I'm beginning to think that the RX2 has a serious personality disorder. Three attempts at RoL, and three DNFs.
At least this time we completed all the stages (but we were out of late time).
Leading up to the event, I sent the front guard away to be straightened after the suspension failure last year at RoL. When I went to pick up the guard, I realised that I had given the painter the wrong paint (Dynamic White instead of Super White)
. I found cracks in the top rails. Welding up the cracks caused a fire in the cabin
. After I pieced everything back together (last Sunday afternoon), a check over everything revealed that the fandangle Spal thermofan had three broken blades. Managed to break a bolt while fitting the replacement fan
, and the list goes on.
On the morning of the event, I put the car on the trailer, then found that the fuel pressure regulator had completely failed, pouring fuel out all over the place
(it was fine on Thursday night!!!). It turns out that any sort of fuel pressure reg for a carby car is fairly uncommon. We finally found one at Auto One in Bathurst and sent one of the crew off to pick it up. Tim returned just in time for us to fit the new reg while we were waiting to start.
It was all pretty uneventful for the first few stages, except for the same variable brake pedal issues (that I thought we had solved
).
On the second pass of Ridge Rd, a roo decided to try and crash tackle the car as we were going past at the top end of 3rd gear. Fortunately he hit us just behind the right front wheel, so no major damage (to us).
Had a great battle going with Winks/Hodgkin and Duthrie/Hanns for most of the day. It was good to be right behind Russ on the road, so we could keep an eye on their times. I think we were up by about 15 seconds at most through the afternoon.
We started getting some gearbox problems through the afternoon, with it jamming in 4th a few times. Fearing that it would permanently jam in 4th, I held 3rd as much as I could. Unfortunately, 3rd decided it didn't want to play the game with a few stages to go, but 4th came back for another go (WTF??).
Heading into the start control for stage 9, we found that we had lost all the brake fluid, so headed back to service to fix whatever had caused the fluid loss (turns out it was another problem with the banjo fitting into the rear caliper
). We got back to the start of stage 9, but we weren't sure whether we were still within late time or not.
We were told we were on the road behind Julie and Mat. After some quick calculations, Mat suggested to the controllies that we should go ahead of them for safety reasons. Thanks again Julie and Mat. I would have been quite happy to stay behind you for Summit and Gum Valley, with a rethink going into Ridge Rd.
The reshuffle at Stage 9 start had Butch a bit concerned, and they arranged for us to slot in ahead of them going into Gum Valley (thanks to you guys as well).
Had we been within late time, we would have been 13th (I think), just behind Russ/Stephen and ahead of Duthrie/Hanns by a few seconds. Russ must have had a big go in the last pass of Ridge Rd, the time was pretty amazing. Without 3rd gear, we had no chance of keeping up.
There's a fairly long list of things to be done now. Top of the list is a new gearbox, probably new rear brakes (again), re-think the diff housing and axle bearings, straighten the front guard (again), new nav's seat, fix lots of holes in the floor and wheel arches, sort out the steering geometry (somehow between RdF and last week we have ended up with a 2 degree castor variation), and lots of little things. Oh, and send it for some therapy sessions to adjust it's attitude towards RoL.
Thanks to:
Ric, Phil, Brett, Bean and everyone else who put in the hard yards to make the event happen.
All the other officials who sacrificed their day(s) to let us have fun in the forest.
Mum, Bob, Ken and Tim for servicing.
Jo for calling the notes and being very patient with my stress levels over the last couple of weeks.
Ken (again) at Macquarie Rd Auto Repairs for letting me hijack the hoist for a few hours last Thursday, as well as support and advice whenever it's needed.
If anyone has any photos or video of Car 21, please let me know.
I'm thinking that there's an issue with the rallytiming results for car 38 on SS6. 3 sec/km faster on their first pass on Gum valley than their second pass, and lots faster than any other stage??
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