Project Sandtrax Set

Night rides are always a thrill. We wanted a lighting system able to turn ‘night into day’. We contacted Rick from Ricky Stator, who suggested adding a set of HID (High Intensity Discharge) lights. The HID’s feature converted 6″ PIAA lights with Phillips HID 35-watt bulbs all mounted in a steel rack. The bulbs are filled with Xenon gas and have a Phillips “starter” for each light. The starters provide a 25,000 Volt charge to initially light the bulb, then drops down to 100 Volts during operation. Draw is 35 Watts x2 or only 70 Watts! The stator has been converted to a rectifier/regulator configuration to provide power and to charge the battery, which is mounted in the stock toolbox location. Having a battery provides a constant light that does not dim as the RPM of the motor decreases. It can also be handy to have lights if the motor is off. A picture of the lights on does not do them justice. They give off a very white light and are amazingly bright! So bright that if you look at them and then look away, you will see spots! HID’s are the brightest lights you can put on a quad and the cost is nothing short of amazing, about 0.00 for 2 bulbs and 2 starters! Well worth it!

For tail lights we used a set of Rad Lites billet mounted LED’s. They are very small but bright! The billet mount makes them very easy to mount almost anywhere. We even mounted a couple in the engine compartment.

The motor, a CT Racing 350PV (covered in part 3), has held up great with zero problems. Feeding this motor is a Delta Force reed cage and a 39mm PWK carburetor (with a CR250R intake boot) attached to a high quality Motion Pro cable and twist throttle. To get maximum airflow to this hungry motor we removed the stock air box and used the ESR air box eliminator kit with a K&N like filter wrapped in an outerwear. For a clutch we used a Barnett with a Hinson basket along with the Billetanium Hydraulic clutching system. Something we learned from Barnett was that the springs for the TRX are stiffer than the springs from a CR500. The Barnett TRX springs are rated at 72 lbs. at one inch compressed while the CR500 springs are rated at 57 lbs. We always assumed that the CR500 springs were stiffer. This is mainly due to the fact that the CR500 has 6 springs while the TRX has 5.

The exhaust side gets an ESR TRX5 pipe and silencer, which pulls and revs hard anywhere in the powerband. To keep track of the engine temperature we added an ESR in-line water temperature gauge. Since our motor is set up for high compression (220 psi) we need to run high-octane race fuel. We chose the high quality, VP C-12 108-octane fuel. We run it straight mixed with Maxima Super-M 2-stroke oil.

RIS Designs sent some of their fully polished aluminum dress-up items. Such as brake reservoir covers, gas cap, foot pegs, radiator shrouds with an all-new aluminum radiator cover, and an all new right side case cover. The RIS Designs polished aluminum products certainly added the finishing touches to Project SandTrax!      We did however find a few problems with the foot pegs and the radiator cover. The foot pegs are made of aluminum and the teeth do not stay sharp for very long. We found that our boots liked to slip off the pegs in high-speed turns. Our solution to this was to go back to the stock pegs with a set of DeRisi Racing peg extenders. These are either bolt or weld on extenders with ‘meaty’ teeth to keep your boot firmly planted on the pegs! The stock foot pegs with these extenders weigh about 4 times more than the RIS Designs aluminum pegs. Using the radiator cover we noticed that the motor ran about 10 degrees hotter. Upon further investigation we noticed that it covered too much of the radiator and does not let enough airflow onto the radiator.      The gas cap, reservoir covers, radiator shrouds, and right side case cover fit perfect and are top notch!