The Shopping List (Part 2)

Driveshafts to engine

Moving up from the axles, we’ll use driveshafts from JE Reel Driveline in Corona, California.  Jim has been building our driveshafts for years and we’ve had nothing but perfect luck with them, even on the insane 82 degree driveshaft he built for the front of my current WE Rock Unlimited crawler, the Red Bull RockIt II.  The front shaft will be a two-piece Canyon Crawler design with 1350 joints and the rear will be a traditional setup with 1350 joints.  This is one of those parts where we’re glad to “install em and forget em!”  Having anything but the best in driveshafts is one of the worst things you can do, on the competition course, or on the trail.  Driveshaft angles will not be an issue in this rig.  The True Hi 9’s elevate the diffs reducing the vertical angles.  Also, remember, with the True Hi 9 diffs over Dana 60’s, the pinion sticks out far less, giving you a longer shaft, lessening the angles the drive shafts ever see. The off-set front AND rear diffs (done for axle tube clearance similar to a portal) could have caused an issue but Bender had a simple solution.  To handle the sideways angles created by the rear offset diff, we are locating the engine far right in the chassis and the transfer case far left, making an almost straight line to the rear diff.  Trust me, with a combo of those facts and the shafts from  JE Reel Driveline, Bec will be sitting pretty in more ways than one!

Moving up the line, we hooked those driveshafts to a product that changed the face of the sport years ago, and will do it again this year…the transfer case.  Years ago, we had the introduction of the Atlas II transfer case by Advanced Adapters.  Their bulletproof, twin stick design allowed you to choose 4-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive, or front-wheel-drive, all with the brute strength of a transfer case that was built specifically for hard core use.  The only drawback to an Atlas is its manner of shifting.  With an automatic transmission (the tranny of choice in competition) the shifting requires you to shift the tranny from drive, to reverse, to neutral, and then pull on one of the two mechanical shifters to disengage either the front or rear wheel drive, and then you shift the tranny back into gear to proceed.  To re-engage that drive, you often have to reverse the process.  That is time consuming and frustrating but still, the benefits outweigh that negative.  Jump forward a number of years to the present and watch the introduction of the new air-shifted transfer case from Lovell Engineering.  The extreme durability of this product will be demonstrated over this season but the main thing that will be proven is the big advantage you’ll have from INSTANT shifting.  Even if you added an air-shifting system to current transfer cases, as they are gear to gear, you’ll still have to shift your auto tranny as I described above. The Lovell case instead uses an air-engaged clutch system that changes everything! No matter if you’re in gear, full throttle, tires smokin’…with the flick of a specialized toggle switch, you’re instantly in, or out, of the front or rear drive system as you choose. This technology will allow you to instantly change the loading of the crawler, helping you to turn tighter, take aggressive off-camber climbs with ease, and to save a huge amount of interior space as there are no longer two shifters sticking through the floorboard.  There are simply two small toggle switches that can be mounted remotely.  For competitors, the time saved on-course will be huge…think about it, 30 seconds is a TON of time, especially with the time limits and difficult courses lately.  I’m willing to bet, we’ll save about that per course, plus having the other advantages offered by the air-shifted system.  Lovell Engineering scored a major touchdown with this idea and we will be testing a brand new gear ratio for them which will be 4.7 to 1.  For the first few weeks, we’ll install the 3.57 to 1 ratio while they finish up the lower gear ratio prototype. The overall size and weight are about the same as an Atlas and the output yokes are in the same location so there is no need to change shaft lengths.

Our transmission will be the trusty PowerGlide by a company we’ve already mentioned…Dedenbear Products.

Hands down, the most trusted and well known PowerGlide case manufacturer in the world, Dedenbear makes an all-aluminum “shorty” case called the “SuperGlide” that is far stronger, and lighter than the stock tranny cases you find in many rockcrawlers.  The overall length of the SuperGlide is 19.5” and that INCLUDES the bellhousing that is built into the Dedenbear case.  We will use Dedenbear’s “super pump” to handle the important job of feeding the fluid to make the tranny work.  We’ll have a custom 27 spline output shaft built so it will work with the Lovell Transfer Case (you need this for an Atlas too) as well as choosing a first-gear ratio of 2.11 to 1. Any lower in ratio and we’re dealing with a strength issue.  On the bottom of the case will be a custom fabricated pan by Stef’s Performance that gives us a “little” more clearance and also is far more durable.  We will be running a fan cooled tranny cooler that we’ll get into later.  Also, we choose a manual valve body with a normal shift pattern.  We have gotten used to this pattern and prefer it to reverse pattern…that’s simply a preference thing and we never miss a shift so I’m not worried about needing to change.  Blue Torch Fabworks will fabricate a custom shifter as well as the linkage that will keep things simple, compact, and light.

The torque converter will be a smaller race converter and will be set to stall around 3100 RPM.  We are still shopping for who will supply that but are looking at a number or reputable shops.  Trust me, a torque converter with that high of a stall had better be a good unit…better units work with better efficiency and efficiency affects heat…heat DESTROYS trannys.  This time around, we are following the lead of Brad and Roger Lovell and giving the Art Carr output and 1.80 1^st gear kit, as well as their full manual valve body and torque converter.  Art Carr claims their torque converter will be more efficient, allowing us to run a stall around 2700 RPM, rather than the 3100 I was going for.  Their claim is we’ll have good crawling torque and a decent “FLASH” of RPM when we need it to make those quick-dash types of heavy throttle.

Now to the big surprise…our team has been using custom aluminum engines for a couple years now.  Becca’s Red Bull RockHer I uses a custom “ShortStar” 3.5 liter GM V-6 that puts out over 300 horsepower.  In the Red Bull RockIt II, I have a custom Vauxhall / GM 2.0 liter supercharged inline 4 cylinder engine that puts out over 325 ponies.  Those engines and their weight and power have been great BUT they just do not oil properly.  Oiling at extreme angles is an issue we are tired of messing with and the costs of our specialty engines, versus the headaches, just hasn’t paid off.  In keeping with our theme of K.I.S.S., we have chosen to build a slightly beefed up GM 4.3 liter vortec v-6… That’s right, we’re going to a heavy old cast-iron block but seeing as that’s been a successful engine for so many teams and for so many years, we’re making the jump back to old school…only with a little polish in the right places.

The engine will go in for a rebuild and balancing job, total seal rings (to keep the oil where it belongs when inverted), a roller cam, solid lifters, and roller rocker system, a gear drive system, larger injectors and throttle body, a super high volume oil pump (geared for lower RPMs) and some headwork including port matching and polishing.  Also, we’ll be using a new “DryFlow” synthetic air filter from AEM coupled to a longer air intake before dumping into the throttle body. 

For the exhaust, Bender will work his magic with custom headers and the tubes will actually flow forward to a muffler in the front of the engine compartment.  The exhaust will dump out from a fenderwell, but not where it is pointing towards a tire or a shock as the heat from the exhaust dump could screw things up.

The wiring harness is always a hassle and we’ve had enough of building our own stuff and patching it together time and again.  The simple fact that we don’t even have data ports on two of our engines has frustrated us to no end so this time, we’re going the easy route.  We’re picking up a complete engine harness from Painless Performance Products and LOVING it.  It is already built to fit our engine so is a 15 minute plug, play, and tie-down job.  The part number we’ll be using is a Painless 60214 for 96-99 GM Vortec V6 because the engine will be close to the area we’ll be mounting the electronics.  If we needed more length in the harness, then a Painless 60215 would be the ticket.

On the front of the engine, what you will not find is a water pump. To increase power, we’re ditching the traditional mechanical water pump and putting on a WP3 remote mount electric water pump from Dedenbear. 

It saves about 11 pounds on the engine, allows for full water flow to cool the engine, even when the engine is not running, and frees up the horsepower lost on the drag of the traditional waterpump.   The “engine off” cooling is the most important feature for us…especially when competing and practicing mid-summer in these desert competition sites that top 110 degrees.   

Our starter will be a TINY 6 pound unit from PowerMaster Motorsports that can start engines up to 11:1 compression, and the Alternator will be a 6 pound unit that puts out 120 amps, also from PowerMaster.  With the loss of the waterpump on the engine, we will need to custom build a system of idlers and a tensioner to keep using the serpentine belt.  I have a feeling that part will keep Dallas and I busy for awhile. 

Bender thinks he’ll get the engine low enough that we’ll need a remote oil filter package.  We’ll be shopping for that this week. 

Rounding out the front of the engine will be the hot rodded Saginaw “P-style” power steering pump from West Texas OffRoad.  Matt sent me a pump for the RockIt II that flows somewhere in the realm of 11 GPM…it gets HOT within a minute of two even with a HUGE fan cooled 6-pass cooler.  This pump will not be as hotrodded as that one as really, heat steals pump-life, but it will be close.  West Texas claims it will be a good balance of longevity and performance.  Driving that pump will be a sub-6” pulley so we get enough flow out of it, even at low RPMs.  For the reservoir, we’ll use the filtered Tall setup from Station of Performance OffRoad Systems.  We’ll make a slight modification to the fountain to reduce cavitation and increase flow back into the reservoir. We’ll remove the internal fountain by unscrewing it and drilling the current holes slightly larger as well as adding two additional holes. 

The majority of our plumbing will be steel braid as we had enough of worrying about our hoses bursting and leaking on the Red Bull RockIt I and the RockHer I.  After dealing with all of the different hose manufacturers, we decided that the one company that offered the most of what we were looking for, plus the customer service on all of my plumbing questions, was Russell Performance.  Their plumbing makes it easy to build an effective system with.  Considering the difficulty we always have trying to find “just the right rubber hose” at the auto parts store, and then finding the same one a year or two later when the old one fails, it’s just easier to do it right the first time and build it yourself.  If you’ve ever built steel braid hoses, you’ll know just how much of a hassle it can be, especially with the Earls hose ends that are an absolute NIGHTMARE…Well, it’s not with the Russell stuff and I’ll show in photos later just how easily it’s done, even without a vise to hold it all. 

The radiator will be a totally custom unit from Ron Davis Racing Products. 

There are a ton of aluminum radiator manufacturers out there but once you take a closer look at their processes for manufacturing, you see how big of a difference in quality, one company can be to another.  Ron Davis aluminum radiators stand at the top of the list for sure and that is due in part by amazing customer service, part by actual participation in the many Motorsports they build for, part by building products to custom specifications, and the rest from their quality.  Ron Davis uses 100% TIG welded all-aluminum construction with custom cooling fins that are “louvered”.  These fins dissipate heat faster, and the manufacturing process makes their radiators stronger.  The size is a custom 14” tall and 20” wide and uses two rows of 1” tubes to carry the water.  The fan(s) and shroud will be custom built by Ron Davis to best fit the radiator and we’re expecting a finished thickness of around 5 ¾”.  This radiator will not have anything else built in…even the tranny cooler will be separate.

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