How To Clean… An Off-Road Race Truck! ｜ 4K

How do you clean up an off-road race truck when it's just been through one of the most gruelling desert races in the world? We're about to find out. In this episode we're going to hammer this Ford Performance Raptor R around the Nevada desert and then book it in for a little spa treatment to try and make it look shiny and new. So it's bumps and jumps with one of Ford's best off-road drivers in history and then getting rid of mud with suds. Off-road race trucks face some of the harshest conditions in existence. Mud, ruts, water, gravel, dust, everything coming at them with extreme violence and at high speed. It means they get very, very dirty. The thing is I don't think I'm actually going to get this truck that filthy driving it around here at this speed. But do you know what? I know a man who can. And it's this guy. Lauren Healy has actually won the Baja 1000 in various classes five times. He's a multiple winner at King of the Hammers and guess what? In the Ultra 4 class he is the most successful driver on the planet. So he knows a thing or two about getting a car proper filthy. Lauren, you seem quite familiar with all this. Yeah, we had an awesome opportunity to help Ford design and develop these off-roading locations to help general consumers that have bought a Raptor or bought an off-road vehicle to come and learn how to use it. So I've got a ton of laps on this track. You know, we played here with Bandito. We play here all the time and get to test and tune trucks all for the general consumers to get a better vehicle. I mean, this is still quite dangerous, right? Absolutely. I've seen a lot of people wreck and roll on this track. So Lauren, where have you just been with this truck? So we just got done conquering Vegas Torino, which is exactly what you would think. We race all off-road from Las Vegas, Nevada, all the way to Reno. It's about 500 miles, but nothing on the road. We're in the desert the whole time and takes us close to 12 hours to complete the race. What kind of stuff have you been facing then? Is it all just rocks or is it dust or what? It's everything that the Nevada desert can try to kill you with. You know, it's 110 degree temperatures. It's the nastiest dirt, silt, rocks, ruts. And then the biggest problem is the dust. Three, four hundred trucks are racing through this and we're all trying to pass each other and there's not a lot of room to do that. All right, tell me a little about the truck, because this feels to me almost like a pre-runner, but it's even more stock than that, isn't it? It is. This is 100% Ford built this as a production Raptor R. It is a very stock truck, very off-road inspired though. The whole Raptor line between Bronco Raptor, Raptor Ranger and the Raptor R, all three of those trucks were just racing at Vegas Torino this weekend and completely dominated again. A standard Raptor R comes with a 5.2 litre supercharged V8 with 720 brake horsepower and 640 pounds feet of torque, a 10 speed auto and zero to 60 miles an hour in 3.2 seconds, as well as 37 inch tyres, Fox live valve shocks, 13 inches of ground clearance and off-road modes, including a specific Baja setting. So it's not that big of surprise that it doesn't need much extra to compete in the production based classes. In fact, most of the mods on Lauren's truck are simply safety, spares and communications. This is for a stock truck, essentially. This is incredible. Yeah, there's not many vehicles out there that are designed and developed with off-roading in mind. So yes, this is a street driven vehicle, but it's going to go perform really well and it's proved that by conquering the Baja 1000, all these cool off-road races where the Raptor line is born. Now that we've got the truck looking properly used, it's time to make it pretty again. But there's a distinct lack of water around here, so we need to figure something out. So from Raptor Valley, we drive to Ford's other off-road playground, the Bronco Off-Roadio, one of several official Ford test and demonstration facilities dotted around the USA. Give me a one tip for cleaning a race truck after a race that I wouldn't know. So the very important part is to don't add water until you can get as much of the dirt and dust off of stuff as you can, because you're going to create mud at that point and then mud bakes and dries and it makes the situation worse. The tricks that we like is leaf blowers and air to get the mud and stuff out of the truck before you turn it into mud. Get all the silt and get all that out of there and remove as much as you can, wheels, tires, that type of stuff, to be able to get into the tight areas that you've got to work on. OK. Right. Do you trust me? I do trust you. You've only just met me. That's stupid. Now in the spirit of reality, the Top Gear Clean is about real life. So we're going to clean this car in four hours, the kind of time a normal person might spend giving their motor a mini valet. And we're just going to use normal products and tools, so stuff you might reasonably have at home or be able to buy for a few bucks. Which looks like a challenge when it's a full-size race truck that has very much lived a lie. But luckily, I do have a bit of help to get this done in our allotted four hours. Jose and Dan, our no-nonsense speed clean muscle. So the first thing we've got to do is blow out the dust, and we're going to take Lauren's advice and use air. This is 140 psi, which should be enough. One of the first jobs, you need to get rid of all that race dirt stuffed into the interior. And a race truck has lots of extra bits and bobs that need a clean. All those nooks and crannies and every single one of them filled with the silt dust that has the texture of talcum powder. Okay, so guys, we've blown out most of the silt from the inside of there, but now we've got to do the rest of it. Would you start with the inside or the outside? Normally, we'll start with the inside. Obviously, if you're going four-wheeling out on any weekend with your buddies or something like that, you're going to get a lot of different kind of dust and mud and all those things. So what we'll do, we'll jump in, focus on a few key touch points with the mats, center cluster and things like that. We've already blown it out, so we'll go in with some brushes, get some really tight details, and we'll move to the outside. So is anything worrying you about this? Because I noticed on the backs, you know, the inside face of the wheel, it's just got rocks and mud and it's all baked on. So anything you're going to concentrate on? Yeah, the suspension. It's filthy, it's cake. You want to make sure all components are rock-free, mud-free. From there, what we're going to do is pop the wheels off to spend a lot of time really pulling some of that dirt out of those tires and focusing some of the backside of the tire, or at least the wheel structures as well. I think you better go on with it. Sounds like a good idea. Let's get to it. So what you're going to see here is actually the power of a foaming interior detailer, right? You're after and you're before. The nice thing about using a foaming interior detailer is that it's going to be going into the plastic and really trying to bring all of that dust and caked-on dirt to the surface before you can go in and wipe away. But again, obviously quite a bit of wear and tear in here, so might need another layer. Weird problems that you get when cleaning a race truck. Come here. See the mat? That bit's bolted in, and then if you look underneath, this is glued in, so you have to work around it. But it's a challenge we can overcome. So what counts is getting all that dust to stick to the cloths that you're using to wipe it off and keep going until things look a little bit less used. And the fiddly bits get soft brushes to make sure all the dirt gets lifted and disposed of. One thing you have to make sure is that you clean the important bit of an off-road race truck, the suspension and brakes. That way, you can find problems hiding under all the grime. So why is it important to clean our suspension properly? We want to make sure all the dirt of the debris and the grime comes off. The brakes, so it's safe to drive. We want to make sure the suspension and your struts, your shocks, all that's clean for your next drive. It's basically so that you don't get any of the kind of silt and stuff into the bearings and grinding paste. Right, correct. It does look like quite a big job. Yes. Let's get to it. So Dan, we can't actually fix the damage to the wheels. That is true. But we can clean them up, right? Yeah. So what we're going to do is use some foaming wheel cleaner to be able to get in, really kind of break down that really, really deep dirt that's kind of caked on. Yeah. Use a wheel brush, obviously go in, clean up that exterior for a nice finishing look as well. And there is one more problem. There is. It's the bits you can't see. So again, we're going to be using that same wheel cleaner to go in, power wash everything, get it really, really wet and saturated, let it sit for a minute or so, soak in, and then we'll go back, power wash it through, scrub it back down, and then we'll call the wheels done. You got anything else to do? Unfortunately, yeah. But, you know, all in the fun of detailing. Let's go. One of the best ways to lift baked-on dirt from a vehicle like this is the use of snow, or rather snow foam. It's a bubbling pre-wash that you spray on, then leave to sit as it lifts and separates the grime from the body. It's the least invasive way of soaking off that crud. Once you've got the biggest bits of the Nevada desert washed out and off the truck, then it's time for another rinse and the beginning of a little bit more finishing off, which still takes plenty of time. Perfection isn't possible, so it's about making it as good as it can be. The thing is, the more we wash the car, the more the dirt just kept falling out of it. It was an endless river of filth. Now, because this is a race trip, there are some bits, battle scars, that we can't polish out. But all that remains now is to take it out in the sunshine and see how it looks. So when you've had a hard week's racing, you really can go from a beaten-down race truck to a race truck with a glow-up, which means you'll be red carpet ready for your next event, or even just your next trip.