Author: Jim

You collect a lot of spare parts in seven years of racing. (Not all of them are going with us.)

We met again this past weekend to finish work on the car, install bazooka spotlights courtesy of our sponsor Lifetime LED and install our secret weapon, to be announced later this week.

Bazooka spots from our fantastic sponsor Lifetime LED Lights. Thank you Ryan.

We also went through spare parts, deciding what we’ll be taking, what we’ll be storing and what we can get rid of. That was cathartic.

Chuck Gianni working out logistics.

We signed up with Mag 7 pits, opting for their full service. They’ll be handling fuel for us. Chuck mapped out our fueling and driver / co-driver swap out strategy.

Jenn Frederick programs all our numbers into the Iridium Extreme sat phones we’ll be using.

Communications is key to racing the 1000. Most teams go blind immediately after going off the start line and call Weatherman for updates on where their car is. We’ll be using satellite communications to keep chase trucks close to the race car and respond quickly if something happens. More to come on this.

Roxanne was kind enough to send me along with a crock pot of minestrone soup and tortelli, which we warmed on the utility shelf next to the fire extinguishers and cleaning solvents.

$3,565 later, we are officially entered in the 2014 Baja 1000 in Class 11.

2.5 weeks to go and a lot is in the offing.

Watch this space….

Thomas Gallahue contemplates all that remains to be done.

We’re three weeks out from the Baja 1000 and finally turned the corner for “working on the car” to “buttoning up the car.” There’s still a ton to do (like register for the race), but it’s really going to happen.

The crew from Rugged Radios also came by on their way back the Ultra 4 Nationals to tune up the radio and install one of their just released MAC 4.2 Dual Air Pumper systems. Twice as much flow through as the old Parker Pumper we’d been running.

We also watched our three seconds of fame in the recently released Dezert People 11 DVD.

It was nice weather so a lot of the cars at Wallentine Motorsports were out in the parking lot. Here’s a gallery.

A quick update from a weekend of work by Crusty, Gil, Brian and Toby:

Starting Saturday, we upgraded the torsion bars , fabricated new rear bump stops and shock tower supports and welded them in place. On Sunday we removed, inspected, repacked and re-installed the CVs. Pulled the spare engine, removed the pressure plate and removed and inspected the the flywheel (all good). We also got the alternator light working again, wired the night lights into the new gauges, wired in the winch, and cleaned/rewired the headlight harness (including the markers). We also I spent some time replacing funky looking connections and other janky things, but this is an ongoing process.

And, earlier today, I drove seven hours and delivered our spare transmission to Scott Sebastian of MetalCraft for a refresh.

Much more to come…

One of the cool things about being a Silicon Valley-based race team is that we’re a lot more open to testing new technologies – many of which haven’t been used previously in off road racing.

As I like to say, “We’re slow, but we’ve got all the cool toys.” We were the very first off road racing team to roll out a mobile app (which now has 55,000 downloads. We were the first to film video with drones (thanks Ziv!):

Desert Dingo Racing from ZM Interactive on Vimeo.

This year we’re one of a handful of teams that will be beta-testing GPS navigation software from the Virginia-based company LeadNav Systems.

Current GPS systems are bulky, hardware-intense and take up a good chunk of real estate in the car. This new system runs on iPads and iPhones and is software-focused. The LeadNav team is fantastic to work with and we can’t wait to put it through its paces.