Danger Ranger Race Prep The Cage is Done! Here's Why Everything Else Comes Next.

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:05]So, that dude made a bet that I'd back off, and it looks like, well, he lost.

[00:00:09]This time, we're doing some Danger Ranger race prep for Cletus McFarland's Danger Ranger 9000 race. We're tying the front end of the truck into the rest of the cage, and we're going to kill chassis flex, so that way we can tune the way the truck behaves under load.

[00:00:22]And we're going to fix that crunch body work you just saw. Why? Because I'm a beautiful butterfly. Welcome to Off Camber.

[00:00:31]Turns out the amount of flex I had in my chassis wasn't going to be doing me any favors. The push that I was getting from the changing camber and toe, it was feeding me under steer and I couldn't narrow my line. So that crash was pretty much inevitable. I was going there and he decided to narrow his. That's all there is to it. Wasn't any avoiding it.

[00:00:49]It doesn't matter what changes you make to correct this issue. If the chassis is flexing, you can't tune it. You're just feeding changes into an unpredictable, constantly moving target. and October's coming at us quick. This thing needs to be fixed. With the two previous failures in our rear view, I've decided to do everything I'm allowed to do to give this truck the best shot to win this race. And this time, I do aim to win this thing. But to get there, the truck needs some changes to the structure and the gearing. We're getting walked out of the corners by leader trucks. That means I can drive with them through the corner, but going into it and coming out of it, I'm just not keeping up. We need to get this truck to go faster in and then out of the corner. And that's where that cage regear and the stagger is going to come into play. So I just spent a few days down in the Florida heat with my friend and race team compadre Ken.

[00:01:36]And we sweat out every single ounce of water in our bodies to get this episode done. So you should watch it for the children.

[00:01:46]So before we get into the cage, we got to fix the crash damage here. I would have just left it alone, but we had to open the doors to get access to the windshield bar cuz we're going to be welding to it. And I also wanted to change the library on it. So clean panels are kind of a must for the red carpet debut for this beast. I'm not buying sheet metal though at new part prices. Not for damage that I can fix with a $100 pole at a junkyard. So Ken and I went hunting.

[00:02:17]>> It's got a dent in it.

[00:02:20]>> Oh, we can't have that. Oh, that one's bad, though.

[00:02:22]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:02:23]>> That one's >> I think this one got raised, too. That one's as bad as ours, man.

[00:02:30]All right.

[00:02:31]So, we looked at they have a lot of Rangers. So, we looked at 22. That's this one on a junkyard adventure.

[00:02:45]It's 2000.

[00:02:47]But we can get the doors open. The hinges look the same.

[00:02:54]I'm saying we found our found our car. All right. Damn. Mission success. What would you say, Ken? Thumbs up.

[00:03:05]>> Absolutely. Long as another love bug doesn't just fly into my eye.

[00:03:09]>> Yeah. And try to make love your eyeball.

[00:03:11]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:03:12]>> Love bugs. So, now that the accident damage is fixed, let me draw this cage out to you and show you what we're allowed to do. Yes. I'm a great artist.

[00:03:20]This is the chassis. So, here's the current cage. We have the main structure right here. This is the cab. These are the down bars to the bed. So, we're already tying in back here. We need to do a little bit of lateral support, but we'll talk about that. What we're allowed to do is we're allowed to run two bars from the cage to the frame rails and then tie in across the frame rails to build a core support. So, essentially, I'm allowed to run a bar from here down to the frame rail. So, the radiator, this drawing right here, has to stay in the factory location. And the tubing size is going to be the same size as the cages. So, we're going to use 1.75 with 125 inner wall. So, it's kind of like we're front halfing the car except for we're using the actual frame rails instead of lopping those off and creating our whole structure. With this in mind, I cut the whole front structure out. So, we cut all the inner fenders and everything off. So, we ran bars here from the windshield forward to the frame rail. And then we ran a 1.5 in lower tie bar from frame rail to frame rail. We're going to use this as the lower support structure for the core support. Then we used the upper piece from the stock core support and cut it out so that way we could have a place a way to locate the fenders. Then we ran two vertical bars with 1.5 in tubing down to those frame rails again to kind of create that whole core support structure. Then we'll use the headlight piece in front to tie the two fenders together and it'll create one solid structure in the front so that all the original sheet metal can be mounted. The whole reason we're using this factory core support section on top is it's going to help us to locate the hood and the fenders and kind of keep fabrication to a minimum because you know why fix what ain't broke or don't reinvent the wheel or something like that. I don't know. Somebody somewhere said that once and it was probably Abraham Lincoln cuz he was a pretty smart dude. So, the benefit to spending all this time doing this, because it doesn't save a lot of weight, is when you tie the front structure in, you're creating continuous load path from the front suspension pickups all the way back through the main cage back to the back of the bed. The front of this truck then stops being a collection of separate pieces and becomes one rigid unit, something that you can transfer weight through depending on how you set it up. So, when that chassis flexes under load, your spring rates actually become vague suggestions. Your alignment changes become guesses. The toe changes constantly. Every single input is filtered through a variable that you can't control or even consistently measure. So the technical term for this is called a show. You can't tune something that never moves the same way twice. And if we manage to remove a large amount of this unpredictable flex out of the chassis, we can use other tools to tune it like tire pressure or ride height at a certain corner to shift the weight around. Right now, our strategy is really just hopes and prayers.

[00:06:10]What you again? Hang on a second. Are you still watching and you haven't hit subscribe? Look, I'm doing coilovers.

[00:06:19]I'm doing bushings. I'm doing control arms.

[00:06:23]I'm doing all this for you and you haven't hit subscribe for me. Come on, man. Go down there. I think it's over in this corner right here. Hit subscribe.

[00:06:32]It's free.

[00:06:35]What's it going to hurt?

[00:06:38]All right, sorry to interrupt. Back to the video.

[00:06:43]Let's talk about suspension flex. If you picture a rectangle, just a nice two-dimensional rectangle just like we drew in third grade.

[00:06:51]If you tie three of these corners down and pretend they're semi-locked in place with some weight. If you push down or up on either one of these corners, this shape is going to deform. This is pretty basic explanation of chassis flex and what's happening to the truck. So, by adding these bars here and this bar here, we're tying all four corners together of our truck and we're spreading all the load throughout the cage structure. It gets way super mathy and it helps to show it like this because the math gets really complex really quickly. But this is actually where Ken comes in clutch. Ken happens to be a math nerd. I mean engineering student. And if we want to use the spring rates, alignment geometry, and contact patch of the tire to tune the way this thing is going to behave under load, we need to get rid of as much flex as we can. So because we're operating within a set of rules, we're not allowed to get crazy with the suspension. But we can make small changes to OEM components. So we can cut the springs to lower it. We can lower one corner more than the other to put weight on it. So it changes how it shifts the weight when it gets load thrown onto it through those lefthand corners. Watch this footage from the leader trucks to see how this truck moves through the corners. It's not cheating. It's proper setup of the stuff you have to work with. It's called being clever. So we have to use OEM style shocks, meaning that they have to bolt into OEM locations. So, we can use a softer shock on one side and a stiffer shock on the other, you know, to help us control the weight transfer to a certain extent. We can use shorter shocks to keep it from getting bouncy when we cut the springs.

[00:08:25]They made these rules pretty specific, but there's some playfulness in them.

[00:08:28]There is plenty of wiggle room to play in, and that's where this race is going to be won if you obviously remove the size of the driver's coonus.

[00:08:38]So, one of the changes we're going to make is we're going to move to a smaller and lighter wheel. And that's going to get rid of some unsprung weight and rotating mass. Not to mention, the wheel will actually lower the truck about 1.66 in. That lowers the center of gravity.

[00:08:51]So, we're adding mechanical grip to it.

[00:08:53]So, here's the math to prove it. Our current setup on the car runs a 17in wheel with a 26-in diameter. It's because it's got a 17x9 wheel with a 2554517 tire on it. And that works out to a 26 inch OD on the car. The 15s we're going to be moving to, we're gonna move to a 2454015.

[00:09:15]And that's going to lower it to a 22.7 in outer diameter. Now, if you take the 3.3 in difference and you divide it by two, you get 1.66.

[00:09:26]So, that is the effective height that it's going to lower the vehicle, which means it's going to lower the center of gravity. With that change in size, we're going to end up with 14.6% 6% change in RPM. We're also going to do a gear change. We're going to move from the 355s to the 373s. That's going to give us a 5.1% increase in RPM. So, you add the 14.6 from the tire diameter to the 5.5 from the gearing and we're going to get a 20% increase in RPM. That means that we're going to be way faster out of the corners. We're going to get more speed down the straightaway. We're also stand the chance of running out of gear faster. But 6,200 RPM should be just about the rev limiter as we hit the end of the track. And if you look at this footage that I've got now, you'll see that I'm getting up to about 5,000 RPM by the end of the track. With these changes, I'm going to end up at about 6,200 RPM by the end of the track. So, by choosing the tire with a shorter overall diameter, we're effectively changing the gear ratios just by picking tire sizes. All of those changes, what that actually equates to is it keeps me right smack dab in the middle of the power band. And if you think about it, we're also playing with spring rate and what's called stagger on each corner. By adjusting the tire pressures by softening it up in certain areas, we can better control how the car transfers weight and how it responds to imperfections in the track. Changing the stagger or the overall diameter of the tire makes it pull to the side with the smaller tire. So, if you make it want to turn left while it's going straight, you're messing with the stagger on the left side. This can help you get into the corner faster than a truck without it. Another good reason to start the tires off at a really low pressure is that we can keep them from getting too hard and overheating as the pressure increases in the tire. If the sidewall gets too stiff because of increased air pressure, the truck will pogo at that corner with the increased air pressure because you're going to be increasing the spring rate on that corner. So, you might be thinking to yourself right now, great, you drew a bunch of math and crap all over the board. I don't even know what you're doing, Jason. What we're doing here is we're getting loads more acceleration out of the corner with less unsprung weight to deal with. So, it's going to help the weight in handling, in stabilizing on entry. It might make it a little bit more squirly on exit, but that's going to be throttle control. The point of all this is that we're making a few setup decisions that are working to get the same result. By themselves, you don't get much, but as a system, you're going to gain a ton of tunability and some really big performance increases.

[00:11:55]Math. So, the gear changes next. That's the ring and pinions. We're going to move to those 373s. Then, we're pulling weight out from up top. Glass comes out.

[00:12:03]Lex hand goes in. Then, we're going to throw some gauges in there to watch the vitals while we're running. And that should get us ready. And by the way, if you want those 17s, tag me down in the comments. They're actually for sale. And the liver is changing. I'm keeping the off-c campber so palette, so work with that. But drop me some comments down below and let me know some color ideas.

[00:12:23]Want to talk more than just in the comments? We have a free Discord server.

[00:12:27]Go ahead and join up. Links on screen right here and all the way down there in the description, too. And don't forget, we actually now have some hats in the store. We also have t-shirts and stickers. All the money made from this stuff is going to go straight to the Ranger Project and helping us field the truck for racing later this year. And don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. I know everybody asks all the time, but it helps more than you can imagine when it comes to getting sponsors on board to help with these costs. Also, make sure to check out this video here. I think you'll like it. So, thanks for coming. I hope you enjoyed your time here and I'll see you next time on OffC.