Spring 2009 Project:
"Project XXX"
UWHARRIE 4X4 Cross Here We Come!
A few days ago I got a good deal on a 1996 4wd Suzuki X-90 which ran great, but the body was mashed in from a pretty bad front end collision, the headlights were held in with plumbers strapping, and the frame was bent. As any true Suzuki enthusiast would want to do I really wanted to restore it, well until I took a good look at all the rust and the cost to actually buy al the parts to fix a bent up rust bucket ..... so the next thought was that I could race it at the Uwharrie 4X4 Cross Off-Road race which was coming up in about a week: 4x4crossracing.com
The first question people seemed to ask when I told them about racing the X-90 was "WHY?" Well, the power to weight ratio was a good start and these little two-seater SUV's (It actually says "SUV" on the title otherwise I would have to call it a 4wd car) weigh only 2650 pounds and have a 1.6 16 valve motor in them so the power to weight ratio is really good. This one actually has only 103,000 miles on it and has the 4-speed (3-speed + overdrive) and 4.62 front and rear differential gears and it really goes 0-60 fast on the road .... even with the auto transmission. Honestly, I would have preferred a 5-speed for racing, but I intended to take what I had and planned to make it work.
I pulled her into the garage rolled down the power windows and pulled off the T-top's ........she is just soooo cute ....But not for long! First went the front bumper and then the radiator support had to be pulled out about 6 inches then it was apparent that the front of the frame was a little tweaked The front cross-member was straightened and reinforced and then she was put up on jack stands and the real work started. How do you fit 30" - 31" tires under and X-90 with tiny little wheel wells? Well it starts with a 2" suspension lift using coil springs from a 2000 4-door Suzuki Vitara. The old X-90 coils were dwarfed by the Vitara coils and a strut mount flip had to be done for the struts to even reach the strut tower mounts again. While I was in there I removed the front and rear 4.63 3rd members and replaced the front with an open 5.83 front and a spooled (always locked) rear 5.83 3rd member. This would over gear the little Suzuki so it would be able to keep up with the racers with much bigger motors and the spool would help maximize traction.
Next I installed an AFTERMARKET4X4.com Front Skid Plate that bolt to the front cross member and them up to the lower cross member under & behind the motor. This would prove to be one of the MOST important additions to the X-90. After the gears and skid plate were installed I tried to make the 30" Dunlop All Terrain's fit, but it had major rubbing issues on the back side of the front fender wells meant that some Extreme fender trimming aka: "virtual lift" had to be performed on her. So with about four inches removed from the back of the fender wells the tires cleared and with minimal lift the center of gravity would be really low which was very important for the 4X4 Cross Racing event that was only a couple of days away. Last I removed the catalytic converter and the existing rusted out exhaust system and installed a 2 1/4" Dynomax Super Turbo muffler from the down pipe back. She sounded a bit meaner and the exhaust was more throaty when you nailed the throttle...I love that sound!
I spoke to a good friend Mike Whitfield who had raced the event in a Tracker the year before and he mentioned that I should reinforce the steering idler arm on the passengers side of the frame and to install a strut tower brace across the top of the motor. The idler arm brace was simple, but the strut tower brace was not going to happen because the hood cleared the motor by only about 1/2 inch and so without cutting a huge hole in the hood that was not going to work. Not building a strut tower brace would soon prove to be a big mistake.
So that is the build.....very simple and that's the way I hoped to race her .... looking as close to stock as possible......a kind of "Sleeper". Now it's off to the races!
OK, so you don't need to hear about the boring 5 hour drive to the event where we lost a trailer tire tread. Yep, just the tread flew off and we had thought we heard something an hour earlier before we stopped and there it was ....a tire with no tread riding on the metal. The tire was changed at the rest area and we were back on out way in under 30 minutes. We arrived about and hour and a half later to a huge open field where we would be parking and camping. Above is a pic of the X-90 and Zach's ("SpecialEdition" on the BBS) white Samurai on the trailer behind my trusty Dodge 3500 diesel. The Zuk's fit quite nicely on the 20 foot long trailer and tow very well behind the dually.
We pulled everything out of the Zuk's and got them off of the trailer Did a poser shot of the "cute little car" and went to sign in. Zach entered the Rock Crawl Competition and I signed up for the 4X4 Cross Racing. Zach went and looked at the Rock Crawl course and all I remember him saying was "I hope they don't make the stock class drive all the way up there" while pointing to the top of the hill strewn with insanely huge concrete pipes and boulders. The course looked tough, but was definitely do-able with the right tire placement. I had a chance to pre-run the 4X4 Cross track after signing in and waited in line to do so. the deal was that we could put around the track at 5 mph, but about 1/2 way around the track I noticed most people were not putting and were breaking their trucks then getting towed off of the track....and this was the PRE-RUN! So after watching the others driving at a fast pace I sped up and had some fun drifting the 90 degree turns and jumping some of the hills. I was starting to get a feel for the course on my second pre-run and then they shut off the entrance to get ready for the rock crawl competition.
About the same time we met up with Will (Willc) and David (NorZuki) and we all hung out and watched the festivities. The rock crawl started with the 36" up to 44" tire class and most were 4-linked buggy's with all the goodies on them and some even had rear-steer and a few were bobbed bed Yota's. The big tire class struggled over the obstacles and only a few actually made it to the top of the hill. There were several broken drive shafts, a broken axle shaft and some bent up links, and re-arched/bent/broken leaf springs which stopped all the competitors in their tracks. This was a VERY hard rock garden and is much, much steeper than it looks in the pic's!
About the time it was getting dark outside they finally started the small tire class and Zach was one of the only two entries and he went first. He took a line directly up the middle of the left side of the rock course and pulled the front wheels off the ground several times when attempting to climb over the largest boulder in the center of the course. I was his spotter and pointed him towards the correct location for tire placement and after a few tries he pulled a wheelie and conquered the huge rock. As intimidating as the huge rock garden was and despite the drivers rear tire getting caught in the undercut near the top Zach did not let up and gave her hell just at the right time cresting the top of the boulder strewn hill in just over 3 1/2 minutes which was faster than most of the buggies made it up with similar lines. Next came the only other competitor which was the now infamous GSXR Samurai (Yes, that is a stretched, 4-linked, and tubed Samurai with a 750 GSXR motorcycle motor in it!) In the above pic Zach is on the left and the GSXR Sammy is on the right. Sorry the pic is so dark, but not many of the night pic's came out at all. The GSXR Samurai with the sound of the high revving motorcycle engine whining got into about the middle of the rock garden and then became high centered several times in the same location that gave Zach some trouble and when he got tired of trying to finesse his way through the rocks he back up and smoked the tires for about 20 seconds then proceeded to launch the Samurai up over the upper section of the rock course and over the top of the hill. It was a sight to see and I am amazed the driver kept it from flipping over while throttling through the tall rocks. It was exciting ....and scary all at the same time! Unfortunately, with the GSXR Sammy launching over the rocks this meant that Zach was now in second place ...and this was a "winner takes all" event.
After the rock crawl event we decided to go out and do some night wheeling across the street at Uwharrie National Forrest so I went over to Will's campsite and we found this idiot on his roof. Evidently he was doing donuts in the field and lost control and flipped his 2003 Tacoma onto it's roof. "No Officer, those aren't our beer cans all over the ground next to the truck!" At least no one was hurt!
Now with our trail passes on our vehicles Zach in his white Samurai with Stephanie as hi co-pilot and myself with Will as my co-pilot in the X-90 we all drove over to the trails. Now Will had a few drinks at camp so he was definitely not driving so he was elected "navigator" and it was too bad for him that I was driving.... Once we got to the trails we started "speed wheeling" which was a way of testing out the X-90's suspension on the whoops on the trails and this is was one of the reasons I wanted to go out before the 4X4 Cross race. Poor Will had just poured his drink into a cup and we hit a big 'ol jump and his drink flew all over the interior of the X-90 so his next thought was "I can hold it out the window". So on the next jump he showered the X-90's T-tops with drink and for the next few minutes it rained down and dripped on us. We all laughed so hard and even Zach and Steph laughed while driving behind us. Will should have known better than to pour a drink into a cup with me driving! LOL! After a couple hours of wheeling and torture testing the X-90 and Zach's Sammy both vehicles survived and we made it back to the huge field where we were camping. It was completely full of trucks and tents with loud country music cranking and rednecks hooting and hollerin' and somewhere between 1-2 am we went to bed.
DAY 2: Off to the races!
We woke up about 7:30 am and Zach, Steph and myself drove over to the Eldorado Outpost and had a killer breakfast feast. Man they can cook! After breakfast we had a few minutes before the 9am drivers meeting and so I proceeded to remove the doors and the T-tops off of the X-90 to lighten her up a little. The door came off in about 10 minutes each and the T-tops lifted right out of the roof and this also made for better visibility. The drivers meeting went quickly and then they lined us up to race starting the stock vehicle class know as "A" class which I was in. There was a bright orange Cherokee tube vehicle first driven by a guy named David Wall and I pulled in behind him to be the second in line to run the 4X4 Cross race course.
The Cherokee tube buggy finished in just under 5 minutes which was great for such a hard course. Above is a pic of the long table-top jump which few people were able to get enough speed up to clear it. I was up next in the X-90 and YES I was nervous as I had never run a race like this before and I was definitely intimidated by the other competitors rigs and by the difficult course itself. I pulled up to the starting line and Lorenzo asked if I was ready ....then if I was SURE I was ready, then again asked once more. The whole time I was holding the throttle down with the exhaust roaring and the my left foot on the brake to hold it in place. He yelled "GO" and I sped down the first steep hill and off to the right at the bottom then after a 75 ft straight away with several jumps in it I did a 180 degree left turn while sliding sideways down a 6 foot embankment next to the lake and bicycled it on my right two tires and then pulled it back onto all four and stomped the throttle. Yes, my seat got al little bunched up on that turn, but I didn't go into the water that was only two feet to my right and I kept on going. The next section brought racers back up to the left near the starting line and I hit the first two jumps pretty fast and cleared them without a problem landing nicely and comfortably then the course started its way back up the hill with a near vertical ledge before a flat plateau. Well to say the least I hit it too fast and reportedly I caught about six feet of air in the X-90 and she landed hard on the right front tire and I heard a hissing sound. The right front tire just got punctured probably by getting pinched between the tire and the ground since I was only running 8-10 psi in each of the Dunlop all terrain tires. I had only run about 1/4 of the track and now for the the last 3/4 of the track I had to run it with a flat passengers side tire and it was incredibly hard to steer to the left! So there was lots of stopping and backing up then stomping the throttle again once I was back on the course. I was winding my way up the hillside and here's the video Steph and Zach took. I am not so good with getting the "embedded" video's to come up so here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHxgz5aaIa0 As you can see in the video the X-90 wouldn't steer hardly at all and I had the hardest time turning left, but still tried to drive as fast as possible. Also, with the flat front tire the front skid plate was keeping the front end and cross member from digging in and helping slide me over the steeper jumps and hills that looked like big Ski moguls. With the flat front tire the X-90 was landing hard directly on the rim....I could feel EVERY BUMP and it was not pleasant so I had to slow it down a bit. ....yeah right! I stabbed the throttle as hard as I could and as often as I could while still maintaining control of the vehicle, but I was still not always in total control. After what you see in the video the track turns 90 degrees to the right and there's a 100 foot straight-away until the next 90 degree turn and I ran her as fast as she would go and then couldn't stop in time to make the 90 degree left and ended up hanging the passengers side front tire off of the 6 ft ledge above the other side of the lake. I put it in reverse, but she just spun tires so I unbuckled and jumped out then locked the front drivers hub then hung over the side of the vehicle and locked the passengers side hub, jumped back in, buckled back up, then shifted into 4 wheel drive and stabbed the throttle. With 3-wheel drive she backed up onto the track and I hit the gas pedal again going as fast as I could while trying to ignore the steep drop off on into the lake on the passengers side which looked to be a 15-20 foot drop at this point in the course. The track wrapped around the back side of the lake and then came a series of three steep valley's and steep hill climbs one right after the other then up on top of the last hill climb there was a 180 degree turn around some trees, a jump, and then another couple turns. Well, the X-90 decided it wanted to go down the hill and into the trees. I hit the breaks as hard as I could, but she slid about 20 feet and was out of sight from the announcer deep in the trees and the brush. I heard the announcer say "We've got a racer off the track" and they called for the Bobcat to extract the X-90. I slammed her into reverse and punched the throttle and spun the tires while sawing the wheel left and right until I drug myself out of the trees carrying parts of weeds and vines back on the course with me. Then I heard the announcer say "Nevermind, he's back on the course" and I hit the throttle and headed up through the last few turns and down the last few straight-aways then up and across the finish line. Now slowly limping all the way back to the starting line area Lorenzo game me my horrible time of well over six minutes. Disappointed I did so poorly, but happy I was able to finish the race and amazed that the X-90 was still moving I continued limping her back to the campsite and on to the trailer. Time to asses the damage and fix what I broke.
Back at the trailer I looked her over and saw that the front of the frame was leaning in a little, the strut towers were also leaning in (I should have taken Mike's advice and installed a strut tower brace!), the front control arms were bent back a bit, and the skid plate was pushed back into the frame cross member. She was still driveable so I attempted to put two Swampers in the front, but with the camber so far off they rubbed horribly and I did not want them to get cut up. So I removed the rear tires installed them in the front and figured out that I needed more lift for 31" Swampers to fit on the back. Here is another video Steph took while I was doing the "virtual lift" to the X90. A few people came by to see what I was cutting and banging on and you can just barely hear people laughing in the background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37yYtVQLIIAbout twenty minutes later the 31X11.50 Swampers were on the X-90 and we all drove over to the upper section of the course to watch some of the other competitors. The pic's below are the first place and second place vehicles flying around the course and the silver cherokee almost rolled on this tight curve.
With all the extra time between races because of competitors destroying their vehicles we got bored waiting for the track to be cleared and Zach decided to park on my hood. Just click on the video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITk6hPP56MWe had a good time and the fender and hood were already bent up and my only concern was making sure the windshield did not get broken. Here's a still picture of it:
Like I said, we just got a little bored and started playing around. Poor little "X"....looks tiny with Zach's Samurai parked on it! After we had seen enough racing we drove across the street to play on the trails at Uwharrie again. We hit quite a few more trails including Rocky Mountain Loop and stopped when people would stop us to ask "What is that little car?" and most every time I stopped it scared the crap out of people when they heard the crunch, because Zach Samurai was playing bumper cars with the X-90's trunk and tail lights. The expression on peoples faces was hilarious and when he would run into the X-90 their eyes would get sooo big and we would all start laughing! LOL! Here we stopped for a quick break on the trail:
This time Will was driving his Samurai and after Rocky Mountain Loop we ended up on Slab Pile. I figured I'd try to tackle it and attempted the front side of the big rock only able to get the front tires up onto it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH4CoUQG9BAWith the lack of ground clearance and lack of flex the X never had a chance of getting up over the rock, but it was fun trying. On the other hand, Zach in his Samurai on Toyota's with 35" Krawlers made it look easy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZExXEtfVqGoWe continued the X-90's torture test all afternoon and still unable to kill it with the countless jumps and rocks it was constantly ramming into we finally cruised back to the campsite with the X-90's front tires leaning inward at the top so badly the tires squealed as it was driving down the road. We got back in time for the night's festivities which included a truck pull and lots of clowning around on the hill overlooking the track. Later that evening on the hill Zach got the bright idea to drive his Samurai up onto the hill and ram the X-90 a few more times. Lots of people just stared and laughed as he pushed it off the hill and it slid down facing forward then turned sideways as it hit the bottom of the hill. As it turned we thought it may just roll over, but no the X was too low to the ground and too stable to flip that easily. It was funny to see the expression on peoples faces as it came sliding down! Later that night we were invited over to a 200 hot dog cookout with a group of guys that were up on the hill with us. They were all from Williamsburg, Virginia and had come down for the rock crawling event in their Toyota Truggy's. We all hung out and played some Ladder-ball (aka:"Redneck Golf") then soon after we were done eating and everyone had a significant amount of their choice of beverages a hot dog fight broke out with the remaining wieners flying across the campsite and striking the unsuspecting drunks sitting by the campfire. I just stepped back and watched the wieners fly and it was hilarious to say the least! After things calmed down I turned in for the night.
MORE TO COME![/center]
Sean DeVinney
AFTERMARET4X4.com
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