Jeepspeed Comanche at the Mint 400

Well, it looks like Jeepspeed is finally giving the Comanche a little love. At least the SWB Comanche anyway. Member Zoomy97acr managed to get Jeepspeed to issue him a number for my truck. We're currently prepping to run in the Mint.

The truck is one of the old class 7s SCORE trucks, and it's not up to modern Jeepspeed standards. We're not going to be speed-competitive. Should be interesting to see how things shake out though, as the truck is solid, and has held up to score racing. Considering Parker had six 1700 cars cross the finish line out of a field of nineteen and the Mint course is supposed to be rougher, if we can cross the line we'll be well up in the field.

We'll be Race 1711. Below is a link to an album with some older photos of the truck carrying it's old SCORE number. I'll be updating with new pics as the truck comes together.

Link to photo album at Photobucket.com

Sweet! Can't wait to see it in action.

Very cool.

Very neat.

Nice! Glad to see some MJ action.

when was the truck originally built? any history? I grew up in socal and raced in larana in class 9 in the 90s and in stock class ranger 3 time class champs and then 7s and 12 beam car and class 1 from time to time in m.d.r. and m.o.r.e. and some mexico sutff

Welcome to Jeepspeed. Looking forward to seeing your truck. We have 2 other MJs nearly ready to run later this year.

Well,.. Um,... whoops.
Open mouth,.. Insert foot. :dunce:

Looks like there won't be a Jeepspeed Comanche in the Mint this year. At least not mine.
Due to events in the past, we decided to hold off on race registration until we got our number panels. The number panels showed up 'night before last. Yesterday morning Zoomy97acr called me to let me know the field was full. If we wanted to go ahead and get on the waiting list, we'd be 16th in line if slots opened up.

Well shoot. Already spent the money to get the number, mounted all the electrical gear, half way through prepping the truck,.. now what? Well, we'll be in good shape to early register for the Silver State 300, or we can wait for Vegas to Reno.

D wants to do the Silver State. I'm inclined to agree. This will also give us a little more time to solve a tire issue that cropped up, and give us a testing period that we wouldn't otherwise have.

So anyway, we're going to continue working on the truck and put off racing until the first week of May.

randomguy310: Not sure of the exact build date. It was put together by Swanty Racing in Kingman AZ sometime in the early/mid-'00s. I don't know the race history other then most recently it ran the NORRA 1000 the year I bought it. Here's a picture taken at the '05 Laughlin Desert Challenge:



It's running a different number then it was carrying when I bought it (723 or -5 on the windshield) It was 741 when I got it.

Anyway, got a couple new photos.
Here's a short vid of me adding 5 hp via the "paint finish modification" method:
Vid link at Photobucket.
I think it would have been 7-10 if it was white.

And here's another 30 HP

This is what we were waiting for: Now it's "the unicorn". A Jeepspeed pickup
Now if we can just spot one in the wild,..

This was shot during a load/voltage drop check with all the lights and accessories on
The HID/LED swap lowered the amp draw by almost half.

And here's a pretty rainbow to go with the unicorn
That was actually in the sky when we were putting the decals on.

Did you safety wire your PS gear box bolt? Mad props haha do you work in aviation?

Sorry you missed the cut off for the mint 400. We have 23 Jeepspeeds racing. The Silver State 300 May 2nd in a perfect first Jeepspeed race for you and your Commanche. Fast, fairly flat, exciting rally style roads through wooded areas of northern NV. Only one tricky silt bed near the end. Looking forward to seeing you.

Jeepspeedchief said:

Sorry you missed the cut off for the mint 400. We have 23 Jeepspeeds racing. The Silver State 300 May 2nd in a perfect first Jeepspeed race for you and your Commanche. Fast, fairly flat, exciting rally style roads through wooded areas of northern NV. Only one tricky silt bed near the end. Looking forward to seeing you.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I like that course description! Between Parker and VtoR, we've spent about 5 hours digging out of silt pits. One of them cost us an alternator(and finished our race for us). I think we've got the answer to that problem, but it's nice to know it's not a "normal" issue at the Silverstate.

That's a big Jeepspeed field for the Mint. Should be exciting as all get-out. Talking to a couple other racers after the fact, I guess it's normal for the Mint field to fill up. Live and learn,..

Jeepedo129: I have a HUGE interest in Aviation. No working background, but I do own a set of construction plans for a Piper Cub, which I'd like to build some day. 'Been a member of EAA for a couple decades, and I find the aviation tips, tricks, and construction/repair techniques cross over into the off-road and racing world quite handily.
That said, I'm not responsible for that particular bit. As you can tell by the pic, at some point in the past the frame rail cracked and was repaired (SCORE legal stock repair) I always assumed the safety wire was put on by whoever did the repair.

Nice! I work for Delta as an AMT. I agree aviation maintenance techniques are solid and wouldn't be a bad idea to safety wire bolt heads. I was wondering where you got the bolts that have holes for safety wire.

It would be awesome to build a kit plane like a cub. In A&P school one of my instructors had a project cub that we did some dope and fabric on flight controls and such, fun plane to work on.

Do you have you're A&P licenses? I don't know if you can build a kit plane with out it or not?

Sorry for the off topic post haha

No problem. Every thread goes off-topic sooner or later. I don't have an A&P. There's a loophole in the regs you can drive a truck through though. If you build an airplane and do the majority of the work yourself(what they refer to as the "51% rule), when you register it you can also register to get a repairman's certificate for that specific airframe. Then you can do your own maintenance, including log book entries. The repairmans certificate isn't transferable, so if you sell the airframe the new owner has to have an A&P do any required work.
Check out these guys for mor info(EAA)

Interesting, I wasn't aware of the 51% rule. That opens up a lot of possibilities. So basically you have to do 51% or the work, who is responsible for the 49%? An A&P or IA?

I should look into home builds, I'll never be able to afford it, but it would defiantly be a load of fun