Desert Dingo Racing

Category: Prairie City

  • Barstow Bound for the MORE Powder Puff race


    And we have another winner in the “Who the heck are you people?” contest.

    We’re headed to Barstow in a couple of hours for the MORE Powder Puff race where we’ll meet up with Tut and Pepper Cote of Tut Tech Racing, Emme Hall of Dulce de Leche Racing and Miss Motor Mouth herself, Michelle Naranjo. While I’m lounging by the pool at the Comfort Suites, Roxanne and they will be confabbing. Driving with us (actually, driving us), is fellow NASCAR fan and good friend Catherine Hicks, who I think Roxanne as strong-armed into shooting photos for us. Pepper will be racing her Sportsman Class buggy, “Kitt”, and Emme will be racing her father’s Class 5 Trophy Bug.

    Because, for once, I won’t be responsible for anything, I’m going to play around with the technologies and will be running our first-gen SPOT tracking device, beginning around 9 a.m. You can follow our adventures here. Be patient. It takes forever to load.

    Richard, Crusty, Charley and maybe Bob are headed to Prairie City this morning for the next to last race of the VORRA season. Charlie is making his triumphant return to the team after accompanying us to the first Baja 1000 back in 2007. They’ll be practicing later today, doing the official practicing tomorrow and all out racing on Sunday. I’ll be posting updates as long as the battery on my lousy iPhone holds out.

    Oh, and that handsome fellow in the photo? That’s Christian H. from Germany, a good friend and long time supporter of Desert Dingo Racing. (Notice how he photographed himself with a mirror in the background so you can see the DDR t-shirt he’s wearing). He sent the photo in response to our “Who the heck are you people?” contest.

    Christian already has all of our hero cards and stickers and pins and t-shirts, so I’m thinking I’m going to send him one of 1107’s fenders after it’s been thoroughly trashed at this weekend’s short course racing. No, two fenders. COD to Germany.

  • Prairie City on my mind


    OMG! OMG! Two Larrys and a Megan Racing will pay!

    The last of this season’s short course races start this weekend at Prairie City, just outside Sacramento. 1107 is mechanically sound, which is code for “The car is in 100 pieces in the front yard.”

    We (ok, Crusty) power washed about 100 pounds of dirt out of the car this week. I pulled out everything that wasn’t bolted down. Richard hammered out dented stuff. It really just needs fenders put on.

    Some photos from this weekend’s work.


    Richard autographs his masterwork.

  • We pass 10,000 downloads of the Desert Dingo Racing iPhone, iPad and Android apps


    We blew through 10,000 downloads sometime Thursday night..

    I’m still sending out hero cards to folks (Jeff I swear yours goes in the mail Monday) who send me a photo of themselves holding their mobile device with our Desert Dingo Racing app on it. So shoot me an email at jim@desertdingo.com and include your first name and snail mail address.

    With the passenger door un-pranged, the only major work left to do on 1107 in advance of our Oct. 9-10 VORRA race at Prairie City is to sort out why we’re getting a leak in one of the valve covers.

    As previously mentioned we’re red-shirting the Baja 1000 this year to do a body off rebuild in preparation for the 2011 race season. We’ve got something cool in the works that I can mention for fear of jinxing it.

  • Unpimping ze auto

    It's driveable, really
    There’s nothing that a crow bar and a hammer can’t fix. Failing that, shouting it into place works.

    Crusty and Bob rolled in around 11 a.m., giving me time to clean house and rake the yard. We resolved the “passenger-door-not-opening” issue and the the “accelerator-pedal-revving to-10,000-rpm” issue. We’ve stripped everything we don’t need for the Oct. 9-10 short course races (spare parts, quarts of oil, tools, Shawn’s precious pine-scented air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror).

    Next up: power washing followed by pulling the rear skid pan and sorting out the oil leaking from the valve cover gaskets.

  • We’re red-shirting the Baja 1000 this year

    Take a meeting
    Shawn and Scott confab on Bob’s futon/sofa during the team meeting.

    We decided Wednesday night to skip the Baja 1000 this year, focus on beating our arch rivals Two Larry’s and a Megan Racing for the Stock Bug season points championship in VORRA and spend the off season doing a body-off rebuild of 1107.

    The issue was financial. The 1000 is our most expensive race, costing close to $8,000 to run in a good year. Because the course this year is a straight shot from Ensenada to La Paz, our fuel bill – always our biggest line item – automatically doubled.

    So the plan is to race the last two VORRA short course races at Prairie City the weekends of Oct. 9 and Oct. 31 and then cut what’s left of 1107’s body away and begin a ground up rebuild. This gives us the time and access we need to make tweaks you can’t otherwise do with the car body on. We’ll replace 1107’s current body with that of a 1970 Bug body now covered in pine needles in the front yard.

    It’s a bummer knowing we won’t be in Ensenada in November, but we’ll be back at it next year and giving nine-time Baja 1000 winner (and good friend) Eric Solorzano a run for his money.

    The wait is almost over