Well, I haven't posted here in awhile but I figured I'd give a follow-up on some of my earlier questions in case it helps others.
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hoche
As mentioned there, I've never done a snow rally and am trying to figure out a bunch of stuff:
1) Am I gonna need a block warmer or anything like that?
2) Snow tires/studs. I know jack about these. DiscountTire won't tell me anything because they're not available where I live, and calling the local outlets about them just sorta results in a "huh?" I don't like getting tires mounted at an event if I can help it because you never know what can go wrong. At that moment that leaves me with TireRack, which has General Altimax Arctics and Firestone Winterforces for about $65, and Pirelli Winterforces for about $76 (+$15 each for studding). Some are 82Q (99mph) rated, and some are 82S (112mph) rated. Those are 175/65R14s. There are also some 185's available, but I didn't look at them because I understand that skinnier is better.
3) Should have tubes put in the tires?
4) I couldn't tell if there was gas available at the event. If I bring the P-Stock Golf, it runs on pump gas so I don't need to bring high octane, but if is there any pump gas around (maybe that was in the supps - if so, just smack me.)
5) What should I plan on packing in the car during the stages?
6) What's the road like getting up there from Yakima? Seattle? I have cable chains for the van & trailer, but do I need to plan on spending hours chugging along at 25mph or are the roads mostly cleared quickly?
7) How well do gel batteries like an Optima do in weather like that? Should I just get a std lead-acid one for this event? I'm gonna probably replace all my Optimas anyway for other reasons, but I'm talking specifically about cold-weather issues.
This looks like fun, but my idea of "cold" is when it gets down to 50F and I have to put long pants on.
1) The block warmer wasn't necessary. If you register at the host hotel they have an indoor garage that's heated to about 60F. The only problem I had was backing the car off the trailer just after I got there; after hours of towing through subfreezing temperatures, the shift linkage in the Golf froze up. I just had to start the car and let the exhaust temps thaw things for about 15 minutes and then everything was good after that. Since the car was stored in the garage overnight, I had no troubles for the rest of the weekend.
I did leave my van out in the parking lot though. That was no problem either except that I found that something in my hydraulic jack didn't like the cold; it was mostly unusable. I thought perhaps it just needed a bleeding but it worked fine when I got back home.
2) I got General Altimax Arctics from TireRack with whatever they deemed were the right studs (I think they stuck out about 2mm) and they worked ok. Frankly, I wouldn't've known the difference between good tires/good studs or bad ones. For seating the studs, I just drove the car around before I went. I found that in California the stud rules are on a county-by-county basis and since my county never gets snow they have no law about it. I seated four tires with about 60 miles of slow driving, and two with 30 miles.
3) I didn't put tubes in the tires. As it turned out there was enough snow/ice that it was unlikely we'd have a debead so it was probably a good decision.
4) No gas available as mentioned previously. I went across the border with empty cans just in case and filled up in Kelowna. I kinda wish I'd filled up on the US side as gas is much cheaper here and the border people didn't even look.
5) I got two lightweight aluminum snowshovels from Amazon and strapped them to the rear stays of the cage. We didn't use them and now they're hanging on the wall of my garage. I'm not sure what to do with them. I didn't bring traction mats in the rallycar at all.
6) I crossed the border at Sumas and then drove up to Merritt and over. The road was clear going up, but returning was a little sketchy. I had chains but didn't use them for that. I did have to use chains for the last few miles up Big White Road (and back down). As a side note, the front tires on my van are M&S tires that've seen some miles. They're nowhere near being worn out, but don't have the tread depth they used to. There are steep hairpins on Big White Road. At one point coming down the van just plowed and refused to turn and I damn near stuffed it. This was at about 10mph with chains on the back of the van and on the trailer. So, make sure you have good tires on both ends of your tow vehicle.
7) The Optimas were just fine, in both the van and the rallycar. As mentioned before, the van was left outside.
Other random notes:
The crossing into Canada was easy and the wait was nonexistent. I did it at around 8am. Crossing back was kind of a pain. I got there around 5pm and there was a 30 minute jam just getting to the station, and then they went over everything with a fine-toothed comb. All my paperwork was in order and I got through ok, but I was sort of surprised at the difference. It may have just been a time-of-day thing though.
Tech at the event was cake, and I needn't've worried that I couldn't find triangle bandages for my medkit. I did have an amusing moment when someone took notice of my hood vents and started lecturing me on how that was all wrong and I should lift the back end of the hood instead. In all fairness whoever that was probably didn't know I usually race in the southwest in summer where it gets bloody hot and after ten years of running Golfs I'm quite familiar with their cooling.
Snow is tricky-assed shit to drive on properly, and I kept making dumb mistakes. I kept going into turns way too fast and would slide out, lose all my momentum, and then lose all kinds of time building it up again. Entry speeds were way slower than I expected and it took awhile to recalibrate the ol' noodle. Jimmy has a lot of experience with snow and ice and yelled at me a lot for entering turns too fast. Taisto gave me a few tips on one of the turnarounds that helped quite a bit.
I'm pretty glad I took the "slow" Golf. I'd've just spent more time spinning tires on the quicker one. Also, having the full glass and stock doorcards probably helped retain heat in the car. And glass doesn't fog up as easily.
In Canada I'm considered a Novice, which I found amusing but was quite all right considering I'd never run there before. I had to go to the novice meeting, but I would probably have gone anyway just to make sure I understood the procedures. Different group, different rules.
We ended up winning Open 2WD, which was kind of a shock considering I'm a noob at the whole snow thing. We got beat by Taisto Heinonen in a Production Yaris by 50 seconds or so, but the way I figure it there ain't no shame in getting beat by Taisto in the snow. The next 2WD car was a minute and a half back so I figure we musta done pretty OK.
Self-righteous douche canoe
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 03:57AM by hoche.
