2006 Mini Baja      

We attended competition in Portland, Oregon on May 11th through 13th.
Here are our results in the West Mini Baja Competition

76 teams competing

Static Judging_________________________________62nd
Design_______________________________________54th
Cost_________________________________________8th
Overall_______________________________________60th

Further detail can be found at:
http://minibajawest.com/

A brief synopsis of the competition:
Portland turned out to be 1700 some odd miles and about 28 hours of pain for our Ford F-150 with a 5.4L V8 in it. Pulling the trailer through the mountains was quite a chore for it. We passed safety without too much trouble, except for two major problems. First they wanted a sealed trottle cable and second we had to weld in a small support between the lower frame rail and the firewall. After this we passed without further trouble. The first day of competition went well and we finished all the events about middle of the pack or a little better. The car performed well and handles like a formula car, except for some minor turning issues due to the live axle. It accelerates moderately well. That could be improved with some playing with gear ratios and clutch tuning. We just didn't have time to get it to the point we would have liked. We ran well in the endurance race for 45 minutes or so and then broke down. If we had run the entire race I think we would have easily finished in the top ten. Our first problem was that we didn't loctite the set screws on the gears inside the gear reduction box and so one backed out and the key came out allowing the gear to spin on the shaft. After a frantic hour of work we pulled the transmission and fixed this problem. We ran another 45 minutes or so, but during most of this the second chain in the reduction box was jumping. Then the gear finally wore enough that the chain jumped with about an hour left and so we were out for the rest of the race. I am not yet positive what caused this since I haven't gotten a chance to tear the transmission down.  But, it was probably from a combination of the following two things. First our bearing carriers in the box weren't machined perfectly, so the bearings may have started to wallow out and shorten the center to center distance, and second at the very bottom of rear suspension travel the drivetrain would bind, so if we bottomed our suspension it would bend the driveshaft at the bottom of the reduction box, which it did at least slightly.