Well, we’re still working on making improvements. The Texas race revealed a number of areas where the design of the truck could be improved. One of the most grossly obvious was in the fuel intake. Having replaced the stock fuel tank with a fuel cell moved the location of the fuel supply higher in the vehicle but left the intake in the same spot (the stock fuel door). This caused a major leveling out of the line that takes the gas from the fuel door to the new cell location. The change was significant enough that if the truck was on even just slightly unlevel ground (tipping towards the driver’s side) or even level ground, that the fuel would not flow to the cell and would back up towards the filler neck, washing out and making it appear that the cell was full when in reality it might very well be empty…A major issue as it left us with an empty tank yet no way to get fuel into the cell at one point.
Solving this was relatively simple—we have removed the idea of using the stock filler location and moved it up to a secure spot off of the cage itself. This creates a significant angle down to the cell which will eliminate the prior issue. Problem now? Short people. They may need a stepstool to refuel the truck….but as Randy Newman says “Short people ain’t got no reason to live” right? ;)
