Jeep Speed II - Pro Truck Series: Staats Family

It's called cheap speed

class. Desert Racing for the common man. Today on Xtreme 4x4, it's the final Bill day before our 95 XJ is ready to run. Plus Steve stat

and sons prove off road racing is all in the family.

Hey guys, welcome to Xtreme 4x4. Now, over the past few years, we've shown you some pretty wild racing

and some pretty trick vehicles that compete in those races. But we know what it's like. Not everyone can go out and drop the kind of money you need

to get a race spec chassis to start their project with. I know I can't and I'm on TV. So today we're going back to our good

Jeep Cherokee XJ, a budget form of desert racing that requires basically stock. Jeep Cherokees modified with over the counter parts.

Now we first brought this truck in here. We simply installed our Rusty's off road suspension system, some fab tech shocks as well as some race specific BF Goodridge tires and American racing wheels.

We're gonna start today by taking care of the drive train in our race truck. And obviously, we're gonna be replacing the rear axle with this nine inch that we got from curry. Now, we could have simply gusted that stock housing put in some new shafts and gear set in a locker.

But by upgrading to this Ford nine inch, we're gonna have 30 spine axles, 456 gears mounted on a spool and with just a little bit of maintenance, this axle should last the life of our truck

go outside. Tom.

Oh,

heavy.

Now, moving from the rear to the front, the next piece of drive train we're going to deal with is going to be our transfer case.

Now years ago, the O EMS changed from a fixed yoke output shaft in the transfer case to a slip yoke built into the front of the drive shaft. Now, the downfall of this design is when you'll lift your truck up in the air and you have that rear axle, articulate or droop out, you can actually pull the drive shaft right out of the back of the transfer case and you don't want that. So to solve that problem, we're going to be installing the short shaft slip yoke Eliminator kit that we got from advanced adapters. It's basically going to replace the output shaft in our transfer case and convert it over to the fixed yoke. Stop.

The first step is to remove the TKS from the jeeps

with it on the bench,

remove the front output yolk,

followed by the extension housing,

the snapping

and the speed or housing.

No,

no, no No, no, no, no.

Now split the case, removing the oil pumps with the rear case hatch,

disassemble the rear output shaft and transfer the parts onto the new output shaft.

Reassemble the case working the case half bolt to 25 ft pounds.

Then the new short shaft tail housing can be installed

followed by the

Y

and we pulled the front axle of XJ for a couple of reasons. We need to change out the gear set in here to a 456 gear to match the career rear and we put in the back. Now, we could have done that with the axle of the truck. We've pulled it out more importantly to go ahead and gusted up this entire housing to handle the abuse while we're off road. I'm sure you're wondering what all those gussets do check this out

when we drive our vehicles off road. Sooner or later, the front axle is going to leave the ground

and when we're talking about off road racing, getting some air happens a lot.

The real problem begins when the wheel hits the ground and the weight of the vehicle that is being carried by, the suspension is loaded onto the front axle housing.

This could cause it to bend.

The obvious solution is to add an axle trust to help stiffen up the housing itself and keep it from bending on most trail trucks. This housing is built on the top of the axle to not affect ground clearance

and it also

makes for a great

mount location.

The issue is that with repeated abuse on the housing during an off road race,

a brace itself can begin to crumple or accordion

and the housing can then start to bend.

That is why axle bracing on desert racing trucks is done on the bottom side of the housing. It is much more difficult to tear the steel than it is to crumple it,

making this brace stronger in the long run.

Now, our trust will travel from the outer sea on the bottom all the way to the actual center section

and not only that will come into these upper parts of the inner sea and gust at them as well to keep them from bending too.

We are using two by 48 inch wall rectangular tubing as the main part of the housing guses

by tracing the housing outline onto the tubing,

cut it out with the BSA,

then drill some holes because it wouldn't be a desert racer

without layered holes

to help add strength tubing would be welded inside the gusset.

And finally, the gusset is welded to the axle housing

so we could strip it down,

put it in our new 456 Superior gears.

Finally, we'll clean it up, paint it

and install it back into our truck, replacing all the stock hardware with new grade eight hardware from Industrial Depot.

Now, the cool thing about these Cherokees is that the suspension is the exact same, whether it's a two wheel or a four wheel drive,

a two wheel drive axle just basically is a bare axle tube with the outer seats in place and the suspension can bolt up to it. So, what a lot of guys do is they'll carry that two wheel drive axle as a spare and we haven't found one yet, but when we do, we'll gusted it up and probably take it to the track with us. And then all we have to do is basically finish putting this axle together and our drive train, it's ready for a race

up next. Level playing field means driver skill is key pro truck racing. When Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Now, spec class racing is more popular than ever for a couple of reasons. One, it tends to be less expensive than full on race teams and two, it puts everybody on a relatively level playing field. Now for Steve stats and his sons, their playing field is some of the gnarliest terrain ever

featuring buggies to trophy trucks. The best in the desert series has something for every racer for Steve stats. He wanted a class that tested his racing chops. The pro truck class is a spec class. Everybody has to run the same and it makes us different from some of the other classes. It's what people refer to as a driver's class. A long time motorcycle desert racer, the decision to switch to four wheels wasn't difficult. The difference being when you crash on the, in the truck, you just fix the truck. You don't have to fix yourself. Usually rolling 100 miles an hour through the roughest terrain stats is just loving it. Most definite danger there.

I mean, you have nightmares sometimes about the cliffs

and, uh, big rocks and

you shouldn't yet.

Not as bad. Huh?

Yeah,

that's part of the adrenaline rush too. That's part of the fun

off road legend. Ivan Stewart created the pro truck series with the racer's wallet in mind. You know, a lot of the classes, the guy with the most money can win. Like, in a lot of motorsports, the guy can just outspend somebody else in this class. It comes down to driving

just because it's spec doesn't make it lame. We have about 24 inches of travel in the rear, 21 inches of travel in the front pro trucks ride like a Cadillac. They're fun

to race because you can race a 400 mile race and at the end you're not even that tired because they, they ride so well. The choice for us is a Ford 351. There's only certain things we can do to it. We're running about 420 to 440 horsepower. We run a three speed automatic. You work them real hard

engine does take a beating.

We're running them at 6000 RPM. They do have a rev limiter in this class. We can't go over 6000 RPM

and it's 2nd and 3rd all day

serving as his co driver are his sons, Alex and Ryan

right there. Yep.

He's not pulling on us at all.

Well, that's a family sport. I just feel that if they can get as much enjoyment

out of this as I have over the years, I don't think I'd change a thing. He's given us this great opportunity to be involved in a sport like this. Not, not many kids our age come out here and be involved in this. So it's

really, really thankful for that. Not everyone in the family is a fan of desert

racing. Yeah, mom, she's, she's not too excited about it. She's not as excited about it as we are. She doesn't like her

young pups out there in the truck. She thinks it's a little dangerous

easy. It's a

nasty one.

We send her to Disneyland and then, and we go race for the stats, men. It's their blood bonds that help make them successful on the course. Roger that

go

on.

That's all we're getting right dad

because he's my dad. You know, we know how each other think first of all, all the time, there's times where you get going on a good road and you'll just, you'll laugh about stuff that happened previous in the race. Come on, baby, you're the

you're

the man.

It's just, it's cool. It's a good connection and

it just brings us closer together as a family as well. It's good to have your dad as enthusiastic about this as you are.

He's probably actually more enthusiastic. It's probably over the top, but it's good. That's, that's what you need to run a successful program. That for

on this day they suffered a rare DNF, but that's not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the stats family. When you get the truck going along in some of these dirt roads and you're doing 100 miles an hour and you're hitting some rollers. It's definitely an ad

adrenaline sport and I think that's what keeps you coming back.

You know, it's been watching stuff like that. That's really got us excited about building our Jeep speed and we are this close to having that truck ready for the desert.

Oh, yeah.

Time now for an Xtreme 4x4 Tech tip,

here's a tip for you.

The next time you replace a bearing specifically in the rear axle, your truck cut the cage off it. You'll end up with something like this. You can weld it onto a piece of tubing

and you end up with a handy bearing installation tool that works better than anything you can buy in a store.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where we're right in the middle of buttoning up our Jeep speed one class desert racer.

Now, when you're racing in the desert you're gonna go for long distances. I mean, the shortest Jeep speed race is 200 miles long and the longest one is over 500. So when you're sitting in the pits, filling up with fuel, you're not making up any of that time. So we wanna carry as much as possible. So, we're gonna install this 22 gallon plastic bladder with steel outer shell fuel cell that we got from summer

first. we will remove the cap to replace it with this fast fill neck in order to install a fender well fill kit

using the rear cage tube as a guide. Another tube is added in front to keep the fuel cell from moving.

Then spreaders on either side

will secure to the steel shell.

Now, this type of mount is not enough to hold the fuel cell by itself, especially once this thing gets full of gas.

When you're bouncing this truck around off road, the outer lip will just start to bend and eventually it'll break off. But if we take a second piece of tubing and a couple more tabs

and sandwich the fuel cell in between the two, it will basically hold it securely to the roll cage. So while I go ahead and build this second piece, Tommy's actually gonna tear into the front of the truck

and these fiberglass fenders that we got from Rusty's off road, not only make our XG look more like a desert racer,

the larger flare and six inch bulge will help it work more like a desert racer. It will basically keep the tire out of the vehicle's sheet metal when the suspension is fully compressed. And we're gonna be racing this truck long distances and that means probably gonna be racing at night. So we're gonna, we need a good set of lights. We had light force send us two of these XGT lights for the front bumper. Now, these are a great off road light because they're light virtually indestructible and they have a 100 watt 2000 hour Xeno

fought bulb. Now, with that bulb, you can comfortably read a newspaper 900 m away. The lens covers themselves

pop off and they come in different colors depending on the driving conditions.

We also had them ship us a couple of these smaller bits to mount, pointed out the back of our truck and we're gonna mount a mixed flood spot, amber cover on the top of those because it's a lot easier to see the amber color in dusty conditions. And when a racer is coming up behind us, it's just for own safety, they'll be able to see us better

with a piece of inch and three quarter tubing spent and cut to fit the front bumper. We'll weld it on with some short extension

with the tabs welded on and the lights bolted in place. We'll add the last piece of tubing to protect them when we're off road

in the rear, our smaller lights will mount to the top of the rear hoop

and the amber cover can be snapped in place.

Then all we gotta do is wire them up.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Our XJ is pretty much ready for the track. Thanks to our new curry nine inch axle in the rear, the slip Yoke Eliminator we installed in the transfer case and that front axle completely gusted, rebuilt and ready to rock. Plus we got a lot more clearance for our tires off road. Thanks to these new fiberglass fenders and now we can turn our attention

to the inside.

Now, we had to add these bars to the prebent cage that we got from essentially off road for this truck in order to mount our suspension seats directly into the cage itself for safety. And we're gonna be putting in two pr p full suspension seats into this truck and you've seen us install this type of seat before, but that was mainly just for comfort on the,

when it comes to a desert racer, a full suspension seat is almost a must. In order to absorb the pounding you get when you're driving off road for 500 miles.

Another must is gonna be an SF I certified five point competition harness and how you mount this harness in your truck is actually pretty important. So gonna show you a couple options.

Now, a clip in harness is pretty popular and you've seen us install this on a couple of our trail trucks, but it's not the best choice for competition. And depending on your sanctioning body, they might not allow it. Better choice is a bolt in harness and it simply runs a bolt through a tab in the seat belt into a tab on the chassis and the truck. Now, this is mounted in what's called single shear and you don't want to mount it this way because when the load is placed on the fastener, it actually is gonna be a side.

You're actually twisting, this bolt can cause it to fail prematurely. So a better setup is what's called double shear. You basically sandwich the belt tab through two tabs welded to the chassis and run the bolt through both of them. Then you have a straight shot across that bolt makes it a lot stronger. This is the ideal way to install this type of belt. Now, a and a manufacturing sells these prebent

pre drilled seatbelt tabs that make mounting a belt in double sheer, super easy.

The lap belt mount

to 2.5 inches forward from the inside of the seatbelt.

The shoulder belt must be anchored either one inch above to four inches below your shoulder height when you're in the seat.

Now, the co driver isn't just along for a ride. They have a job to do. Number one, they're gonna be keeping an eye on our low rants global map 4 80 C GPS unit. So we know where we are on the racecourse. They're also gonna be in charge of monitoring all the engines, vital signs watching these auto meter sport comp, two gauges. Now these are just like every other classic auto meter sport comp except they light up using led technology. So they're super bright, easy to see at night.

Well, that's about it. A completed jeep speed one desert racer. All we have to do now is race prep. This truck go over a bumper to bumper, check every fastener, every weld, make sure they're ready for the course. We're gonna have this ape wrap with the show name on it and the next time you see this truck it's gonna be tearing through the desert

with us at the wheel.

Yeah.