Mud Truck Part III, Mud Racing from Louisiana

This sound is music to the ears of everyone who loves high horsepower pedal mashing dirty fod

today on Xtreme 4x4, our mud truck returns for plumbing suspension axles and gears. Plus we'll dive head first into the American Mud Racing Association

today on extreme, we're bringing in our old Chevy pickup that we've turned into a mud

boer for another healthy dose of parts and labor all in an effort to get this truck ready to throw into some big deep sloppy mud holes. Now, I know a lot of you guys have been dying to see this truck get done

and the same group of guys been bugging us ever since extreme got started to build a mud truck just like this. Um Before we get started on this one again today, let's have a look back how this whole project started.

It all started with a well worn 87 3 quarter ton Chevy that we pulled into the shop and stripped to basically a bear frame

after hanging some new body panels onto the truck, a small funny car style cage was built to keep the driver safe.

Then we tossed on some classic mud bogging tires Interco boggs in the back

and super

whoppers up front.

The guys down in the horsepower shop took our meager 400 small block and basically tossed it in the dumpster

and put together a monster 588 cubic inch big block that was slid between the frame rails. Then finally we bolted up the ultimate mud truck accessory. A set of zoomies from Edmund Hustler

one.

Now, mud bob competitions have a bunch of different classes you can compete in and it's always determined by what type of suspension you run on your truck.

Now, in our case,

we wanna run in the lowest class possible, probably somewhere around super stock. That means we have to keep leaf springs on all four corners of our truck.

So for a little bit more tire clearance, we're gonna be installing a complete lift kit from rough country suspension. Now, this is a two inch kit that gives us all new leaf springs on all four corners, no lift blocks. It comes with shocks, new U bolts and then all the hardware we need to bolt it up.

Our new leaf springs simply replace the stock ones with some new grade eight bolts in both the hangar.

Now, our kit came with brand new U bolts and nuts. But if you buy a suspension kit and it doesn't come with new U bolts, go out and buy some at your local part store under no circumstances. Should you reuse old U bolts.

Now, probably one of the worst things that can happen when you're out messing around in the mud is steering failure. That's when stuff like this happens.

Now, the reason that happens is because both your drag link and tie rod end in their stock configuration are basically a ball and socket joint. Now, these can fail when they're excessively side loaded and that's pretty easily done when you have a large tire and you're trying to carve through some serious mud. So we're gonna eliminate this problem. A couple of Q A one rod ends, some D un tubing and a little bit of fabrication

using some tubing adapters from ballistic fabrication. We'll slip them into an inch and a half DM tubing

to accept the Q A one rod end.

This new setup is super strong. The rod end can handle more than 31,000 pounds of static load.

The bolt itself can handle 33,000 pounds, meaning this setup is way beer than a typical tie rod.

Now, it came to the rear axle for a mud truck. We came upon a little bit of a dilemma. Originally, we planned to use this junkyard nine inch that we mocked in place under the back of the truck, just rebuild it with all new internals and upgraded shafts. But we started to do the math on it. It's honestly not that much more money to replace it with an upgraded housing for less than 600 bucks. You can get one of these fabricated housing from Spider tracks off road has a fully welded center section

that's designed for strength. The axle tubes, cells are 3.5 inches across and a quarter inch wall, meaning this thing can handle some serious beef. Plus another benefit we're going to get from. This swap is by using these big bearing cups as well as their unit bearing set up. The axle becomes a full floating axle. That means if we ever break a shaft, all we have to do is remove this outer cup and the dry flange slide the axle shaft out and replace it

with the old Ford nine inch. We have to take the tire and the wheel off to get the axle itself as well as remove all the brakes. This is better for service.

The first step is to determine the total width of the axle. We're gonna build our rear to match the front at 67 inches.

After calculating the height of the end cup and unit bearing will cut three and 5/8 of an inch off the end of each axle tube,

then we'll install the bearing caps on the axle

and to position the axle under the truck to locate the purchase

up next fender banging rooster tail mud fly in action when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Now, this is the reason why we're building our first ever mud bog truck here in the shop, I'm talking high horsepower, wide open throttle fender bang and action. That kind of fun. You see every weekend at the American Mud Racing Association.

Louisiana is the global center of horseshoe mud racing.

Mud racing is just coming out on Sunday afternoon playing in the mud pretty much Louisiana. They love anything deal. A

couple trucks banging around, racing around that mud. They love this special

at the season finale. Close to 100 rigs were banging around Monroe's Win City Speedway.

It's as extreme as anything I've ever been a part of. I mean, I've seen some rock crawling from coal racing. It's out there as, as far as you can get, these racers took on 100 and 60 ft mud hole. If your trucks set up, right, you'll glide right over it

if your truck's not set up. Right. It's kind of like hitting a wall and had to navigate the red clay course.

It's about like taking your average vehicle and put it on a sheet of ice.

Louisiana mud racing is all about mud, slipping, sliding and, and horsepower and managing all that ahead of your competitor beside you cross the finish line

and the super mods are the baddest.

Everybody loves to watch the super mods

pushing well over 1000 horses. These machines are modern ZB

Marvel. It's a lot of speed, a lot of horsepower. That class, anything goes super modified. Class is the best show here. Barrel Richardson is the two time defending super mod champion. We can rub with the best of them. He came to the final race one point behind series leader Stacy.

Wish him good luck. You know, I just,

but I'm here to win and there's a very good possibility that the guy could win the championship and me come in second and, and if, if that happens, it won't be because I haven't done everything in my power to try to,

you know, win that number three throughout his reign, the number 47 has beat down the competition.

I'm the only guy running forward, only guy. We

some only guy with this type

suspension and it, it works powered by a 598 big block. He's blasting 1160 horses.

Torque wins mud races. I mean, horsepower really doesn't mean anything to me. We build motors to build torque.

Uh This motors almost got 1000 pounds of torque, which I guarantee is 200 more than anybody else has got out here

before this season, Stacy Cockrell made his name, building and racing drag cars. I won't be the first one to win a track championship drag racing and mud racing in lessons learned at the drags. Stacy built the headhunter low to the ground

and made it the lightest truck in the class.

He even competes without a spotter. That's another 200 pounds. I got a toad if I got a spotter in it. Um,

me personally, I think 90% of this racing is getting across that water and getting around that curve first. It's hard to race when you get mud though, in your face, forced to roll the dice. I've raced him three or four times last three or four times. And, uh, he's beaten. Barrel made a radical adjustment to his 4500 pound machine

that take away Stacy's start line advantage. We've made some changes to my truck added, added

noss,

uh 300 shot. Hopefully,

uh I can stay with him. The points leader

was an impressed to take a motor making 1200 already. It's probably not really built for Nitro.

It'll probably make a few passes. It won't make it long though.

I don't anticipate getting pulled to lengths of the hole tomorrow with this new edition. So

we'll see

anticipation for the Super mod race was running hotter than Louisiana Gumbo.

Just try to be smart and finish the race. Hopefully not break anything.

I'm gonna give it all I got and see where we stand at the end in the lu two eliminations. Both drivers were clear in the field. Then Barrels

Title

Hoax almost came to an abrupt end.

Said the spindle broke off. That's kind of rare that, that, that really never happen. But, uh

it did. We're

gonna,

we got it fixed, we got another one, got it fixed, we got it back on. We're gonna be fine. They both advanced to the final round.

Right. According to plans, Stacy was quicker to the hall. He easily won the race and the series championship got a lot of hours in this thing and, um, it feels good to do what you came after. I've been points champion for two years. It had to happen sooner or later. You know, we're just gonna have to come back next year and see what we can do.

Build on a budget Xtreme 4x4 projects that save you time and money.

And when you're pinching pennies on your project, a great way to do it is with used parts. Guys are constantly upgrading the rigs and selling off their old pieces that you can get for sometimes half as much as a new one,

you can get ring and pins typically out of a ford nine inch will get you the best low ratio available because drag guys pull them out of their drag cars all the time and you can pick them up a very little way

on them. But a big ticket item that you can always save bucks on is a transfer case. Now, the one thing you wanna do is check out the low range that's in it. They say it's a 4 to 1. Go ahead and turn the input and count the rotations on the output to make sure it's the gear ratio that you want. If it looks good and you trust the guy, pick it up put it in your rig, you save money and you're still wheeling.

Now, so far today, we've put a little bit of a lift on our mud truck as well as beefed up the steering

and the rear axle that we just slipped underneath the back end is only part of the puzzle to create a bomb proof rear end to handle the horsepower that motor puts out and to finish it off, we're gonna need a beefy center section.

Now, one of the best things about using a nine inch rear axle in a vehicle like our mud truck is that every single piece of the center section can be upgraded for strength, plus you can buy every piece in one spot. Now, we got a pile of parts here all from Randy's Ring and Pinion. Now, the biggest piece of this puzzle is their heavy duty center section from uconn. Now, this is a nodular iron piece with ribs cast in it to prevent gear deflection under load. Now, the bar

caps themselves have also been forged for extra strength. Now,

the first thing we're going to install on that is going to be this Yukon performance spool. Now it's machine to exacting specifications and it provides 100% of the engine's power to both wheels. It's great for competition vehicles because it doesn't have any moving parts like a traditional locker. It can make turning a corner a little bit more difficult, but when it comes to mud bogging. It's all about the straight line.

After reviewing the

dyno numbers for our engine and calculating the tire size. We determined what RPM we want our motor to work in.

We chose a Yukon gear set with a final drive ratio of 513 to 1.

Now, one very unique piece that Randy's has is the Yukon heavy duty pinion support. Now, this is a bill of aluminum 6061 piece. Now, this thing is machined a lot thicker than its steel counterpart and all that beef will help eliminate any gear deflection under serious load.

Our install kit includes everything we need to set up our gear set and obtain a proper gear, tooth contact product.

I don't know what's happy

and all we have to do is install the third member into our housing

to measure for axles. We're gonna take the distance from the inside of the spines of the spool to the outside of the drive. Flinch. Then we'll take that measurement, send it to spider tracks for some custom 300 m shafts.

Now, there is no question that the 588 cubic inch big block we stuffed underneath the hood of our truck is going to drink some serious fuel. So we need a fuel system that can handle the demands of that motor. It's all going to start with a small five gallon aluminum fuel cell that we picked up from summit racing.

So

the first thing we have to do is make a mounting plate out of some eight inch steel to put our fuel cell between the frame rail.

Now, the five gallon cell may seem small but weight counts

and by only carrying enough fuel for one trip into the mud hole, we'll be able to travel light and fast.

Now, when it comes to plumbing your fuel system, it can often be a pretty complicated affair. You usually have different size fittings on your fuel cell than you have on your fuel pump. You have to factor in filters and regulators and how much hose you need. And it can actually be a lot of work. The guys at AO

Moive have figured out a way to make it a lot easier.

How about one part number for everything that you would need to plumb a fuel system up to 1500 horsepower and I mean, everything from the pump to the filters, the fittings, the fuel lines, the relay and the wiring to hook it up, even the cushion clamps and the screws to mount the fuel lines to your frame rail. Now, the heart of the system from a

is there a 1000 pump? Now, this is a build aluminum pump with a dash 10 inlet and outlet. It can be fully submersed inside the tank for specific applications and it can deliver enough fuel for 1500 horsepower if you're naturally aspirated like our mud truck or if you have a forced induction motor like a supercharger turbo charger. It can handle 1200.

Another great feature of this pump is that it can handle either a carburetor or a fuel injection set up by simply changing the regulator,

it will deliver the pressure needed to supply. Ef I

the regulator is a bypass style with a dash 10 inlet

dash eight, return,

it supplies fuel to the carburetor through 2-6 feed lines

and has provisions for a gauge.

Now, one item that we want to install along with our fuel system that's not included in the kit is the new air mode of fuel log. Now, this is a fully adjustable fuel rail and the inlet ports can rotate up to 20 degrees either way. Now, that'll help accommodate nitrous plates or carb spacers on your intake and it simply bolts up right into the carburetor.

When we installed the zoomies on this truck, they hit the brake booster and master cylinder. So the stock pedal has got to go to make room for the new parts.

Now to replace the stock set up, we're gonna be using this dual master cylinder mount pedal assembly that we got from summit racing. It's what's called an under slung mount, which means it's mounts up underneath the dash where the master cylinders are inside the passenger compartment and the pedal controls both of them. Now, the 78 inch bore in these master cylinders will give us plenty of braking power at the end of the mud pit and because it's up underneath the dash, it'll keep mud and dirt out of the brake fluid

with all the work done today. You know, we weren't gonna leave without firing that monster up. Of course, maybe a little bit of hearing protection first.

Give us some fuel. Chris.

Hold on.

I hit it.

Yeah, that's the oil pressure port there.

Here we go.