1107 in repose in dry, flammable grass.
Crusty, Bob, Richard, Creech and, to a greatly lesser extent I, prepped 1107 for its trip to Ridgecrest, California for the KC Hilites Midnight Special.
Shocks – installed. Quick release steering wheel – installed. Radio – moved. Hood – installed. Headlights – ok, we’re not a NASCAR team. We’ll dial them in on Friday.
1107 is in the toy hauler. Tomorrow we load tools and everything else. Friday, at various ungodly hours, we head east.
Everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off on Sunday.
We’ve got less than a week to go before the KC Hilites Midnight Special in Ridgecrest, California. The team met on Sunday and reinstalled the front skid plate, attached the fenders and moved the race radio so it’s now above the GPS unit on the co-driver’s side, nearly touching the roof.
This gives the tall people quite a bit more leg room. Also, we don’t spend a lot of time futzing with the radio during the race, so moving it out of the way is fine. And this frees up room for an iPod dock.
The folks at Bilstein finished the upgrades to the shocks this morning and we expect them here tomorrow.
Ok, technically none of us are Canadian and, technically, we’re only two-wheel drive, but Trevor and his team were kind enough to name us August Rig of the Month on Gear Centre Group’s 4×4 Club website.
We will, however, be heading up to Montreal in October to put the car on display for the World Diabetes Congress where I’ve set a personal goal of eating my weight in poutine.
We’ll be working on Creech’s toy hauler this weekend. Bilstein is wrapping up work on our prototype “Ensenada” race package shocks, which will arrive Tuesday. And somewhere out on the East Coast, an R&D lab is putting the finishing touches on our secret weapon for the Baja 1000.
The KC Hilites Midnight Special race is coming up August 8.
First draft of the new Desert Dingo Racing hero card.
Roxanne put together a first draft of the hero card we’ll likely use this year. The front has a picture of the car and the back has info on the team and the warning signs of diabetes. We print them in English and Spanish and this year we’ll be doing a run of them in French that we’ll distribute at the World Diabetes Congress in Montreal in October.
Update: A.J. has a slightly different take on the hero card.
Francis rolls out of AWACs.
A.J. picked up Francis earlier today. Francis, as you recall, is a Vietnam era M-274 mechanical mule. Four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, it can go just about anywhere, just not very quickly. A.J.’s plan is to strip it down and restore it to its original military look in time for the Baja 1000. It will sit inside his 28-foot U-Haul (nickname AWACs) which will be our rolling command post for all the super secret stuff we’ll be doing for the race this year.
A.J. asked if I would post this shot of him, to demonstrate that he does, in fact, know which end of a plasma torch to hold.
