We’ve got nowhere to go but up.
Tires are on order. Fuel is on order. Crusty’s gone through the tool and parts bags and yesterday I drove to San Jose and tossed them over Bob’s fence (he wasn’t home) so he can go through them. He also hit up Pick ‘n Pull for something we need. Boxes with race stuff are arriving at the office daily.
Curtis Guise has edited a video of VORRA’s inaugural USA 500 in 2011, in which we finished second.
Some screenshots…
So it’s the weekend and a lot of stuff is going on. Here’s a wrap up.
Friday night. Helmet wash night. Diane Neimand, who always beat me out for high school drama roles, gets all up in my grill about doing it in the the kitchen sink.
We also got a new batch of Desert Dingo Racing coffee mugs in for folks who’ve helped us out a lot. They were very popular. If, for some reason, you want walk around in a bathrobe drinking coffee out of one these bad boys, email me at jim@desertdingo.com and I’ll send you the link where you can order one.
If you actually do order one (or a t-shirt, or a water bottle or a baby jumper, or a dog warmer, or a baby tee), take a picture of yourself sporting it, email it to me, and I’ll post it on the blog.
The Yerington 300 is two weeks out and the first step is piling stuff in front of 1107. I’d like to thank the skunk that lives under our storage shed for having a freakout this weekend about 20 feet from where this photo was taken.
This pile of lumber, which is three feet from the aforementioned storage shed, will transmogrify into a shade structure that a dust devil can not turn into scrap metal, like what happened at Fallon last year.
Thanks to newest Desert Dingo Racing team member Khaled Mabrouk for putting us on the path toward streamlined processes. Crusty slogged through organizing four boxes of nuts and bolts. Bob is cataloging tool and parts bags. I’m doing first aid and pit kit. And electronics and camping equipment.
Dave is putting the finishing touches on his Group T El Camino. I’m expecting it to look like this:
And be totally doing this all the time:
Lastly, I spotted Dingo Emeritus Charlie Reynolds driving his bright yellow Baja Bug (the one with the air scoop on the roof) in Scotts Valley. I texted him and he responded.
Holy cow there’s a racing game that let’s you create a custom off road desert race car.
Romero Rivera races. And he owns 1sane, which allows you to create custom off road race cars.
Romero, who’s racing the Baja 500 in his Class 5, was kind enough to digitize us.
Before we show you the screen shots, here’s his car.
It concerns me that when I see dust around the electrical connections for the GPS, my first thought is “Q-tips.”
There wasn’t too much wrong with 1107 post-Prairie City so much of Saturday was spent dialing in things for the VORRA Yerington 300 on Memorial Day weekend.
First off, we added a few things to the standard tool kit that will be standard each of our pits moving forward, courtesy of newest team member Khaled Mabrouk of ReduceOr. Drew’s Used Tools is fantastic.
Romy and Bob got the new alternator pulley installed and a new alternator belt and we’re pretty confident we resolved the alternator belt shredding issue.
Jen and I spent the day doing radio checks between pit, car, handheld and helmets. We identified a bug in one helmet mic and will get that dialed. Jen and I also got the GPS running.
Crusty came by for dinner and we cataloged the tool kits in the car. He’s also sorting nuts, bolts, washers and screws in four kits, which we’ll then label with a Dymo.
This is truly the stuff of racing. Also, Crusty owes me $1,000,000.00 because I bet the jack stand would not fit over the car-mounted lug nut breaker bar.
First order of business is raking the race shop.
Crusty came by Saturday and started taking 1107 apart. Found a broken valve cover gasket, which explains us looking like a smoking bbq pit for the last couple of races at Prairie City.
Crusty’s located a couple of old Porsche stub axles that we’ll swap out for the substandard Empi ones we ran at PC, one of which is now a paperweight on my desk at the office. While Crusty and I were working at Desert Dingo Racing HQ, Romy worked on Race Engine No. 2 at his place.
Industrial Engineer Khaled Mabrouk has joined the team. Khaled has been advising us on process. We have approximately one million packing lists that vary based on the race, where we’re staying and who’s coming out. We’ve already made some tweaks to tool locations in 1107 that have carved a minute off of a tire change out on the course.
First stab at a tool table. Need to do some in-filling.
The idea here is to catalog every single process we use in preparing 1107 to race, setting it up in advance of the race, checking it during pit stops and tearing it apart when we get home. I’m focused now on putting together the pit. We’ll have a standard set of basic tools that will always be set up exactly the same way. Spread out from the pit table will be the welder, spare tires, jack and whatever else we might need if something goes wrong. Pretty much every team member has his or her own tool box so those will be available as well. Every single tray in every single tool box will be labeled.
My goal is to get us to the three second pit stops you see on Formula One.