The GadZooks Racing 1717 story...
Brand new car. It fired for the first time at 1PM on Wednesday afternoon, driven into the trailer and headed out to Barstow for a quick test with a 2 page list of items that we still needed to deal with before the race. I arrived Thurs afternoon and they had the car at the Vegas 4 Wheel Parts store working on the remaining items. I had our new Rigid LED light bar and the custom amber and blue safety lights they made up for us. There was some apprehension from the crew when I turned on the light and it was amber and I had to do a lot of reassuring that it would be OK. I took a lot of crap for that one that night. Out at the pits later that night I finished the wiring while the guys worked on the rest of the details in a miserable cold dust storm. Friday we managed to get everything together and finish installing all the safety gear so we could pass tech. We stopped at some point on Fremont St to clean the dust from the car and put on all of our stickers. Passed tech with no issues and we were back to the pits. Double checked as much as we could and we were ready to go.
Race morning started good. Eric Heiden and co-dawg Bryan Regan were making good time until rock met wheel and rock won. No problem, change the tire and away they go. A short time later a rock managed to climb up a tire and roll itself between the tire and shock and it tore one of the bypass tubes off one of our front shocks. They continued at a slowed pace, just trying to get back to main pit. Then we hear from one of the remote pits that the car came through with the volt meter pegged at 20volts. Our spare regulator somehow managed to be in a pit box that was left back at the shop. I hauled butt down to the nearest auto parts (about 35 miles away) and grabbed a new regulator and raced the car back to the main pit. They turned on everything electrical in the car to get the voltage down but it was still running at 16v. We just hoped the computer would survive. Car pulled in at the end of the first lap and we got to work installing a new front shock and replacing the regulator. We also found a cracked front housing so we threw a weld on that. They were back up and running shortly and off onto lap 2.
Somewhere around mm25, the output shaft on the steering box decided that it had enough and committed suicide. Car down in a no-chase area. Tried to get permission to take a quad into the area from Pit A, but SNORE said no way. The guys on the 1708 team were gracious enough to let us strap our borrowed replacement (from the 1730 team) box into the back of their car and they delivered it to our broken car. New box installed, and they were up and running again. Just short of Pit D, they reported fuel pressure problems and within sight of the pit the car died with zero fuel pressure. Quick diagnosis found fuel cell foam blocking the pickup tube. Cleaned out the tube and filter and they were up and running again. They finally made it back to main pit after a brutal 7 1/2 hour lap.
I hop in to co-drive while Josh gets into the driver's seat. As I buckle in, Eric comes over and says the amber light is awesome, when it gets dusty just kill all the white lights and use only the amber. He loved it. By this time, it is nearly 8:30. Can we pull off 2 laps in less than 6 hours? We were going to try. We went out to find the most brutal ugly chewed up mess of a course that we had ever seen. We pushed hard, but we just couldn't make any good time. It was so chewed up and the holes so big that we just couldn't get on top of it. The amber light was awesome though. There were pockets of standing dust in the air and we ran the amber alone for probably a quarter of the lap. It was great to be able to run up to the back of someone and not be totally blinded by the dust. With a totally flawless lap, we were pumped to go back out for another, ready to tackle that 100 mile mess again. But just before we pulled into main pit, we got the word that no new laps would be started. We said a few choice profanities as we knew our day and our 21 race finishing streak were over. We ended the race running though - we didn't need to get towed back in out of the desert. We went down fighting. We simply ran out of time. Our race day ended at shortly after midnight.
I have to add that the new Goodyear MTR Kevlar is an amazing tire. This was our first flat in 5 races, and this one was due to destroying a wheel.
Thanks go out to all of our sponsors - 4 Wheel Parts, Goodyear Tires, Bilstein, Rubicon Express, Rigid Enterprises, L&J Landscape. And a big thanks to our team and their families.
Brand new car. It fired for the first time at 1PM on Wednesday afternoon, driven into the trailer and headed out to Barstow for a quick test with a 2 page list of items that we still needed to deal with before the race. I arrived Thurs afternoon and they had the car at the Vegas 4 Wheel Parts store working on the remaining items. I had our new Rigid LED light bar and the custom amber and blue safety lights they made up for us. There was some apprehension from the crew when I turned on the light and it was amber and I had to do a lot of reassuring that it would be OK. I took a lot of crap for that one that night. Out at the pits later that night I finished the wiring while the guys worked on the rest of the details in a miserable cold dust storm. Friday we managed to get everything together and finish installing all the safety gear so we could pass tech. We stopped at some point on Fremont St to clean the dust from the car and put on all of our stickers. Passed tech with no issues and we were back to the pits. Double checked as much as we could and we were ready to go.
Race morning started good. Eric Heiden and co-dawg Bryan Regan were making good time until rock met wheel and rock won. No problem, change the tire and away they go. A short time later a rock managed to climb up a tire and roll itself between the tire and shock and it tore one of the bypass tubes off one of our front shocks. They continued at a slowed pace, just trying to get back to main pit. Then we hear from one of the remote pits that the car came through with the volt meter pegged at 20volts. Our spare regulator somehow managed to be in a pit box that was left back at the shop. I hauled butt down to the nearest auto parts (about 35 miles away) and grabbed a new regulator and raced the car back to the main pit. They turned on everything electrical in the car to get the voltage down but it was still running at 16v. We just hoped the computer would survive. Car pulled in at the end of the first lap and we got to work installing a new front shock and replacing the regulator. We also found a cracked front housing so we threw a weld on that. They were back up and running shortly and off onto lap 2.
Somewhere around mm25, the output shaft on the steering box decided that it had enough and committed suicide. Car down in a no-chase area. Tried to get permission to take a quad into the area from Pit A, but SNORE said no way. The guys on the 1708 team were gracious enough to let us strap our borrowed replacement (from the 1730 team) box into the back of their car and they delivered it to our broken car. New box installed, and they were up and running again. Just short of Pit D, they reported fuel pressure problems and within sight of the pit the car died with zero fuel pressure. Quick diagnosis found fuel cell foam blocking the pickup tube. Cleaned out the tube and filter and they were up and running again. They finally made it back to main pit after a brutal 7 1/2 hour lap.
I hop in to co-drive while Josh gets into the driver's seat. As I buckle in, Eric comes over and says the amber light is awesome, when it gets dusty just kill all the white lights and use only the amber. He loved it. By this time, it is nearly 8:30. Can we pull off 2 laps in less than 6 hours? We were going to try. We went out to find the most brutal ugly chewed up mess of a course that we had ever seen. We pushed hard, but we just couldn't make any good time. It was so chewed up and the holes so big that we just couldn't get on top of it. The amber light was awesome though. There were pockets of standing dust in the air and we ran the amber alone for probably a quarter of the lap. It was great to be able to run up to the back of someone and not be totally blinded by the dust. With a totally flawless lap, we were pumped to go back out for another, ready to tackle that 100 mile mess again. But just before we pulled into main pit, we got the word that no new laps would be started. We said a few choice profanities as we knew our day and our 21 race finishing streak were over. We ended the race running though - we didn't need to get towed back in out of the desert. We went down fighting. We simply ran out of time. Our race day ended at shortly after midnight.
I have to add that the new Goodyear MTR Kevlar is an amazing tire. This was our first flat in 5 races, and this one was due to destroying a wheel.
Thanks go out to all of our sponsors - 4 Wheel Parts, Goodyear Tires, Bilstein, Rubicon Express, Rigid Enterprises, L&J Landscape. And a big thanks to our team and their families.
