PFR Results - Quick Summary

Well...it was an intense event. A Blizzard rolled into the mountains and covered 3 of the stages in snow. 2 of the stages had to be cancelled since 3 competitors ended up going off the road during recce and no trucks could even get to them. We were able to finish Recce but had some hairy moments on the gravel tires (the only ones we brought with us).

We finished 14th of 26 regional competitors for the Friday night stages. I am pretty happy with that result since I've never ran those stages before, had a new co-driver, and were running on pace notes that we wrote (also a first for me) and, as a result, were not pushing. The Princeton Cutoff stages were CRAZY with huge exposures, ruts, and rocks (my skid plate has some new dents). Also, the Friday stages did not count towards the WCRC points, and were essentially ran for fun by the regional competitors so no point breaking the car. Something like 6-8 cars didn't finish the Friday stages (including 1 roll over).

Saturday went mostly well for us. Because 2 stages had been cancelled, the organizers decided to run the other snow covered stage an extra 2 times in the morning. We found out about this at 8:30 on Saturday morning. I ran into Canadian Tire when they opened at 9 and bought 4 Goodyear Nordic snow tires and 4 rims (I should have bought the ones available in the Classified forum before leaving). They had them mounted for me by 9:45, our start time was something like 10:24. Because we're relatively new to rally, we were seeded as 26 of 32 cars. Even though we took it easy on the first stage (covered in snow) we passed 3 cars over the 23kms. We knocked another 40 seconds off our time the 2nd time through. At that point we were running 9th of 26. We had 5 gravel stages through the afternoon and slipped to 12th. We gained back one position on the 2nd last stage (back onto the snow again) knocking a minute off our time from the first time through - but we had a puncture near the end of the stage. We got the tire changed and made it to the time control on time for the last stage. We decided on the start line not too push again and take our 11th place finish. About 5kms from the end we punctured another of the snow tires and had to finish the stage with the flat...losing about 2.5minutes from the previous time through. The tire was smoking when we got to the finish, I thought for a second that it might be on fire. We then had to wait for the next VW to come that had a spare for us to borrow so that we could get back to the finish control. We took 1m:10s in penalties for arriving late to the finish, bumping us to 14th.

So..it was a finish and the car isn't broken. 3rd finish of 4 rallies...not too bad, but I really would have liked that 11th place. Also, we were making good time on our last stage before the puncture, and a top 10 wasn't out of the question. I'm a bit dissapointed, but I guess that's what I get for using Goodyear Nordics in a rally. 4 new tires and rims, 2 punctures and 1 wrecked rim.

Lessons learned...1) when using cheap snow tires on 2 passes of a 23kms rough stage, take 2 spares. 2) We could have put snow tires on the front and gravels on the back for the last 2 passes through the snow stage. We knew that the stage was getting chewed up pretty good, and only the 1st half was snow (stage starts high and loses elevation).

I'll post more later...very tired now after 17hour drive home. I also had a video camera in the car this time and got some great footage, will post up some video when I get it edited and sorted.

Lastly...Thanks so much to John Hall, my co-driver for the event. John and I made a great team, I think, except he likes it really cold in the car and I like to run the heater non stop :). John did a great job with the pace notes, but more importantly he kept me grounded during the event, constantly reminding me to not take risks and finish the rally. As he put it "first learn to finish, then learn to finish first".

PFR 2 weeks away

So, it is 2 weeks from today that I will be leaving for Merritt, via Edmonton to pick up John on the way to a weekend of racing at PFR. I know that the race must be getting close, since I had a nightmare last night (?only a nightmare to me perhaps?) that the car was still being put together the night before the rally. The dream isn't too far from reality, however, as I am still pulling together the last few 'critical path' items together. The new engine fired up for the first time the night before last. I quickly discovered a coolant leak from the front coolant flange that comes off the head. A new O-ring comes in today, so I intend to be running the first break-in session tonight. The exhaust went on last night even though I've got a touch of the flu, or a cold or something. I still have to install the driveshafts and make an adjustment to the throttle cable (also tonight). An alignment is scheduled for Friday, so I will have the whole long-weekend to practise with and tune the car. One unfortunate item is my cams have still not arrived, but I am assured that they are on the way (?). I will be breaking in the engine with the stock cams for now and won't be pushing the car too hard for the short term anyways. I anticipate that even with the stock cams, the car will feel much more torquey (Is that a word?).

There are also some other things I want to do with the car before PFR that are not on the 'critical path' (i.e. If they don't get done, I can still race the car). I've swapped out the manual steering rack for power steering and I have a steering quickener on the shelf that I hope to install. This will likely be a 4-hourish type of job, so I'm leaving it until I'm sure everything else is ok. I've also been trying to buy a minidv camera from ebay, but I'm so cheap that I've lost like 8 auctions in a row.

Overall, I'm suprised how similar this swap has been to the project management I do as part of my day-job. I have a due date for completion and getting all of the parts, etc together in time has been a challenge. That leads me to something I've been meaning to put into this BLOG. If you ever plan to build your own rally car out of a VW Golf or any other car, PLEASE TAKE THIS ADVISE: Buy a rally car that has already been built, or start with a platform that already has the engine you want. I think the only stock items left in my car are: 1) the shell; 2) the dash and some things below it; 3)the master cylinder (although other parts of the braking system have all be changed) and; 3) portions of the wiring harness. Granted, I have learned A LOT about this car by building it myself, but 1/2 of rally is about car preparation and maintenance. I think I would have learned almost as much by now if I had purchased a car already built.

If you're coming to PFR, then I look forward to seeing you there. If not, I'll put up links to pics as soon as I can.