Desert Dingo Racing

Tag: KC Hilites

  • KC Hilites Midnight Special map – should be a walk in the park

    SNORE just released the map for the KC Hilites Midnight Special race coming up in August. It looks relatively flat, with the course skirting any major mountains. I’m sure they’ll make up for it with lots of silt and big rocks.

    Work on the car continues. Richard had pulled the fuel cell. He and Crusty disassembled it to get a look at the foam inside to determine whether it had deteriorated at all. It looked good, but we found a cracked hose that did something. Richard’s taking it to the local hose shop to get a metal braided hose replacement.

    I’m playing with a service called 12seconds.tv, editing down some of our existing video to bite-sized morsels. I’ve started a page here. And here’s my favorite so far:


    Getting air in a ’69 VW at the 2008 Baja 1000 on 12seconds.tv

  • We’re probably going to need this

    Taking a look at the steering box.

    Updated: Photos! We’ve got photos!

    Crusty, Bob, Scott ‘n Carrie set to work on the car on Saturday. We found a problem with a sleeve inside the front beam. A problem in that the sleeve was trashed and we’ll need to figure out what happened and what we can do to reinforce it.

    Crusty has continued on his campaign to rid the car of rust and nearly the entire inside has been chemically stripped and painted. Not quite clean enough to eat off of, but definitely “five second rule” clean.

    Logistics meeting coming up on the 21st and driver practice the following weekend. KC Hilites Midnight Special in early August.

    Photos of Saturday’s work to come.

  • Men at work

    Shawn and Bob work on the co-driver side front drum brake.

    In advance of our first logistics meeting for the Baja 1000 on June 21 at Seth’s place, the team put in time doing advance prep on the car. Crusty continued stripping out the car, eliminating rust and painting any bare metal. Shawn and Bob worked on the brakes, replacing some bits that kept the passenger side wheel from rolling relatively freely. Richard pulled the fuel cell, power washed it in preparation for pulling the bladder and sponge, which apparently needs replacing every couple of years.

    We may have some interesting developments in the communications department. Photos from last weekend’s work are here.

  • Idle hands are the devil’s plaything

    Little red remote control car with a camera on it.

    The KC Hilites Midnight Special isn’t until early August, so we’ve got time to kill. A perfect excuse to test the microphone settings on the GoPro Motorsports Wide Angle cameras we run on the car. The low setting on the cameras muffled the engine. We’ll run them on high for the next race.

  • This is not a picture of Francis the Mechanical Mule

    “A.J., when you visit Francis this weekend, get a photo,” I told him.

    “Ok,” A.J. said.

    This, obviously, isn’t a photo of Francis. It is, however, a photo of the aluminum ramps A.J. scored off Craigslist to get Francis (and our pre-running motorcycles and maybe my ATV) on and off of AWACS, which will be our mobile command center for all future races. The man knows his Craigslist and I defer to his mad skillz.

    The ramps, AWACS, the motorcycles and maybe Francis and my ATV will make their debut at the KC Hilites Midnight Special race in early August.