A clip of Robert Johnson and Eric Solorzano followed by a Trophy Truck doing the same section of the Mint 400. Video from Wicked Gravity Video.
We’re prepping for the Caliente 250.
Category: Eric Solorzano
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And the repairs begin…
Sometime Sunday Creech is coming by with a Checker cab outfitted with a tow hitch to trailer 1102 to his place in Ben Lomond. Bob “Bus Boy” Russell, our team sommelier, will drop the engine and transmission. We’re pricing spare race transmissions as I write this, and looking to folks to rebuild our primary tranny.
Photos tomorrow. It’s a new race day for the team.
And, at Eric’s Tijuana workshop, that was the best chorizo and jalapeno pizza – the size of a car hood – I’d ever had.
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Airborne at the Baja 1000
There’s been a lot of discussion (if you consider three of us instant messaging each other as “discussion”) about how much air Scott and Seth caught off the Red Bull jump in the Ensenada wash.
I think Richard thought it was about 12-18 inches. I maintained three feet, based on watching the video something like 50 times. I forget what Skid thought. I got a call from Eric Solorzano today and he maintains we could have jumped another Class 11.
Judge for yourself. I edited the full Ensenada Deportes video down to our jump. (I included a trophy truck for comparison).
I like this photo. It was the last time the car was clean.
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If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done
We did our team briefing this morning with Seth, our logistics guy taking the lead. He mapped out fuel stops, who’s riding with whom, and a bajillion other details that only a guy like he could conceive, remember and then articulate to the rest of us sitting in plastic chairs in the barnyard.
Genas fabbed a new light bar for us and welded the mounts in place last night. Mike Taylor painted it this morning and a whole bunch of folks pitched in to install and rewire the lights after we got to our base of operations in Ensenada this afternoon.
We breezed through team registration this evening but encountered a hiccup with fuel distribution afterward. Terri with Sunoco has been great, and we’re meeting with Carlos of Baja Pits to iron out the rest of the details tomorrow morning. Richard and Cary get in line for roll cage inspection at oh dark early tomorrow, even though it only opens at 10 a.m.
Tomorrow we have our booth on Contingency Row with Norma Angelica Ramirez of the Asociacion Mexicana de Diabetes en Baja California, AC. We’ll be handing out the crayons and hero cards with the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back and literature provided by Norma.
Here’s a gallery of photos from last night’s work and this morning’s preparations. And, lastly, here’s a quick video of everyone hangout out at / working at Eric’s Tijuana workshop.
PS: Note to families and friends: Feel free to contact me, Roxanne Graham, at info@desertdingo.com, with your messages for the team or for anything when the race starts. I’ll post updates to the blog as I receive them once the Desert Dingos are on the road.
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Mexico, Days One & Two
We crossed the border and made our way down the Highway 1 toll road to Rosarito, about half an hour south of Tijuana. Rosarito Beach is seeing its share of growth – with a new Home Depot and big box store complex on the north side of town – but for all intents and purposes, it’s still a small beach town.
We parked the RVs and trailered car in front of a Smart & Final and waited for Eric Solorzano, the nine-time Baja 1000 winner, who would take us to where we’d spend the night. We handed out a good number of hero cards and boxes of crayons to kids coming with their folks to the store.
Eric showed up after sunset and guided us to a yard big enough for all of our vehicles, including everyone coming in over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday. It wasn’t til the next morning that I realized we were sharing it with two horses, three chickens, four dogs and were a block from the beach.
Midday Saturday we towed the car up to Eric’s shop in Tijuana and got to work. One of Eric’s suppliers is fabbing a set of brass braided brake shoes, so the car will stop as quickly as it accelerates. We’re moving the front shock reservoirs into the wheel wells so that they get more air (for cooling). Richard and Crusty tweaked the steering to maximize our left and right turning ability.
On Sunday they’ll add a short throw Empi shift with reverse lockout, complete welding on the left turn stop, install the shock reservoirs, and install a chain on the back of the motor fan shroud. I’ll probably play with the car cameras and load the detailed course data into the GPS unit. Seth, our head logistics and lead chase truck person, arrives today.
Here’s a gallery of photos from Saturday.
