Lof8 wrote:
In regard to towing a stuck competitor, what if you're fighting for an overall or class win? Do other drivers understand that you might drive passed in that situation, or should you still stop and help?
Absolutely, and chances are that those guys were seeded ahead of whoever is stuck in the ditch anyway. When we were stuck I was picky about who we flagged down for towing- I specifically waited for a car that didn't seem to be flying, if they sounded like they were going for it before they saw us we waved them by.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
Lof8 wrote:
In regard to towing a stuck competitor, what if you're fighting for an overall or class win? Do other drivers understand that you might drive passed in that situation, or should you still stop and help?
Absolutely, and chances are that those guys were seeded ahead of whoever is stuck in the ditch anyway. When we were stuck I was picky about who we flagged down for towing- I specifically waited for a car that didn't seem to be flying, if they sounded like they were going for it before they saw us we waved them by.
also he waved us by knowing that my 1.8 RWD had zero chance of actually pulling them out, lol.....
I addressed the whistling noise from the engine bay over the weekend, it turned out to be the seal between the upper and lower intake manifold. Looks like somebody smoothed out the ports at some point:
Sealed it up with some RTV and it's nice and quiet now, except there is clearly a crack in the exhaust manifold which is leaking a bit.
Drove both rally cars since they were both running at the same time- I miss the way the RX7 turns but not much else about it. Despite the sentimental value, I probably need to clean it out and list it for sale.
Matthew Stryker, king of badass rally photos, has finished processing some of his shots from BRS- he got a few nice ones of the Merkur:
In other news, we qualified for the national championship event at ESPR! I guess that just proves that finishing a few high attrition rallies is good enough to get you in. With an $1100 entry fee and an upcoming wedding, I think we're going to sit that event out so that we can still afford to improve the brakes and some other bits over the winter.
Lof8
HalfDork
10/10/16 7:48 p.m.
"You got like three feet of air that time". Kickass photos!
Remember when we got engaged in the RX7 rally thread? The Merkur got some use this past weekend 
Seeing the tail light and the remains of the tow strap made me smile!
Congrats to you and Sara- I'm so happy for you!
Woo-hoo! Congrats you guys
Rufledt
UltraDork
10/18/16 8:28 p.m.
Congratulations! Best-announcement-car-ever
You two are adorable. Congratulations.
de80q
Reader
10/19/16 8:21 a.m.
Congrats man! Wish I could get my wife anywhere near a race car...
Very cool. Congratulations! 
Best Wishes for you both. Congratulations!
I've been slacking, let's get caught up a bit!
Leaving the wedding, just as we passed the crowd and shifted to second, the shifter broke- we both laughed our asses off and did a lap of the township in second gear anyway because of course we did 
The cause was later determined to be even more loose bolts:
We got a couple of surprise GRM wedding gifts too- Brian (paranoid_android) sent us some sweet decals:
And on top of that, he sent us a bigass LED bar:
Thanks Brian! I've been collecting some other parts as well, and the big tear down for the winter will hopefully start this weekend.
Last weekend we went up to Empire State Performance Rally to volunteer, and saw lots of rally friends, as well as meeting Rob (bobofthefuture). Always good to meet another GRMer!
Looks like the same light bar we have, which we've been very happy with (along with our other Hella light bar). Doesn't throw great distance, but really is an excellent fill for close and medium and cornering.
Surprised you didn't meet Rob at BRS. I'm pretty sure you were standing right next to us at one point when we were chatting with him lol.
NickD
Dork
11/2/16 6:54 a.m.
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
I was up there crewing for Rob and Chris, along with Wall-E.
Started disassembly this weekend, took the ass end off (a number of bumper mounts and the mudflaps were destroyed):
Rear shocks had some issues, although the dampers themselves seem OK. DS was hitting the trailing arm and took some serious berkeleyery to remove:
That was taking away about 2" of droop travel, I guess I know why the car didn't really jump straight. Once removed I found this:
Can you see the crack? Both rear lower mounts had some damage, I'll be plating those so that hopefully this doesn't happen again. I wonder how many more hits it would have taken to break one off 
Took the skid plate off too, this used to be flat:
We can cut up the remains of this one to make mini-skids for other parts of the car, I'll make a thicker one for under the engine since it didn't take much to bend this one. Looks like the bell housing took the brunt of the impact, and we're replacing that anyway.
That brake line looks WAY too close to the axle!
Wow- good catch on the mounts!
In reply to wvumtnbkr:
Agreed, those will be getting rerouted anyway. The car came with caliper adapters to get rid of the drums in the back, I just need to figure out what caliper they're designed for.
