Jeep Speed Build

Today. It's a spec class desert racer. Anyone can build on the Jeep Ian and Jessi debut their Jeep Speed project. Plus that you've never seen Jeeps like these part four by four part submarine. That and more right now on Xtreme 4x4.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. If you take a look around, you can see you are a little low on projects. So it's time to start looking for a new one. We've been covering a lot of bases like competition crawlers, trail trucks, even an import and we've also built a couple work trucks, a borderline rock racer, the ultimate tow rig and to go with that, the ultimate trailer. So what's missing? Well, a desert racer, desert racing has gotten a lot of attention lately. Thanks to movies like dust to glory.

The film chronicles the legendary Baha 1000.

And if you haven't seen it, you're probably living under a rock. If you have seen it, you know what it's like to get bitten by the desert racing bug,

but let's face it. Desert racing is not the cheapest form of racing to get started in

even classes that were designed to be budget classes like the 1450

a

class that started as a way for anyone to go. Racing is slowly becoming the rich man's game.

The trucks going well over $100,000. No problem.

Well, what do you do if you still really want to go racing? But your wallet doesn't have that kind of money in it. And worst of all, you don't want to build a truck and then go out there and get beaten by someone just because they have more money than you. Well, the answer is pretty simple and that class is called Jeep speed.

Jeep speed is the brain child of Clive Skilton.

He saw a need for a desert racing spot that had strict rules that basically forced the competitors to build comparable trucks.

They do this by first making it open to only Jeep

Cherokees that can only be modified using products that are manufactured and for sale to the open public,

no hard core super trick suspension and one off race parts found on these trucks. Just real world xjs built using off the shelf parts,

but racing on the same courses as other desert races like trophy trucks, class one buggies or even a class seven truck

and sensing the need for expansion. Jeep speed has now branched out to include Jeep Speed two, a class for the new Wranglers and the latest Jeep speed three, the unlimited class. So to build a Jeep speed truck, we obviously need a truck to start with.

So we picked up this Jeep XJ for 3500 bucks that we're going to turn into our Jeep Speed one race truck

and like any competitive motor sport, there are rules to follow. And here's our list in a brief detail.

Speed one vehicles got to be Cherokee XJ from 84 to 2001, whether they're two will drive or four wheel drive,

the entire drive train must remain stock.

You can run an after market.

I as long as it costs less than 2900 B

stock wheel base and a single shot per corner are also requirements. In the JC category,

you can change the front fenders and flares. As long as the rest of the body panels are left, stock, front

bumpers may be replaced and the removal of all the glass is optional

before this truck can see any race course. We got a little work to do.

All right, we got a lot of work to do. And the first thing is stripping out the interior

since we were able to find a donor truck that was in really good shape. We're going to keep it that way.

So this will be a pretty tame tear down by our standards

with the seats removed. We're going to pull up the carpet just at the sides to expose the floor for the roll cage.

The rear will be completely cleaned out.

The airbag will go

along with the instrument panel.

Now, the first thing to go into our Jeppe Cherokee is obviously going to be a full roll cage. Now, wait a minute, I know what you're thinking. We said this was a budget form of desert racing

and now I got a goat and I got to buy a tubing bender and tubing notch or just to compete. Well, there is another option out there and we have it right here on the floor. That's right. Essentially off road makes a pre

for the

Cherokees and they make a Jeep speed specific

C Now this is what you get. When you call them,

you get a free

and not c

that you in

yourself in your Jeep

made of

record deal

and to be,

and it comes with all the pieces including the front

kick

to the.

Now all we gotta do just like all of our cages install this main hoop. We can lay out the rest from there.

Perfect.

I need to get rid of it.

Oh,

I hope not. But maybe,

and we can position the front hoop, making sure we have clearance for everything in the dash, followed by the roof spreaders

using a ratchet strap to hold everything in place. Then we can text

the rear hoop sits in between the rear wheel wells

and the spreaders are also installed into the middle hoop.

Once the rear kickers are in place,

we can slip in all the floor plates.

Probably a good idea. To protect the dash and the carpet from any wetter,

the front group back to fully welcome front who

then finish the entire,

the entire

C is fully welded. We can go ahead and attach it to the trucks un body structure

using the supplied hardware that we got with the cage kit and

that's all it takes to put in a pre bank case. Pretty simple. Now, later on, we're going to be installing a long travel suspension kit and give this baby more power

up next from an XJ to a, what the heck, Jay? These extreme off roaders get their thrills submerged. Swamp Jeeps when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Now, if you've never heard of swamp buggy racing, obviously, you missed our show a couple of weeks ago when we showed you that this six year old tradition was alive and well in Naples, Florida, what we didn't show you was the every man's class or 10 grand and a good set of waiters.

You can go

deep

in

competing only three times a year. Modern day swamp buggy racing is considered one of the most challenging motor sports in the world. Train, running a boat and a stock car. I reckon you cannot race out here and not have a problem sooner or later. Something's gonna break something, gonna give up racing on 18 inches of water around the figure eight course. Both the buggy and Jeep classes have to contend with the sippy hole.

The hall is probably 8 ft deep.

Getting across. That's kind of half the battle.

They've been battling the Sippy Hole even before it was called the Sippy Hole.

Years ago they were the guy, his name was Sippy. He'd go out and race and he never was able to get across that hole. So they named it after him

for the Jeep class. Getting wet is not an option.

When I'm sitting in the seat, the water's up to my chest, the whole motor, everything goes completely underwater. Steve Armstrong has been competing in the class for 20 years.

It's exciting.

They put

nine of us on the track at one time.

All a bunch of bumping and grinding and you never know what's gonna happen. It's a real close competitive class. All the other classes, you know, they put one or two out there at a time while the $100,000 super mods rely on horsepower.

The $10,000 Jeeps is a driver's class.

You gotta know how to drive, but you need to know, you know where to be on the track, where you can pass, where you can pass and what you need to do. So there's, there's a lot to it. I not only race but we build these out of my shop up in uh Sarasota

with five Jeeps competing including Evil and Wicked General Lee and Frogs. Spit, Steve knows what works.

I mean, it's a true four wheel drive everything has to be a Jeep. We all have to run

the same motor. Basically. We run a 134 F head or L head motor.

The uh F head motor is what I got here. It has four valves in the block, four valves in the head. Most people run the F head because you get a little more power out of them. They quit making this motor in 1972. So it's getting hard to find the part.

But, uh, there's still some out there when they're stocked

they turn about 3500 RPM. I got this one turned to right around 7200. I got a hydraulic clutch set up on mine which is different. Nobody else or there might be one or two others. I was the first one to come up with that

with water that comes chest high. He makes sure his rigs are sealed tighter than a frog's behind

carburetor sitting up on an intake and we have that

plastic hose that goes up to keep the water from going in. And then we got spray

and silicon and stuff. We put all around, all of our fuel and everything goes to keep the water out, kind of primitive stuff. But you gotta keep the water out somehow. Only takes one gulp and shut you down. Come race time. There's one thing left to do.

I'm ready to get her done

almost as soon as the race they started

it was over

first race. Doing excellent. My front end locked up

about a backward wheelie gonna try to race another race in two wheel drive. But I guess I

must have blew my

transmission too because I ain't got no gears anymore.

So I'm done for the day.

He may be done for the day, but Steve knows he'll be coming to the swamp buggy races for years to come.

I love it. I got my

oldest boys racing now. My youngest boy, he's 14. He's hitching the race. So

pretty soon down the line, I'm gonna pass it on to them and I'll be a spectator. Let them race.

Well, they only race three times a year down in Florida Sports Park. So go down to Naples, Florida

and get wet.

I don't think we'll need waiters for our Jeep though because it's going to the desert. It's dry there.

Yes, it is.

Like,

welcome back to the extreme shop. We're right in the beginning of our Jeep Cherokee XJ build. That's being prepped to race in the Jeep Speed One Desert Racing series.

Now that we have a roll cage in there to protect the driver and copilot,

we can turn our attention to the suspension

since the rules dictate that all the major items we use on our J must be readily available in the after market. We went to the one place that knows XJ inside and out.

Rusty off road

and not only does rusty carry products from popular manufacturers, but they also have their own components like this long arm suspension system that we're going to be using.

It's got new leaf springs, new coil springs, adjustable radius arms and all the mountain brackets.

Now, this kit requires no welding, but this transmission cross member does require some extra support because it's now the new lower mount for our control arms. So we're gonna be sandwiching another bracket on the outside of this frame rail. So we're gonna have to drill some holes. Now, the reason we bolt this on instead of welding, it is the XG is a unibody truck. So this is basically just 16 cage steel up here. If we went ahead and welded something this thick to that,

all it would do is just tear off in time

using the outside frame plates as a guide mark, then drill the required hole, making sure to move the fuel lines on the driver's side.

Then once a one inch hole is cut on the inside frame rail, the backing plate

is slid into place

and the bolts can be torque to spec,

then move to the front axle, removing the shocks,

unbolt the sway bar

and the track bar.

All right. Now, this bracket right here that was holding that lower control arm in

has to be cut off for clearance for the new control arm because it's gonna come off a skid plate and come right down through here Now you want to be careful when you cut this off because like I said before, this is really thin steel, just wanna make sure

don't damage that frame.

Give me a plasma cut

man that was loud.

And now we're ready to go ahead and put in our new control arms. Now, this is a completely different design than the factory suspension. If you remember, we basically had a four link in here bar on the bottom, then a steel

bar on the top, but this is almost like a radius arm. You have one long arm that goes from the bottom to the bottom side of the axle and this connector tube goes up to the top side of the axle. Now, Rusty suggests setting these

up the lower one at 35 and three quarters of an inch to start and the upper at 15 and three quarters of an inch. Now, once you get the thing back down on the ground on the ride height,

you're going to want to go ahead and check your caster angle.

That's the tilt back of this front axle. The best way to do it is right on top of the ball joint with an angle finder. And you're looking for seven degrees positive caster or lean back of the axle and you can adjust that with those bars.

Then the new coral springs can be installed.

He

was working on the front. I went ahead and finished the rear by installing the archly springs, new shackles and of course longer still

break lines.

So now we can turn our attention to the shocks. We're going to be using that

dirt

logic shocks on all four corners for a couple of good reasons. One is that, that campaigns

in the deep speed circuit. So they have over

a jillion hours in the testing different valving setups specifically for the Jeep speed trucks.

And two is the dirt logics have two and a quarter steel body, 78 harden chrome piston rods and

bearings on both mountain points. So, you know, these shocks are race ready

just like all sanctioning bodies. Jeep Speed has rules and regulations regarding what kind of aftermarket wheels and tires you can use. And in our case, it's BF Goodrich tires wrapped around American racing wheels, which is great because American racing has just released a full line of forged aluminum wheels that are specifically designed for off road racing and we chose 15 by eight chamber series. Now they're coated in Teflon and there's a reason for that

when you do long races off road, you can actually have dirt cake up on the inside of this rim and throw the balance off and also makes the rotational mass heavier and the way having the Teflon on there, the dirt is just gonna fly right off. Now, the BF Goodridge tire has proven itself time and time again in Baja

and the Baja T A has a nice aggressive tread, but the tire itself is not that heavy. There's not gonna be a lot of load on our axles on those long runs,

6.5 inches of lift and 33 inch tires. This thing's ready for the desert.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Our deep speed X

built, this truck has already been treated to a full suspension upgrade,

race back wheels, tires and a full roll cage. Now, all we have to do is concentrate on some power at

and by now, I'm sure you've figured out that almost everything we've used today has been from companies that are involved in desert racing and when it came time to find our power rudders, well, we found one more. Now, banks engineering is tearing into the gas market with everything from torque tube headers to cat back systems and just like all their products

stuff is dyno

proven power ADDers for your vehicle. And not only are they proven power on the

dyno, they're actually tested in the desert competing in the stock full class. The Donohoe Racing F 250 super duty is one of the very few diesels in competitive desert racing.

Using a host of banks, products from Power PDAs and Big Hoss bundles. Banks is using this truck as a test bed to ensure their products can handle the abuse of Baha.

And with the recent impressive second place finish at the Terribles 400. It looks like they have a winning combination.

Now, the rules state that we can tear out this engine and completely rebuild it as long as the block in the head stay stock. But we decided to go with out of the box power ADDers like these torque tubes. This mantle

head pipe

has a thick flange to eliminate exhaust leaks.

And the three into two design will help with the scavenging effect, giving us more combustion and more power.

And the combination of the bank's torque tubes with the monster cap back system. We showed you a couple of seconds ago flows 44% better than any other exhaust system on the market. So we're sure that it's really going to liven up our 4 L out in the dirt. Now, these are all direct replacement parts, so they're really easy to install. Some of them take a lot of time and unfortunately, we're out of that today.

So the next time you see the old Jeep speed in the shop basically be taking care of everything else we need before we can take this thing out in the desert, like suspension seats belts, the GPS units, some off road lights, everything we're gonna need to have fun in the race

up.