RACE REPORT
2022 KING OF THE HAMMERS EMC - TBD - 4600 Class
Round 2 against the toughest off-road race in America with an IFS Toyota.
OUR 2022 SPONSORS
Lakebed Prep:
This year we had a better understanding of what would go into getting the car ready for race day. This year the car was pretty much completed when we showed up with the exception of a leaking shock on the trailer. We pulled the shock and got it rebuilt and found a few other small issues. We took the car out to test/tune the shocks and immediately blew our right rear. Knowing how important it is to have the shocks dialed, we spent a good bit of our time working with Rock & Road performance to get them squared away. We ended up blowing the same rear again, which forced us to hunt down a pair of shocks out on the lakebed. One of our pit guys had a set of 14” King Smoothies that we swapped on to the car and had them tuned. This all took roughly 3 days and ate through nearly all of our pre-running time, but the car was running fast in the whoops.
RACE DAY:
Right out of the gate the car was performing better than it ever had. We were 4th from last off the line and we had quickly passed a handful of cars by the time we reached Turkey Claw a few miles into the race. We sat through a line of cars there and made a few passes coming out of the canyon. The car was chewing through the desert and it was a blast passing cars that were in the classes above us. We found Atteberry and settled into a pace right behind him so we could pick our way through the pack.
Just outside of Cougar Buttes we started noticing some power loss issues in the car and we lost our lowrance. We thought the issue was tied to our relay under the hood being bumped again so we stopped to check it. Sadly when we went to restart the car we had no battery power. So we jumped it so we could make it through Cougar Buttes. We had super clean lines through nearly all of the rock section here. On a couple of the climbs Will had to climb out and jump the car when the battery died. On the last rock section heading back out, the car died and we had to leave the jump box attached so we could get out of the way. It was clear at this point we had lost our alternator.
It turns out the alternator is not a quick and easy swap on a 2004 4Runner. Alex found himself having to go as far as pulling the power steering pump apart to have enough room to sneak out the alternator. The repair took us about an hour and we watched every car we had passed go right around us. We jumped back in the car determined to make up time and stay in the race. We made it back through to pit 1 with the car feeling good. The quick stop revealed that our limit strap mount was ripping out of our shock hoop and hanging on by a thread. We limped it back the 22 miles to main going as slow as we could allow ourselves in the smooth desert. At main pit the guys from True North Fabrication went out of their way to get us welded back up and in the race again. We made good time back to Turkey Claw and zoomed right through it. As we were exiting we started to notice a vibration in the front end from binding. We assumed we might have blown a CV axle so Will got out to inspect. The CV boot was torn but the CV was still intact. After a quick shake we realized that all of the stock front differential mounts had broken.
At this point we called the race. We knew there really wasn’t a way to fix it and the car needed to be 100% for the rocks.
THANK YOU
We can’t thank our families, friends, and sponsors for all of their support and help. Without all of you, racing would not be possible. There are so many hours and so many parts that have to fall into place at the right time. We also want to say a special thank you to all of our sponsors who took the time to be there for us in our pits. It is so rare to see that level of support from big companies and it makes us extremely excited to push hard this season.
Yukon Gear & Axle – Being a team driver for Yukon has been such a great experience. They have always gone above and beyond to make sure that every one of us drivers is taken care of. From the personal chef to the turf for our garages, they go the extra mile. The guys even worked on a spare front diff for us until late at night right before our race. Thank you so much to Neal and the rest of the team at Yukon.
Marlin Crawler – Having a company in your corner, that is so passionate about what they are building goes a long way. Big Mike and Marlin himself spent hours with us learning about the team and going over every inch to learn about how they can make better products for their customers. We cannot wait to see what else the Marlin Crawler team comes out with for our Toyota trucks in the years to come. We can promise you’re gonna love it.
Rock & Road – The team at R&R spent 3 days with us getting our shocks tuned before our race. They went above and beyond, providing us with a killer tune. We can’t thank you enough!
Power Tank – Thank you to Tyler at Power Tank for checking in on us daily and even sharing a beer or two with us. Tyler spent a lot of time with us, finding new ways to streamline our pit and race setup to be even more efficient and take advantage of all the exciting products that Power Tank has to offer.
YotaMafia – The YM racing team is another passionate sponsor who cares about all things Toyotas and racing. They not only helped us get to the lakebed, but they set up our entire team with goodies.
