Well I finally did it. My first "serious" damage to my Raptor. I was going down a muddy hill during the my latest GNCC racing attempt. It had rained hard all night before the race, and continued to rain off and on throught the race. The track was really muddy. Not the thick, sticky kind of mud. Not the watery, swamp mud of Florida. This mud was more like Vaseline. Slick!

I was going down a big down-hill. There were two lines. You could go left around the big tree. You could go right around the big tree. My raptor had a mind of its own and headed STRAIGHT FOR THE BIG TREE. I locked up my brakes and tried to steer but at that point nothing could prevent the inevitable. I smacked the tree dead on with my bumper. After shaking the marbles out of my head I jumped off and checked the front end for damage. Luckily, the only thing wrong was a bent bumper, or so I thought.

First of all I have a Tag bumper. The bumper was jacked off to the right, and I thought that the lower mounting bolts were bent and that I was going to have a hard time getting them out. To my surprise they unscrewed straight out. They were as straight as the day I put them in. The lower bumper frame mounts were another story. They broke/bent inside the frame instead of the bumper or bolts bending.

Now for the questions -

1) Can they be fixed? How hard would it be for a welding shop to cut them out and weld some new mounting holes in place?

2) Could they do this without me tearing my whole quad apart?

3) Or should I just leave the bent (mangled) bumper on there and try to hit another tree someday on the opposite side to bend everything back?

At least we know the Tag bumper setup is strong. It will bend your frame before it bends the stainless mounting bolts that come with it.

RR1

 

Any ideas? Anyone?

RR1