Mexican 1000 off road rally (NORRA1000)

[welldigger00]

OLD BAJA 1000 MEXICAN RALLY (AKA NORRA 1000)

The NORRA 1000 is an off road rally race that our team, Trinity Motorsports, raced this past April. This is the third year that we’ve raced, and I am going to tell you our story from my point of view along the way. This will be a long post, and I’ll try to make sense as best I can, as I am not an educated man.

I was included in last years race, as a co driver/navigator and I did a whole write up on it, it was titled “While you dudes were at desert storm, I was co driving a trophy truck in Mexico”. I don’t know how to do a link that you can click on, hopefully the moderators can assist me with that. It is a fairly long post as well, but it has some great content, and pictures. I am going to give a description off what the race is about that will be a redundancy if you read, or have read my story last year.

Basically, the race is a five day event, starting in Ensenada, and finishing in San Jose Del Cabo.each day is comprised of a mixture of special stages, the actual full speed dirt racing, and transit stages, that go from each special stage to the next, that are on a highway, that you’re only allowed to travel at 60 MPH, that will go through each town,or each finish line. The total miles are like 1200.
We raced two cars in two different classes. We have a trophy truck, that is like a hybrid of a buggy and standard late model trophy truck.....basically, a truggy. It is a mid engine, meaning the engine is directly behind the cockpit. The transmission is between the driver and co driver, and then the output goes to a v-drive between the driver and co drivers feet, that sends the power back to a full size solid axle. The class we entered this in was “Evolution unlimited truck”. The second car we ran is a 2018 Can Am turbo max. The four door job. This car was entered in the “Evolution modified turbo utv”.

A little history, the previous year had a fair amount of drama. We installed a new engine in the TT before the race. The engine was built by Morruzzi race engines, a So cal engine builder that built this LS7 deal that was pretty potent, it made like 650 horse. As a result of a trans issue destroying the thrust bearing, the motor was destroyed in our trophy truck and the race was over, 150mi in. The can am, on the other hand, was pretty close to stock, and it did awesome. It made it all the way to Cabo.

In preparation for this years event, we had a new engine built by Jeff Ginter Racing Engines. This one was a whole new complete deal. The block was destroyed on the Morruzzi, as a result of a window put in the block from having a connecting rod deciding to not contribute anymore. This new block is a tall deck Dart, shaft rocker, dry sump, solid lifter, gigantic roller cam deal. Super spicy. It made over 700 horse, at 7000 RPM and 137 MPH wheel speed on the dyno. This meant a fair amount of re configuring the intake and exhaust setup in the car itself. The car only had 150 miles on it from last prep, for the last race, so it didn’t require a full tear down.

The Can Am on the other hand, needed a bunch of work. It got all new suspension, trailing arms, hubs, exhaust, tune, auxiliary fuel tank, and a pretty comprehensive inspection.

We are not professional racers, or race car prep people by trade. All of us have day jobs, and we’ve been working of the cars after work, weekends, that kind of thing. The team is owned by two business partners, Matt and Dave, they own a company called Trinity construction, hence the “Trinity Motorsports”. We have no sponsors other than each one of us putting in the time, and the Trinity boys ponying up the cash. As we got closer to the race, we were definitely way behind schedule, and we had like one week before the race, and we finally made it out to the desert for testing. I’ve got a lot more to post up, but this is enough for now. Hopefully some of you’ll enjoy this, just like last year, I am writing this more so I can look back and remember all the stories and shenanigans that went on. Thanks for reading...


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[Bpracing1127]

Look forward to the rest of the story

 

[HNL2LHC]

Thanks for the story!! Looking forward to the next segment. By the way here is the link from last year!!! https://www.riverdavesplace.com/for...-in-baja-here’s-my-story.183185/#post-2958034

 

[Joe mama]

Thanks for the read..

 

[welldigger00]

It was the Wednesday a week before departure to Mexico that we finally made it out to our super top secret testing facility that our buddy owns out in Johnson Valley

.

The totally ripped bald dude is Pig pen. That’s my cousin checking out his pose.
Testing was a major disaster. The Trophy Truck was having issues, popping, and nosing over under load, and not sounding right. Fortunately this time, i stopped the car once it started acting strange. However, the car was twenty miles out in Johnson valley, behind the hammers, and needed a trailer ride to get out. The can am was working well, other than a gremlin in the fuel system, as a result of adding a auxiliary fuel tank, the computer did not like having two different fuel pumps and switches to select between the two on the fly. We brought both cars back to the shop, and starting digging in to the TT at 10pm.

We cut the oil filter open, and the pleats were loaded with metal. We were totally devastated. Our race was over before it begun. We decided that the Can Am needed further computer tuning, or valving magic to make the system work, so we decided that time was running out, we’d just run it on the big rear tank. The TT on the other hand, we had no plan, 7 days before the race.
Jeff Olsen and Matt begin taking the motor out that night.
The next morning, our pal, and team member Jeff, who is a member on the boards here, that goes by Aloha Jeff, rallied the troops, and said he was going to find an engine or another can am, something to race, a hail Mary shot!. Now mind you, we were exactly one week from leaving for Ensenada. It didn’t look feasible. Matt, and our other buddy, and team member Jeff “Fat Kid” Olsen finished pulling the the engine out and got it down to Jeff Ginter to see how bad it was, this was on Thursday. They tore it down, saw that because we shut it down early enough, all we lost was two rod bearings and subsequently those two rods. . Crank, block and everything else were good. Unfortunately, they were custom carillo rods. The rods were going to be 8 weeks out. So Aloha got ahold of our buddy Dave Cole and found an engine elsewhere, it was a somewhat mild callies ls7 deal, standard deck. We already reconfigured the car for tall deck.

We went foreword on the new engine, and Matt picked it up on Friday afternoon as a bare block and rotating assembly. He got it down to Ginters early Saturday morning, and worked till midnight with Jeff Ginter putting together a new package. If it wasn't for Jeff Ginter having a rare std deck gear drive we would not have made it. I worked all day Saturday cleaning out dry sump tanks, coolers, lines, filter housings,etc. I picked it up Sunday (Easter morning)morning at Matt’s house, and my kid Evan, also a team member, went to work putting it in the car 5 days before we leave. Matt showed up a little late after getting some sleep, and by the end of the night, we had the thing fairly buttoned up. She fired right up Tuesday night and Ginter pulled some strings, and got us a dyno appointment for Wednesday. That gave us one day to test.

The following day after that was Friday, the day we leave for the race. Fat kid, and his co driver Kevin “Eh-Hole” Kabatoff, drove it around the neighborhood Thursday night. That was it. That was our test. We felt that we had a handle on what was the cause of the engine failure, and we made corrections. It was not as a result of Ginters assembly, it was a result of a mistake made by our team. I’m gonna leave it at that.


Friday morning we all met up and loaded our gear and hit the road. We had to make a stop in Temecula to get our issues figured out with one of our radios in the chase truck, and made for the border. We were anticipating a long wait like last year, but this time we were through the border in 20 minutes! We showed up in Ensenada with time to roll through tech. There was minimal drama with tech not allowing our race number stickers, and we had to find new ones that were black numbers on a white background.

Matt had Evan drive the TT back to Estero, which blew his mind. Imagine being 18 years old and ripping a trophy truck through the streets on ensenada.
Saturday morning we just kind of chilled out, did A couple of things on 2025, nothing major just checking fluids and tightening bolts here and there. The 444 crew was installing a belt temp gauge, that became a major asset to us. We thought we were as ready as it gets

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[025]

Nice write up!

 

[welldigger00]

Thanks pal. Feel free to chime in on any anecdotes along the way. After all, this was your circus...


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[welldigger00]

Race day one:

For the most part, we did not do a huge amount of partying the night before, everybody woke up feeling pretty good, and we were all milling around out at the cars, doing some final checks. No one noticed a clamp missing on an axle boot on the driver front outside. Now mind you these are super bad ass after market axles, with bad ass cv boots. The car was going to be leaving soon. We attempted to put a new clamp on the boot, to no avail. Both race cars needed to head to the line, and both chase trucks needed to head out to the first transit section for fueling. We ended up safety wiring the boot on, because our super awesome clamps would not fit correctly. This was an indicator that we were having problems with the axles, that we did not pick up on yet. Both cars headed to the start, and the chase trucks were off to the end of the first transit stage, at the top of el Diablo. The 2025 trophy truck was piloted by Jeff “Fat kid” Olsen, and his co dog, Kevin “Eh Hole” Kabatof. The All Fours can am was Piloted By David “Pig Pen, aka Uncle Roman, aka “Mom” Walters, and my cousin Brian “The Bull” aka cuz Hopkins.

Two things happened at this point. The trophy truck was bamboozled by some bastidos out on the race course. They set tires across the road, and directed our guys down the wrong road. They went several miles before realizing this, and they missed three VCP’s. Virtual check points. We were expecting them to come in fairly early kind of in their order that they all started. Several cars were coming in, and our car was not in yet. They were too far out to get on the radio. We were able to get comms with 444 chase and they were able to relay to us that they heard 2025 race on the radio. Now, keep in mind we were on pins and needles because we blew up at the bottom of el Diablo last year, and we had zero test time on the new engine that we installed a week earlier. We were expecting the worst. When we finally got comms on 2025 race, and they broadcasted that they were doing fine, things started looking up. They came in, we dumped fuel, fat kid told his story about the re route, and we were stoked! Next came All Fours. We did a visual on the axles, sure enough, torn cv boot. But the safety wire repair held! Torn right in the middle. We said, screw it, head for the finish, and we’ll throw a new axle in at San Felipe.

Both cars rolled in to San Felipe, went through the finish line, and headed to the air B and B that we had lined up. When we were able to get the TT parked and cooled down, I went to work on checking into the engine. It was on break in engine oil, and we needed to dump that, and change the filter. I pulled the filter out, and cut it open to see if we were fucked, or not. I had a crowd around me as I was cutting it open, and not a word was said. Very little material in the filter, and mostly aluminum from piston break in. Matt was looking at me from across the court yard, and I looked up and gave him a thumbs up. You could see the weight of the world come off his shoulders! The All Fours gang was fast at work changing out axles up front, and at this point they were confident that their fix would work, and that was that.

The air B and B was pretty nice inside that gates. It had a pool, and cool courtyard that worked out nicely to park the cars, and work on them. The neighborhood was not so nice. It reminded me of something you’d see in the hood. Broken down shit everywhere, it was slightly sketchy for sure.

We went to town, had some grub, came back to the house, and smashed a few pops and reveled in the success of day one. I’m getting ready for bed, and Matt asks me if I want to take day two in the TT, and have My son Evan co drive. I was super stoked, and shitting bricks at the same time. I’ve had little time at speed in the car, and Evan had zero time actual co driving with lead nav. What the hell, the car seems good, day two had about half and half transit to special stage, it was a good was to get confident that the car was gonna make it, and we would see if the boy barfs his guts out navigating like his old man did last year.


We wake up day two and the chase teams head to Bay Of La, and the race cars head to the start. We were fairly nervous, and didn’t know what all to expect, other that it was going to be an unbelievable experience. We get off the line fairly late because of our penalties from the day before, and also how far our of route we were. There we a grip of side by sides, buggies, vintage iron, you name it ahead of us, and we’ve got a fire breathing dragon underneath us line Jon snow was riding In game of thrones. It took my boy and I time to adjust to said dragon, and things clicked.

Here’s a few pics of my boy and I on the balcony in San Felipe, and a few of us next to the blackbird. Another of A-hola Jeff, in the red suit, and Brian, Jim, and the peckhamster all together.

Evan was a little off on his bearings at first, I was learning how the car like to turn, but after a hundred miles, we were on, Locked in, and screaming! We were picking cars off at a furious pace. At the end of day two, we had made up 27 positions, and went mid buck twenties in the lake bed which had to be at least ten miles across,on the second special towards bay of la, and the car wanted more! We rolled through the finish, and were handed warm beers, and got out of the car to a crowd of little kids wanting stickers and pictures with us. All fours came in a little while later, and just as day one, they had torn cv boots again! We know that day three is a monster, and we need to give the cars a good looking over, so we head to our hotel.


Now when I say hotel, i mean shit hole hotel. It seams to be the trend in Mexico to start building something, get it mostly finished, then just walk away leaving rebar sticking out and raw concrete exposed. But nothing near like the dumpster we stayed in last year. We had two rooms, two beds each. We spent the evening putting new air filters in the newly named 2025 trophy truck, the “SR71 BLACK BIRD” and a few other minor repairs. Once again, the All fours gang was working on cv boots, and Fat kid was preparing a delicious rib eye dinner for all of us. The wind picked up big time like it always does in Bay Of La, and Fat Kid and Eh hole slept in the trailer.

Here’s a few pics of the finish in Bay, and a few of the shithole. Dig the coors light and cowboy boots kid!

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[One2go]

That's cool,That motor looks bad ass for the truck.

 

[025]

That looks like a tecate light and cowboy boots.

 

[intense]

Nice job keep it going

 

[One2go]

Oops was way behind,my bad

 

[X Hoser]

Nice write up John. From what I have been told the "unfinished" buildings with rebar poking up from the last stories is their way to avoid paying property taxes. (Unfinished)? Not sure how true that is ?? I really need to make this race with you all one day. I'll be in Estero Thursday through Monday for the LOORS race. I'll stop by Matt's the next time I'm up the hill.

 

[welldigger00]

Rick, with all your experience in Baja, you’d be an asset to the team! You just gotta tell mom and dad (Dave and Matt) you wanna go next time. All it will require on your behalf is hundreds of hours of free labor[emoji6]


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[welldigger00]

NORRA 2019
Race day three.

Day three is a monster. It is basically the Baja 500. It leaves Bay of La, and heads to Loreto. It has a huge first special stage, like 180 miles, super fast, then a 50 mile transit, and a 200 plus mile second special. And it’s choppy, rocky, ups downs, steep switch backs, it goes from coast to coast. Our leader, and team owner, and brains behind the whole operation, Matt, aka the” mayor”, aka “Dad”, aka “mr peanut”, is taking my Kid Evan and gonna run the whole day. My boy is a little nervous, he doesn’t want to let his uncle down. Pig and cuz are gonna run the All Fours by them selves as well.

Just like every other day, the race cars head for the start, and the chase cars head for their rendezvous to pit. It is several hours drive in the chase cars to get to where you need to go on time. This point In the race is when the carnage starts

Our buddy Dave Cole in his ultra four car hit a concrete abutment at 70 mph plus with the drivers side front tire, and stopped dead in its tracks, and flopped over on his side. It sheared the king pin off the top of the knuckle, tore off the lower inner C, and tore the lower link off the Chassis, they were uninjured. Needless to say, they were sore, and their car was trashed. Our other buddy racing, Brian Crisp and Jim Beal, were running the 421 can am, in the evolution stock turbo class, ripped a rear tire, hub, and the works off of there car in the first stage as well.

We planned to fill up both cars in San Ignacio, because the second special is more than 200 miles. The blackbird comes in, and boy my boy and his uncle Matt are in great spirits! The car is running awesome, they are picking dudes off like crazy, and they go tearing ass off down the road to the next special.

All Fours race comes in, and both front axles are fucked off bad. We removed the axles, our last set, and just installed the outer stubs, and we put arrowhead drinking bottle caps in the holes on the diff where the axle would normally go into and seal. Front diff destroyed. All fours is in two wheel drive from here on out. The All Fours race heads down to second special to continue on.

We make the coast in Santa Rosalía, and we get into cell range, and because we haven’t had it for two days, the texts start bouncing in. All fours dead in the water. 421 also dead in the water. It’s pretty funny because we are getting texts from our friends and family at home that our cars our down. Cuz has a sat phone, and I get a message that there down. They lost a rear axle. I was able to raise them, and they say their gonna try to fix it. We tell All Fours chase that they’re down 50 miles into the second special, and all,Fours chase decides to head back to the beginning of the special. It made more sense to drag a dead car out the top fifty miles, that 150 out the bottom.

As we drive towards Loreto, We’ve got no comms with either All Fours race, or All Fours Chase. Then we get a message that their gonna try and peg leg it out on one axle, it's getting late. We get a relay to all Fours chase with weather man that All Fours Race decides to push towards Loreto. We find out that the black bird makes it into Loreto, and Dad And Evan are grabbing a beer on the malecon.


We’re starting to sweat because we can’t get ahold of All Fours race because the aerial comms relay known as weatherman, who is a flying Cb antenna, had to land the plane for the night, and you could see on the transponders that our car was not moving. All fours chase was headed back down again at this point. Cuz and pig were in for a long night. They are stuck at the top of a switch back rocky ass loose dirt hill, and are stuck. No one will help tow them, because they are either crippled, or getting stuck themselves. Finally someone helps them over the top, and they come limping in at like 11:30pm. Both crews worked into the late night to get another set of spare stock axle in that night to get ready for the next day, still 2wd but determined to finish. 450mi to go to the finish line!

Cuz and Pig weren’t the only ones in for a late night. We got word that Dave Coles chase team retrieved the race car out of bay of la, and they drove all the way back to San Felipe to pick up parts from someone who drove parts from home to meet them with, then they turned around, drove all the way to a town called Viscaino, found a weld shop, spent all that next day welding the car back together, and they were at the start on day five. They missed day Fours race entirely, that put them out of contention, but they got to finish! Like 40 hours no sleep! That’s why they call him “Colezilla”.

We left a hub and rotor for the 421 car at our hotel in Bay, and they spent day Fours race putting their car together as well. They also made day five.


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[welldigger00]

Race day four


Race day four started out in Loreto and had a short special stage, some transit, another 60 mile or so special, another short transit, then like 200 or so miles of special stage, finishing in La Paz. The Black bird crews split this up to Eh Hole and myself driving the first portion, And then Fat kid and Eh hole driving the second portion. A-hole-a Jeff, and hamster were at the helm of All Fours.

Here is a few pics of the morning I woke up in Loreto. We stayed in a golf resort that was off the chain.

The blackbird was idling a little rough in the morning, and we all dismissed it as possibly the wonderful Pemex fuel we were blending race gas with at this point, and off we went to the starting line.

Here’s a few of the starting line in Loreto

We left Loreto and had some city to drive through at 25 MPH, and then the first special opens up in a huge wash. As I dip into the wash to jump into Mach three, the car noses over hard and is backfiring like crazy. Shit, something was not right. It was behaving exactly like it did when the engine let go in Johnson valley. I was freaking out. It was making almost sixty pounds of oil pressure off idle this time though, good. Everything else was normal. I stopped the car and got out, checked all the connections like crank position sensor, cam position sensor, wiggled connectors that kind of thing. The spark plug wires looked ok, and I tried to start it up again, still missing.

I Radioed chase and they were on their way. So I went underneath again, and figured maybe a plug, or plug wire failed. I grabbed each one and felt them pop on and off, untill I got to number five and seven. They crunched in my hand. Fortunately we were close enough to the start that there was a road crossing that we could get the All Fours chase crew to with the enclosed trailer full of tools and parts.

We made two new wires, installed them, and off we went, an hour or more down. We came onto the race course right ahead of sweep, and I hit the afterburners. Just in time! We would have been screwed on total time! We met up for drivers swap at the transit and the car was happy, All Fours was still up and going, an All Fours chase was able to borrow another axle from a friend, just in case, at the meeting point for fuel stop.

The next special stage was fairly uneventful, with the exception of the Blackbird making a questionable pass of the All Fours car. As the story goes, the blackbird came up on the All Fours at speed. Fat kid and Eh-hole were making up time, and passing cars at a furious pace, as a result of my breakdown. They were experiencing a phenomenon that we all experienced such as people ignoring the push to pass sign on their Stella. It gets frustrating after awhile. The details get a bit fuzzy as to if the bird threw out the push to pass, and if all fours received the signal, and ignored it, or didn’t get it, or they got it and acknowledged it, and the blackbird was impatient, or whatever. The net result was as the blackbird got around all fours, the cut back in fairly close in front of the car, and hammered hard on the gas, and shotgun blasted the All Fours crew in the face with gravel.

This made the pilot of the All Fours furious, and he tried to catch up to the bird in the transit, because he was going to nerf the black bird hard in retribution. To no avail. The black bird cannot be caught up to when in full afterburner mode. At this point, the All Fours car was named the F14 Tomcat. Not as fast as the bird, but a fighter none the less.

Both cars and chase crews met up in La Paz. We stayed in this bitchen villa, that had a big pool in the middle courtyard. We were able to get a few repairs done fairly early, and get a little dinner, and get some rest for our last day.



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[025]

Hahaha, the story of the questionable pass was pretty funny.

 

[Jed-O]

Great story so far John! Glad to see you posting again Matt!

 

[welldigger00]

Hahaha, the story of the questionable pass was pretty funny.

In your recollection, does my synopsis seem accurate?


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[LargeOrangeFont]

Awesome story!!!

 

[025]

In your recollection, does my synopsis seem accurate?


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Spot on

 

[welldigger00]

NORRA 2019
race day five

Once again I am given an opera unity to drive with my boy. Day five is like 160 miles total with two 60 mile specials.
This is us at the start in la Paz.

This is a pic of my boy and Simon(aka trophy burro) who has a huge following on Instagram

We start way back in the pack again. Norra needs to rethink their starting order program. They place each car based upon total times of each car from the day before. Placing a trophy truck behind some of the vintage iron classes is a way to get a lot of people pissed off. Although, it is seriously a kick in the pants to pass so many people in a day, but also a little gay considering it’s like a 60’s era bronco that you’re passing it a late model full blown race car.

The first special was super silty, poor visibility, and the kid calling the turns was on point.

I jumped out, Matt jumped in, and He and my Boy finished the race.

All fours came in a little later, and that was that. Both cars at the finish, and time to party! All of our families flew in to Cabo, and met us at the Welks resort, which I highly recommend. The prices are very reasonable for the quality of rooms you get.

Here’s the a pick of the Blackbird, the Tom cat, and Colezilla at the welks.

Here’s a pic of the entire Trinity Motorsports family

Here’s a few action shots

View attachment 759272 View attachment 759274

This last one is the Blackbird, and her mother and father.

Thanks for following along, I plan on doing the same next year!

 

[025]

Hahaha. Like the mother and father part

 

[alohajeff]

As the driver of the #444 at the time of the "Day 4 Incident" I'd like to set the record straight on the Blackbird / Tomcat pass.

The # 444 was running in clean air and sort of limping along at 60-ish MPH on a pretty smooth section of farm road. We were slowing down as we were approaching a small Village with a posted 25 mph zone. The #2025 was being piloted by Maverick (Fat Kid) and navigated by Goose (Eh-Hole). As we slowed the #2025 came ripping around us on my side (left) and blasted the shit out of us with dirt and rock. So much so that I put my head down and we came to a very complete stop. As the dust was clearing I immediately saw red because I knew it was a dick move to have passed us how they did. I thought the #2025 did it on purpose because the pass was so herky-jerky. The road was easily 40' wide and they could have cleared us without the big slash to the right which would have resulted in a much safer pass. With clear air opening up on one side of the road we got moving again and I immediately tried to give the # 2025 a piece of my mind via the 2-way radio but the damn helmet air hose / comm cables were connected up backwards so my cussin' and swearin' was not heard by our teammates. I wasn't sure if they were ignoring me or not so I decided to say FAWK the Village speed limit and raced through the village (to the delight of the kids standing alongside their school fence) to catch up to them. And catch them I did. I was tail-grabbing their ass on the pavement section (60mph limit) and just as I was about to punt the back of the #2025 I determined the #444 was too low and nerfing wasn't possible. Damn it! So I drove along side the #2025 and did more cussin' and swearin' and then passed right by them. My co-driver and I were discussing revenge when I had another ah-ha moment... I have to pull over and let these A$$HOLE$ go back by us on the highway section or we are going to eat another face full of rock/dirt when they pass us on the next dirt section. Damn it again!

It wasn't until we made it back to our hotel that afternoon that Fat Kid was made aware that his pass wasn't appreciated by either occupant of the #444. He apologized and I said if he ever did something like that again I'd kick him square in the nuts. Then we immediately hugged it out and drank beers. Incident over.

Aloha

 

[welldigger00]

I knew it went something like that!


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