Custom Pre-Runner Jeep J10 FIRST DRIVE! at NTD Racing - The Journey to the Baja 1000

on this episode of the journey to the baja 1000 it is crunch time to finish the j-10 race truck [Music] on this episode of the journey to the baja 1000 we're going to talk about what we're doing to get this truck to ensenada in time for the race so here's just a quick recap for people who are just joining us on this channel how we got here i i bought the gj10 you know probably almost two years ago my brother brought it here and it finally arrived in my garage november of last year and i was kind of trying to figure out what am i going to do with this truck uh i knew i wanted to build something for the baja 1000. i figured this would be the perfect thing because it's just such a cool shape i just really like the looks of the jeep j10 i figured i gave myself a 10 chance of having a truck ready this year for the baja 1000 and a 90 chance of having a truck ready uh next year and then the lockdown happened and all of a sudden everybody found themselves a lot of time at home and looking for hobbies and so i'm like you know what this is my time this is my chance to go for it i'm not working a lot with my normal job which is a pilot with delta airlines and i have time at home so let's go for it my brothers also while i was building this they said hey why don't you make a youtube channel so here we are making a youtube channel called the uh the journey to the bottom 1000 where i've kind of shown how i've gotten to this point i started off talking about buying the j-10 taking that one apart and using the parts buying a chevy silverado and using the engine transmission axle and brakes uh to for most of the parts for the uh the truck and then along the way as i've been building sub systems like the suspension i've been using fusion 360 and also the crop langmeyer systems crossfire pro cnc plasma table to build a roll cage i've been using bentek and then my jd squared bender and an angle grinder to build this uh roll cage so that things came out pretty pretty good uh the other things that are happening behind the scenes are you know the team that we've got and this thing has gotten from me just the small idea to this amazing team of people and i'm going to show you who those folks are here in a second also some of the things that we're doing to prepare let's take a look at some of the equipment some of the things that we're going to be using that i think are unique to our team uh again this is our first time doing this so uh we're gonna test everything uh and there's gonna be some failures and that's okay uh we're gonna break some stuff out there we're gonna learn a lot and hopefully next year when we come back we're a better team more prepared uh for this race with that let's go ahead and take a look at the stuff we got take a look at the first start of the other truck and see how it's coming along so there's something magical about building your own car and rolling it out for the other first first start i built a lot of cars i built a supercar built some jeeps and everything like that and just every time you get to roll your car outside for the first time i probably could use some help you're doing it but every time you get to roll your car outside for the first time and fire it up and just basically breathe life into this machine it's really it's really magical and especially uh once you get to the first drive the first time you feel the thing pushing you along something you've made nuts and bolts everything you put together and it's now driving you around there's just something magical about that moment uh and that's this moment right here i think it's really cool getting to push this thing out let's go ahead and take a look at uh just some last checks here and then getting the engine started for the first time let's drive it go just doing a couple last checks of everything on here i don't have the bypasses on right now i just don't need those i was working on some of the brake systems so i'll put those on a little bit later uh looks like i got the fuel line all set up and good to go as i start this thing for the first time i'm assuming it's going to take a little bit of cranking or at least a little maybe a couple primes of the pump to get the fuel to go all the way from the back to the front i'm running this uh 2 gallon tank here just in case it doesn't go well i don't want to have a whole bunch of gas in the brand new tank i'm going to use the old tank and then i can clean that one out a lot easier and then i will put the fuel in the new tank once that we have everything kind of dialed in as far as that go batteries all hooked up i put a little more coolant into the radiator uh besides that ready with two fire extinguishers in case things go bad one last quick check of everything before i hit the start button up here and uh and get going so here we go well you might be asking yourself why are we driving this thing around without floorboards and really missing probably some basic safety stuff on there and it's just because we have like like builds like this go sometimes you work yourself into a time corner and we just wanted a one quick test drive just to shake this thing down and make sure that we have all the mechanical things chosen correctly do we have the right size brake masters is the fuel system going to work is it going to provide power is a drive system going to also just start shaking itself to death is the transmission going to work is the engine going to work we got it we needed to answer those questions before we continued any further because we don't want to answer those questions two or three days before the race and not have time to fix those big things after the test we just we have found that this thing works and be ready for the race but it is just a blast to drive this thing [Music] [Applause] no way [Music] oh [Music] well i hope you liked the uh the first test drive the truck drives awesome it uh i'm really impressed with how well it did there weren't really any uh any hiccups in the other truck or anything that we were concerned about one of the funny things about the truck though is that um i was still waiting for a brake line for the uh the front uh right the passenger side front wheel uh we didn't have the brake lines so i was like i really need to test the brakes to make sure i have the right size master cylinders so i only had brakes on the uh the driver's side front wheel and also the back two tires the brakes still work pretty good um we'll get those all plumbed up later on so only three breaks on the truck right now i got a little parts ready for it but one thing we're going to be doing before we start uh as we finish up this truck is we're taking everything back apart we're going to paint the chassis we're going to leave the engine in but we'll take everything else out of the chassis uh paint it and then put everything else else back in and and torque all the bolts down so let's just do a quick walk around of the uh the truck and see what we got going on i'm gonna apologize uh first off for just some of the rust on the uh the roll cage it's totally cleaned off metal and then it was it stayed outside because i didn't take the truck to the dmv so i stayed in my trailer for one night and got milk or some dew on it and i just rusted up but it that'll wipe it off with scotch brite and we're gonna clean it up with uh some paint as you can see i got the body on it right now the front is bolted on and it's really not mounted yet although i just cut the mounts out of my with my plasma table the langmar systems crossfire pro and those will be going on here uh probably tonight i'll be putting those uh those uh mounts on to get this thing totally in there as you can see we got the engine is pretty much wired up and cleaned up about as much as it's gonna get we did put this uh air cleaner we got this from car tech so if you're looking for stuff like this you know where do people get this stuff car tech and i'll put a link for these guys in my description a really cool air cleaner what i did with this thing is i have just a reducer it goes from four to a three and a half this is a piece of the the chevy silverado um air intake i just cut out so i can keep the mass air flow sensor then it goes from three and a half back to a four into the the throttle body there for the uh for the uh ls engine here this is an ly6 and if you go and check out i think video three you'll see how i got this engine transmission and a rear axle 400 bucks is what i paid for all those after i sold a bunch of parts uh you got the uh my cooling system all fish through here and down past the the shocks and that all fits in there pretty nicely cooling system worked awesome and that's all wired up it was a little bit of a trick to com to a program computer since this was originally this engine came with a fan on the front uh of it and i added an electric fans obviously with the uh the radiator there in the back of the truck so that was a little bit of a trick but that uh worked out pretty good so you kind of see how the cooling system fishes around with the exhaust system there and that's all just uh just a cheapo exhaust system that i kind of put together off of one of those kits you get off of amazon that gives you 90 and 45 degree bends and it came out pretty good we're just running straight exhaust out of the out of this thing still we get all the panels cut out to uh to close out the firewall we're just going to weld in some tabs for that and start bolting all that together as we go inside the the truck here we got you can see the center panel again lane meyer systems crossfire pro cut this thing out basically with fusion 360. i was able to design this panel and backing that up a little bit so i built this whole roll cage in bendtech downloaded the step file from bentek into fusion 360 and then basically just said all right let me cut this panel out and i knew where the shifter was going to be and just put in some other uh panels here like for the uh on off switch for the uh the battery this we're going to be putting the fuses this will be the light switches over here we got some usb uh drives there shifter and there's our start uh and ignition switch over there so everything's uh goes in there nice and neatly and so i'm obviously working on some wiring here and all that stuff will be tucked up nice and neat uh before we close that out up there got the seat brackets in on this side finishing up some seat belt uh mounts there and we got the seat belt mounts uh over over there on the back got the uh the cbr radiator uh mounted we got um the jazz i think that is the uh overflow reservoir uh mounted up there battery is mounted this little thing that's hanging off the back is where we're gonna be putting the cooler for the the transmission that's already uh good to go i just wasn't test driving it with the transmission uh cooler on there in the back there's a little bit of frankenstein work here but uh we got the fuel safe cell in its own cage we originally planned on putting the fuel cell right behind the driver but you know what we just we're a bunch of old guys and we just didn't want that fuel filler right off of our right behind our ear in case we rolled the truck over just give us about five more feet for fuel to drain somewhere other than in our lap so we did put the the fuel cell back here in the back i cut this little two gallon tank up here because i wanted to use that for testing uh this thing out as opposed to filling up the fuel cell with fuel because i have to take this thing out to paint it i just want to deal with a big cell so i just put this little cheapo two gallon tank in there and it does the job just for uh testing but it's already plumbed all i gotta do is swap the fuel lines and it's already ready to go and plumb to hook up to the 50 gallon uh fuel cell and then it's really simple here got a filter going to a pump and then go into one of those uh this is basically out of a corvette this is a filter and a pressure regulator so and it basically has a return line goes right back to the tank and the 60 psi of fuel goes from there all the way up to the uh up to the engine and it works perfect man the engine you'll uh use your herd it it sounds awesome going up here to the front a lot of work on this uh setting this whole thing up you know just making it comfortable so i'll show you up over here how we got the pedals uh in there i was planning on using the stock brakes uh uh master from the chevy silverado it just wouldn't fit in here that thing sits out about 15 inches beyond here so to make it comfortable we ended up going with you can kind of see in there the wheel would reverse we've got the dual uh masters in there and those are going really nice in the seating position now that we've moved everything forward here a little bit is just super comfortable what you're going to need considering that we think that everyone will be in the seat for about eight hours each but um and it meets all of the uh requirements for score uh so uh that is really important this the roll cage it did pass the inspection uh for the roll cage and we have a tag so that was one big hurdle we had to overcome another hurdle way to overcome is i had to get this thing registered such that when we go into mexico and we come back this thing is in my name so this vin number is now in my name which is a big deal because now we get this truck back after we uh we raise it so that's all ready to go let's take a look at some of the other products that we're using in this race which might be a little bit unique and something that we're doing i'm not sure if everybody else is doing it all right i wanted to take a quick minute to show you some of the stuff that we're going to be using the truck that i don't think most guys are using or even know about especially in the off-road world it is the mount that we're going to use for the gps system now we are a budget truck we don't have a lot of money for this thing and so going out and buying a lawrence system and all the software was just something that we wanted to see is there another way that we can do it and save some money and i think that there is and we'll see how it works compared to how other folks are having uh success with the lower and says my primary job i'm an airline pilot and i use this uh gps the the ipad gps and mapping system in the cockpit all the time and what i what i really wanted to show you was the mount that we use and this is from a company called flyboys and it is called a pivot case uh and the pivot case comes in different sizes in the full size ipad pros we're going to be using the the ipad mini and here's the the case it comes with a cover to protect your screen and that closes up and locks down and you can take that cover off which i do most of the time and usually i leave that off almost all the time on my my ipad because the case does a really good job of protecting the the gps it still has cooling vents uh to keep the thing cool it has all the places so that your cameras still work you can charge and all those kinds of things what i really like about the case though is the way that it mounts uh you've probably seen mounts like this for gps's phones and those kinds of things ram systems where it is a ball and socket type of mount where this part in the ball is plastic and if that's plastic i think that's where probably most of the loads are going to happen while this thing is being bounced around and i can see that being a failure point in this case what uh flyboys have done with the pivot case is they've made this an aluminum piece and you can see that's welded there to that that ball and socket that is a metal piece the the socket is still a plastic piece but i've been using this thing for years i've never seen a failure of this system in jets you know and all kinds of turbulence that kind of stuff granted i know that turbulence is not the same thing that we're going to see out there with the truck getting beaten around but my confidence in this thing is pretty high as far as its ability to uh to work out there and then the way that this thing uh works is you know pretty slick it just basically slides in on the back of the ipad it's locked in there it's not coming out from there you can now rotate it into a plan form or a landscape view for the the ipad once it's in there these things are pretty inexpensive i want to say these are like 40 if you go to flyboy's web page and click click on pivot and so we got three or four of these and we're going to put them in different places on the truck just for uh whatever the driver preference is when they get in the truck where they want to put their ipads and then also we've heard that one of the limitations of the ipad and using that as a navigation system is the fact that you get a lot of glare from the sun so being able to put that in different places and maybe even up high will be a benefit so you can put it in a shaded type area in the truck that'll also help for cooling because you've probably been with your iphone in the sun or something like that and overheats so we'll just make sure that things kept out of the sun while we're driving so we'll be able to move that thing around let's go ahead and take a look at the software that we're going to be using in conjunction with this ipad in the pivot case okay i just wanted to quickly show you the software that we're going to be using for the navigation it's this app here called gaia this is a great piece of software they got a lot of information on here and best of all it works when you're not on a cellular network uh so three things i like here let's go through them first off is uh it is totally customizable all the bars all the information you have across the top you can change that to show you what they want one important things for us is speed i don't have a speedometer in the race truck this will be our primary means of telling how fast we're going two is like i said it works without being on a cellular network if you pay for their subscription which is like 40 a year or something like that then you can download all the maps and you can see there are a ton of different things that you can download and have on your ipad such that it'll work when you're really remote like say for example on the baja peninsula in the middle of nowhere in your race truck you'll have all the maps that you uh you need downloaded onto your your gps and the last thing is is you can download waypoints in this case we have downloaded the entire race course this happens to be the 2019 racecourse we'll get the 2021 on there so it won't be lost while we're out there uh racing but as you narrow in here you can see how detailed it gets with the topographical map on there uh and it gives you a lot of just great information you can tell that hey if i'm going parallel these uh lines out here that means i'm pretty much flat if i'm as i'm crossing those lines i mean they're going uphill or downhill so it'll help you plan uh for your mat for your drives and you get information off of this that maybe you couldn't get off of say a satellite view because you can really tell like when you're going to be down in the valley in a draw over ridge prep you know top or something like that some great information on these maps all right couple things i wanted to show you uh on the computer here which i first one i think is is super cool it is a program called spot walla and we will for the race have our own spot walla page we'll be sending that out on our youtube channel on our webpage on facebook also on instagram we'll send out the link for this in case you want to follow us now you will be able to track all of the racers for the baja 1000 if you go to score what will be different about going to our spot walla page is you'll be able to see where our truck is and you'll also get to see where our support drivers are which is a little bit different you'll get to see how we set up where all our support guys are this is a shot right here on the screen of us testing the spot wall this is live this is really going on so these are where all of our gps's are we're using garmin gps's that will be able to satellite send information via text around and also be able to send our current location it'll update every 60 seconds exactly where the car is and the chase trucks and basically everyone who's carrying one of these uh satellite gps's and as you can see we got one of our teammates over here in senegal one in germany the one in portugal must be off right now over here at uh lax and then some in texas also so really cool software and on race day we're gonna send out the link so you guys can follow not only the truck but our support crews through the race all right i just want to take one quick second to give a plug for the ntd racing webpage which our marketing person michelle is just doing an awesome job getting this thing dialed in with some really good content uh on the page um the first episode is right here on the first page and this thing explains what we're doing where we're doing it and most importantly uh why we're doing it we got a whole bunch more episodes if you'd like to check out all the different episodes that we have including links to our tool tips where i talk about the langmeyer systems crossfire pro cnc plasma table bentek and some of the other tools i'm using around the garage one of the things i really think is the most important part about this team and just really i think the most unique thing is the people that are on the team which are just really cool one of the common threads for all of us is none of us his ra race the baja1000 some of the guys the first time they will have driven a race truck in the baja 1000 will be the day they hop in the truck and learn how to do it and that's one of also i think the cool things about the baja 1000 is it's almost like running a marathon you're going to go out there and run with premier runners or premier drivers in this case and you can just basically run what you've run that being said there's a lot of things that we're jumping through hoops wise when you're talking about safety and all the different things we got to meet to raise score but at the end of the day you can be a common guy bringing your truck and racing the ball 1000 as long as you go through all those uh safety wickets why do i think all these guys can go out there and drive in the bottom 1000 each of them has a unique you know skill capability um and that and also the fact that we're all approaching 50 years old so we're not going out there to win um i've said a lot of times in my video that my measure of success for this year's race is crossing the start line without being pushed and then everything after that is gravy after that the goal is get the truck to the next driver so you know we're not going for maximum air time or maximum speed we're going to get just be persistent keep the truck going don't destroy the truck in the race and i think that we have the right group and mix of guys who are who have seen excitement they don't get heavy throttles they don't get overly excited we've got uh you know career fighter pilots that are on the other team including myself we've got guys who uh are work for the state department and diplomatic security and have been in dicey situations all over the world we got combat medics on the teams we got ski patrollers from the premier ski hills around the uh the globe um fedex pilots delta pilots uh just super cool people that are on the team and really blessed i think to be a part of this team i hope you'll take a chance a little bit of time to go through the web page and especially read through the bios i think you'll be really impressed you know and if you're down there baja man please come up and say hello we would like to meet all you folks we're out there learning so if you uh just want to come and talk baja or teach us some stuff out there then we are all ears this is uh that's what this year is all about for the ntd racing okay well the excitement is building we've got about two weeks left to get this thing ready to go to the bottom 1000. i can't believe that we were getting so close i remember thinking a 10 chance we would make it this year and as we knock out those big things you know the engine's working the transmission's working the drive train's working the brakes are working the body is fitting on the car uh you know seat belts are going in we're passing the uh chassis inspection all those big things are now in the past uh that when i thought originally we're gonna be about 10 chance of making it i just feel like our chances are are better not obviously not 100 there's still a lot to do but i find those to be the little things that we know we can do it's just time consuming getting the floor and getting the firewall and getting electrical done uh painting this thing so it looks uh good uh for the race uh and our sponsors will be probably their their logos are on so we're getting through all those things and working really hard in the future we got on the 11th i have team members showing up here to help finish out the other truck the 17th we're driving to ensenada hopefully passing tech inspection on the 18th uh on the 20th we should be starting the race somewhere around one o'clock please log in to our youtube channel we'll be live streaming portions of that we've got drone footage going on for the city we're going to have gopros inside the truck we'll show some video afterwards and i hope to in the future do some videos and show you know everything you need to do if you want to do this also how do you pass tech inspection how do you get to raise the baha 1000 and i'll do a video thing and how you get through all the competition regulations and what they mean as we were kind of finding all those things uh those things out with that uh we hope to see you in future episodes i will try to get one or two more out before the the start of the baja 1000 and then i'll have more time afterwards to do some uh some more videos but please don't forget to like and subscribe this one thank you so much for joining us on this video and all the videos up to this point we'll see you in the future take care of yourself please consider following us on our webpage at ntdracing.com on youtube and on facebook you can follow us at ntd racing and on instagram you can follow us at nt desert racing you

Channel: NTD Racing

Views: 6,130

Keywords: custom prerunner, custom prerunner build, Baja 1000, Score, score international, custom pre-runner, silverado, jeep, j-10, FSJ, racing, its a jeep thing, prerunner, Preruner, ls swap, langmuir systems, trophy truck suspension, langmuir systems crossfire pro

Id: U3kOv631M_A

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020