Working out some bank heist planning in order to pay for the next rally car… I need to go fast.

through registration… through tech… car prepped… ready to GO FAST… first or last bitch.

We missed Desert Storm this year (and some much needed points) and have had the itch to get sideways ever since our little fiasco in Nevada last year. This weekend Team TM/FM will be defending their Group 2 title win last year this weekend at the High Desert Trails rally. The car seems to be in good shape with some help from a few friends–we’d love to show you exactly what was done, but it’s a bit top secret at this time. Let’s just say “bullet-proof” is a good term… more to come.

Sooooo….. it’s been a month, but after not finishing another rally, I felt robbed of any motivation to write something here.  With that being said, we will be racing in a week.  This definitely provides a bit of motivation as the anticipation grows for when we get to go fast again.

Prescott Rally was a great time, but it was tough.  We left Rally HQ pretty late… so late that after driving straight through the night, we only got about 45 minutes of sleep before having to get up at 6:00am to go run recce.  Steve and I have been trying to get into the habit of utilizing recce to its full potential, so after a very tiring 7 HOURS of recce, we headed straight to registration and tech inspection.  Parc expose and drivers meetings were both mandatory, leaving us with only 30 minutes for a quick nap back at the hotel.  We were seeded to start in the 11th position out of 22 cars, and I was sitting in the driver seat of the car during parc expose, falling asleep.

The stages were amazing and really fun to drive.  On stages 1 & 2 we were fastest in our class and 7th overall, just seconds behind the six-figure Subarus!  Pulling into service, I was complaining that the newly rebuilt coilovers felt like shit.  We quickly discovered that threads in the housings were gone, along with the locknuts that used to hold the strut rods in place.  While we got to work on the car, we were reseeded to the 7th position, which means we lost 4 minutes of our already short, 35 minute service.  With some positive reinforcement from our Streetwise Motorsports service neighbor Doug Nagy, we ripped the front suspension out and started digging for new nuts to hold the rods in place.  With much urgency, we struggled to compress the struts enough to get the nuts on and stuff the suspension back under the car.  We left service late, and had to make up a LOT of time during the 20 mile transit… in that haste, we arrived into time control, and accepted a 1 minute interval instead of the 2 minutes we were supposed to get.  With a two minute interval, it was bad, but being only 1 minute behind an AWD car on a night with no wind, was nearly impossible.  We had some slow times on stages 3 & 4 which put us back at 10th overall, and second in our class for the first day.  We then spent the night pulling the suspension back out to reinforce it, and doing a full reprep of the car.

Steve and I don’t have a lot of time in the car, so we tend to ramp our speed up gradually.  After getting the required minimum amount of sleep, we finally had food in our stomachs and were ready to go fast.  Stage 5 was 21 miles of very fast flowing roads turning into a steep hill climb of switchback after switchback on the edge of some gnarly cliff drop exposure.  We did 1st in our class and 5th overall!  We were reseeded to 5th position in the start order as we turned around to run that same stage in the reverse direction, as Stage 6.  Steve and I took off into the switchbacks with a lot of confidence… only this time they were downhill.  We had a lot of oh shit moments… and one very close call in a left 3 high up on a cliff.  Just as we were starting to get into the faster roads, we had a blow out.  Steve informed me we were about half way through… 10 miles to go.  I don’t know if I made the decision on my own, or if it was a group effort, but we decided to run the flat.  I think I kinda knew what was going to happen, but adrenaline is a crazy drug.  2 miles later we had lost the tire, wheel, brakes, and spindle… and were now driving at speed with 3 wheels and no brakes.  For 8 miles, Steve and I laughed our asses off while I tried to whip the car through corners without brakes.  I think I remember people rushing to get out of the way as we barreled through time control with a large hole in our gas tank, dragging the rear end of the car on the ground.  This obviously meant we were done.  But it was all worth it.

So here we are again, a week from the next race and the car is no where near being ready.  A few late nights and we will be on our way to Vegas.  RALLY!

Steve and I had a long day of recce today… this is the first rally we’ve done without organizer supplied stage notes, so writing our own notes from scratch was a learning experience, but we are pretty confident after doing two passes on each stage.

Gorman Ridge is four stages that are run in both directions, some two or three times… totaling about 60 stage miles.  There are some gnarly, rough, twisty stages in this rally… one of them has about ten switchbacks with flat corners and straight cliff drops… no berms to stop us going over this time!

We had a flat on the trailer driving out here last night, and a flat with my Jeep during recce… hopefully this means that we won’t have any issues on stage tomorrow.

Tech inspection starts… now… time to get over there.  Keep an eye on http://rallydata.com for LIVE updates during the rally tomorrow!

It’s 2:00am… Steve and I just got done with ANOTHER long night working on the car… but we have some good news…

…let’s recap first though… In the last 3 months, we have:

• Won 2nd place overall in Group 2 regionals at Oregon Trail Rally.
• Won 4th place overall in National 2WD at Oregon Trail Rally.
• Won novice driver/co-driver of the event at Oregon Trail Rally.
• THEN… destroyed a motor.
• Missed North Nevada Rally.
• Pulled a VW motor and tranny for the first time.
• Missed Idaho Rally.
• Dropped in a junkyard long block.
• Struggled to finally get it running.
• Dropped the tranny AGAIN to fix a clutch issue.

…ANNNND we finally had everything back together!  Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the thing to run under load.

Now that we are caught up;  In order to make Gorman Ridge Rally, we need to have the car tested, prepped, packed and on the road this Thursday.  We agreed that today would be our last effort to try and make the race this weekend.  It feels like the bad is starting to overshadow the good… not funny, not fun.

Tonight, after FINALLY resolving an issue with a Motronic sensor, we got the thing running GOOD!  And after dialing in the motor, I GOT A TASTE… OHHHHHHHhhhhh I forgot what it feels like to get sideways in a little front wheel drive car… incomparable!!  My motivation has been replenished.

When this dirty piece of shit got done belching out clouds of black smoke from crap that had built up while sitting outside for over a year, it slowly started to remember how to breathe.  I revved the piss out of this thing… 7,000rpm in 5th gear for quite awhile!  It tops out MUCH faster than the old “race built” motor and feels like it pulls way harder on both the bottom and top end.  It does seem to be lacking mid range torque, which makes it really hard to fight the brakes up front, so I think there is going to be a lot of mid corner downshifting if we get on stage this weekend.  Hopefully, we will get to find out!

After getting back from our test drive, we discovered the engine compartment and underside of the car covered in about a half quart of gear oil.  It looks like the final drive seal on the passenger side of the transmission is leaking.  This is a show stopper.  According to the manual, these seals can be replaced without dropping the tranny.  Wednesday (now today) is our last day to try and get this leak taken care of.  The plan is to see if our friend Charlie @ Charlie’s Garage in Ramona can take care of us… neither of us want to touch this car again until we have helmets and fire suits on.  We are about 75% go for this weekend.  I’m tired.