gearheadE30
gearheadE30 Dork
7/26/23 11:59 a.m.

In reply to Berck :

What rack is in your car? Stock power rack is 4 turns lock to lock. Several off the shelf options exist in the 2.7-3.2 range, and it makes a massive difference. Offset control arm bushings helped mine in the feedback department as well, if yours are still stock centered ones, but that's on a pavement car. If everything is working, it should actually feel pretty good, though if you're still running power steering it does tend to be pretty overboosted. 

Berck
Berck Reader
7/26/23 12:20 p.m.

In reply to gearheadE30 :

I'm pretty sure it's the stock rack.  Upgrading it is on the list, especially if I can grab a cheap aftermarket one that'll bolt up with minimal fabrication?

gearheadE30
gearheadE30 Dork
7/28/23 12:27 p.m.

Gotcha, that's a huge opportunity for improvement then. I really disliked the steering on my E30s until doing a swap, really makes the car feel more responsive and modern, though the latter is probably more important for a daily than a race car. 

It's been probably a decade since I last researched this, but maybe this will help start the search at least. E36 racks were the common swap, they bolt in with a few spacers as the E30 subframe ears are further apart. People have been known to use washers. Normal E36 and 1996+ M3 are 3.2 turns lock to lock, 1995 M3 is 3 turns, Z3 is 2.7. I think it was the Z3 rack that has different, tighter steering stops, so not great for rally. I have a 3.2 turn rack in my 318is, at the time they were cheap and easy to get and probably still are. The 325es has the stock rack and feels like a bus in comparison. 

I believe some people are using E46 racks as well, but I don't know anything about those. 

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) MegaDork
7/28/23 12:48 p.m.

In reply to gearheadE30 :

The Z3 is probably the same ratio as the others.  My Volvo has 2 turns lock to lock steering, but it is the same slow steering as a base model, just with enormous steering stops.

 

I'd be inclined to splice a quickener in, myself smiley   Fast steering is incredible to have.  A quickener is not exactly an evening's worth of swapping parts like changing the rack is, though.

Berck
Berck Reader
8/10/23 7:50 p.m.

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) MegaDork
8/11/23 8:48 p.m.

Well.  That de-escalated quickly.

 

What happen?

Berck
Berck Reader
8/11/23 9:09 p.m.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

See the writeup and video a few posts back?  Just updating with a few professional photographs... 

Srob1107
Srob1107 New Reader
11/23/23 1:46 p.m.

What do you guys think of pitting on thrust washer surface very small maybe 1/4 inch and dimples inwards will I have issues? M44b19 engine going in a z3 

Berck
Berck Reader
11/23/23 5:19 p.m.

In reply to Srob1107 :

I'm no expert, but I wouldn't want to waste labor installing that crank as-is.

Berck
Berck Reader
6/3/24 10:31 p.m.

Still here. I haven't given up, but boy have I thought about it.  First off: more tire help/advice please!  While there's theoretically enough of the Maxxis gravel tires I bought awhile back to get me through another rally, they're cracking.  Mostly in between the tread blocks:

Given that they're only like 2 years old, this is annoying.  Of course, they were cheap.  And stored outside in Colorado the whole time.  The one that has never run and spent most of its time in my trunk looks okay.  But I'm pretty sure that enough stuff will go wrong at my next rally that I don't need to worry about this.  So as much as it pains me to do, I need more tires.

And I can't find *any* cheap rally tires.   And barely any expensive ones.  These Maxxis are apparently no more.  There are no MRFs and no Federals in stock that I can find.  Pirelli K4s comes in a much better size for me, 175/70R15, but there are none of those to be had as far as I can tell.

That leaves two terrible options:

Murray has some Yokohama A053 Mediums in 160/640R15.  I have no idea what that actually is, but some Googling makes me think it's roughly equivalent to 195s.  They have some softs in 150/625, but I'm skeptical about a set of softs getting me through Rally Colorado.  In any case, the medium 160/640 are $149.49.  Which sounds very reasonable!  Only, shipping is *also* about $150/tire.

That leaves Hoosiers.  I have no evidence, but Hoosier just... pisses me off.  Mostly this is about Formula Vee, but they managed to win out being the spec tire for SCCA Formula Vee.  They took their super-grippy FV tires, made them have less grip, but still cost as much and wear out just as fast but of course they sell plenty of them because they're a spec tire.  I race one of the few vintage groups that still runs slick tires, and this move has made the much better but cheaper American Racer slicks near-unavailable.  I'm angry about the whole thing, and it's probably not actually Hoosier's fault, but... ugh.

Regardless of my poorly-conceived prejudice about Hoosiers, they're stupid expensive.  Worse, there's currently only a ridiculous hodge-podge available.  From their closeout section, I can get some 185/65R15 x-hards for $125!  That sounds great!  Only, they're only available in Rights.  I can get some 195/65R15 in x-hards for $175, which is also fine, but they're only available in left.  I'm....  considering it?  What's a little right-turning tendancy going to matter, anyway?

In a less ridiculous idea, I can get current 185/65R15 Mediums for $313.  This is too expensive, and my biggest concern is that Mediums might not even make it through all of Rally Colorado.  Rally Colorado is very hot, very rocky.  My goal is not to win anything but to, you know, on my THIRD attempt maybe finish a berkeleying rally.  Mediums don't seem like a great idea, but this is probably my best option?  If I do go this route, can I cheap out and just buy 4 and carry the least cracked of my 195 Maxxis as spares?  Or is that really dumb, too?  If I buy 6 of them, are these going to age out just as quickly as the Maxxis?

I'm hoping that you guys know about a source that I haven't checked and there's some cheap 195-or-skinnier gravel tires out there somewhere.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UltimaDork
6/4/24 6:57 a.m.

A lot of people order their Pirellis from Four Star Motorsports in Canada- not any cheaper than the Hoosiers, though.

You could reach out to rally.build and see when they'll have more Federals in stock.

The obvious answer is find used tires, but there's no easy source to point you to- Tim Wickberg and Steve Olona are both friendly and Colorado based, maybe they have some or know somebody nearby who would?

I have been very happy with the Hoosiers, the expense is offset a bit by their contingency program although it's not as generous as it was a few years ago. I would run Hard or XHard for an event as hot as Colorado gets, the Mediums will melt. If you want to keep it cheap, I doubt you'll notice if you run directional rally tires the wrong way around- it's a pretty minuscule difference. 

In your shoes I'd buy the 185 XHard Hoosiers on closeout and pretend they're not directional. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UltimaDork
6/4/24 7:20 a.m.

On the cracking Maxxis tires, I'd probably air them to a low but serviceable pressure (20psi or so) and go for a drive on normal paved roads.  If they're not throwing tread blocks or vibrating like crazy by the time you get home, perfect spares.

Berck
Berck Reader
6/4/24 9:35 a.m.

Thanks, as always!  If running 2 of them backwards isn't a big deal, then the $125 x-hards are a steal so I went ahead and ordered 6 of them.  Some of the vendors do claim to have the left side, not sure if this is real or not, but I'll try to order some of those as well.

Thanks for confirming that the medium is too soft for Rally Colorado--this is what I figured, but Hoosier Tire West doesn't have the hards or xhards.  I can be as annoyed as I want at Hoosier, but if they're the only tires available...  (Four Star is sold out of all the Pirellis except 205s, they don't appear to ever have K2s and K4s may be too soft.)

The contingency program requires that you place.  Which also requires that you finish.  Something I've never done.  I guess stranger things have happened, so I should go ahead and register in case everyone else DNFs again this year.  There were 5 L2WD cars at Rally Colorado last year and only one of them finished. The ARA contingency details I can find on their site are dated 2019--is there an updated form somewhere?

Car update: Thanks to your hotbits contact, I was able to get my suspension repaired with little hassle and for a very reasonable price.  There are suspension bits back in place in the front left corner:

I've purchased a welder and have been zapping things.  I'm not any good at it, but I was able to cut out much of the destroyed sheet metal.  The floor had started to rust in the usual spots, so I cut out some of that and replaced it.  The crashed corner was rusted as well as ripped apart.  The shape was too complicated for me to manage welding most of it, so it's riveted.  It's not going to win any awards.

So yeah, under the seam sealer and underbody rust coating stuff is mostly rivets.  Some welding, but mostly rivets since that pulls stuff together.  The seam on the flat floor is all welded.  Incompetently, but welded.  The four holes left are for mounting the diamond plate floor pan.

The car spent most of the last year just sitting on the trailer.  After last year, I was sort of expecting ARA to declare my grandfathered cage illegal, and I was going to use that as an excuse to quit.  But no such thing has happened so I'll soldier on.  I've purchased a containment seat on the off chance that keeps me safer.  Mostly I'm relying on the fact that I'm slow and not trying to win to keep me alive.

FooBag (Forum Supporter)
FooBag (Forum Supporter) Reader
6/4/24 10:39 a.m.
Berck said:

Thanks, as always!  If running 2 of them backwards isn't a big deal, then the $125 x-hards are a steal so I went ahead and ordered 6 of them.  Some of the vendors do claim to have the left side, not sure if this is real or not, but I'll try to order some of those as well.

Thanks for confirming that the medium is too soft for Rally Colorado--this is what I figured, but Hoosier Tire West doesn't have the hards or xhards.  I can be as annoyed as I want at Hoosier, but if they're the only tires available...  (Four Star is sold out of all the Pirellis except 205s, they don't appear to ever have K2s and K4s may be too soft.)

Chris already answered for you, but yeah definitely don't use the mediums and I'd even question using hards for that.  I delaminated  one brand new Hoosier hard and broke a belt in the other in a SINGLE rallycross event on my SRT4 at an event with medium hard dirt and 90 degree air temp.  Hoosier then put a bad taste in my mouth by saying the tires, even though having never been used previously and basement stored for  ~18 months, were past their service life.  I was told that their tires should be discarded at the two year from date code mark. angry

Berck
Berck Reader
6/4/24 11:20 a.m.
FooBag (Forum Supporter) said:
I was told that their tires should be discarded at the two year from date code mark. angry

Yikes, now that I just potentially ordered more than I need for one rally, and only seem to manage 1 rally per year.  Given the state my Maxxis are in after 2 years (not sure how old they were when I got them, they might not even have date codes?), maybe this is typical of rally tires.  I've definitely never had a problem with 2-year old race slicks.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UltimaDork
6/4/24 12:42 p.m.

In reply to Berck :

Don't leave them outside, keeping UV off them and temps above freezing should prolong their service life quite a bit. 

Berck
Berck Reader
6/5/24 1:04 a.m.

So after much measuring and guessing (thanks Irish44J!), I went ahead and ordered an OMP HTE-R XL over the winter without being at all sure it was going to fit.  After painting the floor again last night, I went ahead and installed the seat tonight.  I'm happy to report that it fits fine and I fit great in it.  For visibility, I'd probably have preferred to be about half an inch higher, but that's just not possible and it's probably safer that I'm a little lower anyway.  I'm stoked this fits, because I really don't fit in the HTE-R 400 I've got for the co-driver so I probably wouldn't fit in the normal HTE-R either.

Berck
Berck Reader
6/7/24 5:33 p.m.

Tires solved.

I ordered the 6 rights on closeout because I thought I couldn't get lefts, as Hoosier Tire West didn't have them in stock.  But Hoosier Tire GP did.  So then I ordered 3 lefts.  Now I have a stupid amount of tires, but assuming I make use of the rights before they age out, I saved quite a bit amount of money on them.

I'm also hoping that Hoosier Xhards might have a little more grip than the Maxxis hards.

I also don't understand why Hoosier ships these in boxes.  Individually.  I now have a stupid amount of cardboard to throw away.

Is there a way to decipher a date on these?  They're not DOT, so there's not a DOT date block.  There is a weird 4 digit alphanumeric stamp in an oval, though.

Berck
Berck HalfDork
7/9/24 9:34 p.m.

I've been working on the car more than updating this thread.  Things are in pretty good shape for Rally Colorado.  I replaced the driveshaft center support bushing that failed on the last rally.  Do I get a prize for most-destroyed CSB ever?

With this as the only center driveshaft support, acceleration was.... violent.

After replacing it (and, you know, the missing wheel/suspension/brakes on the front left) I went for a test drive.  There was definitely more driveline vibration on deceleration than acceleration which seemed problematic.  I decided to replace the guibo as well after noticing that it seems to have lost a fight with a rock.  Or something.

Of course, I ordered an E30 guibo.  Because I have an E30.  But I don't have an E30 transmission.  Or, apparently, an E30 driveshaft.  Probably not an E30 diff either.  So of course it didn't fit.  I googled the part number on the old one and found the right thing, fits an EsomethingOrOther that hadn't been invented in 1991.

Installed the new one along with some brand new nuts and bolts.  On the subsequent test drive it vibrates just as much on acceleration as deceleration, so I'll call that good.  With bent rally wheels and gravel tires, I'm not expecting smooth.  It's probably fine.

Rally Colorado has aspirations of becoming a real (National?) rally in the future.  This year we're using Rallysafe for the first time.  Back around the time I bought the car, I picked up a rallysafe install kit at a discount on Facebook.  Finally got around to installing it.  I won't mention how much time I spent installing it, because it's embarassing.  I will say that I have no idea how people make the "rent an install kit for $40 at registration" thing work.

I'm annoyed that I'm (1) not allowed to switch the rallysafe power line, and (2) the power connector displays a green LED all the time it's connected to power.  I know it probably doesn't drain much, but this is dumb.  At least I can tell it's getting power since I don't actually have a rallysafe to test this with.

I managed a 65mile test drive on Sunday evening.  As far as I can tell, nothing (new) broke.  

Pete. (l33t FS)
Pete. (l33t FS) MegaDork
7/9/24 9:56 p.m.

I am assuming that they let you use a fuse.

 

I can see why they don't want it switched (shut the car off, transponder shuts off too) at least.

 

Berck
Berck HalfDork
7/9/24 10:41 p.m.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Yup, 5amp fuse recommended and installed.  As I understand it, the unit is *also* battery powered, so you'd think that its power source shutting down in the event that the car shuts down shouldn't be that big a deal?  It's funny installing two antennas, a power lead and wiring them all to a mount for a thing I've never actually seen.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UltimaDork
7/10/24 8:25 a.m.

The battery end of my rallysafe wire is a battery tender plug- if the car is going to sit for a few weeks, I unplug it (and the green LED) and plug the battery tender in.

I've installed exactly one rental kit on a car I was crewing for and it involved just as much frantic drilling, ziptieing, and swearing as you'd think- the permanent kit is definitely the way to go.

I actually really like having the rallysafe unit, when you need it it's very nice to have warnings about cars around you and it makes the live timing much quicker.

Berck
Berck HalfDork
7/10/24 9:40 a.m.

Ahh, that is quite clever.  Switches are not allowed, but quick disconnects aren't mentioned...

To be clear, I'm quite excited about using Rallysafe this year.  As the slowest car out there, I'm particularly happy about the idea of receiving passing requests.  (I'm never going to catch anyone else, so I'll only be on receiving end...)  Last year I felt really bad for the team that passed me on stage, sideways with inches to spare next to a huge exposure.  I'd gladly have made it easy for them if I'd only been able to know they were back there in that dust cloud.

I'm less excited about the corresponding surveillance app for recce.  We barely managed two passes on each stage last year given the whole day, and that was with some minor speeding on transits and a bit more speeding on the second pass on stage. It's going to affect other teams even more than me, given that more than one passed me on stage at speeds closer to 60mph...

Also, given that it incorrectly nabbed you, I'm worried that it can't be trusted.  How did you convince them it was wrong--did you have video of recce?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ UltimaDork
7/10/24 9:44 a.m.

In reply to Berck :

The RS Lite speeding thing was a data collection error- as you're about to learn, the thing has a bit of lag when you do bump into the max speed, so it can record "over" for a while even though you went 31mph for all of 2 seconds.  I actually think my crappy old phone might be somewhat to blame, lots and lots of lag and the GPS is a bit sloppy and jumps around a lot when I'm using a map app.  We were prepared to provide video if needed, we recce with a camera on for each stage so we can review the video later.

Plan to dedicate one phone in the recce vehicle to just the app- it needs to be on screen all the time, just start it somewhere with data coverage, turn the volume up, and plug it into a charger and leave it alone for the whole day.

Berck
Berck HalfDork
7/23/24 9:58 p.m.

I finished a rally!

My goals this year were, in order:

  • Don’t die
  • Finish the rally
  • Have fun

I probably didn’t do as much car prep as I could or should have, but I did repair the damage from last year. Replaced all the broken suspension on the front left corner, replaced a bunch of a sheet metal and the busted driveshaft support bearing.

I spent a bunch of time installing the RallySafe bits, doing general maintenance and making sure I’d accounted for all the rule changes. I had various ideas for improvements/upgrades, and basically none of that happened. Mostly because I couldn’t shake the image of a crumpled rally car making any such efforts moot.

Recce the third year in a row meant that we had prior notes for all of the stages and didn’t have to write notes from scratch. The stages that were the same as 2023 were backwards, though, so that meant that the usable notes we had were from 2022. When I had absolutely no idea what an R3 over crest was.

The first stage was Valley of the Gods and the notes were rough. The stage started from a slightly different place, and our notes were truly terrible. Jack got lost reading them on recce so we marked a whole section as need-to-fix. In prior years when we messed up a corner, we’d cheat and back up a corner to fix it. Since the RSLite app was going to nag on us and disqualify us for such insanely unsafe behavior, this wasn’t an option.

We ran most of the stages once, a few of them twice, fixing up bad notes as we went. For Douglas Creek, we had Jemba notes from 2018 to start with. These were verbose, but way better than anything we created and were both confidence-inspiring and a useful tool for me. In many places, Douglas Creek better resembled a rock crawl than a road and I wasn’t sure whether my car would even make it. We didn’t run it last year at all, and the year before the car blew up before we got a chance.

We stopped to view one of the petroglyph sites near the stages.

We ended up doing Valley of the Gods 4 times in recce before we were happy with the notes. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an option, but given that we were able to do a quick single pass on the stages for which we already had notes, we could.

Parc Expose at the Rangely Car Museum was as hot and brutal as ever. The unexpected addition this year of speakers blasting bro country didn’t help things. The fact that the car museum took their 1915 American La France Speedster (which participated in the 2016 Peking to Paris Rally) out for the parade was pretty cool, though.

A rally car among rally cars:

After the parade, I checked out the car one last time. It was leaking coolant from the lower radiator hose. I have no idea why–it’s a new radiator, a new hose, and a new hose clamp. The clamp was tight, and I hadn’t touched it since last year. I replaced the clamp, and it stopped leaking.

Thursday morning we headed out of the service park toward Valley of the Gods.

We were supposed to start last, but the car that should have been in front of us was waiting for a miscalculated start time or something. So we went ahead and started ahead of them. I’m not sure what the rules are here, but I wasn’t entirely sure what to do and there were no penalties involved.

I, of course, took it easy at the start, trying to remember what it was like to drive on dirt and listen to notice. I had not managed to get into any sort of a groove by the Mile 3 where we ran into this:

That’s the volunteer manning a radio checkpoint waving an SOS sign at us. No one ever really mentioned this was a possibility, so it was a bit confusing, and the guy who stopped us wasn’t really sure what we should do anyway. Jack set up our triangles.

Information from the radio was vague, medical SOS, but maybe not a medical. It turns out that Bret Hunter had maybe managed to the roll the Zombie CRX for the last time after breaking a tie rod, winding up in a rock. The road was narrow and had quite the exposure on one side, so it’s pretty lucky they managed to stay on the road. Fortunately, the crew was uninjured, but the road was impassable, thus the SOS.

It took forever to get the road cleared and then forever for us to transit on to the next stage. We arrived at Quest for Darwin hours late–around the time we should have been leaving service for the second section.

Quest for Darwin is the stage on which we blew an engine the first year and the same stage (in the other direction) on which we crashed the second year. I’m not a superstitious person, but humans are pattern-matching animals and it’s hard not to go into it with a bit of trepidation.

It went fine. The road was full of even deeper piles of silt than I remember from either recce or previous years. There are long, fast sections through piles of silt where the front runners do 115mph. I managed 84mph before the car started sliding around enough that it seemed like I was mostly just hanging on and backed off a bit.

It managed to get miserably hot by the time we made it to Earl’s Bad Day. This stage would probably kill me without a co-driver–there are some truly misleading corners and some places that, without trying hard, you could easily go over a crest and then off the side of the mountain. I drive those sections excessively slowly, because Goal #1 remained no death.

We made it back to service with no complaints about the car. Dan looked it over, pronounced it great. We checked times and were astounded to learn that we were not the slowest car out there–we were significantly faster than the Civic in last place! We tried to hydrate and headed out for Valley of Gods the second time.

This went really well. Part of it is that we’d driven the stage a bunch in recce, part of it was that the notes were good, and part of it is that the stage isn’t insane. There are exposures and plenty of opportunities for death, but they’re not sneaky. The road is rough, but not a rock crawl. There are uphill sections, but not so uphill I have the choice of wheel spin at redline in first gear, or lugging in 2nd gear.

There were about 2 minutes where I genuinely had fun. The Hoosiers gripped way better than the Maxxis ever did. I’d removed a bunch of toe in from the front so only a smidge remained, and that helped the car turn in. I’m left-foot braking where possible and that’s helping get the car rotated. There was a long section where it felt like I was driving fast, the notes were good, and I wasn’t terrified.

We made it to the end and beat lateness….by 6 seconds. That was discouraging until I looked at the times at the end of the day and realized that we were faster on the stage than 3 cars, and pretty close behind a 4th. Actual competition! I have no idea why Rally Colorado sets lateness times such that a bunch of competitors genuinely trying can’t beat it, but it’s rough.

While waiting to check in at ATC, I generally kill the car and run the fan. It’s 95-100F and letting the car cool before each run seems to keep the temps down. I still haven’t installed a real temp gauge, so I have no idea by how much or how hot the car actually gets.

Anyway, as we approached our minute outside of ATC for Quest for Darwin the second time, I belted in, and tried to start the car and it refused. Cranked happily, but just refused to start. I double-checked that the fuel pumps were on. I cycled the ignition off and on and tried again. Nothing. Not a pop or anything. Jack said he was going to go walk our timecard in so we weren’t late. I told him not to bother, that I didn’t have any ideas. He ignored me.

I opened the hood to check for loose wiring. I didn’t see anything. I tried to start it again. Nothing. I cycled the master switch off, back on, tried to start it again. And it started. I closed the hood and picked up Jack, who’d checked in with seconds to spare. We rushed to get belted in. I think they took some pity on us and gave us a later start than they otherwise would have without a penalty, but it’s hard to know.

We were distracted for the first half of the stage, and the second half of the stage I was just miserable. It was hot, the car felt like it had less grip than the previous run, and the pacing of the notes was off. It felt terrible, but somehow we managed 7 seconds faster than our previous run.

The last stage was mostly just an exercise in fighting heat exhaustion. I was guzzling as much water as I could between stages, peeing constantly, and was completely soaked in sweat and still felt dehydrated. It was hard to concentrate and all I wanted was to get through the stage and out of the car. Which we did.

We never did figure out why the car wouldn’t start. It’s worked every time after that. Maybe just a minor hint of our Quest for Darwin curse remained.

Saturday evening was free barbecue in the park with all the teams and volunteers. I slept in a bit Sunday morning. We headed to the first running of Douglas Creek with a bit of trepidation.

The stage had been SOS’d before we got there. As we found out later, about 1.5 miles into the stage, the 3rd place car went into a “L4 tightens to L2” with only the “L4” part of the note. The driver said by the time he got the “tightens to L2” part of the note, there wasn’t much to do. They sailed off the side of the mountain and rolled 3 times coming to a rest 50 feet below the road. The stage was canceled and they took the crew to the hospital. The co-driver suffered a minor concussion, but otherwise they were fine. The crew managed to relay the cause to everyone before we ran the stage a second time, which was great, because we got to add a caution to that section of the notes so we didn’t make the same mistake.

After a long wait, we all headed to Dragon Trail. If we were going to lose a stage, I was kind of glad it was Douglas Creek, the rock crawl stage that was bound to break cars.

Even though there were only 22 cars, we were (thankfully!) running 2 minute intervals for dust. This meant a pretty good wait before we could go. For reasons I don’t understand, they instructed us all past ATC and gave us all the same impossible “ideal” start time.

The first section of Dragon’s Trail is 6 switchbacks with a steep grade. The switchbacks are too tight for 2nd gear, but 1st gear is just a spinny disaster. The grade is steep enough that the M42 barely gets the car to any speed at all before slowing again for the next one. After the initial hill climb stage though, the road is fast, smooth and usually grippy for quite awhile. This is where I do not shine–the really fast stuff scares me.

After Dragon’s Trail is Presser, a fast 1-mile stage with a few kinks and crests. They have us start on a little trail perpendicular to the road, and they let spectators line the road we didn’t use. So it’s a tight L2 in front of spectators while we get up to speed. I shifted to second before the turn, didn’t get the car to rotate and managed to look quite lame.

Still, headed back to service with nothing wrong the car and real hopes of actually finishing a rally.

While we were waiting for the start at Douglas Creek, we watched a Honda Fit climbing the massive hill at the start. “Wow. Look at how slow that Fit is going up that hill,” Jack said. “We’re going to be just as slow,” he continued. “Nope,” I said, “I think you’re wrong. We’re going to be slower.” I’m not sure if we were or not, but man was it painful. I knew that my chances of beating the turbo Subaru in front of me (which, at service, were 7 seconds ahead of) completely disappeared. They’d have no problem putting 30 seconds on us in that one straight section that we’d be doing at 20mph.

Douglas Creek was just as brutal as we’d feared. We passed the formerly 2nd place Volkswagen of Steve Bis and Kelly Keefe. Later on, after a particularly brutal rock crawl skid plate test section that I really should have slowed down more for, we passed the Subaru of Eliza Coleman and Alessandro Gelsomino.

Jack somehow not only made an off-by-one error doing the math for our check-in time at Dragon Trail, he realized it the instant the volunteer handed us our time card back. He was really upset about it, even though the one minute penalty made absolutely no difference to our finish order. At the time he was worried it might, and he felt like it was an inexcusable mistake. Given the fact that I was making mistakes at the rate of one-per-second, all of which added up to far more than a minute, I wasn’t even a little bit upset.

Our second run of Dragon’s Trail felt faster, but wound up being 20 seconds slower. I have no idea why. The second running of Presser I just kept it in first at redline around the L2 at the start, and got properly sideways for the spectators.

And then, for the first time, after 3 years of trying, we handed in our timecard at the finish. And not even the last place finisher!

It’s not traditional, but they gave champagne to all the finishers. I was going to play nice and just drink it, but Jack picked a fight that I won. It felt like we earned it.

I’m realizing that if I want to figure out how to get any good at this, I’m going to have to do it more often than once a year. And, for once, I don’t have a completely destroyed car to fix before I can do it again.

I’m thinking about the Overmountain Tennessee Rally in September…

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