Category: VORRA

Crusty is telling Romy (driving) and Dave (co-dogging) about a dream he had last night.

One couldn’t have asked for a better day of racing Saturday. Temps in the 80s, a packed house, a car that pretty much ran trouble free.

I’m kind of fuzzy on the details of who went out pre-running but I know it included various combinations of Crusty, Romy and Dave. 1107 ran flawlessly. First moto of the day, Crusty and Dave lined up with the Class 9s and went off the line. We were the only 11 car, so this was as much driver seat time as anything else. By the end of the fourth lap we were seeing oil smoke which was quickly diagnosed as an unseated right side valve cover gasket.

Our improvised car lift.

Wait! I forgot the part about how we (ok, Crusty and Dave) realized that a couple of stops Crusty had fabbed for the rotating arms that stick out of the front beam would actually have collided with each other had we actually gone out on the course without testing it. A borrowed hacksaw made short work of that. We then went back and re-borrowed the hacksaw to make short work of the padlock I’d used to lock one of the car hauler’s side bins, when no one could figure out what key went with it.

Ok, back to the racing. Romy and Dave went out for the second moto and did great, but we were still seeing oil smoke coming out the back end. This time it was the left side valve cover that had come unseated. That got swapped out and we were read after lunch for the third moto of the day.

Behold the marvel of the GoPro lasso.

I’ve lost my share of GoPro cameras, always out in the desert and usually because the plastic mounts fail (ok, except for that time when we rolled the car a couple of times and probably landed on one of them). That was until someone told me about the GoPro Lasso ™. Essentially you mount the camera, then put a zip tie around the case, then run fishing line through the zip tie and into the cab of the car. That way if the mount breaks, the camera can flop around on the fishing line until the co-driver can reel it in. Ingenious. Hall Ass Racing loaned us one of their fancy-pants cameras with the LCD BacPac and if I’d lost that, I’d never hear the end of it.

For the third moto, VORRA switched us to racing with the ‘Zuki’s – which are basically Suzuki Sidekicks modified for off road racing. They are, in a world, awesome, and we’d first met when a slew of them turned out for the USA 500.

Dave took the wheel this time with Crusty co-driving and went off the line like a man possessed. Within two laps he had passed two of the Zukis and had his eye on the leader, who had about a 10 second lead on him. Then 1107 started smoking again.

Up in the timing tower, where I was practicing spotting just like they do in NASCAR, the conversation was something like this:

VORRA official: “They’re smoking again. You want us to black flag them?”

Me: “No, they’ll pull over if the red light comes on.”

Down in the car it was another story.

Crusty: “Red light.”

Dave: “I’ve almost caught the leader! Keep going!”

Ok, I don’t know what they really said, but the red light did come on and they decided to see whether they could nurse it to the finish, until they flatted and pulled off the course.

As the sun set, we had the flat swapped out, new valve cover gaskets were silocone glued in and Romy had swapped out a tie rod for some reason or another. Team Green Booger joined for the annual VORRA BBQ and trick or treating. Bob Messer of Deserts 11 will join us for racing Sunday with 1177 and a good time should be had by all.

CaLiPiMp got some camera video of us tooling around the course on Sunday. Click on the image to hear the raw power of a stock VW engine.