This has nothing to do with us, but it was cool to see a rock crawler in Scotts Valley.
Work continued apace on Tuesday with Billy and Crusty working on rewiring 1107. Bob made a run down Bradford’s in Prunedale to pick up the last of our spare transmission parts and a bell housing that he’ll re-fashion into a tranny stand.
A little over three weeks to the 250-mile desert race in Yerington on Memorial Day weekend.
Now go back and check out that sweet rock crawler.
This is pretty much what our work days look like.
Work day tomorrow. Bill “The New Guy” Rickard is going to make a first stab at rewiring 1107. The car was remarkably undamaged from the short course racing. We should remedy that late May at our first desert race of the season in Yerington.
Finally finished Carroll Smith’s “Prepare to Win” that Crusty loaned me. Chapter titles like “The care and feeding of a race engine,” “Basic metal work” “Plumbing and plumbing stuff.”
Here’s his take on painting:
“It is necessary to be practical when it comes to painting the race car. Race cars tend to crash a lot. And when they crash they need to be repainted. This rules out lots of coats of hand-rubbed lacquer. It also rules out elaborate multi-color paint schemes. The most practical approach is two colors…and stick on vinyl striping.”
And this on wiring and electrical:
“I have a tendency to look on anything having to do with electricity and/or electronics as a disaster waiting to happen. Care must be taken in running wires from the dash to where ever they go to and come from. It is desirable to have as few wires as possible (If it’s not there, it can’t fail). Since it takes me hours to figure out how to wire the most simple car – and I know full well I will never be able to remember how I did it – I make a wiring diagram for each car and I color code the wires. Then I never let the diagram out of my sight until the car is no longer my responsibility.”
A wiring diagram. That’s crazy talk.
We’re batting 1.000
I wanted to say thank you to Soccer Mom Off Road Racing of Phoenix, Ariz. for getting us to 1,000 downloads and to everyone else for taking the time to download our iPhone and Android apps. SMOR is a full stock race team and they’re fun to follow on Twitter.
I’m still learning how the mobile app design process works, but to show my appreciation, I’ve released an updated version of the app. It should appear automatically on everyone’s phones.
Onward to 1,000,000!
Also, should have some interesting news in advance of our first VORRA off road desert race of the season in Yerington at the end of May. Coming soon.
Dented, but undaunted.
Work day today with remarkably little to do. Crusty had already pulled the engine, Bob pull the tranny and Richard brought a slide hammer to massage some remaining dents. This coming week Crusty and Bob will make some adjustments to the spacing of the rear skid plate, adding some bushings to increase the distance between the place and the engine and headers, Billy “The New Guy” Rickard will replace wiring going into the engine compartment. Richard will spend some time this week on other prep work. Crusty’s also going to be doing some reinforcement on the FuelSafe fuel cell. Realistically, we could have the car ready as early as this coming weekend for the May 28 race in Yerington, Nevada.
Some photos from today’s work.
Desert Dingo team member Lynda McNeil sang the National Anthem Sunday morning at the VORRA races at Prairie City. Yes, that’s Richard walking in front of the camera at the start.