I think I mentioned we’re about a block from the beach. From the RVs front seats we can watch cargo ships cruise along the coast. The photo gallery includes some shots of what we see on our commute between Rosarito Beach and Tijuana.
Seth and Mike Taylor have arrived. Seth immediately headed back up to San Diego to pick up more members of the team and do whatever it is that logistics people do at Kinkos.
Also included are some shots of today’s work, which focused on getting the new race brake shoes installed and tuning the engine. Here’s a video of that, including the test drive, which set off car alarms for blocks:
We crossed the border and made our way down the Highway 1 toll road to Rosarito, about half an hour south of Tijuana. Rosarito Beach is seeing its share of growth – with a new Home Depot and big box store complex on the north side of town – but for all intents and purposes, it’s still a small beach town.
We parked the RVs and trailered car in front of a Smart & Final and waited for Eric Solorzano, the nine-time Baja 1000 winner, who would take us to where we’d spend the night. We handed out a good number of hero cards and boxes of crayons to kids coming with their folks to the store.
Eric showed up after sunset and guided us to a yard big enough for all of our vehicles, including everyone coming in over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday. It wasn’t til the next morning that I realized we were sharing it with two horses, three chickens, four dogs and were a block from the beach.
Midday Saturday we towed the car up to Eric’s shop in Tijuana and got to work. One of Eric’s suppliers is fabbing a set of brass braided brake shoes, so the car will stop as quickly as it accelerates. We’re moving the front shock reservoirs into the wheel wells so that they get more air (for cooling). Richard and Crusty tweaked the steering to maximize our left and right turning ability.
On Sunday they’ll add a short throw Empi shift with reverse lockout, complete welding on the left turn stop, install the shock reservoirs, and install a chain on the back of the motor fan shroud. I’ll probably play with the car cameras and load the detailed course data into the GPS unit. Seth, our head logistics and lead chase truck person, arrives today.
We pulled into San Diego late last night and slept in the parking lot of a very large big box chain store. This morning we met up early with Adolpho and crew with Econo Lube ‘n Tune and Brakes who saved our bacon last year.
Adolpho hooked us up with Jimmy and his guys at Big O Tires who did a laser alignment on 1102. We marked the alignment that they did and will realign the car to those marks if something goes haywire.
The banner (being modeled by Richard and Crusty) was created by JR Nichols, CEO of STS Graphics in Orange, California. JR also races Class 11s and I contacted him to do that and a Desert Dingo logo for the hood of the car. He took my primitive design idea for a banner and turned it into something 10x cooler than I could have ever imagined. We’ll hang it at the booth we’ll have on Contingency Row that we’ll share with the Federacion Mexicana de Diabetes.
We’ll be giving away 3,000+ boxes of crayons donated to us by the International Diabetes Federation, along with thousands of hero cards that have the car on one side and the warning signs of diabetes on the other side – in English and Spanish.
Here’s a shot of 1102 in the parking lot, pre-alignment:
P.S. We made it to Rosarito Beach and parked about a block from the beach. Tomorrow we take the car in for new custom-made brake pads that will stop the car as quickly as it now accelerates.
