There is something exciting that we're going to try this season! Check this out: 

http://www.ustream.tv/broadcaster/10671568


After some discussion with Jimmy and my own, personal experience with doing live-stream broadcasting, we've decided that we're going to get a UStream account and stream our team activities. Of course, we'll just have the happenings in the shop for the time-being but we also hope to take this capability to the track throughout the season so our fans can watch us live as we get the cars ready to race. USAC has streaming of the events themselves available and we'll get this worked out with them so that way we don't step on any toes with copyright issues.

What we may end up doing is broadcasting our activities in the pits as we run hot laps, qualifying and general preparations throughout the day. Once it's time to line the cars up and go racing, we'll defer to USAC so as not to over-lap with their live timing and scoring which will be available through www.usacracing.com.

We may try to keep the audio on at our events. However, we may require some feedback (polite, please!) that if the sound quality is no good with other cars running, we can turn off the audio and just stream the video portion of the broadcast. We 

So, as we make an attempt to enter the 21st Century and do something bold and exciting, we invite our fans and sponsors along for the ride. We hope that you'll enjoy it and maybe, it will add something to your experience.

In the meantime, I only made it to the shop a couple of times this week as I had other commitments to address. I hope to get out there at least three days this week so I can try to keep up with Jimmy!

Mindy from Brownsburg Signs has been spending about as much time with our cars as we have and we appreciate the way that they're looking. She was able to get us some black vinyl wrap with which to cover the dirt car and it is really starting to look good:

This is how some of the panels look right now and Jimmy's been cutting and heat-shrinking vinyl all week. Very soon, we're going to have a complete dirt car. Note that there is a new spud in the frame. Jimmy drilled that out and our welder, Danny, came out last weekend and among other spots on the car, was able to weld that in there and give us a new mounting point for the rocker arm.

We're also in the process of putting the pavement car all together as the decals have been finished on that. We hope to do a little photo shoot with Jimmy and the cars before the middle of April and we'll be sure to post pictures as soon as we can.

In the meantime, we'll be back at it this week and we'll have another update out to you soon!


- Gar

We have two cars and they're getting us excited to get to the track!

Last weekend, Eddie made it down to pick up our engine to take it to the shop in Chicago to begin the re-work process for the new ethanol conversion. We're expecting to have it back by the end of the month and as soon as we get it, we'll be able to drop it into the car and have a complete sled. Jimmy and I are rarin' to see this on the track.

We're also getting excited because some of the decals are beginning to be placed on the car and it looks tons better than it did last year. It will be brighter and easier to see at the track and that will be huge for fans, sponsors and Jimmy's spotter! It's going to get noticed and maybe, talked about... Here's a sneak-peak of what the new decals look like:

C'mon, now; we can't show more than that or no one will want to come out and see us. Safe to say, there is still more to go on the car and it will look good when it's ready. I'd like to take a minute and send a HUGE "Thank you" out to Mindy from Brownsburg Signs on behalf of the team! She has really been working hard in-between her other projects to help us get the car ready and she's done a great job getting these decals ready for us.

While that's been going on, Jimmy has been working hard, getting the dirt car ready too. What started out as nothing more than a chassis in the middle of February has become a recognizable piece of racing equipment.

After assessing what the team had in the way of available chassis and parts over the winter, Jimmy stripped down the two dirt chassis that we had and has done a great job himself of putting together a good, solid dirt car. He took the best frame that was on-hand, has fabricated some new parts and along with a little help from yours truly, stripped down a fuel tank to make it ready for the eventual placement on the car.

That was an event in itself as we discovered the joys of using aircraft paint stripper (which states, rather clearly on the back of the can, "Not to be used on airplanes"... ummm, okay). Jimmy was prepared to bang away at the tank with a rubber mallet and use the power-washer when one of our shop neighbors offered us this stuff. Jimmy and I had a good time, enjoying the end-of-February 70 degree afternoon, watching this stuff corrode the paint.

In the course of about 5 and a half hours, Jimmy and I were able to scrape an entire fuel tank and prepare it for its new paint scheme:

The remover at work:

While it was corroding the paint, we thought that it sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies!

The end result:

Now, we have a tank ready to be painted. Jimmy has decided that flat black will be the look for the dirt car. We'll have the same decals on it as we have on the pavement car. We're thinking that the decals will stand out very well once we get them applied to the black surface. It should be a really good-looking race car.

Here is some of the progress that has been made on the dirt car to this point:

At this point, the floor pan has been painted flat black and I'll have a picture of that coming up. The yellow nose piece will be painted black and the white visor piece will also be black. Here's what the floor pan looks like, now:

The entire car will have this look. Jimmy's painted the inside of all of the body panels and the outside will be vinyl-wrapped which will stand up to the beating on the dirt tracks better than paint. It's been good to see the black panels around the shop as they're giving us the feeling of real progress being made.

Jimmy has also spent some time getting some spots ready to have new pop-screw tabs or Zeus-fastener tabs mounted on the frame of the car. While we've been fitting panels and pieces together from two different cars to make one, there have been some adjustments to make along the way. We've got the welder scheduled to come to the shop on Saturday of this week and get all of the tabs welded on to the frame. That way, come Monday, we'll be ready to start affixing things to the frame, permanently. Here is some of the prep work that has gone into preparing the frame:

It may have been necessary to grind off an existing tab and move it an inch or two. After grinding off a tab, one must then grind down the paint to the bare metal in order to make a good weld. If any of the welder's tip gets into the paint, it will ruin the whole process. So, enough space must be made around the area to ensure a good weld. Afterward, we'll spray paint it and it will look like new. A bit of Machine Shop 101 for those of us who never knew how some of this worked.

It's been fun to be in the shop, helping Jimmy and seeing what all goes into preparing a car for the season. For anyone who ever thought that cars just show up at the track and drivers simply get in them and race, they do not know the hours and hours that goes into making sure these cars are ready long before the car sees the race track.

We'll keep the updates coming as interesting progress is made. We hope to get some good pictures of the cars together after they've been put together, painted and decaled. We'll post them when we do. That's still a little while away but it's something to look forward to.


- Gar

There are cars taking shape!

Things are exciting, now, as we have a pavement car ready to go sans engine and fuel tank. It's waiting on placement of graphics  and we expect it to look really sharp this season. Jimmy's been working closely with a contact from a local graphics shop and has come up with some great ideas on a way to make the car stand out and look especially good for the night races. We can't wait to get the vinyl on the car and get some pictures on here. Oh, the suspense is killing us!

We wanted to offer a good compare-and-contrast on the nose of the pavement car. This is what we had configured last year:

This is what it looks like, now:

It's easy to see just how much sleeker the car looks and no doubt, how much more aerodynamic it will be on the race track during the season. We have a couple of configurations that we can run based on track conditions that we didn't have last year. It's nice to be in a position to have options to make ourselves that much more competitive. Jimmy's got a great feeling about how the car will race with these changes made to the front end.

The dirt car is also coming along nicely. We hope to get some pictures posted of that in the next couple of weeks as Jimmy continues to make the necessary modifications to that chassis and gets it ready for the Indiana State Fairgrounds run in May.

Keep checking back as we continue with our weekly updates. In the coming weeks we'll have, not only, the updates about the dirt car but we'll be getting engine modifications done for the ethanol conversion, running them on the dyno and finally, dropping them into the frame and have rolling chassis soon. Things are getting exciting and we're looking forward to a great season!


-Gar

Well, holy cow! We've got a race car, sitting here. For all intents-and-purposes, it's a race car, anyway.

Jimmy's been able to get the cockpit finished up sans seat and all we have left to do is install a fuel tank and drop an engine in and we should be good-to-go!

We're hoping to get an engine out to the engine guys within the next couple of weeks to get the ethanol conversion done. After USAC dropped the bombshell on the teams over the winter, there's been a bit of a scramble to get the engines converted to run ethanol. Everyone's in the same boat as we press ahead on this. If we want to run, this is what we do.

The cockpit on the pavement car looks good. Jimmy was able to shorten some hoses and lines and that should drop us a bit of weight as we won't need to carry the extra weight of liquid for brakes and coolant. Jimmy was also able to mount the oil tank on the inside of the frame to get it out of the slipstream. We haven't mounted the gas tank yet, so we may have to move it yet again but we're hopeful that we may be able to keep it where it is.

Here's the cockpit as it looks, currently:

I have to admit that we're pretty impressed with the way the nose of the car came out after Jimmy was able to glass-coat and refinish it. He primed it earlier in the week and we're just waiting to coordinate with the painter to get it done.

The radiator sits at a much better angle, now and after my first metal-working project, we've got plenty of room for coolant lines and  hope that the additional air will keep this thing running nice-and-cool during the season.


Now, it's time to start working on a dirt car. As i sit here typing this in the shop, Jimmy's busy, working on the bell-housing for the steering and we'll be lifting the rear-end into the frame in a bit.

Another good piece of news has been the graphics that we've got advance copies of to see. These should be good-looking cars this year as there's a more-modern look to the numbers and there are some high-lighted borders added to the numbers to make them stand out better at the track. We'll add pictures when they get on the car.


So as we can continue to make progress while it snows outside, we're excited that things are moving along. However, given the summer temps that we had last year, we'll take the snow while we work on the cars!


- Gar

After an eventful off-season that found me traveling the world on behalf of the United States military, it's time to get back to all things racing and preparing cars and personnel for the upcoming season.

Since the team last raced at Toledo in October, Jimmy and Geoff were busy, building a loft in the Brownsburg facility to create a more ergonomically-friendly work environment. They did a fantastic job of constructing an upstairs level and organizing the things in the shop. Many kudos to them for the hard work they put in.

Jimmy was also able to secure some of the machine-shop items that he had at his former place in Missouri. This will make us a bit more independent when it comes to fabricating parts for the race cars. While we greatly appreciated the assistance and guidance that was provided last year, we felt that we were wearing out our welcome with a few local folks and did not want to spend this year, continuing to beg and borrow. It also helped to save time and resources as we don't have to run all over Central Indiana to get something done!

We've also found out that Geoff may be getting close to having a sprint car commitment that may preclude him from being as involved this season as he was last year. We'll look forward to having Geoff's expertise around when we can get him and we wish him a few wins in the upcoming sprint car season!

The pavement car has begun to take shape and is beginning to look more and more like a race car and less and less like a bare frame. Jimmy had some glass-coating done to the nose piece and has been able to get the radiator to sit at a better angle to allow more air flow into it. We hope that this will alleviate the over-heating issues that we faced at IRP last summer.

I assisted Jimmy with re-attaching the drive shaft to the rear end of the car. After some serious weight-lifting and shimmying, we were able to get everything reconnected smoothly. I don't know about Jimmy but I'm still sore after that episode!

There were also areas that Jimmy was able to tweak and outright remove to save some weight and give us a further advantage over what we had run with last year. It's amazing how the simple removal of some length of hose or using less fasteners here-and-there can really make a significant difference. 


In the coming weeks, we expect to get one or two of the engines out for the ethanol upgrade. If things go as planned, we should be able to have them out before the end of this month and back by the beginning of April. Our first race is scheduled for the 19th of May and that will give us plenty of time to drop it into the frame and even give it a test run if need-be.

So, as winter continues to amble along, so do we. Jimmy and I are feeling very good about the prospects for the upcoming season and we'd like to think that it will go much better than what we had last year. Here's the upcoming season schedule:

2012 Silver Crown schedule


Right now, we're focusing on the Indiana races in May and as things progress, we'll start taking a serious look at what the rest of the year may hold.


- Gar