1971 f250 DESERT truck- 10/24 race prep

[hivewax]

I like the modifications on your truck. Time to buy a pipe bender!

[1971ford]

Thanks guys, brother is pretty good with the camera. And it's open to the dirt!


hivewax- we have a JD squared tubing bender with 1.5 and 1.75 die sets in the garage. This is what I use for all tube work.

[BurkeBajaF250]

Wow, cool truck - I'm new to this site today and have an old Class 8 racer. I love the look of your truck!

[1971ford]

Post up the pics! I'd love to see the truck!

[BurkeBajaF250]

Man, I just read the beginning 7 pages of your build. Really cool. That truck you showed a link to on Trackside is close to one of the ones i thought I was buying. Anyway, I think it's totally cool you built your own from scratch. Awesome. Mine has a few photos on Trackside in '77 Baja 1000 and Baja 500. Here's a link to one of each.
http://www.tracksidephoto.com/gallery/i ... &start=45/

http://www.tracksidephoto.com/gallery/i ... &start=60/

I will post a pic of how it looks now to my Welcome area thread later tonight if I can.

[CrypticRacer13]

Ryan has two of the sickest rigs on this forum thats for sure

[trukcrazy]

Thanks guys!
Here's the video.
Oh man quite a few bugs to work out. Front end is way too soft, drivers side is way WAY too soft, exhaust leak, and a few other small things.
Time to pull the shocks apart, re-valve and find out why the drivers side is softer than the passenger side, and work the other bugs out and go test again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCphVbRZAOc

Ryan, you and your truck have come and gone a long way. Extremely impressive what you and your family are doing. The pictures are incredible, but I can't view youtube over here. Can you post it on photobucket? That I can access. Otherwise, I will wait until I am home to see it. Very impressive.

[Ranchero50]

That truck is way too quiet Sounds like it's lugging a lot, not making much HP. What's your average race RPM?

[1971ford]

Burkebaja... definately post some pics up on here of how it is today! That is way cool that one of the old 70's baja f100 trucks that i've checked out on trackside before is stilly alive, i figured they were all long gone. Whatever you do... please don't change it! I've see several old school built f100's slowly turn into modern prerunners, where nothing from the old school days is left. If you're want to go real fast in the whoops then start on a stock truck and leave the old schools alone
Can't wait to see pics!

Thanks Mike

Thanks John, I've never uploaded a video to photobucket, but i'm sure its not that hard. I'd do it right now but all the video and everything is on my brothers macbook he uses for editing, hmm

Jamie..
It's funny i just watched the video and you're right I can't even hear the truck.
I'd say it's louder in person for sure but it still isn't that loud. You can't talk in the truck without yelling basically. But yeah, i had the RPMs low the entire time. The only times i went above 3,500 i'm guessing would be the run up to the jump but thats pretty far from the camera.
I've been told more than once that I baby the truck too much, so next test session i'll have to work on trying to blow the engine up
I guess i'll put a tach back in there too so i can safely get the RPM's pretty high

[Racer Z]

There's no point in unnecessarily beating your motor to death. What is important is knowing the power range of your motor. This would be the results of a Dyno Tune session or by good "seat-of-the-pants" judgement. Where is the peak torque and the peak horsepower? Try to keep in the fat of it's power band. And yes, use your tach.

You've probably already got a good idea where it makes it's best torque and where it runs out of power. After that, all you're doing it beating the motor to death.

[Ranchero50]

In the turns and under load I would stay around 4k even if it means staying in second most of the short track, downshift before 3k, on the flats let it go into drive and just go as fast as the track will allow. I'd look into re-gating your shifter so you can shuttle shift between 2-3 without worrying about going into neutral. Have it gated so you just pull the release to pop it into first. Run a full manual valve body and down shift in the jump and bury the throttle to get some energy into the tires so it'll take off on landing, kind of like clutching a moto bike.

I doubt you'll break it and I'm sure you have more fun with it if you race it vs. drive it.

Jamie

[BurkeBajaF250]

Burkebaja... definately post some pics up on here of how it is today! That is way cool that one of the old 70's baja f100 trucks that i've checked out on trackside before is stilly alive, i figured they were all long gone. Whatever you do... please don't change it! I've see several old school built f100's slowly turn into modern prerunners, where nothing from the old school days is left. If you're want to go real fast in the whoops then start on a stock truck and leave the old schools alone
Can't wait to see pics!

Ryan, someones already changed it a bit, but I am going to attempt to go back to how it was. I think I can do it. The engine cage, cab cage and most of the frame is as it was. Someone added a more modern bed structure, front and rear bumpers and changed the rear spring hangers and front spring mounts. However, this truck was pretty stock F250 with F350 springs when raced, so getting those stock spring hangers, springs, coil towers, etc shouldn 't be hard. I have some decent photos of the original bed strut bars(not really a structure back then) and will try to get as close to that as possible.
Sidenote about Trackside trucks: There was one other built longbed Bump back in the day, ran from 68-79 in the desert and was Stroppe prepped, went through several owners, and ended up last on the M/T coliseum circuit circa 81. All the other bumps were shortbeds pretty much. Wasnt' til Walker Evans '73 dentside that they started using longbeds, and even then not all did.

Here's a couple photos. I put more on my page in the Welcome section, but will soon start my Project Thread! I hope..

[1971ford]

I'm jealous!!! That is cool!
Super glad to hear you are taking it to its original glory! I wish i was closer, It would be a privilege to help restore that piece of offroad racing history. So how did you score that!? Can't wait for the project thread

I'm going to have to send the link to this page to a buddy who is just as crazy about old school ford prerunners as me

[BurkeBajaF250]

Thanks Ryan, it has some cool history but is a MAJOR project. I will start the thread soon, but I'm still in "History Gathering" mode. You aren't too far away from me, just a couple hours! Ha. I'll start the thread now, and post up some more pics I got of it today from the guy who had it in '79-83 - He shipped it to Australia and did a 11k mile rally with it and also did a rally in Reno in '80.

[1971ford]

Short course race in one week!!!