Wild West Pro Rally 2003

Wild West 2003! So where to begin. First off, thanks to the service guys for hauling out again. I'm not sure what drives them, but thank God they keep showing up :) Second, Josh Mulanax, who arranged out lodging for the weekend. A Shelton native, he informed his mother that he'd be home to visit for once... with 7 pals :) So thanks Josh, Sandy & Bob for letting us sack out all over your house! It was very convenient, and much less expensive than shelling out for a hotel. Ken and I had been busting our butts before this rally, and we found that the night before when you don't have anything to do, that that's a good feeling. Everything was packed, the car was ready to rock, the upgrades were top notch... We were very much looking forward to getting out on stage once again. Friday morning rolled around and we headed down south to start our second rally event. We were a bit early, and immediately ran into Doug & Todd camped out at the Red Lion. After saying hi, we headed out to the parking lot to switch to race tires and head over to scrutineering. EEK, first snag. Apparently our beautiful steelies were not exactly a fit. Having purchased 6 wheels and tires at the start of Oregon Trail, the lack of punctures at that event meant we only had to use 4 of our tires. The other two we never put on the car. Imagine our suprise when we discovered they didn't fit. The wheels had a smaller center cap, meant for Nissan hubs, rather than our Volkswagen. So off to Les Schwab. We talked over our problem with one of the gentlemen working there, and he was worried that they didn't have any wheels that would fit our car. After a quick check he discovered two lurking back in the stack of used wheels. Lucky us! Scrutineering went well, as our wonderfully prepared car always passes with flying colors. They performed a sound check, which we ended up passing with a score of 84 decibles. The scrutineer had to adjust the scale down a notch because at first we didn't even register. The one advantage of a stock motor :) So the rest of Friday was pretty trivial. We registered, sent the service crew off to Josh's place for the evening and we headed to St. Martin's for the ceremonial start. During parc expose, Ken and I renewed our aquaintances with the rally community. We had a wonderful conversation with Lance Smith, who heads up Vermont Sportscar (they run the Mitsubishi team. wow!). Lance was very interested in sharing some tidbits about his experience in rally, and hearing how we had fared after only one event. It was great to talk with him!! After the start, we checked in to parc ferme (which we didn't have to leave the car at) and drove off to the camp in Shelton. Saturday began our first racing sections. After a quick run to Walmart for a shovel (which we didn't have, and we were required to show before they would allow us to start), we set off toward SS1. We were very excited at the start, as this was our first opportunity to test our new equipment (an Odo, a short ratio tranny, and an in-car camera setup). At the completion of stages 1 & 2, we headed back to service. On the way in we ran into my father (Bud) who was coming out to check out the service area. I really enjoy when I can get my family involved in my hobbies, and having Dad show up for the first service was great. Because of the fire danger, the rally on Saturday operated on a 'hoot owl' schedule, which calls for a closure of all forest land between 1PM and 8PM. This gave us a very large break. We headed back to camp Josh for some rest, lunch, and a chance to review the footage from Stages one and two. The camera performed flawlessly and we were able to watch the first two stages. This was really a blessing for service crew as they finally had a chance to see what this was all about! Ken and I caught a quick nap, and around 7pm we headed back to the fairgrounds service area to begin the night stages. On the way to stage 5, I was excited about finally getting to use the lights we had aquired for the rally. After running two stages in the dark at Oregon Trail the lack of auxilary lighting was a painful need that sorely needed addressing. The afternoon saw some rainfall, which was well recieved by Ken and I. We wanted to run as much of the scheduled event as possible, and dry conditions would have meant the cancellation of the better part of Sunday's stages. The night stages we really started getting some speed in, as the new lights performed excellent, and the rain fall helped firm up the road surface. I was really looking forward to reviewing the footage from the night stages. After a quick evening service in the pouring rain, the service guys, Ken and I all made our way back to the house for some much needed sleep. Saturday! An early start for Ken and I, as we headed to downtown Shelton for the parc expose. The prolific rain the night before was hopefully going to prevent the cancellation of the afternoon section of the rally, but we hadn't heard yea or nay yet. We got some info from Rick Schmeling saying that we were on for the whole day. Sweet. (Rick by the way drives that bumble-bee painted Datsun 510 (very cool) and also works for Simpson. After wandering around for a while, and scarfing our meager breakfast (some cereal bars, OJ and water), cars started making thier way out towards the start of stage 8. Stages 8, 9 and 10 were run before the first service. The roads were slightly wet, and we recieved the occasional shower as we ran through the stages. Stage 9 in particular was a very open and fast stage. Ken and I were really starting to get into the groove, and my driving reflected it. Aside for some simple idiocy (I stalled right in the spectator hairpin on stage 8. HEH), the stages went well. Then we headed back to service. I had been worrying about pad life, and boy was it confirmed. The hawk blue's were almost down to nothing. The braking was excellent, but we didn't have much life left. So we jumped into a pad swap, while the service guys got going on the normal stuff. Eric Burmeister's crew was pitted right next to us, and saw me starting the pad swap. They remarked that we probably didn't have enough time, but I was confident it could be accomplished. They jumped right in on some of the other stuff (scraping wheels clean, re-mouting the rear tires, etC) and REALLY helped us out. So in a 20 minute service, we managed to get out on time, with all our normal service tasks done, as well as a pad swap. Very cool! Thanks again guys, this really made our day. We ended up pulling into the time control with about 20 seconds to spare. Stages 11, 12, and 13 were repeats of 8-9-10, and I was excited at a chance to reconcile some of my earlier driving mistakes. My inexperience was finally starting to bleed off some, and we ended up posting times quite a bit better than our previous run through the stages. Stage 11 was 30 seconds faster than stage 8, and stages 12 and 13 were both about 15 seconds faster than 9 and 10 each. I was having a lot of fun chasing Bruce Tabor & John Elkin, both experienced rallyists. Bruce is a very pleasent guy, great to talk with, and very much into having a great time in the dirt. John is also an excellent guy, who's been at it a while. It was good to see him back in the co-driver's seat, after a stint as chief scrutineer at the Oregon Trail event. Back into service, for a quick check. The new brakes were holding up great, and we didn't have much to do except basic checking. No problems were immediately obvious, except we knew we had damaged the skid plate (it was sitting much higher than it had been at the start of the event). At the end of service we were out towards the last stage of the event. Wildcat Pass, stage 14, looked like it was a trail just cut for us to use that morning. Wow, what a narrow and rough stage. I enjoyed it immensely! :) After about 4 minutes into the stage I noticed my oil pressure warning light was starting to flicker. This wasn't good, but what could we really do about right then. Nothing, so I sucked it up and continued racing. Ken and I concluded that we'd squished the oil pan some, because of the skid plate damage, and were starving the oil pickup in hard cornering. Things were going fine, we were driving good, and then, towards the end of the stage, I lost it in a corner and we put it nose-first into the inside bank. Doh. It was a slow impact, so no worries there, but trying to back out we realized we were stuck. Ken jumped out to set up a triangle and keep the next car from hitting us, but almost immediately after he got out, I got the car going again. He jumped in and we sped off towards the finish of the stage. All in all it cost us about 30 seconds of time, based on our in-car footage of the incident. Phwew. we finished SS14. After a brief transit to the casino where the finish was setup at, we crossed the line and finished our 2nd weekend of rallying! AWESOME :) Later, looking at the scoring, we ended up doing very well for ourselves on day 2. Here's the results: Day 1 results Day 2 results Based on our finish, we moved up in speedfactor (at the end of oregon trail we were scored as a .69, now we're a .72), and we're now a Seed 7 team. Once we finish another club rally we'll move up to seed 6, based on our sunday finish at Wild West (top 60% of the finishers). Anyway, it was great to get out and rally again, and I'm already looking forward to Mt. Hood, a long 6 weeks away. -Chris