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Well I have to say this year has been one for the books. We loaded up on a beautiful sunny day excited to put the wildcat back on the track and come home with some hardware, We got to Erx motor park got the car setup and got ready to give it our all, the car looked awesome and it was amazing to see how many people were coming over and checking it out.
Practice went awesome, car was hooking up great, and against a full field of RZR1000’s we held our own, left the line in 4th place and quickly worked our way into 3rd Behind a 180hp supercharged Rzr 1000 and a 150hp turbocharged Rzr 1000. We were really excited for what the night had to offer when the checkers flew in practice and were really turning some heads.
Heat 1 came up and got pushed to the far outside out of the gate, but put our head down and made a hard charge back into the 3rd place position actually getting past the 150hp turbocharged Rzr, Traction was great, motor was running flawlessly and ended heat 1 in the 3rd position. We made some substantial adjustments to the suspension after the heat to try to overcome the nose dive we were getting in the back section due to the jumps being too short for our wheel base but felt confident heading into the next heat.
Going into the second heat we felt really confident in our setup and our machine, the finish line jump is a fly away table top with a healthy straight away before it that allowed us to keep the happy pedal down and charge into the corner following the jump. On the first lap we came across the finish line jump in 4th place right on the tail of the 3rd place machine and on acceleration after the jump I felt the front end vibrate substantially anytime I put the peddle to the floor. I thought I had a rock or something else in the wheel but after another half of a lap of shaking I figured it had to be something more I continued with the race at a slower pace to at least try to finish it out safely without incident and salvage some points which we managed to do.
On arriving in the pits we went over the machine , suspension was tight, wheels were tight no rocks or dirt build up in the front end, I went over the differential and axles and diff were good but when we rolled the car forward and backwards we found the cause of the vibration, a bent front drive-shaft that goes from the front of the motor to the front diff had bent. knowing that the bend was eating power in 4wd and shaking the whole car I made the decision at the time to call it a night unfortunately. When we got home I pulled the shaft to find out from one end to the other it was .126″ bent and was out of round from the bend which would explain the shaking.
We will try to race the last race of the Iatvhss in October and do plan on having a much better year racing in 2016. I appreciate everything that you all have done for me and just would like to say again THANK YOU! without you none of this would be possible. I have attached photos from the last race and if any of you would like them in higher resolution I do have them available that I can send.
Thank you again for all of your help and support in a very trying and frustrating year,
-Alex Fortune