s day at the hammers and that’s why we love it. As we wind down from the big race I’d like to thank all of my friends and family that support my adventure as well as the Trent Fabrication family, The Desert Assassins, Dust Junkies and all the badass Ultra4 Staff still out there cleaning up the desert. To the spectators and the fans please tread lightly, pack out what you pack in and pick up trash even if it’s not yours.

 

[CJKnoll96]

 

[CJKnoll96]

 

[CJKnoll96]

 

[CJKnoll96]

 

[Honky Lips]

am i having a stroke, or are the lower springs on teh front of the nexgen car odd. big spaces between coils compared to most setups?

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

am i having a stroke, or are the lower springs on teh front of the nexgen car odd. big spaces between coils compared to most setups?

There is a racing spring company that makes lightweight coilover springs that look very similar to that but for the life of me I can't think of the name right now....

 

[CJKnoll96]

am i having a stroke, or are the lower springs on teh front of the nexgen car odd. big spaces between coils compared to most setups?

Nope not having a stroke they are odd balls. Wayne from alltech set up the shock package on that car using can am parts as part of a buddy deal. The cars been retuned since last year so I'm sure they have been changed to something a lot better suited for the car but at the time it worked good enough for the price tag.

 

[Pickuptrucker]

Thanks for sharing I love detailed accounts like that. Let’s me live vicariously lol

 

[ridered3]

Very cool write up and thanks for sharing.

 

[RunningProblem]

Were you in the car this year?

 

[CJKnoll96]

Were you in the car this year?

I wasn’t I had the opportunity to ride with Tyson again but chose to be an adult and miss hammers. Much bigger things in the works for me in 2024 then riding wrong seat at hammers.