Fire Guys Racing's transformation from 7s to 7200/Class 6 w/ Camburg Suspension

[FireGuysRacing]

Due to many reason's Paul and I decided to change our truck from 7s to 7200/Class 6. I guess first off we are following the 7200 rules so it will be able to race in either BITD or SCORE with BITD's 85" track width rule. Long story short, we think that 7s has been a great class to race in and could be again but see no progress in the near future for the class so we have decided to move on. We will not be building a new truck, but changing our current truck over to the 7200. So if you are hoping to follow another unlimited budget build you should look in another thread. Paul and I have always been in this for the fun of it! We will continue to have fun going a bit faster and hope to surprise some of the competitors in the class while we are at it! We talked to Jerry at Camburg and even stopped in a couple of times (being from Colorado that actually means something!) before we decided to have them build the kit. Jerry and Jason decided they were up to the challenge and have built something that I believe we will be proud of when we can get it out in the desert! So to start this off, here are a couple of pictures of the truck and the shop in Grand Junction, CO where the transformation will happen.

[FireGuysRacing]

Here is the front end kit that we got from Camburg and when I get a chance tonight I'll get more pictures up of the progress and the rear links. This kit would fit '84-'95 2wd chassis I think!?! (with heavy modification!)

[FireGuysRacing]

So here are some shots of starting to tear down the truck, cutting off some of the old cage work that will need to be re-done.

[FireGuysRacing]

Starting to set up the arms.

[FireGuysRacing]

So instead of going with anything like the stock lower bushings that we have been running on the 7s. We decided to make our own bushings. The stock ones were a metal sleeve that had a rubber bushing and another metal sleeve inside of it. We decided to scrap that whole thing and take some solid bronze and have to pieces just like the one in the picture slide in from each end with a thicker wall sleeve that is just a few thousands over the total length needed so you can tighten the bolts down tight. Also a picture of some differences to what we ran before. The first being the difference in length on the lower arm, the second is the original stock spindles we used to beef up next to what we are going to, and the last is just the pile of stuff we pulled off the truck!

[GJToyotabug]

what in the world no one has commented? Nice job you guys?
I for one am very excited about the change! I cant wait to get out their and dominate the pack!

[THK Matt]

Damn...

[sweetmeat]

Right on man!!! We race Best in The Desert its a great series. They have alot of entries in class 7200. In fact a buddy i went to high school with 20 years ago, lives around the corner from me now is actually on the camburg team. They build some great products i'm sure you will be happy with them. Good luck on your transformation and hope to see ya out there soon

[TURBO]

what is this?? leftovers? I want!!! I WANT!!!!!


nice... every time i see pics from you guys i want to build a truck like this!

[boosten22re]

Looking good guys. I would suggest using delrin for the bushing on the lower arm. I currently run a reverse strut configuration on my truck. What did camburg tell you to expect out of this kit for travel?


Gregg

[howyadoin]

Have fun with those Mason trucks.

[46&2]

Damn, this should be badass. 

[FireGuysRacing]

Just an update:
We have been super busy working our 2nd jobs this summer and have not been able to work on the truck but we hope to be back at it in a month or so to get busy on it.  When we start back up we will post some updates!

[locked 4x4]

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[toytank]

i will have to stop by sometime  and check it out looks good. i do have a question though you know that im a crawler rather than a racer but i noticed that your upper arm looked like it was going to have a bushing on the front and a heim on the back why not two heims is that to take up any slack the joint might have or just strength?

[BigMike]

Subscribed

[FireGuysRacing]

Mounting the arms and starting to see how the new front glass is going to fit!

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

A few more of the front glass. Also if you notice all the Fox boxes under the rear of the truck we bought 2.5" coil overs all the way around, 3" triple bypass' for the front, and 3.5" 5 tube bypass' for the rear!

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

 As for the back of the truck we were going to leave the frame at first but decided to cut the back half off to accommodate some of our ideas in this build. We are going to keep the 4cyl for now since it has proven to be a reliable engine that is stronger than most stock 6cyl's and we have a plan or two to give it a couple extra ponies! In the rear of the truck we have been running a 22 gal fuel cell that gets us pretty far with the 10mpg that we get at some of the races. We are putting in a 32 gal cell though and moving it up to behind the cab so the difference in weight from full to empty has a little less effect on the overall balance of the truck. The rear will be linked with a 2.5" coil over and a 3.5" 5 tube bypass for tune ability! I'm not saying that we are PPI or Ivan Stewart but we are trying to employ some of their thoughts (I think) into what we are trying to accomplish with this truck. You don't have to have the most HP to get it done, its power to weight ratio's, and the lighter you are the less wear and tear on the equipment!

Here are the links from Camburg!

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

So here are a couple shots with all the arms on the truck. Also a couple wit the beginnings of mocking up for the shock placement. When it comes to shock placement there are obviously two schools of thought on it. Some we talk to swear by mounting them inner and outer to get the best ability to adjust the bypass and some say put them side by side! We found we had better room on the arms we have to mount them inner and outer. If we put them side by side they were so far up the lower arm we would only get 6.5 or so inches of shaft travel on the shocks. When we put them inner and outer we are getting 7.5" on the coilover and about 10.5" on the bypass. I see a lot of Class 1 cars this way and they seem to do pretty well so I'm sure we will get it worked out in testing! There is also a couple pictures of the rear lower mount we are working on as well. It wraps around the frame as much as possible, then goes down to where the arm bolts through it, and then goes past the pivot point to where we are putting a bolt on cross member that I will show you in the next post.

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

Here are a couple shots of the cross member we are working on and the dash we also got from Perry's Fab'n Fiber. Sorry for cutting it in half Perry, but we thought it would be a better idea than loosing the ends of the dash. So we cut it and glassed it back together just a little shorter now and fits snug between out cage work that is already in place!

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

Oh yeah, if you ever race Baja and or get your truck into water and the elements you might want to look under your dash more often than we did!

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

Here are some shots of the shock mock up process for us. We used the bolt on positions that were welded to the original cage and bolted on some scrap metal and welded up some more scrap until we got the shocks were they would clear everything and almost touch the rubber stop on the bottom of the shocks at bottom-out. In this process we had to take some metal off of the upper arm gusset on the inside to clear everything. We talked to Fox and they sent us a mock-up for the 3" bypass shock so we could tack on the bypass tubes where we need them. I showed the pictures to Todd at Fox and he was able to get us even more room by moving them around a bit different than in these pictures.

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

Here are a couple more pictures of the mock-up.

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

So after we got the shock location "in space" with the mock up. We took some 3/4" 120 wall DOM and cut them at the same length the shocks are wide were they mount. We bolted them in the same spots the shocks go and got some more scrap metal and welded the tubing in place in the mock-up mounts. We were then able to remove the mock-up mounts and cut the old cross member off and out of the way for the new shock mounts to be built.

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

The beginnings of the new shock mounts.

Jason

[FireGuysRacing]

Here are a few more.

Jason

[BigMike]

MAN that is AWESOME!!

I downsized your images for better viewability Hope ya don't mind I just used [img witdh=xxx height=xxx] code like this:

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[img]http://www.race-dezert.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=104548&d=1305600628[/img]


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[img width=800 height=600]http://www.race-dezert.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=104548&d=1305600628[/img]


The forum limits sizes to 800 pixels wide and 800 pixels tall when using this code. So for instance your vertical images sized out to 597 for the width and 800 for the height.

KEEP THE PICS COMING BROTHERS!!!

[FireGuysRacing]

Hey, thanks!

[jrock]