Cognito Motorsports' Justin Lambert Brings Two Custom Yamaha Rhino to SEMA
- 23 Nov 2010
Lambert comes from a background in high performance early on. His father builds racing engines, drag cars, and drag boats so he grew up going fast and being very competitive. He has been custom building since a teenager working in his father's shop building a dragster chassis, sheet metal panels, and machining parts on a mill and lathe. After college he started his own business building suspension systems mainly for GM trucks and SUV's. He bought the Yamaha Rhino in 2007 and built long travel suspension for it and used the car as a marketing tool for the next couple years. Of course he needed more power so the engine was definitely getting some modifications.
The problem is, the Rhino engine just would not live long enough while making that much more horsepower than the stock. Lambert decided to swap the engine in the Rhino. There were several options he looked at, but his Yamaha R1 engine choice was influenced by the SR1 UTV class which had pretty much launched in the 2009 racing season.
This R1 Yamaha Rhino has been custom built from the factory lower frame rails on up. The seats had to be wider in order to fit the R1 engine between them. Thus the floor had to be widened and a custom roll cage and chassis were fabricated. Reverse is important with a weight of 1400 lbs. Since the R1 motorcycle does not have reverse, Justin used a chain driven, forward and reverse, gear box. He also used full size racing seats and safety harnesses.
This R1 Rhino is fully functional, it has 14" of travel front and rear, a top speed of 100 MPH via the 6 speed transmission inside the R1 engine package, an 8 gallon fuel cell, and plenty of cooling capacity. It does not however have 4WD anymore, which does not pose a threat coming from the kind of tire speed with 130 rear wheel horsepower. The off-roading this car sees is desert riding and a lot of sand duning. Without 4 wheel drive it definitely isn't a rock crawler or mud bogger. Lambert is not really into the custom build scene, he just mainly build his own custom projects if time allows. "This build allowed me to show off my design and fabrication skills representing Cognito Motorsports," Lambert states. "The bad thing about my being involved in custom builds, is I can't normally make much money from them. But in my position, I was also building a marketing tool for Cognito Motorsports which can be worth a lot of money if I use it properly." Lambert built the R1 Rhino machine and Rodger from Ironworks built the intake setup including the custom flanges that capture the K&N air filter. "I have been using K&N filters on my motorcycles and quads for 20 years due to the availability, selection, quality, and performance," Lambert mentioned. "So when this custom project arose I already had K&N on my mind for the intake." His other projects normally involve building trucks with Cognito Motorsports suspension and steering components, although he is also building himself a Kawasaki Teryx setup for desert racing, and currently drawing up plans for another SR1 Rhino setup for short course racing. Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world. |
