Oregon Trail happened. It was fun, we had a great time.
Car ran great with the new turbo 8v setup, and besides a 30yo plastic part failing on the throttle spool and costing ~1min on the 2nd stage at PIR, there were no issues.

Pat crashed my shop for a few days while he got his Volvo 244 ready for the rally and raided my scrap pile and street car for parts. He did his first event without any real issues besides a boost leak... which resulted in awesome flames shooting out of the exhaust!

BMWs were running strong and Dave was going quick in the blue M3 before the battery disconnect did something odd and killed power to the car for a few minutes on stage.

Quote
culberro
Oregon Trail happened. It was fun, we had a great time.
Car ran great with the new turbo 8v setup, and besides a 30yo plastic part failing on the throttle spool and costing ~1min on the 2nd stage at PIR, there were no issues.

Pat crashed my shop for a few days while he got his Volvo 244 ready for the rally and raided my scrap pile and street car for parts. He did his first event without any real issues besides a boost leak... which resulted in awesome flames shooting out of the exhaust!

BMWs were running strong and Dave was going quick in the blue M3 before the battery disconnect did something odd and killed power to the car for a few minutes on stage.

Looks like a decent turnout-Entry list:

https://oregontrailrally.com/competitors/entry-list/

Thanks for the info Robert. Let’s see if we can get any other competitors to post up.

Results link:

https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/copy-of-oregon-trail-rally-results

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Some pics swiped from effbook

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Flying bricks!

We were there. As with Olympus, life happened, 3/4 of my crew cancelled, and the car wasn't in running condition 'til 05:30 Friday morning... at least I made it to recce this time, though.

Day 1 was fun run day, a chance to see how the new front coilovers handled. Having never driven on proper gravel suspension, it was mind-blowing. The SSS was not too bad, I certainly enjoyed it more as a driver than the SSS at Olympus the couple times I've driven it.

We struggled with wastegate issues for the first part of Day 2, and then completely lost our manifold-up pipe bolts and gasket on Dalles Mtn Downhill II. We puttered through transit and the last stage of the day with all of maybe 30hp before returning to parc éxposé and immediately setting about finding a new gasket. This turned out to be a fool's errand: something got tweaked and we'd actually need 2 or 3 to fill the gap, but there was only 1 shitty composite gasket that we'd be able to obtain before we had to be on stage the next morning.

Thankfully, our Brother Car (the red bugeye sedan pictured above) had some scrap aluminium sheet laying about that they donated, so armed with tin snips, a hammer, screwdrivers, and files I set to fashioning 4 monstrosities that would act as gaskets to keep us running.

Onward to Day 3. I estimated it'd be ~10 miles before the gaskets let go, but the reality ended up being ~3 miles into transit toward Boyd Loop I. They leaked like a sieve but amazingly didn't melt or let go completely, and we could build a whopping 3-5 psi of boost and probably 50ish horsepower.

Of course, Day 3 was full of long, fast stages, so while I was standing on the loud pedal most all of the time, we topped out around 75-80 mph in 4th during the fastest sections (I think if we'd been running stock 3.9 gearing we'd have been screwed). The day was slow but drama-free until 80% of the way through the penultimate stage when we had a puncture (on a brand new tire... unamused) let go as we went up a crest "flat out" (75 BIG mph). Not to be done in by a flat, we swapped it on the road section, briskly proceeded to the final stage (acquired a small time penalty), and wrapped up the rally just as we'd started it: run ragged.

Overall, a fun event plagued by mechanical issues, and exhausting given how thin the team was stretched.

Sorry to hear about your mechanical issues.

Who’s front coilovers are you running?

Sounds like at least you were pretty happy with those.

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Quote
culberro
Pat crashed my shop for a few days while he got his Volvo 244 ready for the rally and raided my scrap pile and street car for parts. He did his first event without any real issues besides a boost leak... which resulted in awesome flames shooting out of the exhaust!

You saved me with the plates and the switch [and the shop!] Thank You!

I kind of want to post a video of it but I kind of feel bad because those were some big flames. I don't like doing anything that could have put me, Phil or the event at risk and should have thought better of limping back to service with that [we really did not know though until Parc Ferme]

All and all a good first rally. I cant wait to turn up the boost and fix the brakes. Got a growing list of other stuff I need to do to it as well to have it a little better prepped