Kananaskis Results

We finished 9th of 17 cars that started the rally. Another ~mid-pack finish. I had hoped for a bit of a better finish, but I've still got some learning to do and I need bigger balls when it comes to trusting the notes. The car ran well for the event, but we couldn't match the speed of the other Group 2 cars that went 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the event. Overall, I'm still very happy to have finished the event and not have many repairs to do to the car.

We had a couple of close calls during the rally but the car (and the occupants) were unharmed. This was the second event where we made our own pace notes. Our notes were better than our first attempt (at PFR) but there is still room for improvement - mostly in the way that I interpret the road and the notes I give to John. I think that the notes will also improve for subsequent passes of the same roads, since we'll be able to refine the notes rather than writing them from scratch.

So winter work begins on the car. The stock cams will finally come out, and the race cams will go in. I will also be installing a standalone engine management system to make the engine run better with the performance modifications the car has. I'd also like to paint the car again because, well...it's ugly. I'm really looking forward to the next season of racing.

Kananaskis Rally - TV Schedule

The 2007 Kananaskis Rally is coming up on Rememberance day weekend. This is a regional event that is the last rally of the year. I've never competed or even spectated at this rally before, although I lived and worked in Kananaskis for 5 years (although never driven most of the roads used for this rally). I'm excited to go..the car is still running well.

Also announced this week is the TV schedule for the Canadian Rally Series. We competed at two of these rallies (Rocky and PFR) and are hoping for a bit of TV footage to come our way. The events are televised on CityTV and were very entertaining last year.

Chad.



2007 CRC Season Airing Schedule
***Subject to Change****
Intro./ Perce-Neige, Maniwaki
A-Channel BC Sat. Nov. 3rd 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Nov. 4th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Nov. 3rd 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Nov. 4th 4:30pm
Perce- Neige, Maniwaki
A-Channel BC Sat. Nov. 10th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Nov. 11th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Nov. 10th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Nov. 11th 4:30pm
Rocky Mountain Rally-Part One
A-Channel BC Sat. Nov. 17th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Nov. 18th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Nov.17th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Nov.18th 4:30pm

Rocky Mountiain Rally-Part Two
A-Channel BC Sat. Nov. 24th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Nov. 25th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Nov.24th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Nov.25th 4:30pm

Rallye Baie des Chaleurs- Part One
A-Channel BC Sat. Dec. 1st 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Dec. 2nd 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Dec. 1st 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Dec. 2nd 4:30pm

Rallye Baie des Chaleurs- Part Two
A-Channel BC Sat. Dec. 8th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Dec. 9th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Dec. 8th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Dec. 9th 4:30pm

Rallye Defi St. Agathe/ Duhamel - Part One
A-Channel BC Sat. Dec. 15th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Dec. 16th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Dec. 15th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Dec. 16th 4:30pm

Rallye Defi St. Agathe/ Duhamel - Part Two
A-Channel BC Sat. Dec. 22nd 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Dec. 23rd 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Dec. 22nd 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Dec. 23rd 4:30pm

Pacific Forest Rally- Part One
A-Channel BC Sat. Dec. 29th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Dec. 30th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Dec. 29th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Dec. 30th 4:30pm

Pacific Forest Rally- Part Two
A-Channel BC Sat. Jan. 5th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Jan. 6th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Jan. 5th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Jan. 6th 4:30pm

Rally of the Tall Pines- Part One
A-Channel BC Sat. Jan. 12th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Jan. 13th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Jan. 12th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Jan. 13th 4:30pm

Rally of the Tall Pines- Part Two
A-Channel BC Sat. Jan. 19th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Jan. 20th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Jan. 19th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Jan. 20th 4:30pm

TARGA
A-Channel BC Sat. Jan.26th 2:00pm
A-Channel-ON Sun. Jan.27th 5:30pm
City TV Edmonton & Calgary Sat. Jan.26th 1:30pm
City TV Winnipeg Sun. Jan.27th 4:30pm

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.

New co-driver found (well, ok...he found me)

I am very pleased to announce that Mr. John Hall will be co-driving for the Gopher Rally team at Pacific Forest Rally in October. John has significantly more rally experience that I do, so I hope I don't dissapoint him too horribly.

I've also been promising some pictures from Rocky Mountain Rally. The following pictures are property of flatovercrest.com (please support their website).


Shot at 2007-08-20


Shot at 2007-08-20

New Engine

Well, I've finally decided to make the leap from the 1.8 8v to the 2.0 16v engine that nearly every other vw in my class is using. This will provide us with the power and torque that we have been lacking to be truly competive (as we found at Rocky, where our lack of hp was particularly noticable due to long flowing stages, even when the car was running right). As well as the new engine, I will be converting the car from a manual steering rack to a power rack with a steering quickener.

As a result, I have a number of 1.8 8v performance parts for sale here: http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=3395000.

Next event is Pacific Forest Rally in Merritt, BC held between October 18-20th. I am hoping that I will have all modifications to the car complete in time for the rallycross at the Sports Car Olympics in Regina (at the beginning of Oct, I believe) so that I can have a brief shakedown with the car before an actual event.

New Co-driver Required

:( Heath is moving and cannot continue codriving for the team. :(

I will not have any events requiring a co-driver until fall 2007, but am hoping that someone is interested in the job.

I will be posting some pictures from Rocky shortly

Rocky Results

Hi all,

We finished 12th of ~30 regional competitors at Rocky Mountain Rally this past weekend.

No drama on the stages besides some difficulty adjusting to Jemba style notes (for instance: "Heath, you really need to tell me about those 'R2's with exposure' a bit sooner!!"). Actually, Heath did an excellent job with the notes considering we're both very new to the sport. Some mechanical problems, including the fuel pump which was on its last legs and at some times wouldn't let me get up over 5000rpm. The car started overheating seriously (temp guage was off scale during some of the stages). The cooling fan wouldn't run continuously so I thought the thermo switch was busted. We hard wired the fan at service to run non-stop but that didn't really seem to help. Now I think there may be a blockage of some sort somewhere in the cooling system. Even though the car was overheating, we pushed it as hard as the fuel pump would let us. One of the microphones on our intercom also broke, leaving Heath yelling the notes to me for a couple of stages untill we could fix it. As we were coming into the final time control (finish) after about a 10km transit, the oil pressure warning light was coming on (but it seems to do that when running hot - vw mechanic says I've got the wrong sensors(??)). But, the car made it to the finish and we were happy with our result (whoo hoo 12th, Yahhh 12th !!! ....seems a bit funny )

The stages were long, fast and flowing. Lots of long uphills that really made me wish I had way more power. Some short tighter sections where the car behaved very good. I'll get some pictures up once I get some.

Take care,
Chad.

Looking forward to Rocky

Rocky 2004 - My 1st time ever as a spectator at a Rally, sat on the side of a cold dusty road with Warren Currie's brother and decided that I need to do this rally thing for myself (as if I wasn't already addicted).

Rocky 2005 - Heath and I volunteer for the rally and work time control at service (both of us get severe sunburn!!).

Rocky 2006 - I was very disappointed to not have my car ready, as I had hoped this would be my first rally...had to wait until fall of 2006 to debut at Pacific Forest Rally in Merritt, BC (and then went ~14kms before I went off the road...lol). Turned out the weather did not cooperate anyways and many stages had to be cancelled as they were virtually impassable (sp?) due to mud.

Rocky 2007 - Finally going to the show with my own rally car. To say I'm excited is an understatement. Based upon the weather pattern for the last 3 years, I'm expecting sunny skies.

Apology

WOW...just read through the post below and am I ever long-winded, boring, and full of excuses. Sorry (will do better next time).

Chad

Cochrane Rally 2007

I'm a bit overdue for this update. We competed in the Cochrane Rally of the Ranchlands on March 17th, 2007. There was a record number of entries for the event at 25 teams. This rally included "recce", or in otherwords, we had the option to drive the roads before the event to make pace notes. We were also given the organizer supplied notes if we wanted to use them. Since we had no experience creating pace notes, and since this was essentially our first rally after our premature exit at PFR, we decided to do recce but use the organiser supplied notes (rather than creating our own from scratch). We also decided ahead of time that we were going to take it easy and finish the rally. The registration, recce, and the technical inspection was on Saturday and then the rally was on Sunday. Saturday was a beautiful day and there was lots of melting and mud on the stages. However, the day of the rally we had snow and freezing rain. Even before the start of the rally we had problems. Our service man (my good friend Todd from Calgary) came over to the rally car as we were about 2 minutes away from the start to tell me my truck wouldn't start. This was the truck that I had just purchased the weekend before the rally (used). So Todd was forced to unload all of my tools and equipment into his truck so he could have them ready for us at the service area approx. 70kms away. Unfortunately, having my truck not start really threw me off for the day. We had to abandon the truck in Cochrane for the day and we had no idea what was wrong with it (although Todd thought the starter quit). I kept thinking about the truck all day long. The funny thing is if it had been my old truck I would have thought "stupid truck" and that would have been it. Since I just got this one, it really struck me that I might have just purchased a lemon and, as I said above, I couldn't put it out of my mind all day.

Anyways.....We decided to REALLY take it easy since we didn't want to break the car and then have two vehicles out in Alberta that couldn't go anywhere. Despite this we were having grip issues right off the bat. I attributed this to the snow and ice, but after talking with some of the other competitors I realized they were setting considerably better times than us. We continued to struggle with grip and on SS5 (5th stage) we went off the road on a slow downhill left hander. I wasn't on the brakes at all and the car just wouldn't make the corner. We got high-centred on a snowbank and couldn't move the car. We had to wait for sweep to come yank us out of the snowbank. Fortunately, there was no damage to the car. There was significant damage to my confidence, however. We lost about 9.5 minutes on the stage (compared to the first time we went through this same stage in the same direction) and then took 3 minutes in penalties for arriving late to service.

Ok...here is where it gets kinda embarrassing. We get to service late and decide to rotate the tires front to back since the fronts have some wear (although not much). We go out on the stages and still have lots of grip problems on SS6 ans SS7. At the end of SS7 is a turn around and a relatively long wait for SS8. We check tire pressure and we're at 38psi. Ok..so it's my fault for not checking the tire pressure anytime between having the tires mounted and the end of SS7. So I check with a few other people and they're running 28 to 31psi. So all the steel studs on the tire are around the outside of the tire and when we were using too high of tire pressure only the centre of the tire makes contact with the ice (no studs). So we drop pressure to 29psi and the car feels WAY better on SS8 (although I'm still not feeling confident with the car due to our off, and my nerves were still being tested as I continue to wonder what's wrong with my new-to-me truck). We decided that we'd lost so much time with our offroad adventure that we weren't going to take any risks and just slowly finish our first rally.

So, we finished in 2nd last place of the cars that finished (20th of the 25 entered). The only team we beat spent twice as much time as us in the ditch (and we beat them by less than a minute, so they were way faster than us for the rest of the rally). I'm a bit dissappointed with our final position, but I am proud that we finished this time. We learned a lot at this rally, including checking tire pressure before being in the middle of the race. We missed most of the banquet at the finish since we were busy trying to figure out what was wrong with my truck. Fortunately it was a broken wire on the starter, so it didn't take us long to get it fixed, loaded up, hook up the trailer and take off back for Saskatchewan. I feel a little silly for stressing so much about it now. I apologized a few times to Heath and Todd for not being much fun to be around before we knew what was wrong with the truck.

Once again, we'd like to thank our supporters for this rally. If you need a new water well, don't hesitate to contact Lorne at Stauber Drilling. If you Geo-environmental consulting (ok..well maybe you don't need this often unless you're in the mining industry) call ME at MDH Engineered Solutions. If you need any photographic services, please contact Deb at Balance Photography. Also check out flatoutperformance.com if you're looking for aftermarket parts for your car.

I still plan on posting a build log for the race car. Check back if you're one of the 70-or-so people who've actually been to the site before.

My favourite picture from Cochrane Rally:

Thanks Stauber Drilling

Hello all (or should I say "hello few" since this site is still very new - well we're working on increasing exposure). There is just over a week remaining until we leave for Cochrane Rally. I am very excited to get out there with the car, although our strategy/goal is to finish each stage without drama. We are going to drive quickly but not push anywhere near the limit due to reports of mixed surfaces (gravel, snow, glare ice)on the stages. I've been watching the weather forecast for Cochrane and I'm not sure how there is going to be any snow or ice left by the time we get there (highs in the double digits almost everyday). Oh well, I'm planning on bringing both the gravel and the studded winter tires. My hope is that if we can set "good" times on all stages, that we will move up the leaderboard as others have difficulties.

Also, I've finally sorted out about 50 pictures of building the rally car. I'm going to get them up onto some photo hosting site somewhere, and then put the link to it on this site. As mentioned in previous posts, I think this is almost a duty to the rally community since I spent countless hours reviewing other peoples sites to see "how they did it".

In other news, we are very pleased to announce that Stauber Drilling of Regina, SK has joined as a Sponsor to the Gopher Rally Racing Team. If you need any drilling done, water wells installed, etc., please give Lorne or Fred at call at 306 359 1959.

Ice racing video

A bit of action this past weekend for the rally car. I went out to the local ice race track for a bit of a "shakedown" on the new winter tires.

Welcome to our Blog

Well...here we are with a web presence. The purpose of this blog is to post information regarding the Gopher Rally Racing team. The team is made up of myself, Chad LePoudre (car owner and driver), Heath Hrappstead (co-driver, ballast, and all-around good guy), and various friends and family who take time out of their own schedules to come and assist us at events. We campaign a mk2 VW Golf in a modified 2wd class (Group 2) in the Western Canadian Rally Championship.

My hope is that there will be information regarding our recent events (racing or otherwise), photos, etc. I also hope to create a link to a photo gallery that has pictures during builiding of the race car. I consider this almost as a duty to the rally community since I relied so much on other peoples websites during the construction of my car.

One of my philosophies for our rally team is to get as much fun for the $$ as we can. That means that I bag lunch almost everyday, use Canadian tire money to its fullest potential, buy parts from ebay or wreckers, and rely on free web hosting space (thumbs up for blogspot). Since rally is a relatively expensive sport, we also have support from a few different companies and I like giving them as much credit as possible (within the constraints of the blogspot terms and conditions, of course).

Our next rally is coming up on us quickly. It is the Cochrane Rally of the Ranchlands held out of Cochrane, AB. I noticed this morning that our entry form is the first to arrive. It appears that there will be a relatively large field of competitors for this event (almost 20 have confirmed already).

A few links for those of you who land on this blog.

www.rallywest.com

www.mdhsolutions.com

http://www.cscc.ab.ca/cochrane/