Mike in mid-engine teardown.

Bob brought his ace engine guy Mike over today to help us tear apart the engine and decide how much of a rebuild we needed. Initially we planned to just change the rings, but on closer inspection we decided to do a complete teardown so we can start the season with an absolutely fresh engine.

Crusty focused on a redesign of our rear bumper, valence and skid plate, so that the whole back end mounts as a unit. Here’s a gallery of shots from today’s work day.

Bob jacks up 1104 in preparation for removing the engine.

1104 moved from my place over to Desert Dingo Racing HQ (aka “Richard’s place”) to begin winter tear down. Powerwashed, engine pulled, transmission pulled, light bar removed, CV joints pulled. We’ve got three months to prep the car for the first race of the 2010 season. A lot of ideas to improve it. Gallery of today’s photos here.

Also, this is the greatest off road video I’ve seen in ages. Props to Trophylite.

Bob Russell runs through an electrical systems check the night before the Baja 1000.

The folks at Wired.com’s Autopia blog did a great piece on the Rugged Text and Track satellite communications system from EMS SkyConnect and on our illuminated number panels from TrailGlow. You can check it out here…

You should see the other photos that TPR (aka Trailer Park Romeo, aka Nathan) took of himself with Seth ‘n Kristy’s camera.

For some reason, I could never remember “TPR”, so I spent the week calling Nathan “Total Request Live”, “Standing Room Only” and “Survival Research Labs.” I think Lefty settled on “Trailer Trash Romeo.”

TPR and I bonded when he got hauled to the police station for parking Chase 2 on the wrong side of the street while the team was having dinner one night outside one of the many sidewalk taco places near the Estero Beach RV park, where we stayed. While he was in filling out paperwork, the senior cop and I stood outside checking out his lifted Ford F250 and the new Dodge Avenger police cruisers in the parking lot. I think that may have helped get the fine dropped from $40 to $20. We were back before our carnitas got cold.

Here are Seth ‘n Kristy’s shots from Baja. 1104 may be back in Felton tonight, parked at my place until after Thanksgiving and then heading back over to Richard’s for prep in advance of the SNORE Laughlin Rage at the River race.

Neither Seth nor Scott look like they spent a freezing night in the Mexico desert.

This should be the last set of photos, taken by Kristy, Jeff and Scott from this years race. Check ‘em out.

I think this was about an hour before we headed for the start line. (I’m joking.)

Travis was a picture-taking machine. He even captured the only evidence of vandalism on the car. Here’s a gallery of his photos.

Richard chats with Gustavo Garayzar of 1149.

The extraction team and Scott and Seth just arrived here at Jeff and Robin’s place after spending a good chunk of the morning in a technical section in a ravine where our second (and last) tranny blew. The plan is to spend a couple of hours here, then pack up and head back to Estero Beach.

Here are my photos of our Friday morning prep and some work on the car when the first tranny blew.

Crusty and Richard under the car, finishing engine installation.

A full day of running around for parts, working on the car and getting our secret weapon configured. We’re close to getting the car buttoned up. Contingency and Tech are tomorrow. Still need to get the IRC unit. Finish configuring the secret weapon, secure fuel, get registered. Typical day.

Almost time to hit the jacuzzi.

Some shots from today’s work (I just heard them fire up the engine.)

We (ok, Richard), needed to modify our light bar to accommodate the bigger TrailGlow HID lights we’ll be running for the first time at the Baja 1000.

Among other things we accomplished yesterday: Modified the light bar to accommodate the larger TrailGlow HIDs, fabbed two rear view mirror nerf bars, installed a smaller fisheye rear view mirror in the car, chased down a short circuit in the electrical system, tweaked the rear skid plate to make it go in easier, hammered out and painted a new passenger front fender, organized the tool bags and spare parts bins, futzed with the GPS unit and eventually loaded the low-res SCORE GPS data in it, ate Roxanne’s pound cake, wired the pit signs, welded up the spare front end.

Today, more of the same. Tomorrow we head out.

A handful of photos from Saturday’s work.

Heavy metal parking garage.

Richard, Scott, Crusty and Skid met earlier today to erect the frame of a workshop in Richard’s back yard that will soon be the new home of Desert Dingo Racing. The frame is up, as is the primary structure for the overhead crane (Did we mention we’ll have an overhead crane? Yes, we will.)

The rush is to get the workshop enclosed by Thanksgiving because apparently Richard is having dinner for 30 in it. After that, it’s all ours. (I’m contributing a very cool Bilstein racing calendar).

Photos from today’s barn raising are here.