Rally of the Tall Pines 2008
Posted by tedm
Andrew Frick Super Moderator Location: Greenville, SC Join Date: 05/18/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 684 Rally Car: Rally Spec Ford Focus |
Ted Mendham Elite Moderator Location: NH Join Date: 02/17/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 697 Rally Car: once upon a time drove WRX, Sentra, SAAB 99 |
Andrew Frick Super Moderator Location: Greenville, SC Join Date: 05/18/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 684 Rally Car: Rally Spec Ford Focus |
david amor Junior Moderator Location: Stoney Creek Ontario Join Date: 03/22/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 458 |
Ted Mendham Elite Moderator Location: NH Join Date: 02/17/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 697 Rally Car: once upon a time drove WRX, Sentra, SAAB 99 |
david amor Junior Moderator Location: Stoney Creek Ontario Join Date: 03/22/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 458 |
Chris Martin Junior Moderator Location: Toronto, Ontario Join Date: 01/15/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 567 Rally Car: E-85 powered Impreza |
Ted Mendham Elite Moderator Location: NH Join Date: 02/17/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 697 Rally Car: once upon a time drove WRX, Sentra, SAAB 99 |
Dave Shindle/Navitron 2000 Professional Moderator Location: Virginia Join Date: 05/23/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 99 Rally Car: Someone has to call the notes |
John Vanos Junior Moderator Location: Markham, ON Join Date: 06/18/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 11 Rally Car: 2006 Subaru STI |
Martin Walter Professional Moderator Location: North Gower, Ontario, Canada. Join Date: 03/01/2006 Age: Ancient Posts: 450 Rally Car: Nissan 240SX |
Brian Johnson Ultra Moderator Location: Park City, UT Join Date: 12/17/2006 Posts: 166 Rally Car: Co-Driver - Old School Motorsports WRX |
Andrew Frick Super Moderator Location: Greenville, SC Join Date: 05/18/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 684 Rally Car: Rally Spec Ford Focus |
We had a good rally, I love the stages at Tall Pines. This was the 3rd race for Ryan, my co-driver, and our goal was to finish. The recce really helped get our timing down and discuss where the notes were going to be tricky or needed to be simplified. Almost crashed my mother's outback on Egan Creek. Came over a crest and hit the breaks the ABS went off the whole way down the hill and I was able to only lightly bump the bank.
At the start of the rally we had a couple of cars ahead of us that wanted to swap places. Not sure how that worked in CA we had found an official and made the switch at the start of Upper Hastings. We caught the Robin in the rx-7 on peanut after passing Ken Block for the 2nd straight year  made the pass safely but the Robin put the wrong turn signal on after we had started to pass which was a little bit of a pucker moment. We changed places at the next control. Thanks for letting us by.
2nd run through peanut I obviously did not slow down for the rocks enough. At the end of the stage we had 3 bulging sidewalls and 3 bent rims. One of the fronts was leaking a little bit of air. We decided to not change it for Iron Bridge and just backed off a little. At service we started playing musical chairs with the tires. We had 2 spare snows but only one was holding air so we put the spare on the car and then put the best of the rest on so we had 2 bent rims and one tire that was leaking air. We also found that one of the hits had damaged the ball joint on the drivers front. Ran Egan and then switched to a gravel tire in the rear for the Hastings stages. After the transit of lower we had a good run through middle Hastings, the dust was not too bad at this point but we were wishing we had put lights on at the previous service. At service our crew had the last good snow remounted so we but it on the car and decided to run the gravel on the back for Egan Creek rather than one of the compromised snow tires. During the refueling the gas can was not flowing properly so we put as much as we could in the car. We took it slow and we could see the lights of the car behind us at toward the end of the stage. The hastings stages were nasty with dust. I had to turn off the rally lights as I could see better with just the high beams most of the time. So we did a fair bit out of driving the headlights. Halfway through lower the low fuel light came on. So we were unsure if we were going to make it back to service since the car seemed to burning fuel faster than normal. I drove middle hastings at least one gear higher than I normally would and tried to be as light on the accelerator as possible. Got the car back to parc ferme. I was very happy with our 2nd in G2, and looking at the times it looks like we were competitive with everyone but Peter for most of the day. And the car drove under its own power into the garage on Sunday so that makes it a good rally. |
Robin Fleguel Elite Moderator Location: Orillia, ON, Canaduh Join Date: 02/21/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 23 Rally Car: Stanley Steamer |
Chris Martin Junior Moderator Location: Toronto, Ontario Join Date: 01/15/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 567 Rally Car: E-85 powered Impreza |
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