Sometime Sunday Creech is coming by with a Checker cab outfitted with a tow hitch to trailer 1102 to his place in Ben Lomond. Bob “Bus Boy” Russell, our team sommelier, will drop the engine and transmission. We’re pricing spare race transmissions as I write this, and looking to folks to rebuild our primary tranny.
Photos tomorrow. It’s a new race day for the team.
And, at Eric’s Tijuana workshop, that was the best chorizo and jalapeno pizza – the size of a car hood – I’d ever had.
We did our team briefing this morning with Seth, our logistics guy taking the lead. He mapped out fuel stops, who’s riding with whom, and a bajillion other details that only a guy like he could conceive, remember and then articulate to the rest of us sitting in plastic chairs in the barnyard.
Genas fabbed a new light bar for us and welded the mounts in place last night. Mike Taylor painted it this morning and a whole bunch of folks pitched in to install and rewire the lights after we got to our base of operations in Ensenada this afternoon.
We breezed through team registration this evening but encountered a hiccup with fuel distribution afterward. Terri with Sunoco has been great, and we’re meeting with Carlos of Baja Pits to iron out the rest of the details tomorrow morning. Richard and Cary get in line for roll cage inspection at oh dark early tomorrow, even though it only opens at 10 a.m.
Tomorrow we have our booth on Contingency Row with Norma Angelica Ramirez of the Asociacion Mexicana de Diabetes en Baja California, AC. We’ll be handing out the crayons and hero cards with the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back and literature provided by Norma.
Here’s a gallery of photos from last night’s work and this morning’s preparations. And, lastly, here’s a quick video of everyone hangout out at / working at Eric’s Tijuana workshop.
PS: Note to families and friends: Feel free to contact me, Roxanne Graham, at info@desertdingo.com, with your messages for the team or for anything when the race starts. I’ll post updates to the blog as I receive them once the Desert Dingos are on the road.
The shocks aren’t on. Nor are the fenders. But check out the clearance we have now, courtesy of Eric, Sam and Crusty.
One of the last things Eric and Sam did before buttoning up the car was to tune the engine. Adjust the valves. Check. Adjust the timing. Check. Pour a bottle of beer in the carburetor. Check.
(Note that this Corona has a slice of lemon in it).
For the record, the engine ran remarkably better after the beer.
Crusty and Sam work on hammering out the front end of 1101.
Eric Solorzano and his longtime friend and co-driver “Yosemite” Sam drove up to San Jose this past week to work their magic on 1101. By the time they buttoned it up on Saturday afternoon, we had a good 3-4 additional inches of clearance on the front, 4-5 inches in the rear and the Solorzano-built engine sounds like a beast.
Crusty and Sam also hammered out the front end that got smushed at the San Felipe 250 and they extended the roll cage to give more structural support at the front of the car.
Check out a handful of photos from Friday here.
We still have some more work to do. Eric has taken our shocks back down to Bilstein for re-valving and repair. We also need to pull the transmission and send it down to Transworks for some tweaking.
Here’s 1101 parked next to Eric’s car at the 250. Definitely shows the need for some expertise to get us a bit more ground clearance.
