Building King Kong!

Words: Lance Schwartz
Video: Brad Dedon, Joe Tolle
Photos: Brad Dedon, Nathan Delebar, Lance Schwartz, Tom Simpson, Tim Miller
Test Riders: Lance Schwartz, Dave Porzi, George Richards

The Birth of Kong
After competing for 12 Hours in 2005 with my TPC PowerCenter teammates aboard a well broken in Brute Force 750 4x4i, which we took to a runner-up position, my teammates and I vowed hell would freeze over before we put our bodies through this type of punishment again. Well, a year later, my addiction to quads has me building the baddest King Quad 700 on the planet. It is so bad, that it immediately inherited the moniker “King Kong”. The machine, which was built with the help of some of the greatest sponsors in the world, will embark on a 1500 mile journey from my home in Pennsylvania, where it will be put through more punishment in 12 hours than most typical utility ATVs would see in five lifetimes. My passion for the sport and the Maxxis 6 and 12 Hours of ATV America events os so deep that the blood, sweat, and tears my team shed holding onto that uncooperative 750i a year ago is nearly out of my memory. So here begins the build and the subsequent journey of ATV Scene’s project King Kong!

Mechanics/Crew
I would be remiss to talk about building and racing a machine in an event like this without first recognizing the guys that selflessly enable us to compete in these types of endurance races. Skip Porzi, Tom Simpson, Denny Schwartz and Danny and Dave Broadt, the owners of TPC PowerCenter in Bloomsburg, PA are the real heroes behind this whole project. They’ve spent countless hours wrenching on the bike or as the fearless wheelman in the driver’s seat carting us to and from these events. They are the guys that force us to stay hydrated and feed us meals and snacks to keep our energy levels high. So for this, I thank them for their contribution to this article. Without them, Kong Kong, the 12 Hours of America victory and this article would never have happened.

The Team
My two teammates and I, the pilots of King Kong, could not be physically more different. If I had to describe our appearance, George Richards resembles Woody Allen, Dave Porzi is a spitting image of Ron Jeremy, and I have the build and sometimes hair, of Cosmo Kramer. The best advice I could give is when putting together a team, you should try to recruit team members that are similar in stature. For us, this team thing was an accident.

We thought we’d try one race together just to see how it worked out. Six races later, we’re still together, and I wouldn’t want to race with anyone else. With that said, building a quad that fits all of us comfortably is really difficult. There are definitely sacrifices that need to be made. Since I’m the tallest and in the middle as far as weight goes, we generally set the machine up for me. George has to deal with suspension that is a little too hard for him. Porzi, on the other hand, needs to contend with suspension that bottoms out over more things than he’d like. It’s “bass ackwards”, but that’s the way we choose to do business. After all, we’re all about challenges.

The Build
The 2006 Suzuki King Quad 700 turns out to be a really good starting point to build a capable utility class race machine. Our stock black King Quad became the canvas for creating what would ultimately become known as King Kong. For this project, I chose manufacturers with a reputation for building reliable high quality aftermarket parts geared towards our needs. These manufacturers are responsible for supporting, and in many instances inventing parts for the quickly expanding market of utility quad enthusiasts trying to get the most out of their “tractors”. Participating sponsors in project King Kong include Suzuki, TPC PowerCenter, Elka Suspension, Maxxis Tires, OMF Wheels, Dalton Clutches, LRD Exhausts, Dynojet, NiteRider Lights, Spider Grips, Moose Racing, World Class Racing Products and JRZ Fabricating.

We purposely left many things stock, like the engine. My team has always believed in the “less is more” approach. So, if we felt it didn’t need to be changed, we left it alone. One of the most important changes we made to King Kong came from a company called World Class Racing Products. It is no secret that a stock Suzuki King Quad has a major “steer-in” issue. The bars will go from straight to a full lock left or right turn in milliseconds. Myself, Donny Banks, and ATV Scene founder John Pellan have been on the losing end of being tossed over the bars by an angry stock King Quad with turn-in issues. World Class Racing Products produces a replacement set of A-arms that will completely eliminate the “turn-in” issue. After 18 hours of hard core racing on our silver vein powder coated set, we never had the “turn-in” symptom reappear once! This is an incredibly important safety upgrade for all King Quad owners. The increased safety does come at a very small price though, in the form of a slight increase in steering effort. One of the nice things about the stock King Quad was how easy the machine steered. But, the steering is not precise or predictable. The steering geometry that produces that easy feel is also the main culprit responsible for allowing the steering to go postal with no warning. With the addition of the WCRP A-arms, the steering effort is increased a bit. But, these works-of-art transform the steering on the King Quad into a precise and mannerly beast that is much easier to ride aggressively without the worry of wadding it up unexpectedly. The arms worked so well that we actually don’t use a steering stabilizer to help mask the steering geometry issues anymore. If you plan on keeping your King Quad for the long haul, do yourself a favor and invest in a set of WCRP A-arms. You won’t regret it!

The 6 Hours of New Hampshire Experience
Midway through our build, we decided it would be a good idea to take our partially completed Kong northward for the 6 Hours of New Hampshire event in order to shake it down a little bit. We showed up with a nice looking machine running Elka Suspension, Maxxis Bighorns mounted on OMF Beadlocks, World Class Racing Products A-arms, Spider Grips, Bub Exhaust, and Moose Racing skid plates and handlebars. At the start, I got a killer holeshot and within two minutes of the start, I almost ended our day by wadding up the King Quad. The Elka’s, which I only had time to ride around in my yard a few times before we left, were way out of adjustment. A small kicker stood the rear of King Kong straight in the air and I had visions flash before me of the mighty Kong drilling me into the New Hampshire rocky soil. I nursed it back to the pits to make adjustments to the shocks after only completing one lap. It’s not ideal, but I knew if we didn’t pit right away, we chanced the possibility of someone getting really hurt. So, for the next fifteen or so laps, we made suspension adjustments with each pit stop and rider change. By the end of the day, the suspension performed much better. We didn’t have it exactly dialed in, but it was good enough to ride hard and most importantly, remain safe. However, there would be more serious drama to ensue at this awesome track in the mountains of the northeastern United States which is home to “The Falcon”.

With about an hour and fifteen minutes left in the race, we had a healthy lead over 2nd place, who were also coincidently running a King Quad. I started to question myself whether the Bub exhaust sounded like it was starting to get louder. I convinced myself at least five different times that it was my dehydration and exhaustion that was responsible for telling the voices in my head something was wrong. But, deep down, I was sure it wasn’t those wretched voices. Then, something strange happened. Suddenly, the seat began to feel spongy to me. My immediate thought was, “Oh great, now I broke the plastic seat pan”. After all, it was rough and the three of us surely put that seat through some torture. The voices returned and I began a conversation with them about how much it sucked riding with a broken seat and an exhaust that might possibly be getting progressively louder. I thought to myself, “could this possibly get worse?”

It was just about at that point that I began to feel a burning sensation in the seat of my pants. It’s a strange feeling indeed. It becomes even stranger, and downright scary, when the dehydrated brain finally calculates everything that is happening. I couldn’t believe it……King Kong was on fire!!!!!!!

Fortunately, I realized I had only a few hundred yards before I reached the pits, so it was hammer down! I pitched King Kong into a 50 foot long sideways drift, reminiscent of The Fast and the Furious, with the tires howling on an asphalt section as they objected to stopping this 700 pound flaming projectile. As I pulled into the pits, I jumped off the quad and started screaming to my crew and team,“we’re on fire!” That was the first time I’ve ever seen those guys panic. We all grabbed anything liquid within reach to douse the fire. Our experiment concluded that water, Mountain Dew, and Gatorade all work very well in snuffing a smoldering seat fire.

So, how does one catch a King Quad with less than 100 miles on it, and ultimately one’s ass on fire? It turns out the screws on the Bub that mate the header section to the silencer came apart after only four and a half hours of use. When the parts separated, the exhaust got redirected upward, melted through the right rear fender, then the seat pan caught the seat foam on fire, then proceeded to sting my derrière. Our crew scrambled to remove the scorching hot Bub and bolted the stock exhaust back on. After sticking the stock exhaust on the machine, we really never noticed a deficit in power. This was likely due to the fact that we unfairly bolted the Bub on without pairing it with a fuel management system like the Dynojet unit. What we did notice throughout the day was the King Quad felt like it was progressively having more problems building rpm’s. I’ve had enough experience with CVT transmissions that I was almost positive we had a clutching issue that we would have to tackle once we landed back in Pennsylvania. Even though we experienced more drama in New Hampshire than I’d like to relive, we overcame an 8 minute deficit with one hour remaining and were able to pull off a win with a flaming King Quad that wasn’t even broken in yet. Plus, we learned some valuable lessons that we would use to incorporate into our 12 Hour bike preparation.

Preparing to do Battle

We had several issues that needed to be solved before we could make the trip to Texas for the fifth annual Maxxis 12 Hours of ATV America. At the top of the list were fixing the fire damage, figuring out the clutching issues, rethinking the exhaust, and dialing in the suspension. It turns out that when the Bub broke, it didn’t just alter the appearance of the plastic. The plastic shrouding around the gas tank was severely heat damaged to the point that it needed replaced. As you can imagine, our fire could have easily gotten much, much worse, as in explosion. The installation of the Bub exhaust requires the removal of the stock heat shield. In hindsight, for the abuse that we put this machine through, we should have known better than to do this. So, the fix for this issue was to find another exhaust that made power and retained the stock heat shield. This solution was provided by LRD.

It turns out that my hunch about clutching issues was fairly accurate. Under the severe race conditions encountered in New Hampshire, the stock clutch was allowing the belt to slip. In doing so, the ensuing heat damage required the belt be replaced after only 100 miles. At this point, we also started looking into a clutching fix to eliminate this problem from happening again. I have owned a Polaris Scrambler in the past that had a clutch kit installed. It definitely increased performance. But, the rideability really suffered because of the higher engagement RPM in the clutch kit. It was because of these experiences that I was very hesitant to change the clutch. It wasn’t until I started chatting with the guys at Nyroc’s invaluable website that I felt comfortable bolting a clutch kit in King Kong. The gentlemen recommended a Dalton clutch. After contacting Dalton myself, they too reassured us that we would gain performance without any of the negative effects I experienced with my Scrambler. After installing the Dalton clutch kit, I can honestly say it was the biggest bang for the buck improvement we made on this machine. The clutch kit is relatively inexpensive, it increases low and midrange power, and it retains all the driveability of the stock setup. It’s a win-win-win situation as I see it and I’ll never run a King Quad without a Dalton kit in it again.

The exhaust situation and fire scared me. The last thing I was looking to do was catch a $15,000 race-ready King Quad on fire….. again. I chose LRD as the pipe manufacturer for the 12 Hours event for two reasons. First, I’ve seen the quality of their product first hand on many 250R and 450R race machines. Secondly, this pipe allowed us to retain the stock heat shield. When bolting on the new LRD, our man Skip Porzi wrapped the section of pipe just before the silencer with some fiberglass header wrap to cut down on heat loss and the possibility of melting another new set of rear plastics. From the time we re-fired King Kong with the LRD, we fell in love with the pipe. The LRD, in combination with the Dynojet programmable fuel module, made this the fastest King Quad I’ve thrown a leg over.

The final issue was to fine tune the Elka suspension, which we managed to get fairly close in New Hampshire. Before we get too far into this, I want to give a word of caution to those planning on investing in a quality set of aftermarket shocks. Plainly put, fine tuning an aftermarket suspension is one of the most difficult tasks you’ll encounter in the ATV aftermarket. Putting on a set of aftermarket shocks with reservoirs requires a lot more thought and expertise than bolting on an exhaust system. Instead, there are many things to adjust, which can successfully or adversely affect the handling. On our Elka sponsored machine, we opted for the middle of the road Elka Sports and Racing series shock absorbers. In addition to dual rate springs and preload adjustment, our shocks also had remote reservoirs with adjustable compression and rebound settings. It is absolutely impossible for Elka to have your suspension settings exactly correct when they arrive at your door. But, because of the large range of adjustment on the Elka units, there is plenty of room to make the shocks comfortable for your riding style. During our fine-tuning, we’d keep our adjustments increments to one or two clicks at a time. We dialed in compression and rebound settings until we finally got the machine where we wanted it. When all was said and done, we could hit kickers at 60mph with the hammer down with no fear of crashing. These Elka’s never heated up and they allowed us to launch the 700 pound King Kong off whatever we wanted for 12 straight hours. The external reservoirs kept the shocks very cool and we never really felt them fade all day. Elkas are expensive, but they are worth every penny in a dog eat dog race like the 12 Hours of America.

 

Next Stop – Greenville, Texas
After countless hours of preparation, 30 hours of driving, and help from some of the greatest sponsors in the world, the Team TPC Powercenter/Suzuki King Kong was about to do battle with some of the biggest and most talented utility teams in the country. Our plan was simple. We would not allow anybody but ourselves to control the type of race we wanted to run. We felt better equipped at this race than in New Hampshire and had some extra time to shake down some of our existing parts and get them more fine-tuned before heading to Texas. Secondly, we made some additional adjustments and added a few essential parts based upon the experiences and problems encountered in New Hampshire. When we reached Texas, we were greeted by an extremely fast looking course. After walking the entire six mile track, it was clear that our King Quad would have the throttle pinned for the majority of the 12 Hours. Being a native of Pennsylvania, racetracks that are flat, wide open, and void of rocks are something I’m not used to. This Texas track would be the fastest course any of us have ever run.

More Muscle for Kong
New parts that made it onto King Kong between New Hampshire and Texas included an LRD exhaust, DynoJet Powercommander, and a Dalton clutch kit. When you change the exhaust on an Fuel Injected quad, you have to add a fuel management device. We chose Dynojet’s Power Commander because of its ability to be programmed and adjusted from a laptop. That feature is just too cool! While the carbureted teams setup their jetting in a nearby field, we simply hooked up my Apple MacBook Pro laptop running Windows XP and reloaded a fuel curve specifically for the LRD exhaust. We almost felt like an Indy car team with all the high tech gizmos hooked to King Kong. Even with our added power, we came to find out that when running against Team Can-Am’s monster modded Outlander 800 and FD Racing’s Fundy powered Kawasaki Prairie, we were still very much under power. I watched both of these machines repeatedly out-motor YFZ and TRX 450’s in the jetting area and we struggled to hang with them on the straightaways. Big motors like this would be handy on a course like this one. But, big motors also tend to be harder on your equipment. So, we opted to make very calculated changes to give us a little more performance without sacrificing any reliability that the stock machine possesses.

Quite honestly, I was really surprised that we were able to run with the big motored Outlander and Prairie. In the straights, we had nothing for them. But, when in the woods, the combination of Elka suspension, low profile Maxxis All-traks, and the World Class Racing Products front end made this King Quad handle like it was on rails. Without a doubt, King Kong was the best handling machine in the utility class. We were a bit underpowered compared to the quads that sounded like Harley’s. But, that extra power would eventually cause Team Can Am and Team Arctic Cat, (with a modded Suzuki King Quad engine), to grenade their transmissions. Besides, running 70+ miles per hour on a 700 pound quad was plenty fast enough for my taste!

Bumpers, Bullets and Bling

One of the coolest things about this build is the fact that we got to meet new people with the same passion about ATVing as my cronies and I. I received an email from a Nyroc member named Jeremy Seif of JRZ Fabricating. It turns out that Jeremy fabricates some pretty killer bling for the Suzuki King Quad. Two days after our initial conversation, Jer made the trip from New Jersey to my house with a custom hand built aluminum bumper that is absolutely bomb proof. He asked us if we would use his bumper for the 12 Hour event to help get it out there for the masses to see. Within two seconds of seeing it, I started salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. How could we not use it? It looked absolutely sick, plus it would help protect the very valuable NiteRider lights in the event of a crash. In Texas, I used that bumper to knock down a nice sized tree that just happened to get in my way on a tight section of the course. Without that bumper, we surely would have torn up the front plastic bumper.

If that wasn’t enough, Jer also showed us some sweet bullet lights he built. Somehow, he fits an LED, in any color you want, inside the spent shell casing of a rifle bullet. In the spirit of the Halloween season, we ordered up a set of orange ones to mount on King Kong’s rack. As you can see in the pictures, they were a really cool and inexpensive addition that got a lot of looks from passers by.

The final part that Jer makes is the baddest taillight you’ve ever seen. Our unit, which we ran out of time to mount up before he 12 Hours of America, has about 60 different LED’s mounted in its all aluminum casing. There is group of lights on the outside for the taillight, one group of lights on the inside for the brake light and one group for a reverse light. Much to my dismay, it appears that Suzuki wired the King Quads for a reverse light from the factory. All it takes is a few taps into the factory wiring harness by the rear rack to get her shining. For more on this nifty LED unit check out this month’s Scene Gear feature. It’s item number 11 on the “12 Days of Christmas”.

Lights

My favorite part of the 12 Hours of ATV America is the fact that we are able to race at night. When exceeding 70mph in the dark, the stock lights just don’t make the cut. So, as with the theme of this whole build, we wired up some extreme lighting courtesy of NiteRider. In addition to the three factory lights, we had two NiteRider 40 watt HellCat halogens, two NiteRider 80 watt Hellfire HID’s and a helmet mounted NiterRider Cannibal HID light that adjusts between 40watt, 38watt, and 35watt output. For those counting, that is a total of 8 lights. For redundancy, each set was wired on a different circuit. If one set failed or was destroyed in a crash, it didn’t eliminate the others from functioning. Clearly, the killer appearance of King Kong couldn’t be missed during the day. At night, it was much more of the same. Innumerable amounts of people commented and joked about our lighting setup. The King Quad looked like a trophy truck rolling full tilt in the desert. In my opinion, there is no better lighting solution than the one NiteRider has invented. In my opinion, their small size and lightweight makes them the best offroad lighting solution on the market.

King Kong is Victorious but Fatally Wounded
At about the ten and a half hour mark, we had another exhaust failure. The LRD broke where the header ties into the silencer, much in the same way the Bub exhaust failed. This time, however, the fact that LRD retained the stock heat shield saved us from another expensive fire. Within minutes, our crew had us back out on the stock exhaust. For anyone that questions the amount of power the LRD makes, I can tell you it is astounding.

After running King Kong for ten plus hours with the LRD, the last hour and a half with the stock pipe was absolutely painful. It seemed like the King Quad didn’t have enough power to get out of it’s own way. Even with the failure, I’d bolt another LRD onto the machine without reservation. LRD took our news of the pipe failure in stride and is checking into a possible solution so it doesn’t happen again. However, a discovery you’ll read below may actually be the cause for the LRD failing in the first place.

By the last hour of the race, the King Quad had started making some very strange popping and banging sounds in the front end. It became very hard to steer and the machine punished whoever was riding it. Fortunately for us, at that very moment FD Racing, the leaders, ran into some bad luck of their own. After 12 hours, with a little bit of luck, we took the lead position and were able to limp King Kong in for the win. Our initial observation found the right front A-arm tab on the frame to be stretched out from all the abuse. But, it seemed like there were more problems than we first thought.

What better way to thank the sponsors that made this project possible than to put King Kong on the podium and walk away with the 2006 Maxxis 12 Hours of ATV America championship in the Utility Expert class. However, this story doesn’t quite end with the excitement of the champagne shower and burnouts on the podium. It turns out there would be very serious problems that would be discovered after Kong was torn down when it returned home.

After getting the machine home and the plastic body was stripped off, we saw it. I actually could not believe what I saw in front of my eyes. On the top of the frame, just under the airbox, both sides of the frame were completely broken in half. Also, just below the seat, there were two more complete breaks. The complete top section of the frame, just above the engine, was completely destroyed. I could literally move the engine back and forth 3-4 inches by grabbing a hold of it because as the frame broke and bent, the engine no longer sat in the top engine mount. After this discovery, I suspect the broken frame had much to do with the failure of the LRD exhaust. There is no way that the LRD pipe should have stayed together with the amount of flex the frame was now capable of dishing out. Had we not bolted on the aluminum Moose skidplate, there is a very good chance that we would have broken King Kong completely in half. Instead of celebrating on the podium, we very well could have been bummed out at our pits.

Rust in Pieces

Kong was certainly a good championship steed. This version of the mighty King Kong will be retired with an undefeated rookie season record that would even make Ben Rothlisberger envious. With the help of some surgery from Dr. Porzi, Dr. Schwartz, and Dr. Richards, Kong will live to race another day. But this will not happen without some serious wrenching first. At only 350 miles on the clock, Kong will require a complete frame transplant because the original frame has been far too damaged to reuse. After surgery, King Kong will again be ready to do battle.

The Suzuki King Quad is an excellent platform to start with. It is important to mention that the products we used to build this machine are all bolt-ons that are readily available and easily removable if you should ever choose to turn your pumped up King back into a stocker. I guess the only thing to do at this point is put the remnants of the original frame out in a field somewhere, where many years down the road, others can pay homage to the beast that was ATV Scene’s project King Kong! Rust in pieces my friend!

Team TPC PowerCenter Results
2006 12 Hours of ATV America —-1st place—- Utility Expert 6 Hours of Pennsylvania——-1st place—–Utility Expert
2005 12 Hours of ATV America — 2nd place — Utility Expert 6 Hours of Pennsylvania——-2nd place—- Utility Expert
2004 6 Hours of Pennsylvania——-1st place—–Utility Expert

PROJECT KING KONG CONTACTS
Elka Suspension
Maxxis Tires
NiteRider
OMF Wheels
World Class Racing Products
Moose Racing
Spider Grips
LRD Performance
JRZ Fabricating
Dalton
Dyna Performance
Bub Exhaust
Nyroc
TPC PowerCenter

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