Project Baja: Progress

It has been a busy couple months since our last update and well, the Baja 1000 is this week and 11/11/11 was yesterday.  So lets talk about Class 11 for the Baja 1000!

The world of racing is really a pretty small place.  It amazes me every time think about it who I have met because of racing.  If you choose to play the guitar, it doesn’t matter what level you achieve, it doesn’t mean that you are going to meet your favorite guitarist; but in racing you very well may end up next to your favorite driver at an event at almost any level of racing; because of that the community is just incredible.

When we announced that we bought a car and were beginning to build our Class 11 Baja 1000 car, we never expected the support that we got!  From the beginning the community opened its arms.  We have received emails, tweets, phone calls and more from people welcoming us to desert racing and to class 11. Drivers, teams and more, from all classes of desert racing have opened up their knowledge, their own build logs and have offered any assistance that they can provide.  We’ve been given a free donor car and we were even invited to go visit a team in California earlier this fall, to check out their own build and even their logistics bible… which may be the most important part!  So to all of you, thanks for the support!  People make all the difference.  Getting to meet more people is reason enough to do this project.

So what has been going on in the Project Baja garage?  Well since the last entry… a lot!  That car has been taken down to the bare bones.  Our race car has gone through a lot of changes including a ton of bondo removal, replacing the floor that was rotted out and making a lot of suspension modifications.  Class 11 is very much a stock bug and the things you are allowed to do, are all modifications rather than replacements.  So instead of other classes where you buy a set of coil-overs and throw them on there, Class 11 sticks to the torsion bars. You can only cut and rotate the suspension in order to raise up the car; all stock parts, just modified.

We are nearly finished with the majority of the body and chassis work fortunately and we will soon be moving onto our cage.  That will be a real turning point for us as it is exactly when this really starts to look like a race car!  It is amazing how much rust we have been able to chase around on this car, but it is getting much more manageable recently.  Definitely visit our site to check out more details from our build.

We did take a moment a month ago to go visit the Desert Dingos in California.  That visit by itself helped out tremendously with our cage planning.  They have been incredibly forthcoming with info and after a ton of photos we have been able to make our way through the planning process.

(Ok, seriously, tell me that thing isn’t cool)

Other teams have been sharing their own builds with us and I have to say, it really helps a lot to see everyone’s individual ideas, so we can take our own plans and work them into existing plans that work.

We have a few videos coming up pretty soon and we will be sure to share them here on ML@S as soon as they are ready.  In the meantime check out our site for any updates, our Facebook page to like us and support those who support us including Rock Barbers and Nectar Labs.