Well, although it was a dark night, at least it was not a stormy night! The little Manxter performed in almost a flawless fashion at the Baja 500.

Rafael Navarro started the race and brought the car down the beach side of the Pacific. He handed off the car to John BajaMaster Castillo, who brought the car through the dreaded Southern loop. John reported no problems, with the exception of the difficulty of passing the unwashed unfortunates on the side and in the middle of the course. John reported that his section was the worst that he has seen in 20 years of Baja racing. Tons of silt, churned up rocks and water, water everywhere! John passed the car off to Deano Watkins, who brought the car to Dave Dietrich (yours truly) at BFG3 at Jamau.

The entertainment of the day was listening to the BFG crew try to pronounce Jamau"! It sort of came out as Ham-ooo! Sort of like listening to cattle. The BFG guys at Ham-ooo were awsome! We watched their professionalism all evening. We can't say enough about the great guys of BFG. Deano reported a pesky shifter, which was adjusted by the BFG crew in about a minute and a half. I took off with the car and immediately noted electrical gremlins. The radio was making a banshee wail and making all kinds of racket that reverberated in your ears. Having prerun the area just days before, I
expected a quick 4th gear run to Bruce Meyers and the checkered flag.

However, the wail of the radio was accompanied by dimming LightForce lights. I cut the lights to the 3 100 watt lights, but they continued to dim. At about mile 337 the lights dimmed to candle light and the little car ran out of spark. We were on a long down hill section and gave up the ghost in a hole at the bottom of the course. The battery was so flat that the radio would not transmit. Gene Levell and myself bailed out of the vehicle ASAP and ran back up the course to stop traffic from piling into the little car sitting in the hole. When the race traffic subsided, we noted the boldness of the local coyotes. We could see their eyes with our flash lights circling about 100 feet away from us. We then widened our horizons by gathering stray bits of Manzinita, pucker bush and exploded fence material for a fire next to the car. I tried the radio again after we were there for about 3 hours or so. I was able to raise Johnnie Golas, Deano and Paco. I informed them that we were terminally anchored to our position, were safely out of the car and
were enjoying our camp fire. Someone picked up about one-half of the message and began reporting that the car was on fire, but the drivers were safely out of the car! Only in Baja! Deano arrived at our position as the sun was coming up. His tow rope, although much appreciated, was about 6 feet in length. The 90 Km tow into Ensenada was white knuckle to say the least. We arrived at El Joker around 8:00 a.m. Unfortunately, we were not able to deliver a well deserved finish for Bruce Meyers and our friends at LightForce, San Felipe Off-Road, El Poquito Mas and Fox Shox. However, this will just serve to improve us for the assault on the Baja 1000 in November!

The Power Box transmission built for us by Rick St. John was awsome, having performed perfectly. Likewise, the new engine built for us by "Mean Dean" Moore performed perfectly, generating tons of power and not leaking a drop of oil. Photos should be available shortly.

Regards, Dave

Check out the Meyers Manx at www.MeyersManx.com