Central WA Baja

[CentralWAbaja]

Made it out to the dirt

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[CentralWAbaja]

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[petew]

^ Is that the racecar and the prerunner?

[petew]

Made it out to the dirt

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That's a screensaver or a calendar shot for sure! Fantastic photography.

[BajaBug222]

Is your son still playing around with graphics and did you graphics?

Looks like its never been out of the garage before. Good job!

Lee

It pictures well Lee. It is not nearly as polished as it looks. No doubt that she is definitely not a trailer queen.

My son did do these graphics. And no he is not doing it much anymore. He works for my company full time and I keep him very busy. The house we just finished was our first full start to finish where we started with a raw piece of land and did the full house design and a construction start to finish all in house vs sending the customer off to a designer or architect. J.T. did all the CAD drawings for the house and then we tag teamed the management of the project and he handled the final finishes and delivered the product.

That’s a pretty cool accomplishment.

[Skidmark]

A couple questions:
1) did you make any changes to your cockpit in light of your back injury?
2) I take it you are 100% healed up - no residual problems?

Excellent pictures, btw...

[CentralWAbaja]

A couple questions:
1) did you make any changes to your cockpit in light of your back injury?
2) I take it you are 100% healed up - no residual problems?

Excellent pictures, btw...

1) Yes I switched seats from a suspension seat to a hard shell composite seat. Biggest change in this is that the seat belts fit better over the shoulders. I tried two different lap belts and may switch out to a ratchet style lap belt. I want my butt not to move any more. J.T. rode with me a bit and he does not fit these new seats as well for some reason. He needs to be ratcheted down. He is hitting his head on the roof bars. I think those are getting cut out also along with the seat sliders are getting cut out. I am not sure how to get the seats any lower but we will remount and get a little more.

2) I am sore everyday but just kinda deal with it. Some days are worse then others. On Friday we did the 57mile race loop with a 50mph speed limit. there were areas on the course that we needed to be doing 65-80 to smooth it out more, and the rough areas I was taking it easier then I wanted because of JT hitting his head. I felt ok after the loop and took somebody else out for a 12 mile loop. All and all I felt pretty good. We pitted for 4 race teams on Saturday and fortunately I had a 3rd guy to help as those 11 gallon dump cans are HEAVY! we dumped about 8 or 10 of those in a 5 hr period so I think I was more sore from that then I was the riding in the car. I take the pit thing serious and was pretty jacked up on adrenaline for the entire race. LOL

100% healed...Yes. Residual problems...47yr old fat guy with back issues haha

[BAJA-IT]

How do you like those bigger tires?

[CentralWAbaja]

How do you like those bigger tires?

So far I really like them. Really smooths out the chatter bumps and square edge stuff. I think more testing is needed though for sure.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

" 1) Yes I switched seats from a suspension seat to a hard shell composite seat. Biggest change in this is that the seat belts fit better over the shoulders. I tried two different lap belts and may switch out to a ratchet style lap belt. I want my butt not to move any more. J.T. rode with me a bit and he does not fit these new seats as well for some reason. He needs to be ratcheted down. He is hitting his head on the roof bars. I think those are getting cut out also along with the seat sliders are getting cut out. I am not sure how to get the seats any lower but we will remount and get a little more. "


1/2) CWB, what are you using for seat mounts to the floor right now?

3/4) Depending on several things there are things you might be able to do that might make JT fit a bit tigher in the seat.

2) I've posted this before: JT's head, when riding on the sand, should be at least 4" below the bottom of the roll bar tubes. When/if the car rolls over the top bars can dig deeply into the sand. Also there is body stretch on hard hits. One of the guys I vaguely knew became a quadroplegic after a slow roll and his neck (I think) was broken. This was back in the mid-90s and everyone I knew had their cages redone for the 4's" of clearance. He finally passed after many years in that situation.

For what its worth.

Lee

[CentralWAbaja]

Yup I made it real clear I have issues to resolve.

Right now the seats mount to an angle iron notched into the floor tubes with the flats even with the top of the floor tube. Atop that is a seat slider that takes up about 3/4 inch. I have ideas that I am working through.

2 things....1 no way my roof is digging into the sand I have a roof panel . 2 no way I can get 4" above a helmet unless I cut the whole friggen roof off which might happen. Not like I am afraid to make changes to the car.

[CentralWAbaja]

On another note...the most well planned build any of us around here have seen was DesertGuy2.0 any my friend bought that car. He broke his neck in the car about a year ago. Head hit the roof in a hard crash and his son was ejected out the windshield when his hand clipped the quick release on the 5-point. I am well aware of how serious this is. I spent a year recovering from a broken back. Tried to prevent that from happening again and still have issues to resolve.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I understand that the roof material makes it hard for the cage to dig into the dirt but, like the old "California Upright" dirt track cars that often had a "roof" attached to the top of the cage to limit "dig-in"; a hard roll can cause things to happen you wouldn't expect.

Also the roof metal can get formed/pressed around the cage kind of like hydroforming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroforming) on a hard hit too. Its the getting thrown around and the stretch factor of the body does make a bad situation worse. When you are that close to the cage to start with then bad things can happen.

With the back damage you are well aware of the pain that can be imposed to one's body by an oops or two!

On my blue buggy the seats are bolted directly to the floor and there are not mechanisms for seat travel, height, tip/tilt back adjustment but mounting the tracks next to or on the pan should be doable as long as doublers are involved on the underside. Most seats keep the seat bottom stock but allow the seat back to be reclined for several different reasons... mostly comfort but I am not sure just how good that is off-roading!

I tried to find anything about tilting a fixed shape seat to other than a flat seat mounting position (and yes, the bottom of the seat usually is tilted towards the back at least some are). I seem to remember it being done with part of the reason being head room and the other being protecting the back some on hard hits. I am not sure just if it does or doesn't work as it was a long time ago that I heard about it; but I'll keep looking into it.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

This post will be deleted shortly

Cali upright.jpg

CWB, this is more or less what a Cali Upright looked like but not as tall as the ones I remember. This one happens to be a "6-holer" powered one which did OK on shorter courses due to the amount of torque off the corners but most had RPM limitations. I started out playing with inline 6's as that was all I could afford at the time.

[petew]

^Nah, leave it up. We're all learning lessons from a variety of different motorsports.