STPR results

[brv@chrysler.com]

Graydon et. al.-

Thought you guys might enjoy hearing about our adventure in the woods of
Pa. this past weekend.  I will include a post that my
co-driver/brother-in-law wrote to the Rally-l list first with some
commentary afterwards:


"Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 21:12:26 -0400
From: Richard Beels <beels@technologist.com>
Subject: [R] STPR report

     <blush>  You say the nicest things.  Now I guess I have to tell our
story.....  <g>
     Well, where do we start?  Oh yes, Wednesday night packing the truck.
It
was full.  This being our first National rally as competitors (our first
rally was Ski Sawmill, at which we finished 7th overall, first in U2), we
kinda went overboard and packed almost everything.  Good thing too... (but
more on that later).  Thursday was a nice day for driving and we convoyed
for a while with the Villemure's.   We showed up in Wellsboro and checked
into Kaltenbach's B&B.  Nice, homey place - breakfast included and it's the
same price as the Penn Wells.  For us, the free breakfast outweighed the 2
miles out of town location.  Recommended (upstairs rooms are nicer than
downstairs).
     Friday morning came way too soon and we had stuff to do.  Our
bulletproof
GTi had suddenly developed an inability to idle a couple days before and
the torque band was now a wind-up rubber band.  What to do?  Go register of
course.  Registration was a smooth-running and easy process (great job
guys!).  Then it was off to tech.  Another easy-going process.  It was
amazing how many cars didn't have an appropriate front tow-hook though -
especially from people way closer to geezerhood than us.
     Off to the practice session, doing the odo check along the way - when
the
rain started coming down.  Kim (Brian's wife) wanted to ride on the
practice section, so I gave her a quick "how to read a tulip" session.  Of
course, I flipped the numbers in the odo factor calc so she was really
wigged out by the end, when the odo read 14 miles. (hehehe)  She was almost
green when she crawled out of the car.  Brian said he had no rhythm and
drove like crap.  I said that it was a good thing were making our mistakes
today and not tomorrow.  One distrubing thing was the car that whizzed by
me at 70+ mph as I was sitting on the side of the road next to the practice
stage exit.  I was sitting in the service vehicle (red Dodge RAM truck) 1/8
mile from the road and heard the driver punch the ignition.  By the time, I
swivelled my head to the side mirror to see how it was, the car had passed
the truck and I could barely read the artwork as it disappeared down 287.
Cosmic justice must have been watching as this person DNFd.

     Anyways, the car wasn't running very well, so it was off to home base
to
go play wrench monkey. About this time, our service crew showed up.  We met
them at Ski Sawmill and they volunteered to service for us.  They came in a
motorhome and even brought FOOD!    These guys are awesome and no, you
can't have their names<g>....  I don't know what was wrong with the car,
but they got it fixed while I annotated the routebook and loaded it up.
     Way too little sleep on Friday night and then it was time to RALLY!
Finally, what we came to do.  Now, realize we're the only car in our class
with 13" wheels and the M4s are about 10 years old.
     The first stage went by so fast.  All of a sudden, we were at the
water
crossing.  And then we were done.  The car was acting up again but we
nursed it to service where we blew out the air filter (not so wet) and the
distributor cap (very wet).  Seems the silicone job on the cap wasn't as
complete as it should have been.  The second and third stages rocked, we
were in the groove, the car was running well and we were flying (relatively
speaking).  In fact, after the first three stages we were leading
Production.
     But then the ditch witches wanted a sacrifice and we happened to be
there.
 :-(  It was an easy lefthander and Brian must have sneezed or something
because we just drifted out, the rear end caught the soft shoulder and it
pulled us in.  The right front smashed into the bank and we were stuck.
Looked kinda cool on the videotape later but at the time it was
frustrating.  After the requisite 15 seconds of profanity, we de-latched
and began digging the car out.  I was going to leave the shovel out,
figuring I got the shovel for Sno*Drift and it wasn't snowing in PA.
Luckily, I left it in the car as it's what saved us.  There's nothing quite
as frustrating as standing next to your car with a tow hook and having
somebody drive by though (not blaming those who did, hey, it's rallying).
Anyways, we managed to extricate ourselves and did a quick inspection and
everything looked OK, so off we went.  But the car was making weird noises,
we stopped for a look-see.  Sounded like a flat tire, but it wasn't so we
got back in and took off again.  Still making weird noises.  We got out and
looked again.  This time we noticed the right control arm was way out of
specification, causing the drive-shaft to rub against the frame of the car.
 Hmmm....  Decision time.  Two seconds later: Well, let's see if we can
make it to service.  So, off we go again.  We finished the stage at 30-35
mph.  Humorously, there was an O Control on the transit to service.  They
clocked us at 18 mph.  Since we had radios, we called ahead for service and
they were waiting for us.  In 20 minutes, we changed the control arm and
the half shaft, put a new tire on and were off.  At the Germania service,
we looked at the tire from the off and noticed that not only did we fill
the bead with rocks and grass, but we drove rocks INTO the tire itself.
And it lost ZERO psi.
     Anyways, the rest of the rally went smoothly enough, I suppose.  But
the
tires were going out, and quickly.  By the end, not only were there no
edges left, they had whole sections of blocks missing.  Ragged gravel the
size of golf balls and baseballs will do that I suppose.  We finished, even
if we were in last place among running cars, we finished.  And we beat
Thumper<g>..."




As it turns out, the 25 or so minutes we lost while extricating ourselves
and driving 20 miles (10 on the stage and 10 back to service) with a bent
control arm cost us the rally.  If we took an average time for the 4th
stage (the one that ate us) , we would have finished at least second and
maybe would have won our first National!!! RATS!!!

What Rick didn't say was the catalytic converter I had to put on for
production rules backed up the system so bad the car made no power.  I
"borrowed" a prototype mini-cat from work designed for a 7l V-10 and the
damn thing still couldn't flow enough to be usefull.  So we spent 3 hours
on the ground on Fri. "fixing" it.  Worked much better...

And to make things worse, Rick snored so loud on Fri. that I literraly got
2 hours of sleep!!

The last 30 miles of the rally, I was falling asleep.  (this is about
1:00am)  I was seeing purple elaphants, Casper the freindly ghost, and
maybe even Elvis as I tried to keep us out of the trees.  It was the
longest 30 miles I ever drove.  Our times fell from 1-3rd fastest to 5th or
so.  I could barely keep awake.  We pulled into Wellsboro at exactly 3:00
am after being up at 2:30 the previous morning.  Let's just say that I
won't be sleeping in the same room with Rick before a rally...

All I can say is rallying is a complete blast!.. You tend to think about
your mortality a lot when you look down and you're going 90 mph with the
trees 3 ft away!!!  I'm not ready to stop road racing like all my rally
buddies thought.  Its just a different rush.  You guys should come check it
out sometime.

Final result:  National-38th overall, 7th in class out of 8...(only 57 out
of 80 cars finished, missed the National points leader by 1 min AFTER
losing 15 min to the off.  He's kind of a putz..

Divisional 1: 34th overall, 14th in U2 out of 18
Divisional 2: 17th overall, 7th in U2 out of 19

Not bad for our very first National in a tired old rally car with 8 yr old
tires (now shot!)


Brian
Team No Trees Rally Racing