Dirty Duck Racing: Weekend at Craig's Shop

The Magic Rabbit is now in Sacramento, at Craig Smith's shop. Here is a pic of Craig Smith and myself discussing, well, probably everything under the sun! From circle track racing to Craig's latest finds at last week's garage sale. Craig generously is helping us out with the mounting of the drivers seat and the use of his marvelous shop.

Here are The Boys (brothers Hugo and Edgar) starting to apply our number 83 decal to the hood of the car. Looks fantastic!

Next up was putting the decal on the door. They had loads of work getting the decal over the body trim piece and the creases in the door.

Then my favorite decal, our Dirty Duck Racing decal. The Boys made it in two pieces and overlaid them on top of each other. See the red and white "register monuments" (printing lingo I picked up around The Press), that was used to get the second layer on perfectly.

Here is the second layer going on.

And voila, the finished product, Dirty Duck Racing in lights! or make that in decal. What a great decal, thanks Tom for the Dirty Duck logo, thanks Tedders for finding and adding the Racing script and checkered flag, and thanks to The Boys for putting it into vinyl and onto the Magic Rabbit. So Cool!

After The Boys finished their decal work, Craig got busy with the racing seat support system. In this picture Craig is welding in the rear support plate. You can see his work to reinforce the front cross member to something capable of support some significant beef in the drivers seat!

Craig is a true craftsman, beautiful work and just what the Magic Rabbit needed. We have a fully adjustable seat mounting system.

I was working on a "cold" air intake system. Cold is very relative for Willows in August. Goal was to bring relatively cool air from the front of the car directly into the air filter box and into the intake/fuel injection system with a little positive pressure. We didn't want the engine to be sucking super hot air that was coming off the 200 degree radiator. So I had some fun fabricating an air intake system coming from the drivers side headlight bucket.

Using that same FULL RACE dryer duct materials as we will use for the brake cooling system, I was able to bring fresh air direct from the front of the car to the air intake box. First pic is me checking the layout, had to make a couple of hard bends to get to the intake box opening.

Here is the completed system, very custom and should do the job. Combination of headlight bucket, 4 inch to 3 inch dryer duct reducer, 3 inch dryer duct and a 3 inch aluminum elbow with generous application of Gorilla tape and some red zip ties for flare!

While Craig was making the seat mounting system, we worked on the Kirkey "Big Boy" seat. Well, it turns out that this seat should be call Kirkey "Humongous Boy", as it was even too wide for this Big Boy! Here is Darrell and myself working on the seat to add cutouts for the harness to come through the back of the seat and be close to our hips to hold us in tight. No sliding around while we put the Magic Rabbit into a four wheel drift!

Smoothing out the edges of the openings for the seat harness.

The Darrell got busy fabricating the hoses for the oil cooler. We have decided to add an oil cooler to help our poor little engine contend with 16 hours of full throttle racing in 100 degree temps at Thunderhill Raceway. Oil cool cam off the Mexico Porsche and fits at an angle next to the radiator. You can see it in the pic, the black thing with the yellow plug on top, that's the oil cooler, a mini radiator for the oil. Darrell, well just Darrell's hands, can be seen working on the two hoses that bring the oil to and from the oil cooler from the engine. We are now ready for the heat! Oh yes, and not the black plastic shield on the right side of the pic, that will direct more fresh air through the oil cooler to make everything work as designed! Should keep our oil temp right at 180 degrees all day long!

Paul worked on our graphics, to make the Magic Rabbit look like a true race car. Suppliers decals. First is a closeup of the new Dunlop tires and those great looking wheels that Paul blasted and repainted, next to the decal for "Horse Power by Gerolamy" If Gerolamy really knew how little horsepower we have, maybe around 90 hp, he would ask that his sticker not make a showing on the Magic Rabbit!