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.

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.)

Skid works on something on the car.

A quick update. Driving down we blew an engine in Crusty’s pickup. Lefty and TPR rode in like the calvary the following morning with coffee, hooked up 1104 and the trailer and got us down to Orange County. After a quick reconnoiter, we headed down to the Wal-Mart in Chula Vista, were eventually joined by Chase 2 towing 1104. From there we caravanned down to Ensenada and the Estero Beach RV park where we are now.

Some shots of Monday and Tuesday’s adventure.

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.

As a matter of fact I do know which end of an impact wrench to hold.

The SNORE South Point 250 is a week away and we’re buttoning up 1107. Crusty and Scott fiddled with the fuel pump pressure regulator. Carrie spray painted all the tools (so we can keep track of them) and packed the tool kits based on our laminated lists. Scott also installed the lights (we won’t need the night lights for Saturday’s race as it’s only two 60 mile loops.)

Crusty’s been welding 3/8s inch diameter rod into the rims and Richard will take them to Dixon Tires to get all the tires put back on. Oh, and I pulled the tires, installed the fenders and then put the tires back on, you haterz.

Car and equipment get loaded into Creech’s toy hauler Thursday night and we’re all wheels up gawdawful early Friday morning for the drive out to Vegas. This race is also the Stock Bug Challenge II, and we’ve got 13 Class 11s entered. Should be a good race. This race will have Richard and Crusty and Scott ‘n Carrie in the car. Roxanne and I will staff a checkpoint or road crossing for the bonus 25 team points.

Some shots from today’s work day.

For once we have a piece of equipment that performs too well.

Our ignition problems were caused by an electronic fuel pump with an over-developed sense of self. The team installed a fuel pressure regulator and will dial it in this week.

Crusty has started welding 3/8s inch rod into the rims. This should reduce the number of dented rims and flats we’ve endured in previous races. Crusty has done most of the wiring for the TrailGlow lighted number panels.We’ll run those at the SNORE 250 at Primm, bring the car back, touch up the paint, add all the decals and ship it to Montreal for the World Diabetes Congress.

Driver/Co-driver plans for the SNORE 250 are Richard and Crusty and Scott and Carrie. Roxanne and I will staff a checkpoint or road crossing for the bonus 25 team points.

A handful of shots from today are here.

The quality of this photo is more befitting a Bigfoot sighting, but it is photographic proof that the BF Goodrich Nation of Go team stopped by for chili.

The Nation of Go team is traveling the country over 20 days connecting with race teams, tuners, custom car builders and everyone else who has a passion for cars. They made a detour to visit 1107, here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Roxanne made a big pot of chili and we all hung out, talked cars and watched Shawn paint the bug. The rain didn’t matter.

They’ll pull into Bakersfield later tonight, do a quick shoot tomorrow and then south to L.A. From there points east. You can follow them on their blog, Facebook,  YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

We run BFGs on 1107. Their folks in Baja take great care of racers. When you pull into a BFG pit, you can feel the love. In Baja, that’s important.

Shawn is about to paint his masterpiece.

Today was Shawn’s day. Richard and I hooked up 1107 and towed it back to Creech’s place. While I stood around talking on the phone, Shawn turned a small garage into a paint booth, painted four fenders and then set to work on 1107’s body.

Creech’s next door neighbor Shep saved our bacon by allowing us to plug the air compressor into one of his outlets, and, when we kept tripping the circuit breaker, brought over an extension cord that could probably power a Space Shuttle launch. (Prior to all this, we’d recharge the compressor in Creech’s main garage, drag it through the gravel down to the makeshift paint booth, Shawn would paint as much as he could and then I’d drag it back up the driveway to recharge it. Ghetto.

It was too dark (and it was raining) for me to get any “after” photos, but safe to say 1107 is looking spiffy.

Photos from today’s shoot here.