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Team187 4400 Ultra4

tribal4krawler

tribal4krawler

DKA Motorsports
Joined
Jun 1, 2020
Member Number
1745
Messages
485
Just some backstory here, when I was building my 4659 Jeep Comanche I recruited my buddy Kenneth Hale who owned an Offroad shop to help with some of the wiring and I basically lived in his shop for a month during our mad rush to make KOH 2020. The next year him and some buddies built their own 4600 truck, a red full-size bronco that they campaigned for the 2021-2022 season. They’ve since realized that truck just isn’t ideal for Ultra4 so they’re converting it into a straight desert race truck and Ken bought this TMR 4400 car previously owned by Bill McGibbon. The original plan was to convert it to 4800 but after some conversation Ken’s decided to give it a whirl in 4400. I’ve signed on as full time codriver and backup driver (I’ll still be codawging for Ruslan as well). This won’t necessarily be a “build thread” as the trucks already built and Bill raced it for a while but we’ll be making some improvements and I’ll be chronicling our adventures on here.
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And then how it looked when Ken picked it up.

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Our plan this year is to race the TDRA Race to Midnight near San Angelo in a few weeks (July 15) and then Ultra4 Disney in late September before doing a full tear down and getting ready for King of the Hammers 2024. Ken did a quick wrap job and brought the truck out to a local car show. It’s a pretty neat wrap, almost like a forged carbon look but it’s more like digital camo.
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Off topic but that last pic in the 1st post looks like the trailer bearing has failed.
 
Haha yeah that’s just from making a 90 degree turn in the parking lot and the tire deflecting a little. All good.


So we’ve been spending the last week or two looking over the race car and seeing what’s what and verifying all the parts.

Radflo 3 inch 5 tube bypasses
Radflo 2.5 inch coilovers
Fresh 6.0L lq4
Fresh th400
205 tcase
Busted knuckle 14 bolt with Ford outer front axle, rcv 40 spline 300m big bell shafts
Rear east coast gear 14 bolt, 40 spline 300m shafts.
New TMR Customs trailing arms
New sparco seats
New Simpson ratcheting belts
Pci coms and radio
Lowrance gps
Howe steering with Trophy truck pump
Cbr rad
Cbr trans cooler

It’s spooled front and rear with 5.13s and the lq4 was pretty much completely bone stock. Ken ordered some mild upgrade parts and accessories to add some HP and reliability. The really nice thing from a spare parts perspective is that I have a lot of the same parts accumulated for the Comanche 4500 build (like a th400 hd, np205, same cbr radiator and coolers, etc) so we’ll be figuring out what we want to bring with us to races for spares. Ken thought the previous owner had told him the truck was 8x6.5 so we went ahead and dismounted all the 35s off of the bronco racelines, my wife Alex cleaned and painted em all while Ken and I dismounted the 8 40s we had, and then I had mounted 3 of the 40s on the racelines before we realized the truck was actually 8x170. Definitely a face palm moment.
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So the next day we took the racelines back off the 40s, put them back on the 35s (and will be going on a Team187 chase truck) and I painted all eight trail ready forged wheels Ken got with the truck and mounted 4 of the spare 40s. At the end of the day it still turned out good.
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Next we’ll be doing a full prep and bolt checking/paint marking everything, adding fire extinguishers and number plates. We have roughly 18 days before we roll out to Texana Ranch.
 
Any chassis work needed?
 
Poke said:
Any chassis work needed?
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So far I haven’t seen anything but we’re still going over it with a fine tooth comb. It raced KOH 23 but broke a front yoke that took him out of the race. He raced it for about 4 years it looks like in the Canada tmr series. We do plan on adding a “Zandy” bar or a double B pillar bar just to improve rigidity of the b pillar area some more similar to the Miller pro chassis. After Ultra4 Disney we’ll blow the whole thing apart to bare chassis and do a full prep for KOH. We’ll also be rewiring the chassis as that’s a bit of a mess currently.
 
tribal4krawler said:
So far I haven’t seen anything but we’re still going over it with a fine tooth comb. It raced KOH 23 but broke a front yoke that took him out of the race. He raced it for about 4 years it looks like in the Canada tmr series. We do plan on adding a “Zandy” bar or a double B pillar bar just to improve rigidity of the b pillar area some more similar to the Miller pro chassis. After Ultra4 Disney we’ll blow the whole thing apart to bare chassis and do a full prep for KOH. We’ll also be rewiring the chassis as that’s a bit of a mess currently.
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Qualifyed for KOH?
 
Got the bolt check/paint mark done today. Ken is working on adding a trailblazer SS intake, and aftermarket rockers for a little extra power. After that we just have some minor details like reprogramming radios, bolting on fire extinguishers, putting number plates on, etc. b-randon from Lonestar fab will be coming over to install the b pillar mod, I brought over some 2” .120 DOM. I also found some hairline cracks in the rear chassis near the bump stop mounts so we’ll see what he thinks about repairing that. The tires on it are the el cheapo 40” nittos I found on book of faces for super cheap. We haven’t decided if we’re going to run these at R2M or if we’ll run the sticky K-spec Nittos (we only have 4 of each)
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Ken entered the car in the local 4th of July parade to get some shakedown idle miles on the motor upgrades and be able to check the cooling system. We definitely still are hoping to be able to get the tune touched up a little bit but all in all it was a good time. People in Houston Texas aren’t familiar with Ultra4 so they had no idea what they were looking at but he did get a top 10 for parade entries. LOL. My sons birthday party is this weekend so Ken will be finishing up the small list of things to check/do and early next Friday morning we’ll be heading to Texana Ranch
 
whats the story with the chassis at the bump stop?

lowering and moving the spare back a bit will help with handling
 
Texana Ranch is an awesome time, I did the Ultra4 race there back in 2012. Watch out for the camels and oryxes :laughing:
 
mobil1syn said:
whats the story with the chassis at the bump stop?

lowering and moving the spare back a bit will help with handling
Click to expand...
Yeah we’re not sure what to do with it yet. We’ve talked about for the next two races just drilling and welding the crack and then plating it with some scrap 2” .120 and then after Disney cutting it off and redoing that section. We’ve also talked about lowering the tire too, that bitch is HEAVY to lift up that high.
 
cycle the suspension. typically if your destroying the bump mounts you have a shock tune issue or short traveling shocks or both.
 
mobil1syn said:
cycle the suspension. typically if your destroying the bump mounts you have a shock tune issue or short traveling shocks or both.
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Agreed. So we know the suspension tune on it was really bad until KoH this year, he finally had Phil Liccardi (Shock Jesus) tune the setup and added the 5 tube bypasses and he said it was night and day better. So I’m sure the chassis damage is from before but we’ll definitely find out pretty quick at R2M. If it’s pretty dialed and we’re not hammering the bumps anymore we shouldn’t have issues after that. That’s why I’m thinking of just fixing the cracks and then plating the chassis and it very well might just be alright after that.
 
I also got my new helmet in, thing is pretty nice. I was looking hard at a Bell BR8 or Stilo but the problem with those exotic helmets is visors and parts can be hard or impossible to find at a race. So I went with the Pyrotect ProAir Side air. It’s about .5 lbs lighter than the regular Sport Air Mid air that I already had.
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I also picked up a Necksgen Rally Pad to complement my Necksgen harness and man it’s a lot more comfortable now. The rally pad straps to your body like the Simpson harness does - so if you already have a necksgen and you hate how it flops around and can be tricky to get harnesses seated correctly this is a good fix.
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Here’s a picture of the crack in the chassis (I painted it to make it more visible) by the bumpstop mount. The bumpstop rotated forwards forwards the front and in a little. It’s still contacting the pad well.
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so thats on the inside of the chassis? whats the tube structure look like from the other side? both sides or just one?>
 
mobil1syn said:
so thats on the inside of the chassis? whats the tube structure look like from the other side? both sides or just one?>
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It’s just that one.
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The front passenger side also showed signs of cracking before but it was already welded back up before we got it and seems to be fine now.
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I had the opportunity to put together a video of this car at KOH this past year (and Bill’s teammate JP). Here’s the video:

Happy to see he sold the car to someone that’s going to make good use of it. Keep the posts coming, I’m enjoying them.
 
the rear looks like it lends itself well to the eyelet upper mount like the miller chassis. it will help take the rotational stress off that lower tube

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goulet.films said:
I had the opportunity to put together a video of this car at KOH this past year (and Bill’s teammate JP). Here’s the video:

Happy to see he sold the car to someone that’s going to make good use of it. Keep the posts coming, I’m enjoying them.
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Very cool! Thanks for sharing man.
 
mobil1syn said:
the rear looks like it lends itself well to the eyelet upper mount like the miller chassis. it will help take the rotational stress off that lower tube

Definitely saving this pic and we will definitely reassess after R2M. Update: the Tune was absolute TRASH but it’s been sorted out now and the tuner (who’s one of the more we’ll known LS tuners in Texas) said it feels like one of the stoutest “mild” build lq4 he’s ever been involved with. Wrapping up final details this week which is just mainly radio programming and minor details. Will definitely keep y’all in the loop.
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Installed some Stage 8 locking fasteners on our rear 14 bolt, hopefully will keep the bolts from backing out.
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Also got our Jack points welded in as well as the Zandy bars so we’re all good to go. Dicked around with getting the Kenwood reprogrammed for a while until I realized Ken bought the wrong program. So he purchased the right one (sucks that Chirp doesn’t work with PCI kenwoods) so I’ll have to go back over there tomorrow or Wednesday and get that sorted out. Tune is 100% better and the tuner said that mild LQ4 is damn stout. We’re looking to be in pretty good shape for TDRA Race to Midnight this weekend. I’ll try and keep you guys in the loop as much as I can. Follow me on Insta at @dka.motorsports or on FB.
 
tribal4krawler said:
Installed some Stage 8 locking fasteners on our rear 14 bolt, hopefully will keep the bolts from backing out.
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Also got our Jack points welded in as well as the Zandy bars so we’re all good to go. Dicked around with getting the Kenwood reprogrammed for a while until I realized Ken bought the wrong program. So he purchased the right one (sucks that Chirp doesn’t work with PCI kenwoods) so I’ll have to go back over there tomorrow or Wednesday and get that sorted out. Tune is 100% better and the tuner said that mild LQ4 is damn stout. We’re looking to be in pretty good shape for TDRA Race to Midnight this weekend. I’ll try and keep you guys in the loop as much as I can. Follow me on Insta at @dka.motorsports or on FB.
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Looking good and have fun at the races.
 
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All we got left to do is get to Texana Ranch and go racing. We’re bringing the set of K Specs too just in case these tires struggle too much for traction.
 
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Qualifying is over. Got 3rd out of 4 but I’m not sad about that at all for Kens first time ever driving a 4400. He was struggling with the concept of using throttle to turn the car but on the last lap he was improving a ton. Car overall felt pretty good, trans got a bit hot but nothing crazy. Hoping for a solid prerun and great race tomorrow night.
 
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Prerunning didn’t go so good. We came off a step down too hot and bound up the front driveshaft and it spun off the front end of the shaft. We pulled it off and drove to the pits and luckily the ranch welder was nearby and he welded it back together.
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By the time we wrapped that all up prerunning was pretty much over so I didn’t get a chance to get in the driver seat. All good, at least the car seemed to be in good shape. We figured the driveshaft would probably be out of balance and vibrate so we decided to see what the car would do in the race and not push too hard in the fast sections.
 
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