DP Motorsports / National Guard Jeep Comanche #7118 race update:

I have been on hurricane duty since I got back to Louisiana. Do they have Hurricanes in the desert? J Still doing hurricane stuff yuck.L

Here is a little race update.

All went well until mile 15 then stuck in silt. Had to dig complete truck out and around truck. Took about 2 hours. Then all good till check point 2. Truck started to lose power couldn’t go over 20 mph. the chase truck was already at cp3 so we limped it to check point 3. Now we are about 3 hours behind schedule. Finally at cp3, Found the air filter was clogged. Looked for extra ones.......... yea still in my shop in Louisiana.
So we cleaned it best we could and about that time, the pit Stewart told us pit 3 was closing in 2 min, so we stuffed all loose items in it and left. We stopped outside the pit and secured everything and continued. Now everything perfect. Tearing up the desert. We did over 100mph across the dry lake bed (breaking our own rule to conserve the truck) to make up time. Truck is on point and we were hauling butt. No issues until past cp5, were we started loosing power again, air filter. Stopped and cleaned by putting it on exhaust to blow it out, all good.
Flying now trying to make up time. Passed a class 11 vw and continued to cp6. Talked w/ chase truck and decided to blow off cp6 because it was closing in 45 min and we needed to make some time. We entered pit 6, did not see the entrance bump… we must have launched 5 ft in the air… now realize all the Jeepspeed stuff was removed to run in class 7100 (no long arms, no air bumps, just stock jeep coil springs and bump stops) so the landing was painful.

She held together I could not believe it.

So onward to cp7 to make up time. Had made up 30min so far... then disaster. Outside cp6 by like 5 miles, fell into silt hole, swallowed whole front end. It was unreal!!!!! Seemed Like 5 ft deep. The headlights were under silt. So we started digging, freed it twice only to go deeper. We had 30 min before pit 7 closed with 50 miles to get there.
So we were game until... the alternator locked up and burnt the belt off. Seems that if a crap load of silt gets in the alternator it wont work anymore. Go figure.

We were done. 242 miles completed in total, 7th in class, not bad for first outing. Can’t wait for next race!
As for truck issues: Not one flat tire, no real suspension issues. Even running stock jeep upper and lower control arms and coil springs in front caused no problems. Just air filter and alternator. For a truck that just turned 20 years old I Can’t believe it did so well!!

So for all you Jeepspeeders that think you have to have all the fancy stuff, (yea I would have run all the fancy stuff because I have it), but go race it like it is and have fun! be respectful to others and they will help you, they sure helped me.

Thanks everybody for all your help and advice!!!