Peter Rodgers Real Estate Bathurst Rally 2003 - Event Report

[beanpole]

I never doubted the fun factor, Paulie- I have seen only 2 photos of you during the rally, both with huge armfuls of opposite!



Kev

[smee]

Originally posted by Rallyray

The ACT event went pretty well apart from punctures. When we continued on things went a bit pear shaped. I was feeling a bit sick and had a very bad head ache. On the 41km stae I came un done and had to stop to be sick. Got back in. Continued till the finish. My headache had basically turned into something pretty bad and made my vision very blurry. I couldn't concentrate and the more I tried to the worse I got.

From the sounds of it, you became severally dehydrated and your blood sugar levels dropped to very very low. You were a danger to yourself and your judgement was severly impaired.

Best thing to do is keep your fluid intake up and eat (healthy at least)

Take along a few bottles of water (no soft drink), you can add powdered sports drink stuff if you like or just buy Gatorade or Powerade. Replace the empty bottles at each service. Best to experiment with the taste side a few days before the event so you know you will drink and like it. Staminade (salty) and Gatorade (sweet salt) are available. You could also try Glucose powder in water. Nice and sweet.

If you have 1 litre bottles, drink about half before each stage you go into. Longer stages like 50k, drink the lot and then drink more when you come out.
At service drink some more.
Take along some bananas or apples. Snakes and soft jubes are a good sugar hit, and can put your levels up quickly. Just don't eat too many. Your nav could have them on hand if you feel you need a quick hit in a fairly long stage.
Half a protein bar can be a good thing also. Woollies sell them quite cheap, but again try one before the event to see if you like them. Eat these before the stage, say about 10 - 15 minutes.

The things I have mentioned will not sit in your stomach and make you feel bloated or sick during the event. As long as you eat in moderation. Don't get to a service and go I'll have two steak sandwiches, a couple of cokes and a coffee. Caffiene is a dieuretic so draws fluid out of your system. Not good. It may not feel like you are sweating alot, but stress and constant movement will draw a lot out of you. Just look at the WRC to see how hard you can actually work up to. Also because cabin temps can become quite warm it has a detrimental effect.

A good guide to the correct fluid content in your body is
Yellow Urine, not nearly enough fluid.
Light Lemon Squash colour, Good fluid content.
White, Too much.

Did you go at all during the event, if not then this was not a good sign. Nervous ones don't count.

Hope this helps a little.

[Rallyray]

I drank about 4-5 Gatorade's. I usually drink about 10.
Thanks for the tips though...

[tortfeaser]

Oh vey. And doesn't having RoC week a week before an event make it hard to do a good job! (Hi I'm Marc, and I nav'd for Fro in the mighty 180B Appliance Mk4.1)

Here I was thinking that sitting in a car for a week thinking about rallying exclusively (RoC course car) would be a good thing. But it wasn't. I was just dead tired, a bit stressed 'cos the wife approval factor (WAF) was way low, and had pretty much forgotten why I love the sport.

I remembered why on the way across Skyline, then forgot again when thinking we would have to DNF with the brake troubles. Then remembered again in some nice bits of Hen and Chicken Lane. Then forgot again with the over 1 hour wait at SS3 (where if I had my wits about me we could have had the service crew fix the brakes) then remembered again when the service crew did such a sterling job.

I'm not one of those who can remember every corner of every stage. But I did have a quick look at our in car video (which is crap, 'cos it can't see through the sun visor).

SS1 - More gravel than tarmac at car 58, screwed up the spectator point like a few others did looking at the wrong gate.
SS2 - Got angry at some controllies who just looked at us like stunned mullets as we barrelled up to the TC late. They didn't appreciate my throwing the card at them, then my dummy spit when they marked our arrival time as one minute later than we were. I apologised later, but must do so again here - sorry guys, shouldn't have lost it. Appliance now with 4 cylinders good, saw 5th a few times. A Big Improvement over the NatCap.
SS3 - Rocky and rough, but OK roads wrecked by all the humps. Inconsistent road book made calling difficult, and front brakes and dodgy gear shift action made pace even more difficult. Still, I enjoyed it - the love had returned. Bummer about Marty.
SS4 - Still on front brakes only, and found out that drivers are really listening to the codriver after all. Called the 200m RGR on crest OK, 100m I was late, and before you know it we were ploughing into the scenery. Lost 17 mins here pulling the car off the timber pile. Big bummer, but in a strange way it was good to have a problem that was crew error and not so much mechanical.
SS5 - Probably best stage of the event for mine, a bit more open with less humps. Battery problem was foreseeable. Sorry to see Tweety by the side of the road.
SS6 - If anyone dares suggest a 50km stage is a good idea, think again. The dust was horrific 600m in. No problems in this stage, but tyres were well past their best. V skatey. Bummed by Paulie and Spac's DNFs.
SS7 - Nothing comes to mind here, except a top effort by Fro before the spectator point on a RGL not in the book - found ourselves way off in the paddock on the outside bouncing around. I thought were were up for a roll for sure and so did Fro, but then normal service resumed with the gas gas gas call and we were back on the road. It was good to see a lose as a result of having a go. Then the car stopped out of protest for no reason I could see. When the rear door wouldn't shut properly I thought the end was near for that shell, but the door strikers had apparently moved.
SS8 - Stuffed up big style here, there were a stack of straight on calls and I lost count before the THR which was, by now, back...there. Sorry about that Fro. This stage felt a bit like home, narrow roads with some Kowen like rocks.

All in all a big learning experience. A tough rally on tough roads with an inconsistent road book meant that unless I was on the ball every time, we lost a fair bit of time being more cautious than we needed be. We found lots of ways to improve my codriving, the car, and Fro's driving. With the benefit of hindsight, this event might turn out to be the first step up the ladder of continuous improvement.

Thanks to Fro for having me along, Naomi and Jem for servicing, along with the crew of extras that helped us out, Amanda for allowing me to go away, and to the crew of the BLCC for putting the event on.

[Matt]

Smee, great advice. I think that this should go into the "Rallying FAQ" area.

Probably one of the most important, yet least thought-about, areas of rallying.

Good work Australian.

[beanpole]

I'd also like to thank Marc for persisting with explaining the reverse directions in the roadbook to get to Spac. I'm not always that vague or stressed, but we had just changed my first road flat in 24 years driving. I also wasn't expecting anything on the left when the forest was on the right.





Kev

[tortfeaser]

No worries Kev.

I tell you, organisers put pretty much zero thought into service crew info. For Bathurst, the maps provided weren't helpful at all, and trying to find your way through a road book backwards is not easy and downright counterintuitive when you're stressed and in a hurry.

There's a few stories I still haven't heard - where are the entries from Marty & Mark S, and I haven't heard what happened to Russell Winks, or Pete Ewing.

[Mark]

Bathurst - the fun for us was getting there!
I was going to wait for the official results but I might as well shoot my mouth off now!

Ultimately, Bathurst was a bit of a relief for Martino and I.

PART 1 - The re-build

Since NatCap last year, the Trueno had spent five months in Simon Leigh's garage. The short end of the story is that Simon and I spent over 400 hours on it working on the body. It was pretty much the worst for wear after last years large number of rallies. After having done eight rallies - that I can remember - the car was pretty knackered because it had never been prepared for rallying. So, I stripped it down, discovered that the infernal front right chassis rail had a crack running on both sides and bottom of it. Only the top was holding it on. Rob Nunn straightened the rail then Simon and I went to work plating, fabricating and welding various parts in the engine bay and car such as chassis rails. Simon added over 300 seam welds underneath the car and around the rear sub assembly. Then he added 7.5 m of roll cage tubing, adding about another 30 kg in weight all up between the extra rollcage and plating of the rails. The rollcage went from a 10-point rollcage to a 27-point rollcage as well with the cage extending from rear struts to front struts. It was a huge effort from Simon and took up most of his spare time in the last five months - as it did mine. I can't really explain how grateful I am for his efforts except that I see that the trophies WE won on Saturday night belong to Simon as much as they belong to Martino and I. We're now going to attack his rally car with almost the same fury...

At the same time, I finally got around to getting the head ported and polished by Ian K out at ACT Heads in Queanbeyan - nice bloke, very genuine and I highly recommend him. Another friend, Ben Wilson, a la "Professor Frink" - because he has some crazy ideas "...does it say in the CAMS manual that you have to be able to open your doors...?" - took some 20 valve, 45mm quad throttle bodies, added a tuned inlet manifold - for mid-range torque - of 15 inches in length and managed to fit it in the space of 12 inches between the head and brake booster. He spent 60 hours or more, matching the various manifolds up and configuring adaptor plates. He even designed a vacuum box hidden away to feed the brake booster and MAP-sensor. The cam timing and trumpet length were all designed on Ben's engine analyser software and it looks like it was on the money because the amount of torque that we were getting out of the engine was unrivalled for a 1600cc I think yet it still revved past 7,000 rpm easily.

There's a saying in project management and software development that goes something like, "...in any given project, all of the jobs will expand to take up 100% of the deadline...". We sort of finished at 8.30pm on scrutineering night. Got through cleanly except for some unfilled holes in the boot.

Thursday was dyno-day out with Peter Dowling out at Autotech in Fyshwick, as I had the day off. I was looking forward to going to get 2 hour of dyno tuning done then head out to a farm for a practice in the afternoon. Hmmm, what is it about the best laid plans...

Half way into the tuning, at 5,500 rpm when the power curve starts to ramp up (40hp in 500 rpm according to calculations) the injectors maxxed out. I had worked out that the current 238cc injectors were supposed to be good for about 120kw at the fly which we weren't at yet. Not good. I went back to Ben's place and dumped in some Supercharged 4AGZE injectors, ~ 360cc injectors which should have meant a 50% larger amount of flow per minute. We started dynoing again at 6pm that night - Peter staying open just for us. These too maxed out at 6,000 rpm. Then the fun started. Fuel pressure gauge said the fuel pressure was leaning almost to zero at this point with only 60kw at the wheels - bad news. Now, it was 7.30pm at night. Everything was shut, the car had to go up to Bathurst in 24 hours. I gave Spac a phone call - and I must stop paying out his parts collection - because he had a VL Commodore external inline fuel pump. I went and grabbed it. Got back, found the fuel tank had been dropped from the car in the meantime by Peter, Gemma, Martino and Ben and the pump was out. We tested the VL pump and it was good to go. We plumbed it in as an in-tank pump and were good to go 2hours later after discovering the bad fuel pressure. We now pulled 64.5kw at the wheels when the pump was making bad noises and dropping fuel pressure. The fuel filter was the culprit, as was I because I had never replaced it. Bam, instantly 71kw at the wheels with a new Bosch fuel filter. Peter hadn't touch the ignition map because of time constraints as it was now 11.40pm Thursday night!

I would like to say a big thanks to Peter at Autotech for this huge effort which is really above and beyond the call of "customer service". How he maintained his sense of humour at the time of night I don't know? Ty Hooper, Dave Ferris, Fro have all had work done by him and I hope they can vouch for his outstanding service as well. He certainly got us out of trouble. Thanks to Spac's spare parts bin - for being open ALL hours.

With no testing done, I was half tempted to drive the car upto Bathurst just to give it a run in and get used to it. With our new trailer not being ready in time (4.30 pm on the Friday is a bit late for me, five weeks after I ordered it - Grrrr!) we quickly found a Hire trailer - complete with two slices in the sidewalls of the two left wheels. That and poor suspension in our Ute and bad loading balancing by me, made me just decide to drive the car upto Bathurst. The Oldies went and got some Optimax while the rest of us decided to aim for scrutineering at 6.30pm on Friday night. In went the earplugs and off we went. For a rally car, it does around 12L per 100km, cruising the long way upto Bathurst, sitting on 4,000 rpm. We got through scrutineering very fast because they were happy with the Wednesday job. Other events could learn from the speed and the drive-through method of scrutineering demonstrated here. I was especially impressed with the treatment Fro got regarding his fuel pump and the scrutineer then opening his shop to Fro for a new one!

Went back to the Motel to rig up a helmet hammock, accelerator pedal throttle stop, figure out what tyres to put on, clean the sparkplugs, liquids check. Because we planned to take it easy I wasn't going to buy any new tyres and so put on all old rubber. A big guy called Jeff who was the navigator for a WRX STi a few rooms came along to see how we were doing. I figured he would be starting in the teen's. When Gemma put the numbers on, he noticed and said along the lines of, "...we're in the car behind you...". I went to sleep that night with the threat of a WRX STi catching us and whether I'd notice or not. Our intention for the following day, Martino and I had agreed, was to just finish with as few mechanical problems as all. Great, just great.

Part Two is on it's way....

Mark

[beanpole]

I too can vouch for Peter at Autotech. Well, sort of. Great guy, great service, just used up all his magic on Marks car!



Kev

[Tweety]

We got through scrutineering very fast because they were happy with the Wednesday job. Other events could learn from the speed and the drive-through method of scrutineering demonstrated here.

I dunno Mark. My experience at scrutineering was VERY strange indeed. I drove in on the Friday night, reasonably soon after you I think, got out of the car and handed my regional scrutineering form to one of the scrutineers and said to him very clearly, "this car has been regionally scrutineered". So straight away another guy gets me to show him that all the indicators, lights etc are working. WTF? Then another guy comes over and tells Tamsey to jack up the front of the car for him. So I say to him, "this car has been regionally scrutineered. I gave the form to that guy over there". "Oh, so I don't need to do this then". Damn right you don't. So then I tell them what they DO need to check - the holes in the REAR firewall (not the front!), that the rear passenger side indicator works, nav's helmet, fire extinguisher, first aid kit - because they are all standing around like they don't know what to do. I'm standing there not believing it going "WTF??". Anyway, by the time I've told 3 different people that it's been regionally scrutineered, one guy decides to write in my log book that I need to have some safety thing for the tail shaft. So I said "show me where it says that I have to have one in the CAMS manual". He asks the chief scrutineer while I go find Spac who backs me up (it's in Schedules B and C which don't apply to rally cars or something). Eventually they accepted what Spac said even though they didn't actually have a manual with them (at a state event that's pretty strange). Then finally after a really painful process, I have NAFF written in my log book. Quite frankly I don't know what their problem was. It was like they couldn't actually communicate with me - obviously being a girl I don't know anything so I'm not worth talking to about the car? The chief scrutineer was much happier when Spac turned up and ended up talking to him instead. I was thoroughly unimpressed.

[Dave Ferris]

Team Solartint Subaroo
Bathurst Rally report:































End

[Mark]

We were seeded Car 28 which we and the service crew - the Oldies, Simon and Gemma - were extremely happy with, baring the threatening grey enema in the form of an STi lurking behind us. There was a lot of talk on the forum about whether to run road rubber or rally rubber for the Panorama stage. Regardless of my wishes, I ran out of room in the service Ute, so I had to take rally rubber so it could be used later - as it was. The front were bald-ish but the rears were worn but in good shape and I used them for another few stages aftewards despite driving up from Canberra on them as well!

Our times on SS1 and SS2 were slow as I tried to remember how to drive. My braking especially was on par with Berryl and Bill popping down to the newsagent in their Camry, or Avalon, with tissue box on parcel shelf. I just lacked a bit of agression and was overly conservative. I knew Hen and Chicken was 'road-book challenged' from doing the event last year. How about next time we all just drive it the night before and 'mentally' pacenote it and stop the locals from running away from us with their times! One thing I noticed was the seam welding and overall car stiffness was 'excellent'. Turn-in to corners as sharp and let down by the lateral grip of the tyres. Roll/Sway seemed to be reduced as well. The car showed signs that it was more controllable because you could choose angle you wanted the rear end out at and then just plant it and almost keep it there...but my driving talent at the time wasn't capable of really doing it. So I just kept it straight and mechanically sympathetic.

On the transport out to SS3, we stopped twice trying to track down an increasingly loud scraping sound from near the gearbox. During the wait for SS3, Rob Mules diagnosed the problem as a throw-out bearing issue and that it wouldn't cause a problem and just to go hard, driving-wise. I was kind of peaked upto this point with nerves and anxiety and the instant Rob told me that I figured we'd be right. The STi behind had turned its headlights on, to let us know that it was coming. They had taken 14 seconds off us in Hen-And-Chicken, over 7km or something and somehow thought they would catch us in SS3. I was determined not to let it happen. We were 5 seconds faster than them through the stage - where we broke down last year - and that ended that. On SS9, we took 2m23s off them - because they backed off. Otherwise, we tried not to know what times other people were doing because I was just happy to drive to make the finish with the greatest mechanical sympathy. I shortchanged quite frequently, mostly below 7,000 rpm (7.4K rpm revlimit). The new intakes have an 'interesting' spread of torque which looks very similar in shape, not value, to the torque curve on say a Lancer GSR. The difference is that is was still making more power upto the readline - due to a faulty TPS, time and the fuel issues we hadn't got the full potential power output for this configuration.

Most of the stages blended into each other for us. An intermittent Terraphone connection caused minor annoyance. I expected the humps - from doing Oberon three years ago - and generally the track reminded me of Kowen.

The 50km went faster than I expected. I didn't have to ask, "...how long do we have left...". Backed off in a lot of places in this stage because the tyres were losing a lot of grip especially in sand. On the tighter corners, we four wheel drifted frequently to the outside of the corner. I made a mess on the spectator point in this stage, braking, AGAIN, way too early. I also lost control on the exit of the point, TWICE, as I had one hand up to keep the sun out of my eyes while the back swung all over the shop, one-handed. Ugly stuff...but no mechanical breakdowns yet.

Potted along till the service at Oberon. Ian Plenderleith - normally the class act in P2, with a very quick car - comes up and tells us we're a minute ahead of him (in retrospect, it was about a half). This was completely unexpected and I was baffled. I didn't think he had a problem all day. We had just cleaned up on the long stage by a good 40 seconds or something. So the challenge was out. I had run out of used tyres anyway at this point so we went and got two new Dunlops for the rear and thought it would be worth keeping this position. Gemma tested one of the new tyres, it wasn't holding pressure too well, so the Dunlop people went to work and fixed it up for a few minutes and we were good to go. SS8 found us with lacking a bit of mid range power maybe due to the fact that we had a 40km transport or something before hand. The fuel pump had sounded funny all event, especially with lower fuel quantities in the tank - which we kept completely full every service. More fuel seemed to rectify this deficiency. I upped the pace a bit, but was really amazed now at the grip out of corners with the new rubber. The case was, the new car, was remarkably better in the first seven stages on old rubber than the old car was on new rubber. New car, new rubber, it flew along.
SS8 saw us drop 11 seconds to Ian, though we didn't look at the time. We just played to the gameplan of try and finish, just keeping the engine on the boil and not trying to outbrake myself.
SS9 felt like the longest stage ever. 42km in the dark with what felt like 100m between call, felt like 420 corners. Only screwed up once, with one slight overshoot. The fact that we were only running about 300W of lights due to not having a light bar made up in time may have played a part. Regardless, we knocked 47 seconds off the 20 valve Levin in this stage. We still didn't know any of Ian's time though.
SS10 was my most agressive drive of the rally. Probably this and SS9 were our best stages of the rally. Amazingly, Ian took 26 seconds off us on this stage. He later told me, that he lived about 4 km's from this stage and knew it backwards. He said he was driving down one of the straights in complete dust at warp speed and knew where he was going! I think he was about 4th outright on that stage, while we pulled 9th quickest approx.

So, we made it. First rally, in god knows when, at least one year, when we haven't had any performance affecting problems baring the driver! The new feel of the car and the engine rocked. 71kw at the wheels isn't too big in the scheme of rally cars. But it is 18% more than the old numbers and it's how you use it!
We ended up around 10th Outright - unofficially - in the State round, 15th in Clubman I think...and cleaned up P2 category in NSW Novice, NSW Clubman, NSW State and was also first knobbie home in NSW Novice. The whole team was pretty bloody happy. And I'm still giggling like a schoolgirl - we aimed low, just to finish, and finished high. I think that is extremely funny. Simon, Gemma and the Oldies were really happy that nothing major broke either.
Full credit to Simon Leigh again. I couldn't have done it without him and I think he is really happy that the car was good, straight out of the box. Of course, he isn't happy with a few things and wants to do some more re-inforcement. I'll get the tranquilizer out shortly... Ben Wilson also came through with the goods. I'm glad I took a chance with Ben's theoretical musings. He's crazy, but delivers-the-goods crazy.

My driving was very out-of-shape. With some really testing, a new TPS, ignition mapping, a fuel pump and a new throw-out bearing plus stand-in nav, Tamsey, Bega will prove whether this was a one-off or a pattern.

Thanks for reading,

Mark

[Mark]

Jenny,

Weird with the scrutineering. I think I got the head scrutineer anyway and had just one thing to fix and jammed the log book in his hand with the Regional scrutineering form. As long as the head scrutineer is happy! Pointed out that the holes in the boot were now filled in and I was done. Someone else looked at the helmets sitting on the spare seat.
On the other hand, at other rallies its like the scrutineers don't care that you have been regional scrutineered they still check everything. I guess you win some and lose some...

Mark

[Ben Wilson]

Originally posted by Mark
He's crazy, but delivers-the-goods crazy.

Does this mean you're going to believe me about the revs the motor can take?

[Daniel]

Nah Ben - he doesn't listen to me either - with the front end we designed he could've halved his finish position, but NOoooooo he just has to have it all his own way....anyone'd think the car was his or something.




PS - that inlet looks awsome, congrats