My Rally Thread

[Mr Revhead[RL]]

got on the ferry at 3am thursday morning and drove straight to dunedin

started work straight away sortign things we hadnt sorted before leaving.

then at scrutineering they wanted to inspect the turbo on todds car (no6 BYACAR) so dues to space limits we had to tow the car back to the motel and put it back together there. unfortunatly the oil line broke (faulty weld on the fitting) just as it was just about done, so we had to pull it out and go get it welded. lost of other stuff left to do and we finally got it to forbury park with abotu 5 mins to spare.

then it spat all the coolant out Mad faulty fan switch, lucky it didnt overheat the engine and it was sorted.

so day one..... we arrive at lake waihola to find 3 cars parked in our service park.... one was owned by a rally team so got that shifted no problem, but the other 2 were owned by duck hunters.... so out with the jack and shove them out of the way!

 

first few stages went ok, richard won 1st stage, then 3rd and 2nd. todd dinged the rear left over a 7 crest..... reckoned that was a scary moment as he said if he was in a mitis hed have been in the trees.....

 

so first service was pretty busy, sorting the damage on BYACAR (btw car 1 richards has the plate EVOETA, quite good i thought) i think therell be some footage of us rushing around on that as there was HEAPS of media there. may even see me trip and fall flat on my face Embarassed

 

2nd service was more routine, again recheck the alignment on todds car as he wasnt happy with it.

richard ended up winning day one and todd 7th, so all in all we were very happy.

 

now todds car had an annoying habit of pulling hard right under throttle

so back the motel we started looking into that.

going over the alignment etc.

the damn thing still pulled right.... at about 8pm the motel staff were starting to get a bit shitty with us making noise..... so rich was on the phone trying to jack up a workshop. alister gilmour (emmas dad) was kind enough to let us use his workshop. so we started on yet another alignment check, wheel base check and looked for stuffed bushes cracks loose bits etc etc.

NOTHING

so we changed drive shafts, and the rear diff.

we even jacked it up locked the diffs marked the tyres and counted the revolutions to make sure all the ratios were correct.

NOTHING

so we gave up at about 11 as alister had to go.

so parked on the road outside the motel after that we start to put new tyres on the cars ready for the first stage of sunday.

then we noticed something...... the left side tyres on todds car were bulged.... as in the tread wasnt flat across the cross section but bulged out like a bike tyre....

the wear marks also showed they didnt wear like that, thats how they were made! so we looked at the new ones and found a lot of the left hand ones were the same!!!

so a frantic search for 8 good ones saw the cars with good tyres and todds car going straight!

 

so day 2 saw some of us off to waihola, and 2 of the guys off to find a tyre shop to fit some good tyres.

 

services went as planned, only issue was a horror flap coming off on richards car, no issues from that, youd be suprised how fast a suspension arm can be worn away from gravel......

during the day we found out that several others had the same tyres issues... so dunlop nz will have some explainging to do....

 

last stage of the day was forbury park. we were second by about 10 secs from chris west. but overall we were 0.1 seconds ahead for the rally win....

so they decided to run rich and chris seperatly as opposed to in pairs like the others. it was pretty intense.... chris set a time 0.2 faster than rich so he took the rally win

however it was timed by stopwatch.... not the same system as used for the stages.....

so we left dunedin tied first in points. but theres a long way to go yet!

 

NZRC

 

Richard Mason

[love ke70]

great read!

some people get all the fun :)

lol

[Mr Revhead[RL]]

oh it wasnt all fun.... there was some stress there on friday and sat nights with a few people getting told!!

man did we put in some hours.....

 

but yes, i do love it!

[trd]

90% of a rally is won in the garage. well done on finding that tyre problem.

 

i remember went westy use to rally a ke70. shit iam old

[Mr Revhead[RL]]

oh one story i forgot to add...

 

as part of the classic section they had jimmy mcrae (yes colins dad) driving an rs1800 :)

and fabrizia pons co driving a 911.

 

anyway jimmy won last year and was trying again this year. however he stuck it on its roof in a creek :paw: at the prize giving he was telling the story and said he txt all his family to let them know he was ok just in case they heard about it. apparantly colin txt back:

"son, youv just got to calm down"

:D

[Rolla__Boy]

:) Great thread :) I like

[Mr Revhead[RL]]

well spent the weekend at rally rotorua

 

left town 5pm friday, arrived in rotorua at midnight to be told that i need to be up at 4am to make 1st service.....

great.

 

so we leave at 430am and drive 200ks to first service.. madness

 

service park was in some hick town miles from anywhere, no cell reception, one shop a schoop and a pub. great.

 

oh and it was raining. no, wait, it was RAINING

great

 

managed to stay dry for a coupla hours, until it pelted down during the 1st service on EVOETA.

now we are running 2 cars this year, and to be honest we're a bit stretched for people, however rally rotorua allowed flexi service so that eased things a lot.

 

refuel was on a grass patch that turned to thick mud instantly, was fun to watch the 2wd cars slide through on the limiter at about 2 kmh :D

 

only issues on saturday was a coupla flappy bumpers and a bonnet scoop coming off..... richard hit a water splash (rear river!) too hard in the motu.

that wet the air filter and caused a power loss, so final service we did replaced the turbo.

 

finally got back to the hotel at 930 that night SOAKING wet. but was worth it with richard finishing the day in 2nd overall, 1st NZRC (rotorua is a round of the APRC) cody crocker won the day.

 

day 2 service was in rotorua itself, so we slept in till 5am :worship:

was a pretty straight forward day, no issues on the car, only problem we had was the service park co-ordinator giving the wrong directions to the refuel, as such we missed out on refulling the cars....... not so much of an issue on todds car as that has about 15-20 ltrs more capacity than richards..... rich had about 5 ltrs left at the next refuel!

 

speaking of fuel..... as it was part of the APRC we are allowed to use FIA WRC spec fuel. man that stuff sure gives you a head ache :(

 

day 2 went to plan, so much so that after stage 3 rich decieded he was gunna chase crocker.... by now rich was several minutes ahead of 2nd in the NZRC.

 

so rich put the hammer down..... and took like 19 seconds off crocker in one stage.... from 13sec down rich was now in the lead by 6 seconds!!

at the end of the day, richard was first, crocker 2nd... and man we were happy!!!

todd finished 3rd in NZRC.

richs main rival chris west retired both days, one with turbo failure, 2nd with no oil pressure. so now we have a 26 point lead over sam murray.

 

all in all a pretty good result :thumbsup:

 

rotorua results

 

rotorua pics