Living in Southern California you don’t get much mud if any. Last week I got a phone call from a buddy of mine who claims to have six fully built mud machines and a freshly dug mud pit at his house. That got my motor started and I quickly revved up my Brute Force and asked her if she was ready to go mudding. Like any man I live for competition and won’t go down with out a fight. So with that said it is time to build my Brute Force.

I already have a Bayou Snorkel kit on the machine and a Highlifter two inch lift. I have been running her on a set of fairly aggressive wheels and tires from ITP but might upgrade seeing that my competition isn’t playing around.

I ordered more then a handful of products and didn’t want to sit around doing nothing while I waited for the product to arrive so I started cutting the plastics to allow the water to easily pass the front fenders and floor boards. I wouldn’t recommend doing this to every four wheeler, cutting away the plastics like this will get you extremely wet and muddy. Just remember this machine is being built as my race bike for the mud bogs if I wanted to take her out for a ride I would probably put a spare set of uncut plastics on her.

[Step One] I started removing any hardware necessary to remove the plastics. While doing so I noticed my air filter was desperately begging to be cleaned so I removed her as well.

[Step Two] I then removed all the plastics that needed to be cut except for the front fenders which only needed to be trimmed and was not worth the hassle. While I had all the plastics removed I rolled the machine outside and cleaned off any mud or dirt that was lingering around.

[Step Three] I then used tape as a marker for my cut lines.

[Step Four] I then took my trusty jigsaw and cut the plastics. If you are not skilled with a jigsaw find someone who is, I took four years of wood shop and also worked at car audio shops for several years so I have done my share of cutting door panels, dashes and whatnot with a jigsaw.

[Step Five] I then checked to see if everything lined up and trimmed any excess, some tools that came in handy where my razorblade, sandpaper and a file.

[Step Six] On the heel side of the floorboards I opted to drill large holes out to allow the water to pass rather then butchering the plastics any more then they needed to be.

[Step Seven] I then repeated the above steps on the other side of the quad.

The below photo shows the cut side panel, front fender and floor board set in place while I checked everything.

Here is the finished product waiting for the next parts to be installed. Check my blog this week regularly as I will be posting play by play photos of this build.