I have two automotive loves: The first is the Miata, the second is off-road racing. For a while I raced air-cooled Volkswagens in the deserts of California and Nevada and I was lucky enough to co-drive in a class 11 stock bug in the Baja 1000 a few years ago. I podiumed a few times driving my own class-1600 race car. But something always seemed missing.
Then I found Buddy.
Buddy is a 2001 lifted Miata. I bought him with some off-road goodies like front and rear tube bumpers and a three-inch lift, but I’ve spent the past three years turning him into something the original Miata designer Bob Hall never could have imagined.
And this is how I find myself on the starting line at the Southern Nevada Off Road Enthusiasts (SNORE) Rage at the River event in Laughlin, Nevada. With the sun barely peeking over the mountains to the east, I have one goal: JFF. Just Fucking Finish.
Buddy has all the safety equipment necessary for off-road racing. A full steel cage, racing fuel cell, five point harnesses, Recaro seats, intercom and race radio by Rugged Radios, window nets…the whole shebang. Per the rules I have Rigid Industries blue and amber LED light pods in the rear – amber as a dust light, blue to signify Buddy is a slow car.
Performance mods are many. Miata radiators are crap so there is a bigger aluminum one stuffed in the engine bay. The little 1.8-liter engine is supercharged just enough to get a decent power to weight ratio and I added a stage 1 clutch to the otherwise stock five-speed transmission. I regeared the rear to 5.38 to handle the “massive” 29-inch BF Goodrich tires but the axles and rear arms are all stock. I’ve got custom chromoly front upper control arms with uniballs and Fox shocks with Hyperco coils at all four corners.
On race day SNORE wasn’t quite sure which class to put me in. He’s obviously a sportsman vehicle, but he’s open-wheel buggy and he’s not VW powered, two requirements for a few popular sportsman classes. SNORE decided to put me in Sportsman Truck for…reasons, I suppose. Buddy is obviously not a truck but with working doors and fenders, I guess it’s the closest match. Besides, I’m here to have fun. Taking a class win isn’t all that important to me, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you I won the Gambler class at the Mint 400 back in March.
Rage at the River is a two-heat race. Drivers get an hour or so of racing on Saturday and again on Sunday. My heat is technically the Sportsman heat, but many competitors sign up as Sportsman to get a look at the course for their real race later in the day. At staging I see Trophy Trucks with what looks like three feet of travel and what sounds like a billion horsepower. There are plenty of buggies that I know can skip over the top of rough stuff and a whole mess of nimble UTVs, all lined up to race in my little heat.
I requested a rear start and at 6:20 a.m. there aren’t many spectators to see me off, but I still notice people giving me the thumbs up. “Yeah, Buddy” I think as I get my green flag. I dump the clutch and we are off, pulling an uphill soft wash that makes Buddy scream in the high revs. The tires are looking for hard-pack grip but he’s doing good, cruising along at a respectable clip. Hey– this is fun!
Then we hit the Moon Bumps.
I can not emphasize enough how rough this section is. The whoops are giant with sharp gullies at the bottom, eating up suspension parts like a ravenous Sarlacc. In my old buggy I could just keep momentum and skip over the top of the whoops. With my stock wheel travel of about 8 inches, that just isn’t possible. I slow way down and keep all the way to the left, thankful that nobody is behind me. “Just get through it, Hall,” I think. “You’re not racing right now. You’re surviving.”
Still, I can hear the suspension banging away under the car. The Fox shocks have internal bump stops, but these are obviously not sufficient. At every compression the noise just gets more and more painful. I can’t believe I have to do this three more times.
After the Moon Bumps are a few miles of flat, quick race course. There are some blind crests to navigate but it doesn’t get dicey until what I call the Laughlin Leap. Here the ground drops away from Buddy and I feel like I’m on a 50-degree slope. Out of the corner of my eye I see a side-by-side has rolled off the Leap, but I can’t devote too much of my brain power to that poor person. Recovery is there so I know they are okay.
The next rough section is a set of whoops that I just have to endure. Twenty miles per hour is all little Buddy can manage without pounding the front arms to oblivion. However, I know that the rest of the course is super-fast and once we are through, it’s time to hammer down.
I get through plenty of steeply banked turns before I get to show off a bit on a long straightaway in front of the hot pits. I can see people yelling and cheering for Buddy as we got WOT towards the infield. Here I play it safe, keeping all four tires on the ground though I could have jumped him if I were willing to take a risk. It’s just not worth it without better bump stops.
I come into the start/finish line and do it all over again, but only twice. I don’t make the cut off time for a fourth lap. Each lap was 12.5 miles and my time was 1:03:19.118, with an average speed of about 45 miles per hour. Out of 10 in my class I came in 6th. Pretty damn good, I’d say!
Unfortunately Buddy would not be able to race on Sunday. The lack of external bump stops obliterated the passenger front shock mount and cracked the driver’s side. They could have been fixed in the pits– off-road folks are nothing if not McGyvers– but I knew they would break again and possibly cause more damage. The risk vs reward was just not worth it.
What’s next for Buddy? I’ll obviously be working on a new design for the top shock mounts and figuring out the bump stops. The Fox shocks are currently operating with the stock valving, but I know I can fine tune them a bit better. He has three skid plates underneath, but I’d like to add a plate to protect the differential, which will have the added bonus of helping the car to slide along the top of berms when the course gets dug out.
Long term plans include upgrading the CVs and possibly swapping in a beefier RX-7 differential housing. I’m trying to convince my pals over at Torq-Masters to make a locker for Buddy, but so far the closest they’ve got is one for a Subaru.
Hey, a gal can dream, right?