Desert Dingo Racing

Category: VORRA

  • Teamwork @ the Yerington 300

    Yoga helps
    And by “teamwork”, I mean “All the other teams helping up put 1107 together in time for tech when we showed up with a rolling pan and box of parts.”

    Actually, that’s a shot of Meghan with Two Larrys Racing working on our car. I’d been standing around, holding our race radio, when she came up and said “What can I do to help?” and I looked at the radio and said “Install this?” and she was on it.

    Heck, she even shared some pictures of us she took at the race. You can check ’em out here. She’s got a load more on the Green Booger site. Definitely check them out.

    Rain this weekend. We’re taking it off.

  • Greetings, Jalopnikons

    Longtime reader, sometime poster Jim Graham here. Just wanted to say “Welcome. Have a look around. And if you’re in the SF Bay Area and ever had the desire to race off road really really slow, we’re looking for a few good people.”

  • Like a mountain goat

    Srsly. Like one of those goats you see on a National Geographic special in the Himalayas

    “Brisk” doesn’t even begin to describe what it feels like to be in the car.

    Mike Koenig sent these images of us out on the VORRA Yerington 300 course. We took off the start line with snow on the hood of 1107. I was in the car laps 3 and 4 and it snowed, hailed, sleeted and freezing rained. Our GPS shorted out. Our comm shorted out.

    Here’s a video were the credits are longer than the action. This is mostly to hear someone yell “SNUGGIE!”

    And this is us headed down hill.

    We're having the time of our lives

  • What a long, strange trip it’s been

    What a long, strange trip it's been

    Check out this majestic view of 1107 2.0 in front of some mountains ‘n stuff.

    Let start this off with a weather report. A 10% chance of rain turned into a 100% chance of rain, sleet, snow and freezing wind. I slept in the front seat of the rental truck, waking up to the largely unfamiliar sound snow makes when it hits your windshield.

    1107 on the other hand, doesn’t have a windshield.

    But i get ahead of myself. The week prior to departing for VORRA‘s Yerington 300, Bob, Crusty and I began nearly around the clock work to get 1107 ready for the race. We pulled into the pits 6 a.m. Saturday morning (after driving all night) and worked pretty much non-stop til 10 p.m. (when it started snowing) to get the car ready for Sunday morning’s 8 a.m. start time.

    We did break long enough to drive into town for tech and contingency. Despite a few minutes of panic over whether you need double D rings on your five point harnesses (you don’t), things went relatively smoothly and everyone in town turned out for the car parade, lead by the local police.

    Heston and Bob shimming the doors.

    Then it was back to the pits to finish as much as we could before race start. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – the great thing about racing Class 11 is that everyone helps everyone else out. The Green Booger (1112), Bob Messer Motorsports (1177) and Desert Dawgs (1106) spent time wrenching on the car. Special thanks go out to Heston, who we shanghaied from Two Larrys Racing who worked with us all day Saturday and Sunday morning.

    Unfortunately, Crusty busted ass so much he actually broke something and took himself out of the lineup.

    I'm so glad I'm not in the car at the start

    It’s like -50 degrees here in the mountains just outside Kabul.

    Sunday morning’s snow delayed start time by 30 minutes. Class 9s went first with our good friend Dave Orum getting fresh powder. We were the first of the 11s since we were season points leader and 1107 rolled up to Jason Weaver’s inflatable arch complete with race numbers made out of strips of electrical tape, thank you very much.

    The race strategy was to have Heston co-drive the first lap and Don co-drive the second with Bob driving. For laps three and four, I’d shift to co-driving and Heston and Don would get driver seat time.

    We were running a new alternator belt and hadn’t taken time to run it for a while to stretch it, so it popped off on Lap One. Bob and Heston removed a shim from the alternator pulley and were good to go. The steering box got loose and was adjusted when they came in to the pits and Heston swapped out for Don Frederick, DDR’s newest team member and Ph.D. candidate in engine stuff at Berkeley. Our GPS was shorting out on Laps One and Two and by the time I got in the car, it was off entirely.

    The steering box continued to act up and got re-tightened each time the car came into the pits. We were averaging 5 gallons for each lap and, being the cheapskate I am, I’d drive over to Trick Fuels and buy a couple of gallons to make sure we had enough to make it through the next lap. (Trick Fuels top tip: Mudslide turns regular coffee into race coffee!)

    When Heston pulled in at the end of Lap Three, the pit crew spotted a loose ball joint lock nut, which got tightened.

    Our intercom shorted out sometime during lap three and by the time Don got in the car for the fourth and final lap, I was reduced to sign language to communicate. Despite that, Don drove like a champion, preserved the car and we took third in class. I forgot to put on a neck donut and this morning my neck feels like a twist tie.

    Working on 1106

    Desert Dawgs got knocked out after one lap, not having carburetor jets that worked for the 6,000-8,000 foot altitude we were racing. We had our aforementioned issues and Green Booger lost time replacing a shock. The Messers ran a near flawless race and not only took the win, but took home the prestigious Bug Invasion II trophy, $20 cash money and a 12-pack of PBR that they won at the inaugural Bug Invasion 1 and never got around to drinking.

    A pretty big gallery of photos from this weekend’s race here    .

  • 21 man hours later, 1107 2.0 comes to life

    Now I know how Dr. Frankenstein felt
    Billy Rickard, after more than a year on the team, finally gets to drive 1107 2.0 on its inaugural blast down a sparsely inhabited country road.

    We just may pull this off. Crusty, Bob and Billy pulled the daylight equivalent of an all-nighter and sometime around 8 p.m. 1107 (Mark II) came to life for the first time since last October. Billy, who’s never been in the car despite being on the team for a year, took it for the first spin. We could hear him ripping it up through the redwoods. He eventually claimed back and declared it “good.”

    All that’s left before departing for Sunday’s Yerington 300 is putting on the doors, fenders, hood, deck lid, installing window nets, both refurbished Mastercraft Safety seats, the radio, maybe the GPS, pumper hoses, Camelbaks, some minor welding, spare tires, tools, med kit, fire extinguisher, spare quarts of oil, five point harnesses, jack, spare tie rods, impact wrench, spare parts bag, antenna, drilling the hole in the hood, for the fuel filler, spring clip for the deck lid, secondary latches on the hood, deck lid and doors, deck lid latch, hotwiring renting a truck and trailer, packing tools, spare parts bins, spare tires, food shopping and we’re on our way.

    Cake.

    Some photos from today’s work.

    I’ll be live tweeting and blogging the race. In the best of all possible worlds, I won’t have to be in the car, but I’ve got a new race suit that’s itching to get dirty.