1958 UTVWC Race Report

george.felix

George
Jan 11, 2015
818
296
63
Houston, Texas
Its been while since Ive written a report. We started like 39th and blew a head gasket coming out of the pits on the second lap running in 9th at the Mint but ended w a DNF. So we draw 27th at UTVWC. The day before contingency I'm feeling flu sick on the day of I'm bed ridden all day trying to pull it together for the Sat race. This was the first time Ive felt nervous at the start in a long time I don't know why but I just was. Anyway we pulled our "built" motor and installed our used stock motor for this race. We were just done with all the motor issues that started with Baja 1000 in 2016 persisted all year in 2017 and now 2018 we've had enough. Two different motor builders and neither of them ran over 1000 miles......apparently I'm not stepping on the throttle correctly. So we had Adam with Airdam get us set up with the clutching as part of turning over a new leaf and he performed with flying colors.

Were in the 3rd wave of cars and we settle into third going into the first hard banked right turn behind a train of cars and get plowed by Vanbeekum. No harm no foul but was lame since he had to wait anyway. He found a way around with his rocket motor and passed all of us. We repeat the battle we had at the Mint with 1952 McVay and finally got around him and started moving through cars. We knew we had a lot of them in front of us so it was going to take some time..Right off the bat around RM 6 we go into limp mode and the car is over heating. This goes on the entire race about 4-5 times per lap. Was frustrating for us and probably pissing off other cars that we passed only to slow down right in front of them. A few we made good distance on only to go into limp and could see them gaining fast them right about the time they catch us we get power back and leave them. I can only imagine what they are thinking. We just tried to make the best of the power while we had it knowing limp mode was just a few minutes away. At times we would get lucky and go limp in the Fox proving grounds so it didn't really hurt us. About lap 6 we lost more power when NOT in limp. Top speed was 55 and felt like a 2x4 was under the pedal. Turns out the speed sensor ripped out of the trans. We were struggling with all this but still managed to carry speed thru the corners and make the most out of what we had trying not to slow down in the corners mostly and through the infield. We were up to 3rd about 20 seconds off second past the mid point and we knew we still had something working surprisingly with the lack of power. Going into lap 8 we came around the hard deep rutted right and didn't have the power to pull us out of the corner and we rolled the car. BITD got us up after what seemed like 20 minutes but we were moving again. Then we made a horrible mistake one that I teased Brandon Sims for making yes we decided NOT to pit for lap 9 and ran out of gas just outside the infield near the highway. That was it we were going to be the last car with 9 laps if we could get fuel to us and finally BITD came to the rescue but the turbos had started so we let them all by and filed in behind. Not long and we take a right and old man Romo is rolled and we almost hit him. Since our race is basically over we hang around to get them up and going hopefully they can recover their race.

I think we finished 14th. Everyone after a race figures out how they would have won if only.....our story is if only we had a fully functional motor we would have won this one. We didn't carry a spare tire since we run MRT and can run at near race speed with a flat so that helped lighten the car. We lost communication again after the first lap which was nothing new but thats another matter. Thanks to H Town Performance, Turner Cycles, MRT Tires, Airdam, Keizer Wheels, and Polaris for supporting us with not only parts but awesome service! Parts we can get anywhere but the service we get from these companies makes a difference. Also huge thanks to UTV Underground and the crew for all the hard work. It was bigger and better this year than ever. The live coverage was amazing for this being these guys first time working in the booth. Great commentary from Rusty Baptist, Joey, and Jim. This clip was one of my favorites....."representing for the old dudes!" I wish we would have been running strong and caught the early leader 1903 Seth Quintero.....that would have been an exciting match up with the oldest dude vs the young 15 yr old kid. Next time!

 

tatum

Hans Solo - 2009 UTV Baja 500 & 1000 Winner - UTVU
Feb 10, 2009
1,450
198
63
arizona
Any idea why your car was getting hot? Is there any tuners that can program an ECM and eliminate sll the limp mode crap? I am not a fan of all the piggy back stuff as that all seems to fail. If I was racing these classes I would be lobbying for the ability to run an aftermarket ECM just for reliability purposes alone. Otherwise I would use resistors or whatever it took to make my the computer think everything is perfect and let me decide when the car needs to be slowed down. You know, like a real race car would be.
 

george.felix

George
Jan 11, 2015
818
296
63
Houston, Texas
Any idea why your car was getting hot? Is there any tuners that can program an ECM and eliminate sll the limp mode crap? I am not a fan of all the piggy back stuff as that all seems to fail. If I was racing these classes I would be lobbying for the ability to run an aftermarket ECM just for reliability purposes alone. Otherwise I would use resistors or whatever it took to make my the computer think everything is perfect and let me decide when the car needs to be slowed down. You know, like a real race car would be.
We have an issue with Trinity exhaust pivoting on the header and getting really close to the water hose coming off the water pump. We cut the hose down to make more clearance. Trinity said they have never heard of such a thing....Hmm first person I asked that has this exhaust said they canned it because of the heat issue.

Anyone running Trinity have any ideas on this?
 

george.felix

George
Jan 11, 2015
818
296
63
Houston, Texas
Great write up, get em next time. I miss all the banter this forum once had!
I got nothing to work with anymore.....Bradbury destroyed the Young Gun car 3 miles into the race maybe that's something we can stir up......broke the axle and transmission mount pretty much ended their race.
 

702sandman

Member
Sep 12, 2015
85
22
8
49
"old man Romo" man I feel old when the real old man calls me old man Thanks for flipping me over George...we definitely were able to salvage the race, we dropped to 47th and came back to 13th so it was a decent day Please tell me more about this Bradbury story so I can give him crap at our next race, last I heard that car ran was when Shelby drove it I had no idea Bradbury drove it.
 
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george.felix

George
Jan 11, 2015
818
296
63
Houston, Texas
Randy, your correct Shelby drove it last year and ironically Bradbury was her co driver. This year the car was driven by 16 yr old Trevor Beurrier 1924. About 3 mi into the first lap the way I heard it Bradbury was overly aggressive driving a 2900 car and climbed the rear of him. I heard that there was another car in front of 1924 as well but I wasn't there.....regardless at 3 mi into a race you can expect traffic no one is settled in yet and theres no reason to be running over people under those circumstances. Vanbeekum did the same to us....hit us with 3 cars in front of us but we're the bigger car and he hit us square at least. It appears to be a case of hot dog racer trying to win the race in the first lap at the expense of this young man's race. Trevor was disappointed he spent hours putting that car together himself just for this race. I asked him if he had a good time...he said "yeah for about 5 minutes".
 

BiggJim

I Hate Rules - UTVUnderground Approved
Jan 15, 2009
2,079
452
83
Bakersfield
Hmmmm, seems like we had a conversation about what was the best exhaust to run...and if memory serves me right you told me you got a "deal"
 

george.felix

George
Jan 11, 2015
818
296
63
Houston, Texas
Hmmmm, seems like we had a conversation about what was the best exhaust to run...and if memory serves me right you told me you got a "deal"
I don't recall the conversation unless you said keep it stock which I know a lot of people believe is best. I never got a "deal" unless you call a small discount a deal. Hearing so many others with the same clearance issues is disappointing that Trinity seems oblivious to this......
 

Rdl33

New Member
Apr 18, 2018
1
0
1
44
Randy, your correct Shelby drove it last year and ironically Bradbury was her co driver. This year the car was driven by 16 yr old Trevor Beurrier 1924. About 3 mi into the first lap the way I heard it Bradbury was overly aggressive driving a 2900 car and climbed the rear of him. I heard that there was another car in front of 1924 as well but I wasn't there.....regardless at 3 mi into a race you can expect traffic no one is settled in yet and theres no reason to be running over people under those circumstances. Vanbeekum did the same to us....hit us with 3 cars in front of us but we're the bigger car and he hit us square at least. It appears to be a case of hot dog racer trying to win the race in the first lap at the expense of this young man's race. Trevor was disappointed he spent hours putting that car together himself just for this race. I asked him if he had a good time...he said "yeah for about 5 minutes".
 

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