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Prescott Rally
Prescott Rally started off like usual, good weather, good friends and a little car raring to go. I ran into some difficulty the week before the race, the clutch decided to start slipping right after I installed a new set of cleaned and bench flowed injectors. Either the new smooth power band from all cylinders pushed it over the edge or it was just an odd coincidence, bad timing. So, I made a call to the people who made my four puck race disk, ClutchNet, and had them send me one of their 40% over stock pressure plates. I felt that’s what the problem would be, once I got the tranny out of the car. That pressure plate had felt a little weak ever since the Super Special at Ramada last year, where I spun the clutch racing in the deep sand. Once I got the clutch swapped out and everything back together, another problem, annoyance arose, an engine vibration. Now what? Only thing I could think of is the pressure plate being out of balance, but I didn’t have time to mess with it before the race, five days away. So, I made up my mind to just ignore it and have fun.
Friday stages were all night stages, at least for me, being seated near the back of the pack. Tim Hayosh was back in the co-drivers seat again for this race, and confident that he had the motion sickness from Gorman under control. The first stage, First View North, is a long run, with some of the biggest cliff exposure in the CRS and also some of the fastest down hill sections as well. While we were getting lined up, two cars in front of us was the Suzuki team. Their day ended quickly, about four turns into the stage, the car was rolled, but stayed on the road. A quick push from the sweep crew had the car back on it’s wheels and clear of the stage. The whole incident only delayed us six or eight minutes. Off we went and had a clean run down the hill, minimal trouble with visibility, and looking at the time we did, a fairly good run.
The next three stages didn’t treat us as well; the night was so calm, that the dust hung in the air thick as a wall. We must have lost at least a minute to two minutes per stage due to lack of visibility. It was frustrating, but I knew everyone else had the exact same problem, except for the first car on the road. The biggest loss of time came with the forth stage, First View South, a long hill climb back to where the night started. We were lined up behind a car with a flat tire, so he was going slow and kicking up a lot of dust. We caught site of him about 2/3 of the way through the stage and forced to nearly stop a half dozen times in the thick dust. Note to self, install 100-watt fog lights in the front bumper…
All the way up that last stage I was hearing a metal on metal clanking coming out of the front suspension, but the car was driving just fine. At the end of the dirt transit we stopped to help out the guy with the flat tire finally get his wheel changed. The lug holes had become packed with tiny rocks, making it very difficult to get the lug wrench on it. While I was stopped, I took the time to call ahead to service at let them know we would be taking a close look at the front suspension, to figure out what the noises were. I was hoping for a loose top mount or swap bar nut. No such luck. After digging around for 20 minutes we finally figured it out, the front struts were both broken, internally. It was the strangest failure. We could see the shaft moving separate from the can body in a side-to-side motion. The best I can tell, the inner sleeve of the twin tube design separated from the outer tube. It’s still holding gas and oil, but was clearly not safe to run hard the next day. I pack spares for what feels like every piece of the car, but no spare front inserts. The decision was made, by me, to start the day, running the opening stage, a stadium Super Special, then bowing out from there. The stages the next day were just too rough and too fast to risk a catastrophic front-end failure.
I made my peace with having to drop out, my first DNF (did not finish) of the cars career. I don’t feel it’s a true DNF, since it was my choice not to continue, not a full mechanical failure. Next time, we’ll have two spare inserts ready to go. So, I woke up Saturday morning, ready to attach the Super Special with all the car had to give. This spectator stage was a dirt oval set up at the local fair grounds. The stage consisted of 1-1/2 laps is a soft dirt that had been watered down fairly well, just before we started. I’m not a big fan of round track racing, but I must say, that was a lot of fun. We gave it our all and were only beaten by three other 2wd cars, a turbo charged Eclipse, a 400hp Ford Ranger and a 2.0L Neon. The other cars that were faster were all turbo charged AWD cars, Evo’s, WRX’s and one strong Mitsubishi Gallant. We did tie our time with six other cars, but since the times are only in seconds and I’m listed first, I take that to mean I had the lowest fraction of a second. At least that’s the way I’m going to look at it, certainly wasn’t alphabetical.
The excitement didn’t end there, but about two mile down the road. While driving the car back to the hotel, I took off from a light, heading onto the highway, shifted into second gear and bang, pop, then nothing. We pulled the car over to the shoulder and all the gear oil started pouring out from under the car. Rotten luck, but that’s the way racecars go. So, we finally got it loaded up on the trailer and spent the rest of the day hanging out at service and chatting with our friends late into the night, 2:00am to be precise.
Thanks to all of you who helped me with the car and with your encouragement, that’s what keeps me going. Not sure when the next race for me will be, but I’m toying with the idea of just running the last day of the Ramada Express Rally in December. Budget is the real factor for this kind of decision.
Big thanks to everyone who helps out and encourages me throughout this crazy passion of rally racing… Jon Rood, Car# 306 Ford Festiva RS, Evolution 2.1
p.s. to the story, the tranny is perfectly fine, the drivers side axle worked it way out of the side gear and spun all the splines off the end of it, in front of the spring clip.
Prescott Rally started off like usual, good weather, good friends and a little car raring to go. I ran into some difficulty the week before the race, the clutch decided to start slipping right after I installed a new set of cleaned and bench flowed injectors. Either the new smooth power band from all cylinders pushed it over the edge or it was just an odd coincidence, bad timing. So, I made a call to the people who made my four puck race disk, ClutchNet, and had them send me one of their 40% over stock pressure plates. I felt that’s what the problem would be, once I got the tranny out of the car. That pressure plate had felt a little weak ever since the Super Special at Ramada last year, where I spun the clutch racing in the deep sand. Once I got the clutch swapped out and everything back together, another problem, annoyance arose, an engine vibration. Now what? Only thing I could think of is the pressure plate being out of balance, but I didn’t have time to mess with it before the race, five days away. So, I made up my mind to just ignore it and have fun.
Friday stages were all night stages, at least for me, being seated near the back of the pack. Tim Hayosh was back in the co-drivers seat again for this race, and confident that he had the motion sickness from Gorman under control. The first stage, First View North, is a long run, with some of the biggest cliff exposure in the CRS and also some of the fastest down hill sections as well. While we were getting lined up, two cars in front of us was the Suzuki team. Their day ended quickly, about four turns into the stage, the car was rolled, but stayed on the road. A quick push from the sweep crew had the car back on it’s wheels and clear of the stage. The whole incident only delayed us six or eight minutes. Off we went and had a clean run down the hill, minimal trouble with visibility, and looking at the time we did, a fairly good run.
The next three stages didn’t treat us as well; the night was so calm, that the dust hung in the air thick as a wall. We must have lost at least a minute to two minutes per stage due to lack of visibility. It was frustrating, but I knew everyone else had the exact same problem, except for the first car on the road. The biggest loss of time came with the forth stage, First View South, a long hill climb back to where the night started. We were lined up behind a car with a flat tire, so he was going slow and kicking up a lot of dust. We caught site of him about 2/3 of the way through the stage and forced to nearly stop a half dozen times in the thick dust. Note to self, install 100-watt fog lights in the front bumper…
All the way up that last stage I was hearing a metal on metal clanking coming out of the front suspension, but the car was driving just fine. At the end of the dirt transit we stopped to help out the guy with the flat tire finally get his wheel changed. The lug holes had become packed with tiny rocks, making it very difficult to get the lug wrench on it. While I was stopped, I took the time to call ahead to service at let them know we would be taking a close look at the front suspension, to figure out what the noises were. I was hoping for a loose top mount or swap bar nut. No such luck. After digging around for 20 minutes we finally figured it out, the front struts were both broken, internally. It was the strangest failure. We could see the shaft moving separate from the can body in a side-to-side motion. The best I can tell, the inner sleeve of the twin tube design separated from the outer tube. It’s still holding gas and oil, but was clearly not safe to run hard the next day. I pack spares for what feels like every piece of the car, but no spare front inserts. The decision was made, by me, to start the day, running the opening stage, a stadium Super Special, then bowing out from there. The stages the next day were just too rough and too fast to risk a catastrophic front-end failure.
I made my peace with having to drop out, my first DNF (did not finish) of the cars career. I don’t feel it’s a true DNF, since it was my choice not to continue, not a full mechanical failure. Next time, we’ll have two spare inserts ready to go. So, I woke up Saturday morning, ready to attach the Super Special with all the car had to give. This spectator stage was a dirt oval set up at the local fair grounds. The stage consisted of 1-1/2 laps is a soft dirt that had been watered down fairly well, just before we started. I’m not a big fan of round track racing, but I must say, that was a lot of fun. We gave it our all and were only beaten by three other 2wd cars, a turbo charged Eclipse, a 400hp Ford Ranger and a 2.0L Neon. The other cars that were faster were all turbo charged AWD cars, Evo’s, WRX’s and one strong Mitsubishi Gallant. We did tie our time with six other cars, but since the times are only in seconds and I’m listed first, I take that to mean I had the lowest fraction of a second. At least that’s the way I’m going to look at it, certainly wasn’t alphabetical.
The excitement didn’t end there, but about two mile down the road. While driving the car back to the hotel, I took off from a light, heading onto the highway, shifted into second gear and bang, pop, then nothing. We pulled the car over to the shoulder and all the gear oil started pouring out from under the car. Rotten luck, but that’s the way racecars go. So, we finally got it loaded up on the trailer and spent the rest of the day hanging out at service and chatting with our friends late into the night, 2:00am to be precise.
Thanks to all of you who helped me with the car and with your encouragement, that’s what keeps me going. Not sure when the next race for me will be, but I’m toying with the idea of just running the last day of the Ramada Express Rally in December. Budget is the real factor for this kind of decision.
Big thanks to everyone who helps out and encourages me throughout this crazy passion of rally racing… Jon Rood, Car# 306 Ford Festiva RS, Evolution 2.1
p.s. to the story, the tranny is perfectly fine, the drivers side axle worked it way out of the side gear and spun all the splines off the end of it, in front of the spring clip.
ops: BTW mine is blue.
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