A customer asked us if we could do the interior sheetmetal on the buggy he is building. This is what we have so far.

 A couple days later and it's all ready to go home.

The biggest addition is of course the roll cage. Being that this is a race car that will be driven hard safety was priority #1 on this one. Strong and simple is the theme. Lots of straight tubes, and lots of triangles. So far the cage attaches to the frame in 14 places.

As you can see the fuel cell and passenger seat have also been installed. Next will be the drivers seat, dashboard, controls and plumbing.

We've also been working a lot on finishing up the steering and suspension. The new fabricated pitman arm and rear shock mounts are now finished.

The Jeep has already had a lot of work done to it before coming over to SFR. Most of the suspension work was done by Currie, and of course it's sporting a pair of Currie F9 Axles with Currie RockJock Knuckles and a full compliment of Savvy Offroad armor. We also have a lot of other top shelf products including an Atlas II transfercase, CBR radiator,  Seats from Mastercraft, Raceline Wheels and a shiny new motor from Hesco supported on a set of our new SFR heavy duty motor mounting plates.

Here's what the Jeep looks like right now.

The first plan of action is going to be to pull the body back off and finish welding and gusseting all the suspension bracketry, before putting the body back on and building a stout roll cage.

Can you say box of bling? These are the new billet Currie Johnny Joints that will be connecting all our suspension links to the axles and frame. They are Curries latest and greatest version of their popular joint, and the balls on these have been chemically polished for less friction and heat buildup in the desert. We'll be threading these into a full set of custom SFR 7075 Aluminum Links.

It may be built for the "Stock" Class, and look like a normal jeep, but it's gonna be all business. We're building this thing with one thing in mind, racing. We'll be adding a full custom dash and we had 12VoltGuy.com build this sweet switch panel to keep all the controls close at hand.

Last but not least, here's what's hiding under the hood. It's a shiny new straight 6 from Hesco. Exact details are top secret, but I've been told that it should make about a million horsepower. To keep all these ponies firmly reigned in we bolted up the first production set of SFR Motor Mounting Plates, along with some Currie 1" Lifed Motor Mounts.

Here is what we're starting with. It wont look much like this when it's done though.

I'm very proud to announce that this year I will be joining Gerald Lee and John Currie in the Savvy Offroad / Currie Enterprises Stock Class Jeep LJ. John will be driver of record, and I will be taking over co-driving duties, as well as doing a lot of the fabrication and preparation work on the Jeep. We have a lot of big plans, and we're planning on racing to win so this should be a very exciting year at the hammers.

At this point the car had no floor and simple box tubing for frame rails, and the owner discovered he didn't really know where to go from there. That's when he gave me a call and brought the Manx over. The first order of business was to finish welding and gusseting the new framework then fabricate new floor panels.

The last order of business was to build a new cage. It didn't come with one, and if you're gonna go play in the dirt it's pretty much mandatory. What we came up with was a pretty simple 6 point cage with mounts for some 4-point harnesses to keep the driver and passenger safe.

During my time with Team RedBull we competed in WERock, CalRocks, ProRock, UROC, XRRA and King of the Hammers. We worked together with a number of other shops and teams along the way, building new vehicles and keeping the old ones in the fight. We also traveled all over the country to dozens of events each year competing at the highest levels of Rockcrawling and Rock Racing. 

In addition to Team RedBull my time in the pits at all these events has given me a lot of experience with a ton of different vehicles and I've had the pleasure of working with a number of other teams like Frank and Nicole Johnson, Torchmate Racing, Rock Runner Racing and Lovell Racing to name just a few. In addition to Rockcrawling and Rock Racing I've also gotten involved in a good deal of desert racing, working with the team at Jefferies Racing and their Class 1 and Trophy Truck efforts at a number of SCORE races both in the US and in Mexico.

SFR has even gone international. In 2010 we sent Mishka overseas to compete in Eurotrial and a number of other events. Since then the new owner has racked up a very impressive record of wins and strong finishes in his SFR designed and built crawler.

Most recently I was asked to join forces with Lovell Racing as Co-Driver for Roger Lovell at the 2011 King of the Hammers race. Joachim Schwiesow of RockRunner Racing also joined the team in a unique combination of forces that had historically been competing against each other. Together Roger and I managed a 17th place finish, good enough to secure a spot in the 2012 race, and just as Roger predicted we didn't need to turn on the lights before pulling in. 

This page isn't finished yet. I'm planning on adding a lot more from our racing past, and there are definitely more races coming up soon so stay tuned for our next big adventure.

When I got the call from Ryan my first question was "why?" Not too many people head out to the desert in August, as the heat is.....well....really hot. Turns out Dave Cole (Owner of Ultra4Racing and the King of the Hammers race) wanted to go out and run a few trails that he was thinking of using for this years Stock and Modified class race course. Since I'll be racing in one of those classes this year this was a great opportunity for me to get some inside info on what might be the course. Ryan also wanted to use the time to test some new suspension components he had designed for his employer, ProComp Suspension. He also knew that the StinkBug was in need of some suspension tuning and testing as well. So it was decided, and along with a friend of Ryans we all met in the desert Saturday morning.

After a quick catch up session we hit the trails with our 3 vehicles. We had a nice new 2 door Jeep JK from Smittybilt, ProComp Suspensions Jeep TJ, and my Isuzu Amigo "The StinkBug". We were all on 35-37" tires and full bodies which made our group very good test subjects to gauge what the new Stock KOH class will be capable of. I wont go into too much detail on what trails we ran, but we did have a lot of fun and pushed the vehicles quite a bit, but without damaging them.

I mentioned earlier that it's a bit hot out there this time of year. What I meant was that it was roughly 120 degrees. I was begging for it to cool off and apparently someone was listening cause in the middle of the day some dark clouds rolled in and we got quite a little storm. The black thunderclouds came seemingly from nowhere and before we knew it we were getting soaked and jumping as nearby lightening strikes rattled the canyons with thunder. Then, as quickly as it came, it left. Just about as soon as we got out of the trails and started back across the desert towards camp the rain stopped and the desert returned to hot and dry.

Once we were back at camp we cooked up some lunch and got to work on the StinkBugs shock tuning. When I recently revamped good old Stinky and added Sway-A-Way Coilovers I didn't have time to valve them at all. Out of the box the rig was just WAY too stiff.

Well luckily for me Ryan is a pro when it comes to Shock tuning, and he brought another pro with him. After just a couple runs watching it work Ryan and Eric had a plan, and after lunch we pulled the front shocks and changed out a number of shims and played around with the bleed a little. When we took it back out again it was a night and day improvement, but they felt it could still be better. After another round of valving they had it dialed. This thing is REALLY fun to drive now, and just soaks up the desert.

Sunday morning we headed out with plans to run some more trails, but got a little sidetracked playing in the sand dunes. Johnson Valley really is an off-road playground. There are miles and miles of desert roads, tons of nasty rock trails and even a few dunes. We spent probably an hour running up and down the dunes having a blast. However by this point the heat was starting to get to us so we decided to cut the weekend a little short and head back to camp.

we accomplished everything we had gone there to do, so leaving early wasn't too much of a disappointment, in fact we all felt like it was a great weekend. Hopefully we'll get to do it again soon. Until then, we'll keep you updated on the fun going on in the shop.

It's cuttin time!

Since the original build up technology has progressed a lot, as have my fabrication skills. For the last few years my trusty old Amigo had spent a lot of time in the garaged, somewhat overlooked for newer more capable vehicles. I finally decided it was time for Stinky to play a little catch up, so she came out of the garage, went into the shop and onto the lift.

New Link Brackets

The plan was simple. Chop off all the old suspension and replace it with a 3 link front, 4 link rear, and Sway-A-Way Coilovers all the way around. Seems simple to say, not as simple to do. As we tore into the old stuff we found more and more worn out parts that needed upgrading. In the end I replaced all the fuel lines, most of the brake lines, both rear roll cage mounts were rebuilt, the front bumper got reinforced, and I even narrowed up the stock tailgate to fit just to finish everything off.

The first step after cutting off all the old stuff was to start on the front suspension. I had a good Idea of what I wanted so I started with the lower link brackets for the axles. I had designed some brackets that I really liked for the KOH TJ, so I pulled up those files, made some adjustments for the different axle sizes and cut out another set. I actually ended up using a number of brackets that were originally designed for the KOH TJ, including all of the upper link mounts on the frame.

Testing front suspension clearances

Next I started mocking up the front suspension. This was going to be my biggest challenge, as one of my goals for this new version of the car was to be able to go fast in the desert. In order to do that I needed a decent amount of up travel in the front to soak up the bumps. Trying to fit all the required pieces for proper handling, steering, and wheel travel was quite a difficult task. I ended up having to form the track bar around the top of the differential and move the tie-rod down for frame clearance.

Upper Link Brackets and mini-truss

At this point I still didn't have shocks, so I moved on to the rear suspension. The first task there was setting up all the brackets on the rear axle. I decided to build a mini-truss to give a little more room for attaching the upper link brackets. Once those were all finished up I was able to mock up some links and cycle things around to check the geometry.

Link geometry getting checked

Subframe

Once all that was checked and looked good it was time to build the subframe brackets to attach all the lower links to. I also figured this would be a good place to add a little extra SFR flair. all 4 lower links attach to these brackets, and eventually the skid plate will mount to the bottom of it as well. After those were in place I was able to attach all the mockup links and set the car down on it's wheels again for the first time. With no springs it was sitting on the bumpstops giving an idea just how low it could be. Chassis the SFR shop dog decided it looked even better with her in front.

Chassis likes it.

Testing Front Shock Fitment

By this time my new shocks had arrived so I started getting the front set up. The passenger side was pretty straightforward, but on the drivers side the track bar bracket was very much in the way. To solve this problem I ended up having to move the drivers side shock back and down a bit to get everything to fit.

Shock Tower Brace

I also needed to build a brace to go over the engine between the shock towers, which provided another opportunity to add some style. I could have just run a piece of tubing, but that would be boring.

At this point I decided to get a little tricky with the rear suspension. One of my requirements for this project was that I could retain the rear seat. Well since the seat sits directly above the rear axle that makes shock placement very difficult. The solution to this was to mount the shocks to the suspension links several inches in front of the axle. This meant building a set of beefy desert racer style trailing arms, then notching the frame out and building some upper shock mounts that tied the 2 halves of the frame together and tied them in with the cage. The other additional benefit of this setup is that it gives me a lot more wheel travel. Using 12" shocks I'm now getting almost 19" of vertical travel.

Trailing Arms

Drooped Out.

The last thing that needed to be done was to add a sway bar to the rear. This was another packaging challenge, and I ended up needing to build some very special arms to make everything fit, and to hold up to all the side loads that they would see when articulating in the rocks.

After a few finishing touches it was time to test. The first destination was Moab, UT for the 2011 Easter Jeep Safari. You can see how that went over in our trip report section.

Sway Bar

Sway Bar Arms

Good bye old site!

Been working on a new site for SFR. We are excited about the new site as it starts to take shape. The main features will be an online store with a lot of cool features.

We also have this blog to help keep all you crazy cats up to date on all of the exciting thing that are going on at SFR. Dallas, the owner of SFR, is always up to something new. Building off-road vehicles, motorcycles, sailboats, art projects and the occasional silly project. Now he will have an easier way to share his fun.

We thank you for your patience while we set up the new site.

We started with a very stock $400 Samurai.

We removed a few things.

We added a few things.

We rewired a few things. (Toyota fuel injection)

Replaced the  vroom with a  VROOM VROOM.

We added a couple of these things.

When we were done...

...it worked very well!

If you have any questions about this project please feel free to ask.