It started life as a 2009 Arctic Cat Prowler XTZ1000 Baja. Since then, it has morphed into a full blown rock crawling, desert racing vehicle, as part of Dunlap Racing and TFC Motorsports.
I started by tearing it down to the main frame rails and suspension. I spent several months taking measurements and calculating the design. With the seats being lowered over 13 inches in the car, leg room became an overbearing item to look at. I couldn't just lower them and call it good, my knees would've ended up in my *** So I needed to lengthen the passenger compartment as much as possible to accomodate the lowering.
To achieve the lengthening, I had to redesign the suspension, moving the rear tires back almost 6 inches. But all A-arm mounting points had to remain stock in design, material and location. Also, I couldn't cut the main frame to lengthen. So instead, I came up with the idea of using J-arms in the back and angling the front A-arms forward by just over an inch. This gave me 7 inches more wheelbase. Added to that the excess room I could get by moving the firewalls closer to the front and rear tires, I was able to pick up 10 inches leg room. So now, even a 6ft+ driver can easily fit.
I designed the entire cage around the driver and passenger seats. By placing the seats in their general position, I was able to take measurements and come up with a cage that allows ample headroom, elbow room and legroom, yet provide for a compact enough design to fit on the OEM Prowler main frame. Johnny with UTV Inc, had his guys cut and bend the 4130 chromemoly tubing (1.75x.095 sizing) from my designs. A few of the bends were complex as they bent not only down, but in as well as having a rolled upper rail. But UTV Inc out of Gilbert, AZ did a great job.
The suspension is currently boxed construction, but I am in the process of rebuilding J and A-arms out of chromemoly tubing for repairability in the desert during races. The shocks are from King Off-Road Racing Shocks, they are 2.0 coilovers with oversized remote reserviors. They are 28 inches long with 10 inches of stroke, with yields 16.75 inches travel in the front and 17 inches travel in the rear. The car has 14 inches of ground clearance in normal trim, but can be raised to 17 inches if needed for rock crawling. Suspension in normal setup yields 55% compression/45% droop to keep the tires in contact thru the worst of terrain. Axles are made of 300M material by Summers Bros Racing.
Seats are Beard Super TZ's with Beard 3 inch, 5pt. harnesses to keep the driver and passenger in place. The roof, door and rear deck panels are .080 aluminum. Auxilary lighting is handled by OEM headlights, supplimented by Arctic Cat LED light bars, Vision X HID lights and a rear Vision X reverse/rear light. All electrics are switched thru a master kill switch for safety in event of roll-overs or accidents. INterior dash and console panels are aluminum, hand built.
The engine is a 951cc hemi motor produced by Arctic Cat. It is a V-twin design. Compression has been bumped to 11 to 1. It has both a single throttle body fuel injection setup and can be switched over to a twin throttle body EFI setup in minutes. A K&N Xtreme Air filter with a dust cover is stuffed inside a functional ram air setup, sending air to the throttle bodies. Exhaust duties are handled by hand built custom headers leading into a Muzzy X-pipe and dual Muzzy mufflers. Fuel pumping duties are handled by a Walbro inline pump and Trick Flow regulator, providing the 45psi needed for the fuel delivery. Cooling is handled by a CBR aluminum radiator/oil cooler setup with spal fan.
The car has fully street legal lighting with functional hi/lo beams, hazard/turn/tail/stop lights a backup light. The car also has full Best In The Desert legal identification lights provided by KC Hilites.
Up front, during races such as King Of The Hammers, is a Warn RT30 winch to provide recovery duties. Behind the winch mount is an Optima Yellow Top battery providing heavy duty electrical power.