Desert Dingo Racing

Author: Jim

  • Our own private Ensenada

    Our own private Ensenada

    The three palms that give Las Tres Palmas its name.

    Got this great video from Dennis in Ensenada earlier this week. A walking tour of his place where we’ll be setting up shop for Baja 1000 week. Las Tres Palmas. Enclosed courtyard, full garage, full kitchen, bunk beds by the bushel, outdoor hangout area and, maybe best of all, showers.

    When he’s not playing host to Norteamericano racing teams, Dennis hosts groups who come to Mexico to build shelters for folks who need help. He’s also involved with La Casa de Esperanza, which provides a safe environment for mothers and children escaping domestic violence.

    We’re hoping to do something for them when we come down for the race.

    Paul and Ryan with CBCFS Racing came down from San Francisco and spent a few hours with Crusty, Bob and me going through 1107 and mapping what they need to finish their build.

    I forgot to shoot pictures, so I did a screen capture from our Justin.tv live feed from today’s work day.

    Here’s a few shots from today’s work.

  • Nerding out with Desert Dingo

    Nerding out with Desert Dingo

    Crusty welding a thing.

    More work on the car Sunday. Crusty’s tweaking the rear suspension geometry, probably getting another inch or more of travel out of it. I got the Rugged Radio intercom and radio re-installed and did a test with the handheld. Managed not to short circuit any thing. Reinstalled the air pumper and got it running. And got the battery back in the battery box and re-installed. Crusty also sketched out this thing he wants to make and I scanned and sent it off to Bill Savage, the head tech guy for SCORE. If Bill blesses it, you can pretty much use it anywhere.

    The CBCFS Racing guys checked in a few times this weekend. Hoping they might be able to make it down to Felton next weekend to take a look at 1107. Will save them some time on wrapping up their car.

    Our high-end camera set up.

    Just to get in practice for the race season, I’ve started live broadcasting our work days. It’s mostly Crusty welding on something and me standing around with a cup of coffee watching but, amazingly, people watch this s stuff.

    Wunderkit on the iPhone.

    Most of what I’m working on now is paperwork, or, more precisely, the elimination thereof. Beta testing an app called Wunderkit. In a nutshell, we should be able to take all our packing lists, process documents and to do lists, load them all in the app and it will automatically push them out to computers, iPads, iPhones and Androids. Now if only they’ll roll out nested workspaces and tasks.

    While we were enjoy summer-like weather, our Team PBJ in Colorado had this.

    I’d rather be watching this on TV.

    And newest Dingo Normal, who just started Tasty Racing (just a side project, she swears), was wrenching on her 24 Hours of Lemons Honda.

  • Playing catch up

    Playing catch up

    Crusty prepping to cut off a bump stop.

    Eric Solorzano’s gonna kill us, but after four years, we’re futzing with the suspension set up he did for us. We figure we’ll get another inch of rear travel.

    Bob came by with the machined heads, lightened flywheel and a bunch other parts in a box. Engine One rebuild should be wrapped up by the end of next week, courtesy of Bob, Romy and Mike.

    CBCFS Racing is making progress, too.

    Paul with CBCFS Racing called a couple of times. We helped them out with a braking issue and then figuring out how much power various systems draw. They’re pretty close to firing up the engine.

    We’re live.

    I’m sure this will rank right up there with community television, but we’ll be broadcasting workdays live whenever we can via Justin.tv. I’ll announce them via the Twitter and Facebook. Our channel is DesertDingo.

    Lastly, what kind of monsters send you a package of spring loaded ball joints?

    Some shots of my unboxing of the good ball joints.

  • Another Class 11 joining the fray

    Another Class 11 joining the fray

    Is VORRA big enough for two white Class 11s? Only time will tell.

    Spent an hour on the phone last night with Paul of CBCFS Racing out of San Francisco. A great guy. He and his buddy are about 95% complete on a Class 11 build that they expect to campaign in the VORRA series and take to the Baja 1000.

    We’ll head up to SF later this month to check out their build and have invited them to come down to Felton to check out 1107. We’ll probably also do some practice together over at Prairie City in advance of the first VORRA race of the season. A good time will be had by all.

    In other news, Romy jumped on a Craigslist ad for a free hood, free front beams, free doors for our year VW. It’s like Christmas in February.

  • Safety third

    Safety third

    1107 circa 1970.

    We’re in such good shape coming into 2012 we have the rare luxury of looking at tweaks to suspension and transmission support way before our first race of the season. Crusty and I (mostly Crusty) reinstalled the race transmission and did some stuff with a tape measure and grease pencil. I pulled the battery box and found a host of rust. Wire brushed it out and painted.

    We’ll do a full team work day probably next Saturday to map out the next two months. Photos from today’s effort.