Welcome to CK Rally!
Welcome to CK Rally!
November 9th 2006 -- A long-needed update after Mt. Hood



So there hasn't been an update to this site in over 6 months. Unfortunately it's been a mild year rally-wise.
Here's a brief summary of what we've done this year:

  • Doowop's -- we intended to run this event, but a broken valve spring occurring after registration prevented us from starting.
  • Oregon Trail -- I (Chris) was out of the country on an extended business trip and missed the event.
  • Olympus -- Went very well, was an excellent rally! link
  • Mtn Trials -- we had started a mild rebuild of the car (body work & new paint, some general TLC) and thus missed out.
  • Team O'neil -- Chris went to driving school in early August, which was excellent.
  • Sprints -- Chris was on another business trip.
  • Wild West Take 1 -- We were all set to go but it was postponed!
  • Hot Import Nights -- Chris was away, but the rally car still got to share a little show time at HIN Seattle 2006.
  • Pacific Forest Rally -- Chris was on another extended business trip and missed this one.
  • Mt Hood -- We went, we won, we came home. Great rally! (more to come on that...)
  • Wild West Take 2 -- This is the next event on our calendar, scheduled for December 2nd & 3rd. It will be run in the Shelton/Olympia/Montesano area, as always!

So, alas, not a lot of rally this year! Work was a big player in that, but it does pay the bills and that's pretty much the only way we get to do this stuff anyway!!!

So, on to the Mt. Hood story! We started a bit rough, as I arrived home from a month in Europe 3 days before the rally. We had a few minor issues to attend to on the race car which I sorted out during a few needed days off between my flight and the tow down to Hood River. No real drama or last minute crunches this time, and we left plenty early on Friday. A brief stop in Portland netted us our second crew member for this event, Andre Pinter (co-driver Ian's brother). Our stalwart crew chief rode down with us as well (Glen).

Arriving in Hood River we checked in to our hotel and killed some time shopping for groceries and other necessities for the racing on saturday. Tech * registration proceeded smoothly enough, until an astute inspector noticed that we had removed a few pieces of roll-cage padding. A quick scramble amongst competitors and Gary Cavett came up with a piece for us to fill in the missing items with. We installed it and went back for round two, only to be stymied by the additional requirement of SFI certification on the padding, which Gary's piece wasn't. Oh well, back to the search. Charles Buren (owner/operator of safe drives, a local racing saftey supply company out of Oregon) thankfully had one piece, which we bought from him, installed, and finally finished tech... phwew (it was a busy couple of hours!).

Saturday arrived and we started the trek out to the stage start. Mt Hood this year wasn't operating out of its traditional venue of the Hood River County Fairgrounds, so there was no Parc Expose and we drove the car directly to the start of SS1, which was the beginning of the event. A quick dash down the 17 road (very straight and quick) and we had an opportunity to shake down the car and we headed to our first service. My focus this event was on learning to apply the techniques learned at school to actual stage driving, which wasn't always straight-forward. Despite that we set a respectable time on the first stage.

Over the course of the day we used three roads in various directions and orders. The 17 road and Gilhouley (awesome) we had run before, but this year we had an addition of a stage called 'Fir Mountain' which mixed the flowing fast paced sections similar to the 17 road with the technical flavor of Gilhouley. All was going well with very little maintenance needed in service and no big emergencies.

Our first trouble hit at the start of the second run of Gilhouley. We had arrived in a control zone and expecting a slight delay (which had occured every other stage), there was none and we immediately entered the staging area. With only 40 seconds to go, we rushed to get our helmets on, belted in, etc. The stage start minute came and we were still sitting on the line trying to get everything set for the run. We finally left the start line without Chris plugging in his intercom (oops!). We lost about 10 seconds on the start line, which wasn't major, but enough to be frustrating. Despite all that, it was a good run through the stage. We digitized the in-car video for your viewing!

Towards the end of the stage, we started experiencing a few bogs and engine cut-outs. I knew we were close to the end of our fuel supply and I hoped these cut outs were only the result of fuel sloshing away from the lift pump while cornering. We made it to the end of the stage without any incident, but it was a little nerve-wrecking none the less.

After completing the stage and attempting to return to service, we had a worry about making it. This worry proved to be well-founded as we stopped on the side of the road without any gas about 5 miles past the stage end. A little quick thinking and Ian jumped out, secured our tow strap and started flagging down rally cars, hoping for a friendly tow back into service. Charles Buren with his Group 5 turbo impreza stopped to offer us a tug and we headed on our merry way. All was going well until Charles' car started sputtering too, and he ALSO ran out of gas!

At this point, we managed to flag down two more rally cars to tow BOTH of us back into service. Stevan Arychuk (G2 VW Golf) and Peter Barnes (G2 Sentra SE-R spec V) both towed our two hapless cars back to service, where we were both able to re-fuel. Once we had made it, the hilarity of the situation quickly came to the forefront and wow, what a story! Talk about pure comedy!

A heroic effort sucking 5 gallons of fuel out of the service truck (We only had one gas can and it was empty!) sent us on our way, and we finished the rest of the day with one minor incident (we had a clean spin on Fir Mountain). The day's earlier delays led the organizers to drop two stages at the end, which was fine with us. All of us were tired. We headed back to Hood River for dinner and awards.

Upon seeing posted scores, we were in the lead of G2! Peter's Sentra was really fast on the open 17 road, but we had been taking some time back on the twisty stages. All in all, he had us beat, but an early off in the day cost him 30+ minutes, and thus we inherited the top class spot! FINALLY! We got a G2 class win!

No damage done, a class win, and a beautiful day (the weather was GORGEOUS). What a great way to spend our first rally in nearly half a year!

So... what's next!

First, we have the Wild West rally in December. With our win at Mt. Hood, we are going into the final round of this year's PNW G2 driver championship in second place (Ian is LEADING the G2 co-driver's championship). A strong finish at Wild West will ensure we take the year's title.

Next year, we are giving the tired old 8 valve engine the shove in favor of something a little newer and more beastly. The build is still in progress (I only have so much time heheh), but we'll have a shiny new 16v engine ready to race at the Doowop's next year. All in all, this should mean roughly a 50% increase in engine power!!!!

Our next update will come in December, so until then...

I archived the front page again: Archive 7

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