Wow, that was a very different event to what i had been used to. Some parts were good others were just a pain in the arse.
Friday night - Finish helping Ray to get his car going, then head out to Doco. Get the road book and head back home to go through it and get some sleep.
Saturday morning, all is well. Cool calm and relaxed. Car is 100% with it running like a dream the previous night. Brett rocks up with the car, pulls if of the trailer and it's running on 3 cylinders not 4
. After a bit of late checking of spark plugs, injectors and a quick drive in teh car, it's back to normal
.
SS1 - Seem to be attacking the stage from the beginning, got into the groove pretty earlie which was good. About 10 k's in Brett complaining about the car "vibrating". We back of for the remainder of the stage, to try and get the car to service and find out what the problem is. End of stage discover that one of the engine mount bolts have been stripped and the other sheard of due to being unable to hold the weight. Managed to get into service ok. Next step was to replace the engine mount
. Next thing we know we are of to a wrecker down the road who has an appluase. After breifly investagating if the mount was the same we started to pull it of. 30 minutes later we are back to the service park to put the damn thing on. YEEEE HAAAAAAA, we are back in the game!
SS2 - After getting stuck behind "Farmer Joe" in his white ute or something along a long strech of dusty transport road we get into controll using all of our late time.
The stage it'self went ok to memory, but we did start to catch up to the car infront towards the end. Intercom became buggered and was shouting the next to stages till we got to service.
SS3 - Bcause this stage was going to be twice as long as the next, we asked the car infront if we could hop infront. No problems their so of we go. Went ok to memory, only problem was the selector rods were not straight, after being bent when the engine mount busted...
SS4 - This was a very intresting stage. Headed of with a bit of pace, Brett really was trying hard, and everything was going well. we came across a few patches of dust where other competitors had pulled over to change tyres. Ended up passing about 4 different car i think. then the real drama occured. About 7 k's from the finish we were sitting in someones dust. About 2k's later, we were looking at the rear end of a yellow gemi. For 4 or so k's we were flashing the lights and horn in an attempt for this driver to pull over and let us pass. chasing the car for 4 k's seemed to do nothing for the car infront. Then it happend. Because it was so hard to see, with the dust in front, Brett starts to feel tree branches rubbing along the car. In a moment of action to avoid any other possibilites, Brett takes the car to the left a bit. All of a sudden you can not see ****. Brett looses all reference to where the road is and in an emergncy attempt, tries to wash of a lot of speed. Next thing i know the car is traveling backwards into the trees. Arggh **** i'm thinking, the ****ing yellow car did not let us pass and now we're in the ****ing trees.
We we're in fact pretty lucky. Cause right next to us on the left and right were some big fat gum trees. Now that would have to have hurt.
Turns out that the car ended up facing the wrong direction after hitting another tree which stopped us from rolling. another 2 or 3 cars passed and we finally mangand to dig the car out, remove the small trees it was sitting on and swap the tyre that had come of the rim.
2k's to go and we finish. Loosing a good 10 or so minutes.
We get back to service and check everything in and around the car. Apart from a couple of bent panels and sway bar in the wrong angles things seem ok.
SS5 - Get stuck on the line trying to select a gear, final get one then get going again. Driving fast enough to see how the car is holding up without taking to many risks.
SS6 - Pace is picking back up a little, attempting to make up for lost time. A couple of really nice corners, and in the "zone".
SS7 - With i guess not much to loose, Brett went for it. Pulled out a really nice stage time considering what we had went through that day.
Thanks to all who organised it and volunteerd their time to man road clourses and controls. Also to our Service crew of Tanya, Shane and his girlfriend. Their was alot to do for them, and having no idear what to do, they manged really well. Also the the Mark Sessions service crew and people, for the soldering iron. The intercom works so much better now! And thanks to anyone else i missed. Got to go now for scones and tea at mum and dads.....
What an event
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