By Marc Burnett
Two days before tech we went out for the first time to test the car. I could not believe how fast the new Polaris RZR XP Turbo is. After we tweaked on the clutch and the suspension we even got the car to go faster. Thursday night came around and we still needed to do some work on the car before we left to the Parker 250 race. We worked till 3 am and drove out to Parker at 6:00 am. Once there, we got the car off the trailer and took it over to tech. When the car went thru tech there was a lot of stuff that was brought up about my car. I was not very happy after Cory informed me that I would have to push my car on the trailer and back off my trailer because he was going to take my ECU unit out of my car at the end of the race. I had talked to Cory about a week in half prior to the race about the ECU unit and he informed me that he was going to switched 5 random ECU that he bought. He said we would have to return the ECU at the end of the race which I didn’t see a problem returning the ECU to him. I do not agree with what was done. I have a problem with the fact that they did not informed us that he was going to take off the ECU’s from ALL the Polaris cars which when we last spoke he mentioned that he was only going to take 5 random ECU’s out. I asked him what he was going to do with them. He said he was going to make sure they were all legal. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m not afraid to speak my mind. So I will start with that. Cory has no business touching the ECU’s or knowing how or what is inside the ECU’s. Not even Polaris dealers know what to do inside an ECU unit. To make matters worse I find out that the ECU units are on back order. There was also another issue brought up by Cory. I had a OEM replacement coils in my car that he said I could not run. Cory stated that in the Rule book, it states that all electrical needs to be stock. If you look up in the dictionary or google the definition this is what it states in regard to the definition of “Electrical”
“DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF ELECTRONICS”
“The branch of physics and technology concerned with the design of circuits using transistors and microchips, and with the behavior and movement of electrons in a semiconductor, conductor, vacuum, or gas.”
“Based on the dictionary definition of “electronics”, the Energy Coil does not utilize transistors, microchips, or other semiconductors. The 2 pin coil is a passive device, or “dumb” coil, which unlike 3 – 5 pin coils, do not utilize internal transistors, and microchip circuits. It is a passive device such as a battery, or spark plug, with no internal integrated circuits. If the definition involves passive devices such as those which conduct electricity, or are part of the microprocessing or operating branch, then batteries and spark plugs are also subject to the same rule, which means OEM spark plugs and batteries are also mandatory.”
After tech I thought he was going to allow me to use the coils since we argued about them, but an hour before the race he called me and told I could not run the coils. I unfortunately did not have another coil but Cory was nice enough to find me another coil and plug wires. We also did not have a mounting bracket for the coils so we had to zip tie it to a bracket and make a wire to ground it out so it would work. This was all right before the race started. We topped of the car with fuel and got to the starting line. We started approximately in the sixth row. I was very excited to finally be back to what I love doing. My foot was in a lot of pain but when the green light came on I forgot all about my pain for least a little bit. We got the whole shot after the turning section. In the beginning I was very worried about axles and the car since we did not have much time to test the car. By the time we passed mile 20 we had passed a lot of our competition. At this time I was pretty confident the car was working well. The first car that was behind me was a Can-Am Maverick that Logan was driving. I knew it was time to put the hammer down but my co-driver did not want me to push the car, but as people know, Marc Burnett loves pushing the limits. When we start pushing the car I was impressed with how fast the car was moving. I couldn’t stop talking about how fast the car can go. We soon started to catch the front runners in our class. When I saw another yellow Can-Am Maverick I knew it was Cory’s car which I wanted to show him that I didn’t need any coils or modifications on my car to pass him. We passed him on a flat road like he was standing still. As we were moving forward we started to see other cars. At around mile 65 or so we saw car # 910 Dan Fisher’s car. As we passed the car behind him and passed him we had a belt break. We lost 20 min’s in replacing the belt which set us back quite a bit. We saw S3 Power Sports, the Murrays, Logan and numerous other cars pass us. We also saw the Cognito Motorsports car pass us. We had no more belts with us so we did not drive the car hard coming back into the main pit. When we got to our pit we put only 4 gallons of gas in the car because I thought, doing the math, this would easily make it back to the finish. We also grabbed two belts that were the wrong size for the car because that’s all we had but the belts would have worked if he had needed to use them. As we left the pit we put the hammer down to try to make up time. We got to approximately to mile 20 or so and we noticed the car starting to turn off when making the hard turns. As we proceeded another mile or two I notice the problem getting worst so I switched to fuel pump # 2. I told my co-driver that it was still turning off and that there was no way it could be out of gas. Well I was wrong and we ran out of gas right in front of a BITD official which luckily he had two gallons of fuel to give us. So while I was waiting to get fueled I started doing the math. I have a 20 gallon fuel tank in the car which means you have approximately 18 gallons of useable fuel in the tank. I also put 4 gallons of fuel at the main pit stop which means I now have 22 gallons of fuel and I’m at mile marker 106 and out of fuel so there has to be a problem in the tank or something. I got a little bit farther down the road and we needed to refuel again. We waited for approximately 30 minutes or so for our fuel. I want to thank BITD and their crew for helping us with the fuel. I also wanted to thank them for the great race course. We got going again, at this time we wanted just to make it to the finish line. We were just cruising like driving Miss Daisy. About 2 miles from the finish we saw Cory’s car on the side of the course. I guess he ran out of gas too. When we crossed the finish line I was pretty pumped that overall we had minimal problems with the car. After we crossed the finish line we had to wait forever to have Cory take the ECU unit out of the car. I was in a lot of pain and not happy having to wait for him to take the unit out. To top it off he did not have the proper tools to take the ECU or the cover off my car. I still think that taking everybody’s ECU from their car is bullshit. I now have a car that does not run or I can’t test until I get a new ECU from Polaris. I guess this is how it’s going to be at BITD races. This crap will not happen at SCORE, I will make sure of that. If we have to do this at the MINT or Vegas to Reno, there will be double the cars to deal with and it could be hours before you leave the tech area or put your car on the trailer.
I wanted to Thank Fabwerx and their crew for all their help and support at the race. I want to thank the Murray brothers for helping us get a couple of spare tires and I would also like to thank all my sponsors and fans for their support. See you all at the next race.
Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UTVGuide
No Comments