We are back from the race.Very busy weekend Dave will post (hes still recovering)tonight or Monday on the X.Lets put it this way LONG day in the desert.I bet he will be drinking tons of water to rehydrate for the next week. But we will be ready for the Vegas to Reno.

Still waiting for the official results to be posted...Jeez....its killing me...though by the sounds of it it was a rough day...Can't wait to hear all about it....

Argh!! Good effort guys!! The Dave Blakely Xterra looks to have finished 5th out of the 6 trucks racing in the 3100 class and unfortunately posted a DNF....Can't wait to hear the stories behind the carnage and what your experiences were in the first race in this Xterra...

Hey guys, I just got home. Midnight here. I did have a hard day racing. Our day ended with a broken lower A-arm on drivers side at mile marker 144. We started 4th off the line with 7 entries listed, only 6 left the start. We saw from the start we had more motor than the others as we reeled in second and third off the line with in the first 3 miles. But then midway to check 1 we started having over heating problems. The computor went into "LIMP" mode, at that point Hall was able to catch us and then came Falkawski too. We stopped for a long pit 1 trying to get the X cooled down. Still running hot, we headed on fighting limited rpm due to being in "limp mode". Before pit 2 we had to stop and try to bleed a air pocket out of the radiator. At pit 3 the crew jerked the grill and front bumper for more air flow. We still over heated!!! At pit 4 we placed flow restrictor on the upper radiator hose. This cured our problem. As we could run harder, now we started to notice that we had the shocks fading out. We settled into a slower pace to save the vehicle for a finish. Then out of no where, we broke the A-arm. Thats racing, we will be back! Good night all.

well for the first time out sounds like you did pretty well.. This all goes to lessons learned for later down the road..

I'm proud of you guys. Even though the vehicle had some gremlins you did not give up at any time.

As you say for racing - it happens. Just make sure you're back

I am surprised to hear that the shocks faded on your rig. Nice job on the finish though.

AWESOME.. AWESOME.. AWESOME!!! I dont know what else to say. Even though you had problems still trully awesome!

Hmmm better say awesome one more time for the hell of it.

If you post any vids of the action let me know or if you know where it is posted.

"I am surprised to hear that the shocks faded on your rig."
This race coure was one of the roughest I have raced in recent memory.The coarse consisted of either rocks,rocks and silt,or just more rocks.With this in mind it took 100 miles for the shocks to start fading.If we play with the valving and shock oils we will get them to last 10 times longer.Its part of the new car blues in desert racing.This is the most brutal thing that you can do to a vehicle.This why Nissan is useing it for a testing ground for future vehicles.We duplicate more in one day than more people will even think to do in the lifetime of their vehicles.We will get the bugs work out.Its just takes time.

I just got back from the doctors. During the race the floor board was getting very hot. I notice it burning my shoe and had to reposition my foot several times. Well, in deed it did burn my shoe and my foot too. I have a third degree burn on my heel where it rode against the floor board above the exhaust. I've talked to Don my co-rider, he check his hickers and said his whole heel had melted. I guess this grants a extra day off before trying to get it back in to my work boots. I will install a heat sheild on both sides before the next race. I have not gone over the X yet to find all the carnage. I'll go wash it later today and see what we've got.

Oh I totally agree. While I don't run Fox's on my rig, I know about getting them dialed in. It takes time. I had to redo my front shocks once to get it right. It just made me wonder since you are running with 3.0 bypass shocks. They should be good to go for longer without fade. But as you said, it takes time to dial them in. Valving is more art than science IMO.

When we got these from Fox they where set up for around 550 lbs springs we are now up to 850 lbs.The valving and the shock oil are all wrong.We are also probaly going to go even stiffer in the spring rate witch will throw it off more then we will mess with the oil and valving.

That's a hell of a spring rate. I'm running KING 16 inch 600lbs springs on mine with a 4wd 2002. Your front can't be that much heavier can it?

I will let Dave answer that hes more in tune with it.Hes the one that got beat for 180 miles in it.

This is some fun stuff. As a racer (ATVs) I will be one to tell you that it takes all you have to endure the pounding and punches.

I agree with that previous post from Alpine... AWESOME!!!

Keep on it... and good luck Dave!

If you all would like to see the terrain they were running take a look at the video on this page: TT250 race video... which has video of the race from this past weekend....unfortunately I did not notice any film on the Xterra...

Found at least one pic of Xterraracer's X from the TT250!! Looks like it was taken on Friday, during contingency...posted over on Offroad.com...here is the link....
Xterraracer\'s X during TT250 contingency!!

Found 4 more pics of Xterraracer's X!! This time in full racing action!!






I think I'll be ordering a poster of the second image in this series....

These pictures are taken right after check 3. We had been working on a cause for overheating problems and just jerked the grill and bumper. this corner was actually a fast sweeper, but the X does not drift much while running in 4hi.

Pretty cool videos and pix!

Not to steal his thunder but I found pix of me racing in Victorville Racer 715 and in the pack.

Racing... once its in your blood, its all over!

Read this or post the pictures as images rather than web pages:
http://www.xterraownersclub.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=000948

Here they are.

Just go ahead and delete your last two posts if you want.

socalpunX: "Here they are"

Thanks for all your help! Where were you on race day?

Working. It's playoff time $$$$$.

Are you guys coming out for the CORR races in San Diego? Since you are dialed in with Nissan we can all hang out in the Nissan VIP tent.

This could happen. I had not thought of it yet. I would just need to get the dates and plan to display the X. I'm sure Nissan would be all for it.