Building a Baja Race-ready Jeep
When we decided to race the Baja 500, we settled on a 2006 LJ platform as our base. Below represents the two years of work that went into making it SCORE and BITD legal for racing.
Tearing it down
We entered into this with a VERY limited budget of roughly $25000 over two years, so we spent a month comparing rules books, establishing mandatory changes, and ruling out the things we couldn’t afford to change and probably didn’t need to change in order to be competitive.
Being systematic
Its very easy—along any build—to wander into areas you that will cost you more to change than they would if you left things alone. We encountered those issues at every turn. The first commitment we made to ourselves: Don’t touch the electric. Even the original center console and bass remained wired in the vehicle.
Check it, weld it, recheck it
When your life literally depends on doing everything right, you make sure no details are overlooked. Every point of the roll cage was passed through and connected to the frame to ensure a drivers cage that wouldn’t disconnect from the truck in a high speed roll.
Two things count: Thing 1
As the saying goes, “To finish first, first you must finish.” The Baja—and off road racing in general—is famous for low percent finishes. So we studied why half the field typically doesn’t finish a race. And in most cases, it comes down to one of two things. First is engine/driveline failure. As a result, we had bullet proofed the driveline with a custom built engine, racing clutch and improved mounting and more.
Two things count: Thing 2
The second most common reason for failure: Suspension. This is a little tougher than throwing in some Keith Black drop-forged pistons. This involves real shocks that can take the beating. In our case, we opted for Bilstein 24 inch, quad-bypass shocks and had the factory calibrate them for driver and co-driver weight, Baja conditions, and truck set up.
A lot of details were added like hood venting to get the heat out as quickly as possible, reduce the silt circulation under the hood and hood pins as a secondary way to keep the hood from releasing from the truck.
Safety first and last
We can’t stress enough the need to be sure you’re thinking everything through from the safety perspective. We made sure all the details were looked at and reconsidered from how low the side bars should be to enable escape from the vehicle in the event of a fire, to locations for extinguishers for easy reach.
You don’t get a lot of room
When it comes to putting everything on the truck that is necessary to ensure you best chance at victory, you don’t have a lot of places to put. So really mapping out each item, test fitting all items together, checking for secure mounting positions and bump testing it is the only way to go.
10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag!
I can’t stress enough that you need to take everything into consideration when determining what goes where. Access to tools, jacks, changing ice in the helmet cooler, making sure rescue crews can reach a fire extinguisher–its all part of prepping the truck properly.
Light up the night
Many races, like Baja, can run up to 14 hours in the seat. At some point, you’ll find yourself racing at night. When that happens, you need 55 mph lights. Light value is based on a simple formula: How fast can you go at night with the lights on and still have clear vision ahead of you.
Pencil and spread
When selecting your lights, don’t think some basic LED light bar is going to project far, because most don’t. We opted for Hella’s top unit with built in ballast for least amount of electrical draw and maximum projection. We mixed pencil beams in the middle for long accurate light, with spread lights on the edges to see side to side.
Take your time and think everything through. Find a local trail/track that offers everything from jumps to open stretches and put your truck through the paces. If you struggle with issues during dry runs, they’ll only be magnified when its 100 degrees out and nothing but rocks, silt and hills in a real race.
Chicken Creek Customs 