1808 Race Report

At 6am on Wednesday the 16th, with my parents in tow we headed for the Terrible's 250 in prim. As I left the house a funny feeling rolled through my body like I was forgetting something, I wouldn't figure that one out until much later.
The adventure in spending money didn't take long to start. Within 75 miles from home I started seeing people honking at me and pointing, turns out it wasn't my cool truck they were pointing at it was one of the tires on my trailer that was flat. By the time I found a safe place to pull off on I-580 all that was left was two side walls that barely protected the lip of the rim and tire dust up the side of my freshly waxed, soon to be trashed, race truck.

By this time (7am) Wendy (my wife) was busy back home on the computer finding out (a) exactly where we were and (b) where the closest tire shop was. Bingo we found a Big O not one mile from the exit ramp I pulled off on, bongo they don't open till 8:00. By 8:30 and $400 less dollars in the race budget We were on the road again with 4 fresh tires and Mc D's in our belly's.

Ten hours later we all arrived in Primm, check in was smooth, rooms were clean, we set up a meeting place and I headed for the shower. Once I got out of the shower I had a little surprise. I had no cloths. I packed everything but my cloths. There was my race suit, nomex sox, gloves, helmet etc but no fresh underwear. Drrrrr. Lucky me there is a fashion outlet mall in my hotel so off to GAP I went. Sweet I found a clearance rack where everything was marked down to regular retail prices, $50 more race budget money gone for socks, undies and shorts. Good thing Wendy's scheduled to arrive on Friday, sucked for her because she had twice the luggage to fly with now.

In my new duds I headed out to find Aaron and Jim with Dixon Bro's Racing. I was looking forward to showing Aaron my fancy new roll cage I had built in the last three weeks. Aaron is a master fabricator and an amazing race truck builder. Upon finding them and seeing his sweet 7100 Ford I realized I had a lot to learn about lay out and design. As usual what I think I know hurts me (like my seat hight in relation to one of my top bars, safe but a dinger on off camber right-turn woops I would soon find out). Aaron did a quick inspection of my truck and pointed out about 30 things I didn't need and shouldn't have in my race truck, like say..... the dash with a stereo in it ( I was still planning on keeping this street legal, WAS). It was a great learning experience for me because working on my own truck gave me perspective on how much knowledge people like Aaron have and how generous they are with that information. So thanks Aaron for everything. If you think something is cool and some
one that has raced before just looks at you blankly..... tear whatever it is out!

Woke up on Thursday to the alarm at 6am. Walked down the hall and knocked on my Dad's door and off we went to air up the shocks and do the final prep for the Pre run. Some time the night before my co driver left San Diego but arrived too late for the pre run so I needed to find another co-driver. One of the members of the Dixon crew is Ed Ramirez , he and his brother Phil have been racing with the Dixons for over 10 years and Ed had agreed to ride with me for the day. We put our helmets on and plugged the air and intercom in and took off. Ed was giving me pointers on what lines to pick and how to brake into corners on dirt etc. when we heard a bit of a sound coming from the rear. We stopped and pulled over to take a look. I had kept the stock drive shaft in which in the 94 Toyota 4x4's are a split shaft with a carrier bearing in the middle, well that bearing was no where to be seen which meant if we kept driving the bearing race would eventually cut the shaft in half. Out came the
tools and we took the drive shaft out, bummer was that we could not get the bolts out of the flange that connected to the third member so we slid the shaft off the splines, stuffed rocks into the U-joint to keep it from flopping around then wrapped that ghetto fix with electrical tape.

This is when we noticed something bad, fluid coming from the front. We popped the hood pins and found that the battery box had broken free and the whole works had acted like a wrecking ball under the hood. We grabbed a ratchet strap and fixed the battery in place, taped up the severed electrical wires, spliced the important ones together, found someone to pull- start us and we limped back to the main pit. In that time I had placed a call to my co-driver (Micha (hater) Newton) and informed him what was happening.

By the time we arrived back at the main Hater (Micah) had shown up and had found most of the parts we would need to fix the truck. Without shutting the truck down we loaded onto the trailer and headed for Henderson. There we found Pep Boys for the Alternator and Battery. Napa for the 40' of 1guage wire to re- locate the battery to the bed. The coolest guys at Nevada House of Hose who's motto is " Happiness is a good hose job" who fixed the power steering. Finally to aDAMs (thats how it's spelt) drive line where they dropped everything and not only fixed the drive shaft but modified a stronger Ford Carrier bearing to work for racing. All said and done we were loaded up and fully operational by 5pm and $375. Pretty sweet. Getting back to the pit with the truck we (Aaron and Phil) discovered that the crush sleeve in the third member was messed up so they crawled under and fixed that, then tuned my shocks, I just watched trying to learn what the heck they were doing.

Tech inspection was uneventful other than the double D rings I needed for my shoulder belts and the sun burn.

Start time 4:45am Saturday the 19th. Early. Having learned a lot about what tools I didn't have the day before the truck was now well equipped. Another Rookie mistake, two Starbucks coffee's before the start. Stupid with out a pee kit. Micah and I just sat around talking smack about.... well everything in our new helmets through our new intercom, listening to radio jibber jabber through our new radio sitting in our new seats with pressure building in my ever expanding bladder.

Sweet we have the first start position. We start.Trucks running great, suspension is working great, engine is strong and we were flying. Mile 2 GPS dies. Oh well, we call in for a course map. The first 38 miles we averaged 54 miles per hour according to IRC (the GPS tracking / safety device mandatory in all BITD race vehicles) the truck was great. Slowly the steering was growing heavier but I thought it was just because of the heat. Turns out he mount we had made for the reservoir was not strong enough so it flopped around until all the lines were empty. Oh well keep flying at about 40 mph getting bigger biceps by the bump, its all good. Rolling up to pit 1 Ed Ramirez hands us a course map and there goes our competition. We give chase.

Inspired by a Rod Hall Hummer branding a class 1800 number Micah and I found new speed in the Toy right up until we noticed the hood had a little extra movement in it and the hood pins seemed to be rattling freely in there little holes, "F' it", "if she goes, she goes". We make the pass on some of the gnarliest woops ever. The TC Suspension was eating them up. We come to a sharp right turn and bam there goes the hood accept one pin wouldn't let go, we make our second stop, attempt to strap it down and start the Hummer chase all over again.

Passing the start/finish line they watered the crap out of the area so it was this big slick muddy section, we radio up that we may have a flat. It was so slick that my rear end was all over the place. We pull into the Main pit to fuel up and we got to see my gorgeous wife, frantic Mom and determined-to-get-gas-in-truck Father. It was awesome. The pit crew next to us was adding power steering fluid, cleaning the windshield, zip-tying fenders etc. all at an awesome pace. Off we go again.

Micah calling out mile markers, Andrea (Phil and Ed's Mom) saying copy, me hanging onto the now stiff steering wheel again. It was so awesome, flying. sometimes literally. We nailed a rock with the front passenger which in turn ripped the wheel from my hand and broke the pinky on my left hand, that didn't help the no power steering but I noticed that when I was in the groove, not much matters. It was incredible.

Around mile 127 the truck just died. Intake. five times this happened. Despite my balking Micah finally used about a 3/4 roll of duct tape on the entire assembly which fixed it. We lost an hour but we were back to flying around the course again calling out mile markers. By this time Aaron and Phil had just lapped us which never feels good but it was cool to see his truck working so well.

We got to the finish line. Turns out everyone was betting on which lap we were going to be out of the race. No faith I tell ya. Actually I was quite surprised my self to not just finish but to place second. Once getting out of the truck we saw that we had lost one of the bed sides and broke many other (fixable) things on the truck. I felt so proud that we finished it. My Dad ran up and hugged me, mom was close behind him, then Wendy, all the Dixon guys were there. It was awesome. I couldn't think of a better weekend other than my wedding and honeymoon. I cant wait to get my truck in the shop and cut the front off and install the new Tundra clip and cage, cut the back off and install the Total Chaos 4-links and get out and race again.

Tires-$400, replacement parts $375, gas $570, hotel $185, adventure of a lifetime with my family........ Priceless.

Will I do it again? Definitely