So a couple of days ago we broke 7,000 downloads of the Desert Dingo Racing iPhone, iPad and Android apps (we’re at 7,354 as I write this) and I decided to try and figure out who all you all are and announced a contest. I said the first 20 folks who send me a photo with their mobile device showing the DDR app will get a hero card and whatever other schwag I dig out of my tub of stuff.

Chad S. of Las Vegas was first across the line. Chad writes:

I follow the desert dingos on my iPhone. The class 11s are the true racers of desert racing. From start to finish, it’s a challenge. I have a 5-1600 and am trying to build a class 1/2 1600 for my kids. Congrats on the 7000 mark.

Chad knows I’m flattery operated, but a 1/2 1600 for the kids is awesome five ways.

The hero card goes in the mail tonight.

One week to the Hawthorne 250.

Skid, Roxanne and I hit the premiere of “Dezert People 8” at Coach’s bar in Campbell. Skid arrived on his sweet ride.

A good time was had by all. We bought the video, grabbed a couple of posters and Sweet Tea Vodka was handing out t-shirts and frisbees. There are premieres going on all over the place for this film. Many are fundraisers for Fast-Aid.

Thank you, Curt, for pulling this together.

Sometime this morning, probably while I was trying to un-jam the photocopier, we topped 7,000 downloads of the Desert Dingo Racing iPhone, iPad and Android mobile apps. I find this mind-boggling.

So here’s what I’m going to do. For the first 20 people who email me a photo of themselves holding their mobile device showing the DDR app, I’ll snail mail you one of our hero cards. I know this probably requires you to have a camera or you’ll do something creative with a mirror, but what I’m looking for is your face and your mobile device showing the app.

I’d like to publish some of your photos, so you probably don’t want to be in a witness protection program or anything like that.

So take that photo and email it to me at jim@desertdingo.com . I’d like to get your first name, city and country you’re in, and maybe a quickie explanation on why on earth you’re following us.

If your photo is particularly creative or funny, I might toss in one of our coveted DDR stickers.

And, lastly, I’ll publish everyone’s first name, city and country in a future blog post and everyone’s name will be carried in the car at our next race.

How’s that?

P.S. If you’re the one person in Durban, South Africa or Horizonte, Brazil, who follows us, and you send in a photo, you’re a guaranteed winner.

Remember those two rusty rims that Larry Zimmerman donated to us? Now they look like this:

A few minutes with the grinder and another few coats of Rustoleum gloss white and they are race ready. Thanks again, Larry. We really appreciate it. (FYI, Larry drives the bright yellow Baja bug around Felton, so wave if you spot him).

We’ve got a few things to do to get 1107 prepped for the Hawthorne 250. Replace the pedal assembly, weld in a new exhaust pipe to the spark arrestor, install a new brake fluid reservoir (we sort of melted the old one while doing some welding), and figure out where to reposition the shovel and the jack handle.

Richard’s doing the majority of the work. I’m going to be wire-brushing three rims, two of which which were donated to us by Larry Zimmerman, who’s got some great VWs in his barn, as you might recall. He dropped a couple off at the office. Thank you Larry.

So we’ve had a pit radio, exactly the same as what’s in 1107. But it’s been worthless because we’ve never been able to use it to talk to whomever is in the car. That is until I got schooled on how radios work, when, couple of weeks ago, I asked my mentor, 90-year-old Frank Adamson, “How do radios work?”

Frank, who’s led such an amazing life I can’t even talk about it, said “I’m taking this on as a project.”  This was Saturday. Sunday he calls and says “I have an antenna for you.” So I go over and he hands me something that looks like a pointer you use in a PowerPoint presentation.

“Don’t you have something bigger, like a satellite dish?” Thankfully, Frank appreciates me for what’s on the inside.

End result, he hands me this antenna, which Skid immediate recognizes as something that will allow us to communicate with race teams on other planets – an ANLI AL-800. He procures a mast from Ham Radio Shack and cable that is coated with five years of playa dust and we have all the makings of a long distance UHF radio.

Richard delivers an 80-lb. base, which we can drive the support truck on to, and we are ready to broadcast.

Last night I put it all together and had Richard put his helmet on across town at his place (where 1107 is now). End result – I can hear him, but he can’t hear me. I’m confident we’ll get it sorted out in time for the Hawthorne 250 Labor Day weekend.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by last night’s tragedy at the MDR California 200.

We’ve made a small donation to Fast Aid, which was established to help racers and fans in situations like this. If you have anything you can spare, it will be greatly appreciated.

Here’s the link.

No oil spewing all over everything = “success”

At the Fallon 250 desert night race, where we finished last because I’m an idiot, we had a problem with an oil leak that required us to add a quart of oil every 40 mile loop of the course. In a regular car, that’s reason enough to pull the car over and call the mechanic, but this is racing and you just put more oil in until you finish the race or the big red light comes on and stays on. We opted for the former.

Anyway, so now it’s two weeks later and we got under the car and figured out that the majority of the leak came from a failed valve cover gasket. Richard and Scott swapped it out for a new one and then Crusty (seen in the above video) followed out with swapping out our yellow rubber oil lines with braided steel ones. Much stronger and they look cooler, too.

Probably tomorrow I’ll get the new radio mast from Skid and we’ll see what kind of range we can get between the car and the pit radio.

Three weeks to the Hawthorne 250.

This is a screen capture from the Bower Media coverage of the Fallon 250. Many thanks to Two Larrys & A Megan Racing for bringing this to my attention.

Here’s their video of the race. The good stuff happens 41 seconds in:

I pulled everything out of 1107 Sunday and started cataloging what needs to be done to prep for the Hawthorne 250. Main things are fixing the oil leak (probably a big deal), replacing the brake fluid reservoir (it leaked everywhere and we had very little brake pressure), checking the wiring on our transponder and installing a replacement spare (Scott and I really taco’d one on the last lap of the Fallon 250 night race).

A handful of photos here.