Desert Dingo Racing

I accidently left the digital still camera at home, so decided to capture the final night of prep on the car with video. Richard, Dennis and I made a run up to Auburn to retrieve the trailer. Shawn completed the last of the painting and graphics. Bob, Scott and Cary did final buttoning up and then began pulling together all the spare parts and tools we’d be taking down with us. Elektra is headed to Sonoma today to pick up fuel cans we’re borrowing again from World Motorsports. Charlie even dropped by.

The car moves from San Jose to Felton this afternoon and we head out for Mexico at the crack of dawn Thursay.

Shawn and I (again, mostly Shawn) got started putting on sponsor decals and our numbers tonight. We needed to do some touch up on the paint, so we’ll finish it off tomorrow, after Richard and I return from Auburn with the trailer.

Two days to Mexico and counting. Photos of Shawn’s handiwork here.

October 30, 2008, San Jose, Calif, – Desert Dingo Racing and GoPro have teamed to capture and broadcast high quality digital in-car video during the 41st Annual Baja 1000 offroad race in Mexico this November.

Desert Dingo Racing competes in Class 11, which is limited to pre-1983 Volkswagen Beetles and allows for only minor modifications to the engine and suspension. The Desert Dingo VW (No. 1102) is the official World Diabetes Day car in the race and the team is hosting a drive-a-thon fundraiser to raise money for diabetes awareness and education programs conducted by the International Diabetes Federation.

“We’ve tested a couple of different camera setups in the car and were never satisfied with the results,” said Desert Dingo team member Jim Graham. “GoPro’s Motorsports HERO unit is extremely durable - which is crucial for desert racing - and the 170-degree field of view will let us capture all the action.”

Read the entire press release here.

We all got together on Saturday to work on the car, soon to be rebadged 1102. Crusty and Richard repositioned the GPS display so that it’s to the right of the rear view mirror. This should make it easier to track and reduce glare. Cary and Scott worked on the front end, fixing damaged sheet metal from the 250 and reinforcing the front bumper. Mike Taylor picked up a new(er) front bumper, so now we have a spare.

Pretty much everyone worked on installing the shocks that Bilstein shipped back to us. Skid, Shawn and I made a run to a hardware store for a ton of nylock bolts. Richard also needed an eye bolt and a couple of rubber bungie cords that he’s using to secure the hood and trunk, on top of the other clamps we’re using. I busted out the credit card and ordered a Parker Pumper breather from Dezert Nation. I completely botched the mailing address but Nick who was working there got me straightened out.

We’re going with a new front tire this time around. A Traxxion vintage WWII military tire that was probably used on Jeeps. I ordered them via one of our equipment sponsors, Skips Tires, then took them to Dave Dixon with Dixon Tires in Watsonville, who used a grooving iron to, not surprisingly, add some grooves to the tread. The tires are optimized for driving in ruts. Dave’s grooving will give us more traction when we need to get out of those ruts. We’ll be running BFG 215-75-15s on the back.

Thanks Dave, and thanks to everyone at Dixon Tires for your support.

Photo gallery of today’s work is here.

Once again for 2008 we’re conducting a drive-a-thon fundraiser in conjunction with the International Diabetes Federation and its program to raise awareness of diabetes in children and adolescents.

100% of the money pledged to the drive-a-thon goes to the IDF’s education and awareness programs. Desert Dingo Racing raises money to support the team separately. If you can do a penny a mile, it helps.

If you donate, shoot me an email at jim@desertdingo.com and I’ll write your name on the car (probably the inside of the roof).

I’ll be working on a pledge button for the sidebar, but for now you can get to the pledge page by clicking here.

I just faxed off our down payment for the registration fees for this year’s Baja 1000: $200 to SCORE and mailed a check for $500 for pit support to Baja Pits. (I can’t say enough great things about how well Carlos and his folks took care of us last year).

We get asked a lot how much it costs to do this race. Here’s a breakdown of the major expenses:

SCORE International registration fee: $2,075.00

Baja Pits registration: $500.00

110 Octane race fuel - 150 gallons @ $8.95 a gallon): $1,342.50

Then you have individual expenses -

SCORE membership: $75

Mexico Tourist visa: $40 (If you want to pay a guy to go to the bank and handle the paperwork for you - which you do.)

International Driving Permit: $15 (You can get this at AAA).

Then add to that fuel for the RVs, chase and passenger vehicles that go down. That’s several thousand simoleans.

But other than that, that’s pretty much it. Granted, that’s not counting construction of the car, spare parts and tires. Our sponsors, like Bilstein and Skips Tire’s, have been great and their support has been invaluable.

We’re getting together next weekend to start final prep on the car. We’ll be looking at the shift linkage bushings, it needs to be painted, we need to get going on skid plates and Richard will be putting together a checklist that we’ll use to prep the car once we’re down in Mexico.

Last year we went for a “rear start” - meaning you start at the back of the pack of the cars in your class. Since there were only eight of us in 2007, that mean we got an extra 3 minutes of prep time from when the first Class 11 went off the starting line. This year I’ve decided we’re going out first. We’ll just have to be ready to go three minutes earlier.

4,000 boxes of crayons arrived yesterday. DHL driver Clint got a running start in reverse and got the van most of the way up the driveway. I didn’t have a fork lift, so we unloaded an entire pallet’s worth of custom Crayola crayon boxes onto the patio.

From there I hauled them up the side of the house - in 90 degree heat - and into the guest room, which is the coolest part of the house. 4,000 boxes, 24 boxes to a carton. 167 cartons. In the heat. The cats now use them as a perch to watch out for other cats.

We’ll be using the crayons at a public event on Sunday, June 8, with the International Diabetes Federation and several of their corporate partners at The Cannery on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. We’ll have the car and will be signing hero cards, the IDF will be handing out crayons and I’m pretty sure the partners will have educational materials and might be offering blood glucose testing. (The crayons, btw, have the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back) and each box includes a “Sky Blue” crayon - the color of the World Diabetes Day circle logo.

I’ll have more on this event as it gets closer, but definitely mark your calendars. We’ve even lined up Skid to DJ the hits of the 50s, 60s and 70s. It should be a rockin’ time.

Here’s a shot of the crayons, softening in the heat before I got them into the house:

Max Davis, who’s designed for Nike, Intel, Eli Thomas and the SF 49ers, among others, contacted us to offer his services. His father has Type 2 diabetes and when he heard about us, he dropped me a note. (I’m partial to the World Diabetes Day blue circle logos integrated into the wheels). We’re already investigating t-shirts. Max has also helped me put together a sponsorship proposal and is coming out to the photo shoot this Sunday.

Everything’s coming together and I should have news on an event in San Francisco on June 8 pretty quickly.

Not a lot of excitement today. I met with Shawn at Cary’s. Shawn did all the heavy lifting and changed out wheels on 1101. I dropped them off at Skip’s Tire and Auto Center where they’ll move the good tires onto new rims (including two that Shawn painted red). And we’ll have one new tire put on one of the six or eight new rims we’ve collected since the 250.

Robert in Watsonville, who picked up 1110 from Cameron in SoCal, is headed to Hollister Hills this weekend to take it for a drive. He called and invited us to come down with him. Scott and Carrie will already be down there with their motorcycles, Richard said he’ll drive down with Robert and Skid was looking for an excuse to take his motorhome out on a shakedown cruise.

All that being said, here’s a couple of funny NASCAR commercials from the Texas Motor Speedway (the only NASCAR track I’ve ever seen, even at a distance) race last weekend:

and

We’ve registered for the San Felipe 250 and the car is being modified from everything we learned from the 1000.

Bugformance has really come through for us and we’re adding their logo to 1146. Today we worked on the bump stops, Bob put together a new cover for our fueling tube and added adjustable screws to the lights. Skid and Cary worked on the headers. Shawn sanded down the chromoly roll cage and wiped it down with WD40.

We’ve prioritized what we need to accomplish in advance of the 250. A sheet of paper. Action items are being crossed off. I expect we’ll arrive in San Felipe with a car ready to race.

We put our deposit on the race and this time requested a front start.

Photos from today’s work here.