King of the Hammers 2020

Grab a snack and a beverage (adult kind preferred) It’s time for Thorson’s Racing King of the Hammers 2020 Race Recap!

King of the hammers 2020, WHAT AN EVENT! Everytime you think it cannot get better, Dave and his crew continue to impress. Both on and off the race course! Definitely one for the record books!

Thorson’s Racing had a GREAT race! While we didn’t get to cross the big stage, we are excited with our finish nonetheless.

We started out the week with the usual unpacking, setting up pits, and getting settled into our home away from home. The course map was released a few days after our arrival, we loaded it up into our Lowrance GPS and started to do a bit of pre-running. We took some friends out on lap 1 and just took it easy, the course was familiar, so no need to beat up Hells Bells.

Monday race week was here, on the schedule was a interview with MadMatt 4WD, drivers meeting, and prepping the truck for qualifying Tuesday morning 9AM. We woke up early, cooked breakfast and headed out to meet Matt, Australian Matt. Matt is a YouTube creator focused on building and educating the off road community. We had a bunch of fun filming with MadMatt, he is a great guy and very funny! Check out the interview of Matt Thorson and Hells Bells here!

Late afternoon we headed out to the drivers meeting. While at the drivers meeting we decided to hit the qualifying course one last time before we qualified the next morning. We suited up and headed to the short course, where everything went south. Upon entering the short course, Matt put the skinny pedal down and the truck started to buck and stumble but cleared up quickly. Matt shifted into second gear, and the RPMs hit the rev limiter. NO GOOD. We limp around the track shifting back and forth, all the while the truck started to run rough again, we needed to get back to pits and figure this out.

We through the computer on the truck and found lazy O2 sensors, swapped those out and it ran a little better, but still seemed to be free revving in second gear and engine missing a bit. Another look over the truck showed a fuel fitting on the supply line sucking air. It was late by this point, so the team decided to wake up early and get it handled before qualifying. Tuesday morning we tracked down a fitting and replaced it. Slapped on the Wide Band AFR monitor and took it for a drive, engine was fixed! But the transmission was not happy. 2nd gear was gone, it didn’t want to be apart of the party anymore, 1 hour before qualifying.

We opted out of qualifying to not damage the transmission anymore, and hijacked our friend Watson Racing #1943 (THANK YOU RANDY!) pit tent and got to work. We had 3 days to get this transmission sorted out, we would start in the back of the pack, but we will be starting. With the help of our amazing crew, we had the transmission out in 2 hours! Quite a feat in Hells Bells! We drug it over to SEI Racing’s enclosed trailer to pull it apart, with the help of Nor-Cal Transmission directing us over the phone! We found some burnt clutches, but everything else seemed to be ok, we are looking good we thought.

After some phone calls, we found the parts locally to KOH, from a transmission shop called Maximum Off-Road Transmissions. Chris from Maximum had the parts in hand and would deliver them to the lake bed! Awesome! Chris arrived, and not being transmission builders ourselves, figured it was best for him to take a look at it before he went home and we put it back together, and boy are we glad we did. The actual issue was that we rolled the 36 Element Super Sprag. Chris said he had everything needed at his shop to fix it and said to be at his shop at 8AM Wednesday morning. Very thankful he took the time to check it out before he left, otherwise we would have put it back together and been right back to square one.

Chris and his crew had the transmission completely rebuilt in two hours, along with updating and upgrading some components in the transmission. We were back in business! HUGE THANK YOU to Chris and crew at Maximum Off-Road Transmission, you saved our race!

Back on the lake bed, Thorson’s crew got the transmission back in Hells Bells and driving in 4 hours! Turn around time of less than 30 hours from broken to back in business, spirits were up, and race day was on the brain! Thank you all for your hard work!

Race Day is here! We headed out to line up, we would be starting 101 out of 108 Cars. That’s alright, it is a long race. This year we were surprised with a Marine Corps Fly Over, VERY COOL! We left the line around 8:30AM. The first lap was a breeze, finding a good pace and putting miles in the books. Skipped Remote 1 the first time though, we waved at the crew and took off. We got into cougar buttes and found a upside down Texan! The Rufus crew are our friends, so we spun around and offered help. They had already strapped the car up and was in the process of recovering and waved us on. Sorry we weren’t there soon guys, we wanted to help! Hit Remote 1 coming back though for a splash of gas on on our way to main pit.

We arrived at main pit at 11:30AM and took 24 Gallons of race fuel and headed out on our second lap. Our second lap was SMOOTH. Hells Bells is at home in the rocks, for the most part their isn’t a line we can’t take with the 54″ Mickey Thompson TTC Claws. Breezing through traffic, and picking off the rock trails. Stopped at Pit 2 for a splash of fuel and headed back to main to finish off our second lap and start our 3rd and final lap of King of the Hammers 2020.

We left main around 3:30PM. We had a good pace, and kept it going. Hit a little snag between Main and Remote 1, Fuel leak and loose fuel pump. Our crew, with the help of SEI Racing, they had the pump secured and the fuel leak stopped, back to racing.

First rock trail on the 3rd lap, a new one, called “Hell to Pay”. Hell to Pay is a short but exciting trail, narrow in spots, waterfalls and big rocks. This is where Hells Bells would pay up, and unfortunately end our day. Snaking around a rock and dropping into a wash, we got bound up and broke a rear axle shaft, we got out of that and continued down the trail to end of Hell to Pay. We dropped into a pretty narrow section ( KOH, if your reading, pick wider trails please! Hahah!) and got stuck, trying to muscle it out we ended up breaking the other rear axle shaft and ripping a steering clevis off the steering ram! We were done, nowhere to go, no rocks big enough to winch from, and no cars heavy enough to winch us out. Not how we wanted the race to go.

26 miles, we were 26 miles from the checkered flag. Our race pace at that moment would have put us in a early 9 hour finishing time. Which by the looks would have been good for a solid Top 15, and knocking on a top 10!

That’s racing for you though, what can happen will happen. We learned a lot this year. We grew as a team, and overcame obstacles together. We had our BEST King of the Hammers to date, and cannot wait to get back in the seat for King of the Hammers 2021. You haven’t seen the last of Hells Bells and Crew!

Big thanks to our crew. You guys are the nuts and bolts to this racing program, and we literally couldn’t do it without you. Rolling into pits seeing you all in Route 666 gear put a smile on our face every time we came though. It is a great feeling knowing you guys and gals have everything under control while we do our best to get to you as fast as we can!

Partners, another big piece to the puzzle. We have been fortunate enough to partner up with some of the best in the industry throughout our years of racing, and we appreciate everything you do. We are proud to represent you, and hope for more checkers in the future!!

• RPM Engines And Machine – Engine Builder and Tuner of Hells Bells LS9
• Amsoil – The Blood of Hells Bells -We run Amsoil Radiator to Gear Fluid, and convinced this is why we have such minimal wear in our components
• Summit Machine – Burley 7075 Aluminum Links – We danced all 8,000 lbs of Hells Bells on these and they are straight as an arrow!
• Design-it Prototype – Thank you for making all our weird ideas reality!
• Nor-Cal Transmission – Best Transmission Builder in Nor-Cal Hands Down!
• Ouverson Engineering – Beef Cake Drivetrain components – For when you want to run 54″ tires in Ultra4 Racing
• Mickey Thompson Tires – Allowing us to drive into 3′ boulders at 30mph and not worry about a tire!
• Howe Performance Power Steering – Keeping the tires pointed in the right direction!
• TBM Brakes – Literally the only brakes to be running in this sport, if you can’t stop, get at em!
• Warn – Continued support since day one! We wouldn’t trust any other winch on the market!
• Rugged Radios & Crew – You guys are legit, always there to help us hear clear on race day!
• Off Road Design – Hells Bells Proof Magnum Box / NP205 Setup
• Cryo-Heat – Making strong parts stronger!!