What's new
By:
Filters

Team187 4400 Ultra4

ridered3 said:
Looking forward to the recap! Who is driving the old Ben Napier Penhall car?
Click to expand...
that is Dana Hale. Dana sold his Tribe 4800 car a couple years ago to Shelby St. Claire and has been saving up for an IFS car and bought this one from Brett Harrell. Crazy side story, my old codriver bought a Goatbilt buggy from Dana 4-5 years ago, and we'd known Ken for a few years at that point (Ken helped us with building the Comanche) and when Lance picked the car up they got to talking about how Dana and Ken had the same last name, and realized they had some of the same family members. Lo and behold they are cousins who'd never met before. Fast forward to now and Ken says that Dana and his group is some of the best family he's ever had in his life. Pretty cool how that worked out.
 
tribal4krawler said:
that is Dana Hale. Dana sold his Tribe 4800 car a couple years ago to Shelby St. Claire and has been saving up for an IFS car and bought this one from Brett Harrell. Crazy side story, my old codriver bought a Goatbilt buggy from Dana 4-5 years ago, and we'd known Ken for a few years at that point (Ken helped us with building the Comanche) and when Lance picked the car up they got to talking about how Dana and Ken had the same last name, and realized they had some of the same family members. Lo and behold they are cousins who'd never met before. Fast forward to now and Ken says that Dana and his group is some of the best family he's ever had in his life. Pretty cool how that worked out.
Click to expand...
Very cool all around and didn't realize the Penhall car had sold.
 
Alright, so race recap time:

As you saw before, we broke front driveshaft, had to get it welded up, suspected we wouldnt get a ton of MPH due to Drivetrain vibration. We also didn't get to pre-run from pit 2 back to main (13 miles or so). We got suited up, (drank a ton of water too) and got ready to get rolling. We decided take first lap pretty easy, be smooth and smart.
race lineup.jpg


First half of first lap went well, no real issues other than severe driveshaft vibrations over 60 mph which we were expecting. So we were pretty slow in the long straightaways but nothing we could do about that. Passed pit 2 as planned (original plan was to pit in pit 2 after 1.5 laps and see how much fuel we took)


from there was all new to us, took it pretty easy again but we ended up going over a booter in a sweeping left turn that kicked us straight into a mesquite tree that we literally exploded. We backed up, got back on track and a couple miles later the serpentine belt spit off. we suspect a branch or something pushed the belt off, but luckily we were able to find it pretty quickly, trim it up and get back oncourse. we stopped in the main pit and i had them go ahead and refuel us while they put a new belt on. We hit the track again and pushed through another 2 laps, before stopping for fuel at the start of lap 4. we took another 18 gallons and hit the course again. by this point it was pitch black, and our VisionX lights were working overtime to light up the course for us. I had personally thought the lights were a bit overkill, but nope, they were awesome. Tons of visibility even at speed. The only other truck that had lighting as good as us was the spec trophy truck that won. We passed pit 2, still no issues. a few miles later, we tagged a boulder with the right front super hard, and i felt the tire going down. We debated stopping to change it, but then Ken thought we also had a driver front going down as well. With that, and our pit crew texting me and saying 3rd place (Dana Hale) was not far behind and charging, we decided to drive it on in on the flat. 8 miles later, we had basically zero percent of the tire left but we finished the race 2nd behind Tim Hooper, and 4th overall out of 30+ entries. Pretty stoked to say the least for Ken, he had no experience whatsoever with this car and did a great job staying within his means and driving ability and every lap I could see improvement as he learned more and more about the car. We do have some issues with the seating position (which i made a separate thread about) and the steering (still need to make a thread). I'll shut up and post some more pics.

JCS_1856 (2).JPG
JCS_1874 (2).JPG
JCS_2911 (2).JPG
me ken trey.jpg
tommy changing tire.jpg
 


sorry about the potato quality, still waiting for people to send HD videos/pics.
 
Great recap and finish too. I'd imagine there is a slight driving difference between the full bodied 4600 Bronco and this 4400 class rig!

For those not familiar with the race, what is the format and terrain?
 
ridered3 said:
Great recap and finish too. I'd imagine there is a slight driving difference between the full bodied 4600 Bronco and this 4400 class rig!

For those not familiar with the race, what is the format and terrain?
Click to expand...


That's basically the exact same map, couple minor differences but all in all very close. The course varies from dirt to semi rocky, there's no rock crawling (they have trophy trucks, VW's, etc racing this course). There's definitely potential for there to be some rock racing trails out there and if you did that I bet you could get probably 40-50 miles in a lap. how epic would that be for an Ultra4 race not at King of the Hammers? The heat is definitely a major issue, would be way cooler (both literally and figuratively) if it happened in the Spring but it is an active working ranch and they also do exotic game hunts too so scheduling is probably an issue.
 
tribal4krawler said:


That's basically the exact same map, couple minor differences but all in all very close. The course varies from dirt to semi rocky, there's no rock crawling (they have trophy trucks, VW's, etc racing this course). There's definitely potential for there to be some rock racing trails out there and if you did that I bet you could get probably 40-50 miles in a lap. how epic would that be for an Ultra4 race not at King of the Hammers? The heat is definitely a major issue, would be way cooler (both literally and figuratively) if it happened in the Spring but it is an active working ranch and they also do exotic game hunts too so scheduling is probably an issue.
Click to expand...

Looks like a cool race course and can definitely see more potential there for an Ultra4 race like Montana with long laps of minor difficulty but an actual endurance race based on mileage.

Did y'all do anything special to deal with the heat other than hydration? Do you wear a cooling shirt/suit?
 
ridered3 said:
Looks like a cool race course and can definitely see more potential there for an Ultra4 race like Montana with long laps of minor difficulty but an actual endurance race based on mileage.

Did y'all do anything special to deal with the heat other than hydration? Do you wear a cooling shirt/suit?
Click to expand...
It is surprisingly difficult. it's not insane, but it's not a chump race for sure. We did not do anything special, we're Texans and used to the 11 billion degree temps. For sure we would have preferred it to be 70 but beggars can't be choosers. Ken started diving into the truck already and there's ALOT of stuff wrong. Bumps are totally smoked, shocks are blown out, trans is leaking badly, axles are leaking, etc. pretty much a standard deal as far as i'm concerned post race. We'll do a post-race walk around and start getting the car torn down and ready for U4 Disney.
 
tribal4krawler said:
It is surprisingly difficult. it's not insane, but it's not a chump race for sure. We did not do anything special, we're Texans and used to the 11 billion degree temps. For sure we would have preferred it to be 70 but beggars can't be choosers. Ken started diving into the truck already and there's ALOT of stuff wrong. Bumps are totally smoked, shocks are blown out, trans is leaking badly, axles are leaking, etc. pretty much a standard deal as far as i'm concerned post race. We'll do a post-race walk around and start getting the car torn down and ready for U4 Disney.
Click to expand...
Sounds even better for a potential Ultra4 race in the future then.
 



I’ll be posting race recap video once I get my GoPro back that got knocked off by the tree, I know I have some cool footage of the front and rear suspension working on that
 
IMG_1486.jpeg


We noticed towards the end of the race the racecar got REAL loud. The header broke above the flange. I have the exact same headers in my parts so we’ll just change it out.

IMG_1468.jpeg
IMG_1469.jpeg


Our bump stops are also pretty angry at us. The passenger side might still be okay, might just be the dust cap. But we’ll still take both of them apart and repair/fix.

IMG_1483.jpeg


We also figured out the pulsing/pulling brake feeling - the wheel bent enough to where it was hitting the caliper.

IMG_1482.jpeg


We also finally found our pesky trans leak we’ve been chasing for a while, the fingers on this modulator plug were stretched and allowing the plug to leak. We’ll probably change that out to a different setup. We’re going to go ahead and tear down the front/rear diffs entirely and inspect since we took some pretty hard hits. We’re also going to get the repaired front driveshaft rebalanced to get rid of the drivetrain vibrations. Then we should be pretty well set for Ultra4 Disney. Steering was another big complaint for Ken, we have a Howe trophy truck pump and this orbital
IMG_1487.jpeg


Ken would like a shorter turn orbital and one that actually turns the tires at idle. If y’all have any suggestions we’re open. He’d prefer a “return to center” style.

IMG_1481.jpeg


He also found a JK grille in storage and has an LJ fiberglass hood that we’re going to see if we can make work
 
tribal4krawler said:
Our bump stops are also pretty angry at us. The passenger side might still be okay, might just be the dust cap. But we’ll still take both of them apart and repair/fix.
Click to expand...

you shouldnt be killing bump stops with a shock package like that. how bad was he over driving the car?
 
He wasn’t over driving it at all is the problem. We weren’t hucking the car anywhere. I told him we need to articulate the car fully and see what’s going on, I suspect we’re short stroking the suspension. Either that or the bumps were already damaged from hammers or low on PSI and we didn’t know. We’ve found a lot of stuff on this car that hasn’t been right. edit Phil Liccardi tuned the shocks and said the car was working perfectly at Hammers 💁💁
 
Last edited:
for the bumps to be slamming that bad, you had to blowing through the travel and violence in the car.

and you cant tell me he wasnt overdriving the car with the damage report.
 
Last edited:
mobil1syn said:
for the bumps to be slamming that bad, you had to blowing through the travel and violence in the car.

and you cant tell me he wasnt overdriving the car with the damage report.
Click to expand...
I mean I’m used to a 4600 car so there’s that. I’ve gone alot faster pace in my UTV on that track and not done any damage to the suspension. We did smack the one rock hard but that hit on my side and that bump is still working, just the dust cap fell down. I definitely didn’t feel like he was “overdriving” the car. Maybe I’m wrong.
 
So Ken checked the bump PSI and they were both at 75 psi and low on shock oil, so that's possibly some of the reason the bumps were slamming so hard. He ordered rebuild kits from Radflo so we're just waiting on those. We also talked to Howe and Radial Dynamics, Howe said they'd like to see the pump and rebuild it as they think it might be messing up and causing some of our steering issues. Eric at Radial suggested Ken go with a 200cc load reactive orbital which is what he said almost all of his ultra4 customers use and will take us from a 4 turn orbital to a 2-2.5 turn orbital. should really help tighten the steering up a lot which we're excited about. Ken's going to strip the 100w Kenwood PCI radio stuff out of the 4600 Bronco this weekend and we'll start installing that in the 187 which hopefully will eliminate the comms issues we've been having.
 
75psi is not out of the norm for a u4 bump stop, especially with big boy bypasses. what makes him think the oil is low?
 
He said radflo told him the bumps needed 75ml oil and they had 50ml in them.
 
IMG_1992.jpeg


My new favorite part of the 4400. Ken and I built a codawg foot rest. When he bought the car it had just a piece of angle iron and it was super uncomfortable to brace against. I feel like this is something that is often overlooked as usually the driver is building the car for himself and not necessarily thinking about the codriver compartment.
 
tribal4krawler said:
IMG_1992.jpeg


My new favorite part of the 4400. Ken and I built a codawg foot rest. When he bought the car it had just a piece of angle iron and it was super uncomfortable to brace against. I feel like this is something that is often overlooked as usually the driver is building the car for himself and not necessarily thinking about the codriver compartment.
Click to expand...
It's all about the little things! How goes Disney prep?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Back Refresh