Desert Dingo Racing

Category: The Car

  • Countdown to the SNORE 250

    Fresh from the makeshift paint booth, we start prepping 1107 for the SNORE 250 and beyond.

    Today we narrowed down our rough running engine problems to an over exuberant electric fuel pump. It was putting too much fuel into the carburetor, resulting in rough running. Apparently some $40 fuel pressure regulator will fix this. Otherwise, the car is in good shape and we’re tweaking around the edges in preparation for the SNORE 250. While they did that, I filled out paperwork for the Baja 1000.

    Creech can’t make the 250 but has generously offered to let us use his truck and toy hauler to t0w 1107 to Primm for the race. Richard, Crusty, Scott ‘n Carrie will go down in the truck, Roxanne and I will head down separately.

    We’ll only be running the new TrailGlow numbers on the car for the 250. Right after the car returns, Shawn and I (mostly Shawn) will touch up the paint, add the rest of the sponsor logos and prep the car for the trip to the World Diabetes Congress in Montreal.

    I also got ohhhs and ahhhhs from the team when I demo’d the TrailGlow pit sign, that, because I didn’t tape the bare wires, nearly set the car on fire on the drive over, according to Shawn. Fine. I’ll solder and insulate them.

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

    And here’s a 12 second video, via 12seconds.tv, of the engine not running very well, shot with my birthday present from Roxanne, a custom-designed Flip HD camera:

    Rough running engine on 12seconds.tv

  • BF Goodrich Nation of Go team makes us look gooood

    You should see the outtakes and bloopers reel.

    As previously mentioned, BF Goodrich’s Nation of Go team stopped by Sunday afternoon while most of us were standing around watching body-and-paint man Shawn Kovach-Long paint 1107.

    Roxanne made a nice chili, because, as everyone knows, a race team marches on its stomach.

    We talked about their project, we talked about racing, we talked about our working with the International Diabetes Federation and raising awareness about the risks posed by diabetes. It was a great time and they’re doing a great thing. We wish them the best of luck.

    Click on this cool shot of Shawn to go to Nation of Go’s Flickr set of their visit.

  • Nation of Go at Desert Dingo HQ

    The quality of this photo is more befitting a Bigfoot sighting, but it is photographic proof that the BF Goodrich Nation of Go team stopped by for chili.

    The Nation of Go team is traveling the country over 20 days connecting with race teams, tuners, custom car builders and everyone else who has a passion for cars. They made a detour to visit 1107, here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Roxanne made a big pot of chili and we all hung out, talked cars and watched Shawn paint the bug. The rain didn’t matter.

    They’ll pull into Bakersfield later tonight, do a quick shoot tomorrow and then south to L.A. From there points east. You can follow them on their blog, Facebook,  YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

    We run BFGs on 1107. Their folks in Baja take great care of racers. When you pull into a BFG pit, you can feel the love. In Baja, that’s important.

  • Painting 1107

    Shawn is about to paint his masterpiece.

    Today was Shawn’s day. Richard and I hooked up 1107 and towed it back to Creech’s place. While I stood around talking on the phone, Shawn turned a small garage into a paint booth, painted four fenders and then set to work on 1107’s body.

    Creech’s next door neighbor Shep saved our bacon by allowing us to plug the air compressor into one of his outlets, and, when we kept tripping the circuit breaker, brought over an extension cord that could probably power a Space Shuttle launch. (Prior to all this, we’d recharge the compressor in Creech’s main garage, drag it through the gravel down to the makeshift paint booth, Shawn would paint as much as he could and then I’d drag it back up the driveway to recharge it. Ghetto.

    It was too dark (and it was raining) for me to get any “after” photos, but safe to say 1107 is looking spiffy.

    Photos from today’s shoot here.

  • Stripping 1117

    1117

    1117 before the last of the decals came off.

    And we’re back from Burning Man and getting 1107 and 1117 ready for paint, which could happen as early as this weekend. Between loads of laundry and washing the playa dust out of everything, I made time to pull the last of the decals off of 1117. Still needs a tremendous amount of sanding and other stuff, but at least it will look nice over the winter while we start building it up as a second race car.

    The countdown begins to the SNORE 250 October 2-4 in Vegas.