2005 6 Hours, Rausch Creek - Team Stories

[muff]

#270 Double XL -Pro Class
Josh Creamer
Justin Hoffler
Vinny Mofford

Well we had an awesome start to say the least, with creamer pulling the holeshot and leading most of the race early on. Its to bad we couldn't have spend more time getting the bike ready, I guess we really had no idea what were were getting ourselves into. Mud got into the carb very early on, and made the throttle very stiff to push. After josh hopped off for the first switch I was on and could barely do 2 laps, my thumb was killing me. A couple turns later (little over 3 hours in), I was riding again and head some dragging noise in the rear end. I pull the clutch in and look back noticing the chain guide was bent, and it was hitting the chain. Meanwhile the quad decides to shut off and won't start back up with the electric start. Wiggled a few wires with no luck and decided to try pop starting it with little success, just a few stumbles out of the quad. I finally resort to kick starting it (difficult with no hotstart lever) and get it running again, pull in the clutch and click it in gear and it shuts off another time. Now I look down to find the end of the clutch cable broken, ok, just gotta think and use your head, pop it into gear and get 'er back into the pits. Wrong, kick it over again, pop it into gear, and all I got was a little jerk, huh thats weird...clicked into second and nothing. Turned my head down, oh great, the chain just snapped. I'm out in the middle of nowhere without a tow to be found. Trying to debate walking/pushing the quad back, or wait for the tow. 1/2 hour later the tow comes and get it back to the pits (after spiking my nice set of scott rolloffs earlier on).

Between our teammates and mechanics we drop a new battery, clutch cable, and chain on it, and got it going again. If i remember correctly we had one of the largest breaks out of anyone (2 1/2 hours according to ******** ) Along rolls night time and the lights are barely putting out any light, finally on the last two laps (with the quad sputtering like crazy) josh rolls around the track with a flashlight in hand, fortunately finishing the race (after a mid-lap piss break).

All in all it was a good time, would have been nice if we would have recieved a little more then just a plaque (for 4th place pro), but I guess that how it goes....We will hopefully be doing the 12 hour, as long as we dont use my builder of the year quad again Haven't had a chance to pull the motor apart, hopefully will only need a good cleaning and a piston...

by the way harlen, did you happen to have the picture of me going over the double double section on the mx track when i looked over at you??

[WOOLIN]

Team ST Mudd
Fred Mudd
John Rowling
TJ Lenig

We had a great start. John was in fith place going into the woods but 10 mins into the race he didn't come around with the rest of the pack. He finally came through but the quad was spuddering and running badly. He pulled into the pits and we drained the bowl on the carb and I went out. Problem was not fixed so I pulled right back in and we pulled the plug cap a put dielectric grease on it. It helped so we pushed on. After 1 laps my googles were shot and I got mud in my eyes so I had to pit and let TJ take over. The bike was still running bad so we changed the air filter (which had about a cup of dirty water in it) and kept going. We were 2 laps down at this point and finally had the quad running better.

About the half way point we were about to make up a lap when TJ got the quad stuck on the MX track. So we had to run down to get it out of the mud. John took over after that and we were doing good until the quad started to overheat. After we added some coolant I jumped on for a few more laps.

After it got dark it was my turn again with about 1 hour to go. We were making up alot of time on the rest of the field in the fog. Passing about 5 teams per lap. They were riding much slower in the fog than we were. On my third lap in the dark I was running through the woods section and could smell the quad boiling over so I knew I was going to need to pit after this lap.
When I came around the turn coming into the pits the motor dropped a valve and locked up. Our day was over and so was our chance at winning. We figured that if we kept up at our current pace we would have possibly won the overall. According to the results Harlen got from the guys at the track we finished 24 laps 9th overall and 4th in class not bad for only racing for 4 hours and 23 minutes.

[xcbob]

jlhughes750, your welcome glad to see you finished. First I would like to start off with how bad the conditions were for the people that were not there. This was not a 2 hour GNCC in the mud with slow sections. This was 6 hours of wide open flying, or atleast trying to fly through the mud and water at high speeds. If it were the 12 hour, I don't know if anyone would have finished.

Team Sanderson Motorsports/xcbob.com Mike Lucas, Mike Johnston, and Josh Ribley.

Mike Johnston started off, I didn't want to get wet, ha, ha. I believe we had the last A starting spot, and came around the first lap in 8th overall, I think, this is all of the top of my head. We wanted to run 4 laps a piece without stopping, Mike pitched his goggles and ran his 4 laps with muddy contacts. After 4 laps we were into 5th overall behind the Hertz team and Josh took over. Using his head, on unfamiliar ground he was conservative his first couple laps and we lost a position, which I believe he regained before I took over. I took over on lap 9 and noticed the laps were getting faster so I planned on 5 laps to cut down on rider changes. My roll off film tore after 1 lap, and I let them know I was coming in the next lap. They handed me another pair with no film, which lasted about 1/2 lap. So I pitched them and rode the last 2 1/2 laps without them, which I never do. I believe I lost a position to HRE early, but increased my speed with every lap. Our 13th lap, my last was our fastest of the day, and I felt great and could have gone for more, but the little red overheating light was on. So I pulled in for Mike J to take over and get the radiator cleaned out. I think we were in 2nd or 3rd and 4th or 5th overall. This was 3 hours in and when a lot of the top teams started dropping out. Matt's team dropped out, then Hertz, I heard that Traci was stuck somewhere. We kept overheating coming in every lap and on Mike's 4th lap, he never came around. I am not positive, but we may have been in 1st or 2nd overall at this point. He said it was running great and just shut off and won't restart. He could pull start it, but it would stall. A lot of quads were running poorly when they went by, but not ours, it sounded great. So we looked in the air box and found mud and water. Took the filter off and yes it went through. So we just lost too much compression or a valve, didn't take it apart yet. It was our own fault and we should have checked it sooner and maybe it never would have happened. So 16 laps in, we lost the motor, and can only talk about what could have been.

From what I heard there was a lot of lost motors. The Hertz team put a brand new one together, atleast our's was well used. I think the worst thing was to be out front, everyone dropped out. Any team that finished deserves a round of applause that was one of the toughest races to finish probably for almost all of us.

I plan on building a new 06 for the 12 hour, but if it is like that again, we will be running a well used one again. It is just not worth ruining a new machine for that. But as with probably every team we learned some more. Last year we had the chain coming loose problem, but had that taken care of for this year, but there is always something new and the weather no one can control. Maybe they should have cancelled and ran in Sunday during the day. It would have been a lot nicer.

[JohnBMS]

Team BMS A class
Jarrod McClure
Wes Stone
John Bowers

Our day started off just lovely, first we sat on 81 for over an hour about 1 mile from the track, then it started to rain, but we were ready for that.

Jarrod went first and was running great, Third overall on the 1st lap and then the bike just shut off right before the end of the 1st lap, So Mike from Rausch creek came towing him in, so That lap didn't count, then it took us about 20 mins. to find out what was blowing fuses, A wire on our light switch was grounding out, so we got it running and we were in 44th overall and we ripped all our light wire off ,so we had no lights. But at least it was running.

So then John Bowers went for a few laps and the bike was perfect, then every time we switched riders we would fix the lights 1 wire at a time, then Wes stone went for a few laps with no problems and was running strong.

Then Jarrod whet again and started turning some very fast laps,
He had 1 or 2 that were under 11 mins, everything was going great, we were all picking teams off 1 by 1, then while we were pitting for gas, it shut off again, and we had to jump it with the battery jumper which took a few mins, but after all that happened we finished pretty good, 3rd in A and 7th overall,
and I think we would have done better if they didn't cut the race 45 min short, because we were running very strong at the end and we were very very disapointed that they cut it short, So I guess we had a good day and we will be at the 12 hour (with new Lights)

We would like to thank our Pit crew for getting us going, we actually ended up getting Fuses out of my moms Subaru.
Also our sponsors Bowers MotorCycle Supplies
Deer Lake Auto sales
Maxxis
ATVRiders.com
and also Harlen for the great race coverage
and Dave Stone from Deer Lake Auto for hooking us up with 1 of his Awesome YFZ450's

[QuadRacer041]

Cardio Stack Vet Team
Lou Russo
Jason Baugher
Matt Zeleski

Well the race started out pretty good, Ja got a good start but then things went a little down hill. Ja came around after the first lap and said the bike was popping and spitting, probably from the wet conditions. He took off for the second lap and about 15 minutes later was towed back in. We started to look over things, Matt pulled off the filter and saw a bunch of water in the air boot. He went to work cleaning that out and putting on a clean filter while Ja removed the bolt under the carb bowl and found a bunch of dirt sitting in there. He cleaned it out and we thought we'd be fine, wrong. I started up the 450r, a bike I have never ridin or practiced on and it was running a little better but still popping. I got about 50ft and decieded it was unridable that way. I pushed it back to our pit and Ja took off the bowl cap and it was loaded with dirt again. He cleaned and off I went well as soon as i went down into that big pit after the pit area, she died again.
I got towed back in and for a good 15-20 minutes we just kept starting it up and cleaning that cap out. We did it like 10 times until no more dirt was there. Matt took off for what would only our second lap seeing how Ja got towed in on his second lap atept and I only made it about 200 yards. Matt came around and gave us the thumbs up and went around again. Things started to run smoothly even though we were probably about 5-7 laps behind. We were hoping other people in our class would have problems too. I was not too prepaired to run in mud being i've never really done it. I only had 3 pair of googles which was not enough. It was very difficult to change roll off when your covered in mud. This was the first time I had ever ridin a 450r and I was very impressed with Ja's bike. It handle excellant in the woods and on the straights. Only problem was when i was hitting those jumps iI was bottoming out the XC suspention pretty hard. I cased that triple pretty hard at one point I had cleared it a few times but one of the times I went around I forgot if the double or triple was first and BAM landed right into the face of the third hump of the triple. Like I said everything was going smooth until around 10pm or so. I went out for my turn and as I was getting towards the end of my lap in the natural turain track the bike stalled. i try to restart it and the kicker was locked. I got towed in and Ja and Matt told me to put in third and get ready to try to bump start it. I the biggest guy out of the 3 of us and they tell me to sit on the bike as they push, duuuuhhhhh!
Well I popped the clutch and it freed up the motor but she was dead. Probably sucked in too much water.
We wound up finishing 6th out of 7 teams but considering the conditions and it being the first time I rode the bike we were all happy with our riding. We were running lap times just about the same as our compition.
I want to thank Ja for letting us use his R and both Ja and Matt for putting in awsome rides.
I had alot of fun.

[jb500ex]

thanks for doing the write up lou, i actually got 2 laps in before we died. and considering we stopped after almost every lap we did, too clear the carb bowl and change the air filter i think our lap times were very good. i feel bad my quad didn't run right and i hope lou and matt will join me for the twelve hour. i think we could suprise some people and do very well. every spectator and pit person deserves alot of credit as well as every team because the conditions were horrible. all in all it was ton's of fun and i learned alot.

[QuadRacer041]

also a big huge thumps up to rausch creeks tow staff, they kicked ***** towing people out VERY quiclky

[joedirt]

Hertz Racing (Pro)
Rob & Tom Hertz
Sean Neidlinger
Bill Neidlinger (pit crew)
Sean started the race (sucker) got out of the hole in 3rd. Came in after couple in 4th or so. We continued to switch riders every 3-5 laps. Come in and clean out the radiator( every time) top off the tank every so often. You wouldn't think lappers would be a problem but they were. Almost every time I went out I got hung up behind some squirrel roosting up a storm trying to stay in front of me. Look fellas just move if you are racing along and someone comes up behind you like a bat outa hell MOVE (I do it and so can you) About 1-2 hrs. into it we were running 2-3rd OA. All of us did the same thing race at a good pace not try to take in water. The quad ran great did not miss a beat the whole time we were out there. Rob went out and cleaned the carbon out of it a couple of times. Bill was pulling his hair out and crossing his fingers/toes hoping we wouldn't have a problem When I went out I thought I seen a little puff of smoke Thinking watch it and don't beat on it too hard get it back to the pits. As I went by the pits I let them know we need to clean the radiator out the next time around. At this point we were running 3rd OA. Coming out of the woods on to the second half of the MX track I seen 2nd OA trying to start his quad great I thought now were in 2nd OA. I got to the pits switched it off to Rob we cleaned out the radiator good and he was off. He made it about 2 miles and CLACK CLACK CLACK the motor went our day was done. The quad was out of water but I never seen any big clouds of smoke or smell antifreeze. Also looking at the site glass for the oil we didn't see any oil in it, the air filter was also wet it never missed though. We drank our sorrows away, all of us thought we had a really good shot at winning this year last year we got 3rd. I took off my lights and gave them to Mark Thompson and Crew cause they were running stock lights. Mark said Trail Tech helmet lights were the Bomb. Owen and Stef said the one MR16 that was working was way better then both the stockers. I think they finished in the top 5 OA. We hope to have better luck at the 12hr. I love racing these type of events and at night is even better. Maybe we can get some practice between now and then at these team races. P.S. I thought I seen Bill crying because he just rebuilt the motor new piston/crank/valves & springs and a whole-lota late nights and bloody knuckles tryin to get the quad ready in time.

[BlasterBTW]

Originally posted by QuadRacer041
also a big huge thumps up to rausch creeks tow staff, they kicked ***** towing people out VERY quiclky

Thanks! I was on the big red prairie (wearing jeans and a wifebeater) pulling out people. I was having an absolute blast! I bet I pulled out 25 people or more. It was SO muddy, making it harder to pull people out. I think the worst was the 4-5 people I had to pull UP the hillclimbs in the woods!!! I'd do it again in a heartbeat too. All you guys did a great job, and I felt real bad for those of you who couldn't finish.

Bryan

[xcbob]

I did forget to mention that also. Lappers were really bad, the MX was one line and they would not move and you couldn't pass them in the slop with a face full of roost all the time. They would go faster until you FINALLY got around them. Why were they so bad? I mean, you would catch them pretty fast and then they wouldn't move, what's up with that?