The Mint 400 Aftermath – ProjectBaja.com

Well, the Mint 400 didn’t go as planned, we hoped for a finish, we ended up breaking the car in half. I suppose that is how it goes in Class 11. The issues we had were not because of lack of trying, the car was thoroughly prepped and yet a weak spot in the metal just let go breaking the back half of our frame horns off. So now we are left to the task of replacing those and getting the car back drive-able again. We have a tough time with fenders… specifically the drivers side rear fenders…

We dropped the engine/trans and inspected everything that we could inspect to make sure there wasn’t any obvious damage and fortunately it all looks like it is in good shape. Our engine and trans builder, Painters Grinding, will be going through these more thoroughly in the near future as well.

Once done we chopped off the frame horns. Yeah, its a bit painful to just chop them off, so we made a template in order to copy cuts from the car to our donor frame horns. Just a simple piece of bent steel that served the purpose. The old frame horns and the new frame horns were cut to fit one another with a step between the top and the bottom half. This step makes it easy to clamp and adjust while we are welding.

Josh’s Mom came down to try her hands at fitting frame horns too!

With everything cut and mostly fit we are moving on to the final fitment and welding. Keep checking back for updates!