Sand Blast Post Rally debrief and adventures.

OK Boys sounds like yet another fun event came off, congratulations to especially the organsing committee: Chair of the Rally Andrew Frick; Deputy Organizer Sarah Frick; the ever tireless man of a thousand ideas and general nice guy NASA Rally Sport Championship Director Anders Green,
and to our own Rally Anarchista Volunteer Coordinator Matt Smith...and all the voluteers. Seems like a whole buncha Volvo Turbobrickers showed up to help..Sounds like some good cross-pollination

OK where's the gear-change by gear-change reports?

52 cars? ?? cars? sounds good!

Stories? What happened to Gustavo Garridos? Nice second place and then POOF!
How did James Bass go--was the car finally in proper spec with a turbo like it should have been all along?
Where was Micheal Hooper?

Dann Finn and Simon Wright: how were things?


Everybody happy? What's next?

Oh Are we gong to get some helmet cam action from somebody hitting a stump???

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Andrew Frick did an awesome job. Anders had fun competing. Matt looks fit and says he is too much into bikes now to play with cars.

Garridos had engine mount issues I believe. Bass looked good if not particularly sprightly in the sand. I got to watch him from the side of the road after we broke our diff on stage 5.

Hooper was staying home having a baby. Look for him at STPR.

Good weekend. Good competition. Lots of fun.

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"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne

"Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2016 02:51PM by wvonkessler.

Another frustrating event for us.

At Sandblast last year, the clutch was going and we barely finished. At BRS, we had that fixed, but a whole list of other mechanical issues popped up, and we barely finished. This year, Paul thought he had everything worked out and we were all set to finally get a good run in. He's still never really had a chance to push the car hard - we've always been fighting with mechanical problems. Well, we had a pretty good first stage - nothing spectacular but Paul started feeling pretty comfortable and we caught the car in front of us. The second stage was cancelled and we transited it, but the thirst stage started off really well. Paul was finally pushing a little and we were catching the car in front of us again when suddenly the car lost power and started popping and backfiring. The A/F gauge showed it was running super lean and the temps started climbing fast so we pulled over. After a few minutes it cooled back down so we pulled out and continued, but we still didn't have much power.

We limped out way through SS4 and made it back to service. That was a short service (refuel only) so we didn't get a chance to investigate much. About halfway through stage 5, it was dumping so much fumes into the car that both our eyes were watering and neither of us could see. We cracked the windows and opened all the vents and got enough fresh air to continue, but I told Paul I wasn't going to continue if we didn't get it fixed. Back in service we found that our exhaust had come completely loose after the turbo and it was just hanging. We got that fixed so the car wouldn't asphyxiate us any more but never did figure out why it was running like crap.

On 6 even with no power we caught the car in front of us, and then two turns later the temps spiked again and we had to slow and let the car we'd just passed go back in front. After that the power loss got worse and we barely made it through 7 and back to town.

It's really frustrating. The stupid car keeps breaking in new and different ways so in three events we've never had a good run.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

Quote
wvonkessler
Andrew Frick did an awesome job. Anders had fun competing. Matt looks fit and says he is too much into bikes now to play with cars.

Garridos had engine mount issues I believe. Bass looked good if not particularly sprightly in the sand. I got to watch him from the side of the road after we

Hooper was staying home having a baby. Look for him at STPR.

Good weekend. Good competition. Lots of fun.

Sand is really odd if you haven't done it a lot...(I used to be quite good in sand--suprised a few people...Gotta be more brutal-er-er. Lots of gas,, less braking..)

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

I was sitting in with Gus and we had an eventful day but were still pulling respectable times.
SS1 was reading no oil pressure and temps were high, add a half spin and we were slightly off pace.
SS2 was cancelled so On SS3 we thought we lost 4th, stayed in 3rd for most of the stage. SS4 we stayed in 3rd and lost time as this stage had some loooong straights. Came back to service to find out the rear trans mount was melted. Replaced mount but we were also having charging issues. Gus had installed the alternator on motor and dropped in car but didnt realize we cant take the bolt out due to turbo manifold and no room on frame side. We hodge podged the alternator, tightened turbo and went back out checking out 14mins late while trying to secure alternator. Realizing we are in jeopardy of losing 2nd due to bad seeding i moved us 10 cars or so forward behind a fast blue subie that also had some misfortunes earlier on. On SS6 we lost third mid way, limped it back to finish. On transit lost all gears but 4th and reverse, made it to start of last stage but alternator belt came loose and lost charge. We knew there was no way we would make it in 4th with all the deep sand so we called it the day, waited for crew and went back to town.

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rally gods would turn in their graves if they ever knew Lada's were now part of EU rallying!!!

Quote
turoc
Realizing we are in jeopardy of losing 2nd due to bad seeding...

I don't follow. The seed used for your initial start order was 0.821. Your actual speeds during the rally yielded at speedfactor of 0.811. These are different by only 1%, so it seems like the data used to place you initially turned out to be accurate?

Anders

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

Sorry! Had to edit as was typing on phone and used wrong button...
With all the issues we had at ESPR our seed is incorrect, but that was not my point.
When you checkout of service 14 mins late you are 14 cars behind Luckily there was a delay and i was able to talk to several drivers and they were all cool with us moving up as far possible as we could as we were in 2nd place in 2wd. The whole thing started by other competitors who were extremely pissed off at one competitor who was slow and did not allow other cars in front of him that caught them on earlier stages. I didnt even bother talking to that guy as i was told it was no use and jumped 10 cars. BTW, those of you that are here, Thank You!

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rally gods would turn in their graves if they ever knew Lada's were now part of EU rallying!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2016 10:55PM by turoc.

Hoche,

Were you in the Talon?

My wife kept asking me what was wrong with the car as it passed... You could tell there were major lean-out issues as it passed.

Hope you get everything figured out by your next event.

Quote
turoc
Sorry! Had to edit as was typing on phone and used wrong button...

Ahh.

Quote
turoc
With all the issues we had at ESPR our seed is incorrect, but that was not my point.

I'm still a bit confused... for 2013 ESPR Gus's speed factors for the stages he completed were:

.791
.832
.841
.650

The worst was automatically dropped, so whatever issue you had on that last stage was ignored, and the overall speedfactor result for the event was the remaining three averaged: 0.821. That is only 1% off the speedfactor that you ended up with at Sandblast (0.811) so it still seems like it's very accurate prediction of Gus's speed.

Quote
turoc
When you checkout of service 14 mins late you are 14 cars behind

Ohhhh! Oh yeah, that's something else entirely.

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Grassroots rally. It's what I think about.

Quote
Anders Green

Quote
turoc
Sorry! Had to edit as was typing on phone and used wrong button...

Ahh.

Quote
turoc
With all the issues we had at ESPR our seed is incorrect, but that was not my point.

I'm still a bit confused... for 2013 ESPR Gus's speed factors for the stages he completed were:

.791
.832
.841
.650

The worst was automatically dropped, so whatever issue you had on that last stage was ignored, and the overall speedfactor result for the event was the remaining three averaged: 0.821. That is only 1% off the speedfactor that you ended up with at Sandblast (0.811) so it still seems like it's very accurate prediction of Gus's speed.

Quote
turoc
When you checkout of service 14 mins late you are 14 cars behind

Ohhhh! Oh yeah, that's something else entirely.

We were having issues all day but mid way thru last stage we ran we were left with only 4th gear, ironically the same gear that we lost on ss3.
Gus' SF is also based on 100 less hp

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rally gods would turn in their graves if they ever knew Lada's were now part of EU rallying!!!

Had a great time on the stages as Bike 00. This was my 4th rally on the bike as a course car, and my second sandblast on the bike. I don't usually ride sand (this year was my 4th day riding sand..), but thanks to the rallymoto class by the end of this rally I'm finally to the point of being very comfortable on it.
My Bluetooth radio interface worked flawless and could be used on stages by lifting to under about 50 mph.

On the way home we had a little trouble with the excursion shortly after leaving. see the pic. But we managed to fix it on the roadside with a few new bolts from the local autozone and drove it home to Pittsburgh.. It was a bit shaky though with a bent driveshaft.

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Perry

FE570s course bike
KTM 950 ADV
74 Beetle turbo-efi etc..
72 Beetle stage rally project WRX powered
Attended about 15 rallies, usually a volunteer in a course car.

Quote
tbolt64
Were you in the Talon?

Yup.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

Bummer, dude... My wife and I felt quite bad for you with all the popping and backfiring.
I bet that thing is a wicked ride when it's running right.

Quote
tbolt64
Bummer, dude... My wife and I felt quite bad for you with all the popping and backfiring.
I bet that thing is a wicked ride when it's running right.

I'll let you know if we ever find out.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

As my first rally and my first outing as a rally volunteer I was quite happy to see the relative automotive diversity... Although I do drive a Subaru and enjoy the product, I must admit I found myself rooting for anyone in a non-Subaru vehicle.