We finished Prescott!!!

[Mark Nelson <mnelson@brls.com>]

Well, with several headaches, coolant burns, etc., in the beginning
stages, Paul Timmerman and I finished the Prescott Forest Rally, which
actually consisted of two divisional events.  I'll start from the
beginning...

Friday...we pull into Prescott with a car we feel *should not* have any
more overheating problems, and should be pretty much bulletproof.  My
dad and I spent Friday afternoon, finishing up some last minute minor
details, such as installing a CHF radio (this would prove to save our
butts later on), and cleaning up some last minute items.  Since our
incident at Goreman Ridge, we've installed a new motor, a new oversized
radiator, a large diameter aluminum perma-cool fan, removed the
Thermostat, and done a few other things.  We got the car all running on
Monday night, and I went and pounded around in it, Monday and Wednesday
evenings.  It was hard to get the temperature above half-way...but keep
in mind that the temperature around Reno in the evenings can get pretty
cool...so that may have helped in keeping things cool.

Anyway, we start the first stage Friday night that's ~10 miles long
going up hill, on this really wide and smooth dirt road.  This stage
wielded quite a lot of dust, and a couple of rollovers.  It was one of
those types of stages where you can get a bit over-zealous and end up in
BIG trouble, as our fellow competitors found out.  The two rollovers
consisted of a Saab 90 and a mile up the road, Lee Shadbolt's Subaru
Impreza.  Both of the crews were fine.  About a mile or so from the top,
we started having some heating problems, and as we pull into the FTC
(Finish Time Control), we are smoking like crazy.  The route book
mistakenly gives us an incorrect distance to the service area, and we
end up going down the road about a mile.  The temp is pegged, and so we
pull over with smoke everywhere.  Paul pops the hood, and as soon as he
opens it, the upper radiator hose busts, and spews hot coolant all over
his face.  Paul didn't get burned too badly, but it was more than enough
to see that the car was going to fight us all the way.  This time we had
radios, so we were able to radio our service crew to come bail us out.
My dad and Suzy showed up, found that one of the brackets for our fan
had come loose, hit the fan blade, causing the blade to bend and stop
the fan.  We bent the blade back, filled the radiator back up, and were
on our way again.

On the second stage, we encountered the same problem, except the hose
didn't blow off this time.  We had a 75 minute wait, so we had time to
let the car cool off, and figure out what was wrong.  We found that
there were several holes in the radiator from where the fan blade had
hit it.  Whenever we would let off the throttle, pressure would build,
and coolant would spew out.  Several competitors and volunteers gave us
some AlumaSeal which helped somewhat, but we still had a major leak at
the seam.  We decided to take it easy on the third stage (which was the
second stage run backwards), and just make it to our service area.  We
made it back, and several people including John Buffum (VERY cool guy!)
rushed over to see if they could help.  We ended up refilling the
missing coolant, and removing the troublesome bracket from the fan.  We
managed to make it through the fourth stage (which was the first stage
run backwards) since it was downhill.  On the transit back to MTC (Main
Time Control) ~35 miles, we had to stop and refill the radiator 3 times.
I forgot to mention that each time we had an overheating problem, the
turbo was GLOWING bright red!!!  Everything that could be hot on the car
was.  Anyway, we made it back and put the car to sleep.

Saturday...we pulled the fan and radiator, and Paul and Suzy found an
open radiator shop and took it over.  It turned out there were 14 leaks
in the thing, and Paul figured the repair cost out to be ~$4 per leak
=).  In the meantime, my dad and I made a new bracket for the fan,
borrowed some tin snips from Carl Merrill's crew and trimmed an 1/8" off
each blade.  We moved the fan back from the radiator about 8mm, so this
time we would have plenty of clearance.  We got the car all back
together, and everything was hunky dory.  We didn't have any major heat
problems the rest of the day!!!  We only had two very minor other
problems.  The first being that the connector Mazda used for the Oxy
sensor was very winky, and would move around causing the car to run lean
when we didn't have a good connection...we still have to fix that.  We
also had a minor problem with a rock jammed in the right rear caliper
(maybe due to Paul having all that fun with Pendulum turns ;-) and would
cause a nice squeaking noise every so often.

The worst party of the rally, came on the last stage, 9, when Henry Joy
in the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo II, who had been battling back and forth
with Paul Choinere through the whole rally, went 200 yards off a cliff,
1.3 miles from the end, on a particularly narrow and rough section of
the course.  Henry was only 12 seconds behind Choinere starting that
stage and was trying to make up the gap.  Henry had some injuries, and
was taken to the hospital, but was conscious.  His co-driver Michael
Finnell came out of this fine.  Sam Bryan came upon them, and escorted
them to the FTC.  The stage was canceled as we found out, so we just
transited through.  Henry's car is apparently a total loss from what I
had heard, when I talked to the officials at the end of Stage 9.  

Anyway, they gave us 108 minutes to transit through the 21 mile stage
and 35 mile 'regular' transit.  We made it to the MTC with 7 seconds to
spare, and the kicker was when they told us, "we aren't going to give
penalties for lateness"!!!!  It figures!!

Anyway, it was an interesting event...VERY rough in some stages, but we
made it!!  Paul can probably post some more details that I missed.  BTW,
Rui didn't show up, as his car wasn't ready

cya!

-mark nelson
mailto:markn@brls.com

'90 s2 Quattro (Building for SCCA Pro Rally)
'85 4ktq (Finishing up the brakes and sway bars this week)

http://quattro.malebolge.com/audipics