2011 Activities:
December 06, 2011
We haven't had a chance to get the car
out for a test/tune session yet; work has kept
me away from home for weeks on end lately...... We did get our new Bosch
distributor
installed and adjusted - the timing is now rock steady as it should be.
Hopefully, it'll
stay that way for more than just a race or two! We are planning on getting
the car out
in the next few weeks for a shakedown; we need to get some miles on the engine
and
make sure our new brake setup works like we expect..... It's just a matter
of getting
our schedules to "line - up" so we are both available at the same time!
November 08, 2011
We have been searching for a good new
"BOSCH" distributor for our engine since it was
originally built. BOSCH "009" distributors are the original equipment
"gold standard" but
unfortunately BOSCH abandoned the VW distributor market several years ago,
making new
units very difficult to find. The inferior Chinese copies available
new today do not hold up
under race conditions - they quickly wear out and allow the timing to fluctuate.
We have
been forced to replace our Chinese distributors every couple of races to ensure
that our
ignition system remains stable. We finally found a "new, old stock" BOSCH
distributor on
EBay yesterday and look forward to solving this on-going maintenance headache!
September 21, 2011
The car is 100% race ready again,
awaiting an opportunity for some test/tune time to
verify everything still works as it should. We spent hours re-designing
and modifying
our brake set up, we were never really happy with how the original installation
performed.
Then, at last year's Baja 1000, our rear brakes quit working at around the 750
mile point.
We bled the brakes to see if we could get them back, no luck. Once home,
we replaced
every part of the system from the master cylinder up to the rear calipers.
We rebuilt the
calipers and checked to be sure there weren't any "geometry" issues but could
never get
them working correctly again (must have pressure bled them 20 times)....
We finally
installed a new set of rear calipers; now the brakes work great with a nice firm
"pedal".
Wish I could figure out what happened to the original set of calipers, they look
fine!
August 11, 2011
We have our engine back from being
overhauled by Jason at VW Paradise; we expect to have
it re-installed today or tomorrow. We did a major overhaul on the engine,
it had several hard
races on it (including the Baja 1000) and was due for a complete rebuild.
The rest of the car
is ready to race, now we just need to decide on our race schedule. We're
hoping to race the
Baja 250, '500 and '1000 next year so we're trying to get our finances set-up to
support that....
July 16, 2011
The car is all cleaned up and inspected,
we found no evidence of damage from our last race. We
have the engine out of the car being freshened, once it's back to us we'll be
ready to go again.
May 16, 2011
Just back from the SNORE SoCal 250 race
in Plaster City where we finished in 3rd place after
a long and hard fought battle for first. We had a good race, but had a
flat tire during the second
lap that ultimately cost us the win. We finished just 10 minutes behind
first place and just over
1 minute behind 2nd place - a single flat tire was the deciding factor.
That's the nature of desert
racing - especially when we're up against a very competitive field of cars and
drivers! The car
ran and handled perfectly all day long and appears to have weathered the race
without any
obvious damage. Now begins the clean-up/inspection/repair process once
again......
April 28, 2011
We have resolved all the outstanding
issues with the car and it is 100% ready to go race at the
SNORE SoCal 250 next month. We await the release of the course map so that
we can start
pre-running!
April 11, 2011
We are working the few issues identified
at our last "test/tune" session and are now entered in
next month's SNORE "SoCal 250" race in Plaster City. We think this should
be a fun race that's
easy to support for a change......
March 18, 2011
We traveled to Plaster City this morning
for our normal post prep. "test/tune" session. We
identified a couple of issues that we need to attend to before our next race -
either the Baja 500
in early June or the "Record Off Road" Ojos Negros to San Felipe race in late
June. We had
hoped to race the Mint 400 next weekend and had entered; unfortunately, I
learned just today
that my work schedule has changed, making the Mint a race for another year......
Looking at
the entry list, we felt that we had a very good chance of winning our class
- we are disappointed
to say the least.
March 7, 2011
Prepping the car has taken longer than
anticipated but it's finally in "race-ready" condition.
We've spent a lot of time evaluating the problems we experienced at the 2010
Baja 1000 and
implementing solutions for each. We believe that the changes we've made
will ensure that we
don't see the same problems again! We had been prepping the car in
anticipation of racing
this years' San Felipe 250 but the lack of entries in our class has forced us to
change plans.
For now, we expect our next race to be sometime in late Spring or early Summer.
January 15, 2011
We discovered some damage to our front
"beam" that requires us to replace it. The
damage was the result of our failed torsion adjuster at the Baja 1000 lowering
our
front "ride height" enough to hit every rock on the course...... We have a
new beam
on hand and will be modifying it slightly to ensure that we don't have any more
torsion
adjuster failures in the future! We now have the car stripped down to the
bare structure
and expect to begin making repairs in the next day or so. Hopefully, we'll
be ready for
this years' San Felipe 250 race in March.
January 11, 2011
The engine and transaxle are out of the
car and at VW Paradise and Power Box
for freshening. While they're out, we're stripping the car down to the
frame to
inspect/repair the basic structure.