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Traction Products, Inc.
Weismann Marine, LLC.
Oct 15, 2011
"You made this
possible. Not one failure all year..."
- Ricky Johnson
"Won two championships. Thank
you. We swept the weekend in both classes. You are the reason we made it."
- Steve Menzies
Ricky Johnson, in his rookie season in the TORC Pro 4 series, won 6 races, finished in the Top 3 11 times, won 3 Oakley Bomb Awards and took the Pro 4 Championship in style, winning both races during the weekend and setting the fastest lap to win the Oakley Bomb Award.
All season it was pretty much a two truck race between Johnny Greaves and Ricky Johnson.
Both racers use our innovative UnLockers up front and Ricky also uses our 4WD transfer case behind his automatic.
Going into the last race, both Ricky and Johnny were tied on points. The race field was inverted so Ricky and Johnny had to battle their way to the front. When they caught leader Scott Douglas, Johnny got into Scott then crashed into Ricky's side, did a full 360 in the air, and then came down hard, breaking the front ring gear and pinion and ending his championship fight.
Ricky then ran down Scott, passed him, and cruised to a dominant win.
Now that the season is over, we will tell you about our latest version of an earlier innovation.
Ricky has an unique version of our UnLocker, it is actually in the wheel hubs! See the shiny aluminum cap in the center of the wheel? Behind it is where the magic happens!
We came up with the idea a quite a few years back, and we had designed it for the rear wheels and for Karts. Like with Karts, the offroad rules say you have to run a spool (single axle), which we did. However the wheels, we were still able to differentiate in the turns with our secret device. Word got out and some racers started complaining and the International Karting Federation banned it within 15 days of it hitting the track. It's performance was phenomenal on the track.
20 years later we did another version for Rick Huseman. We only raced it once and no one knew it at the time and no one can tell you where or when we did it for sure. It finished the race and we decided not to race it again with real possibility of losing points if we got protested and DQ'd. Later racers were still complaining we were using it when we were not.
RJ and Mike Krahling
Our secret was out and the low down, dirty guy that leaked it decided he could do something similar in the front wheels for the Menzies Crew last year. After myriad failures, a disillusioned Steve Menzies approached us at the SEMA show and asked us if we could fix their front end problem - in a month.
With a chance to literally "put a wheel under" our former "friend" who had told us he was not in competition with us, it was "Game on"!
We worked closely with Mike Krahling, the designer and builder of the Menzies Pro 4 truck, and using his existing driveline out to the wheels, we custom designed and built our latest Wheel Unlocker.
End Result?
Throughout pre-season testing and this whole race season, we had ZERO front wheel driveline failures! - and we won the Championship!
Incredibly, after testing for a few days, Mike told Ricky to go out and really try to break it.
He went out and grinded the K rail for over 50 yards down the front straight!! We were all in disbelief at what he had done! But it survived and we all knew.
Then at the first race in Firebird (Lucas Oil Series), on the very first lap, and in the 2nd turn, Johnny Greaves crashed heavily into Ricky's front left wheel, putting Ricky out of the race with a broken shock mount. It survived again and went on to see a few more JG hits over the year!
Rick driving cleanly down the inside of Adrian
Cenni.
This was our 7th Pro 4 Championship and 5th in a row!!!
We also swept the Top 3 in the Championship and won all 13 races with our products - 6 going to Ricky, 3 to Johnny, and 3 to Adrian Cenni, and 1 for Scott Douglas!
We congratulate the Legend Ricky Johnson, Mike Krahling and Steve Menzies on their impressive first Pro-4 Championship title in their rookie season!!
