Full Disclosure, GTI Story ends

Fall 2013 I moved across town, another rental house. This one has a nice attached garage, but it is smaller, and I'm not allowed to keep ANYTHING outside.

Oh, also, I'd bought a beautiful 1995 Miata that summer for...fun.  (Actually, for a few years now, ever time I saw a Miata I thought 'funnnnn!')  It can also be for track days, it's nice to have a convertible and reasonable fuel economy in my commute, and should be great for E-stock (Street!) autocross on some of our bumpier lots and allow different co-drivers than the kart. This led to some required downsizing.


So of course, I chose to sell the one really good car which we've put so much work into---the '88 GTI rallycar which 'started' this blog.

Selling the car was very bittersweet, and I dragged my feet for a while. Finally, I did actually list it for sale, instead of just saying it was for sale... and sold it in Fall 2013 (1 year ago!) to a person who I think will use it well, and is also in the region.

It was really great reading some of the responses to the listing in some of the forums. A few people had stories to share of watching the car compete, and the car got complements all around. But of course it would - because it looked absolutely badass in track-day(!) trim (which is wheels + muffler extension)

Car looking awesome at 2013 Waterford Hills Track Day, thanks John for the picture!

"For Sale" contents: (Red = work Kenneth and I did):

For sale is a 1988 MKII Golf, started as a GTI. Fairly straight, never rolled.  Biggest repair was a replaced front-left frame horn ahead of the strut top after sno-drift 2012. (still finished the day though)

Log book dates 5/7/99, 'Identity No. 97-206' original owner ran 7 rallies in New England 1999-2001

Billy Elliot owned and ran 4 rallies from 2008-2010, and I have run 4 from 2010-2012

Most recent entry 2012 Sno*Drift

I have also run many rallycross, and even an autocross and track day with the car.  It has proven to be reliable through all, except for once where I broke some wheel studs (see new pressed-in ARP studs below).  Car is capable of running at the top of G2 (2nd at 2011 Sno regional, fastest stage time on last stage).  One of its strongest points is the handling - it is a very driveable car.

Additional pictures: https://plus.google.com/photos/104911009751628720585/albums/5928713671092192641?authkey=CKqdx4i397WKOA (will make more sense after reading summary)

Good handling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3tc-GCBboA

Rally stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T189IkqIR0 (exhaust now includes hushpower muffler for less harshness)

Check out http://www.icengin.com/ from 2011-2012 to get a good idea of the story!

Safety/comfort

8 point cage, 1.5"x0.098, updated door bars + dash bar 2011 http://www.icengin.com/2011/04/doin-stuff.html

Sparco Pro ADV (2x, new 2010) spectacular condition still (of course) INCLUDED!

6061 3/8" front skid plate, extremely strong

steel center skids for fuel lines

Plastic under-car skids

6061 rear skid plate for fuel system

All wheel mudflaps durable and in good condition

Terratrip

Roof vent

Belts dated Nov. '08

Quick release steering wheel

2002 china-market Chery mechanical HVAC heater core and flapper unit! awesome.  

Required spill kit and orange triangle kit

Brakes (http://www.icengin.com/2011/03/gti-rallycar-brake-system-post-1.html)

MKIII front knuckles with greater diameter rotors, larger calipers.  New rotors and pads 2011, still look great

Rear disc (GTI...)

Brake system converted to AN standard (easy repair, multiple-use fittings), hard line run in-car, stainless line to wheels.  No hardware on rear beam.

Rear brake bias driver adjustable

Hydraulic handbrake

Suspension

MKIII rear beam (stronger than MKII)

Front control arms plated, adapted for spherical bearings (COM12) to eliminate durability concern common to OEM rubber http://www.icengin.com/2011/01/front-suspension-upgrades.html

Converted to studs, ARP permanently pressed in from rear (required hub disassembly)

Bilstein "Group B" struts: 

Front: 85-92 Strut Conventional Body 300/120 VE3-4141

Rear: 85-92 Rear Conventional Body 300/100 AK30140

Front top hats replaced with Subaru 'Group N' to eliminate durability concern http://www.icengin.com/2011/06/fundamental-gti-progress.html

Drivetrain

Engine swap to 2.0L 9A (no modifications) 2011

New fuel injectors, injector seals, coolant lines, accessory belts, etc, all at that time

Stainless steel supersprint 4-2-1 long tube header, race cat, flowmaster hushpower.  Also includes external bolt-on muffler for meeting sound requirements for that track day, which is pretty sweet.  Seen in the fancy track day pictures.

Stock 020 GTI close ratio transmission

Electrical

AGM battery, relocated behind driver seat

Engine harness separated from body harness

WOLO air horn (pretty fun)

Body harness relay and fuses relocated to dash center, some rally functionality enhancements for lighting, extra navigator wiper, washer, horn controls, etc

seen briefly here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QI070EkMvE (exhaust is since changed though)

4x giant Hella driving lights with nice weatherpack connectors and wiring

Kill switch

Spares:

Yes.  Many many.  And you must take them with the car!

About 16 wheels and tires (VW alloys, snow, rally, and street tires)

Many beams, bumpers, suspension arms, belts, brakes...everything

Spare 020 trans

Let me justify further: I sold it because I found plenty of fun stuff to do in my unofficial rally sabbatical (posts to come), and I am not making any short or even medium-term stage rally plans.
Fact #1.  The car was all set and running
This made selling it seem like a particularly strange idea, but it also means it had value...
Fact #2.  Is that the GTI was a really good STAGE rally car. And just a 'good for a local region' rallycross car. And a 'silly' track day car.

So the future of this blog from my garage (which is already here in a lot of ways, to update soon-ish!) is
1) Occasional track days with the better Miata (complete with Miata prep!),
2) To build a nationally competitive car for rallycross (the snowmobile civic...) 
   2b) Hm, and maybe some rallycross nationals.
3) Plus autocross nationals with the Shifter Kart (constant fabrication involved for and around that one),
4) and motorcycle track days (maybe a motorcycle front end swap on this blog next year).
5) In all honesty, maybe other RC and some electronic stuff.  Yea yea.  But it's pretty fun.
6) Friend's cars that we get to drive, like Jon's supercharged Miata which I got to drive all through 2014 rallycross (Jon's car, my supercharger!)

Not to mention Kenneth's garage!  hehe, which makes my list above look easy (and my fabrication look woeful)

The future, which is now, is busy and awesome.  There are many more builds, repairs, and races to come and to be documented here!

GTI Repair, back in 2012

After being fairly deflated at Sno*Drift 2012, I heavily procrastinated on the car repair.  It got so bad that I even went in with a couple local Detroit Region competitors and rallycrossed a rental automatic Yaris (sounds awesome, was awesome, not a good idea though), and also bummed a ride in an rx7 in an Ohio event (straight awesome, and the 198something Suburban tow rig with 3spd manual and fragile coolant lines = also awesome, I can only try to give back enough awesomeness someday Kevin!) to get my dirt-driving fix as my car sat broken in the garage.

The damage was as minor as possible given the hit: conveniently we'd relocated the battery to the rear of the car, and its' empty OEM location was the entire crumple zone.  It (the crumpling) was 98% contained forward of the strut top, but at that area we had serious accordion-ing and spot weld tearing.

The light is shining in from the wheel well = not good!

After pulling the engine and evaluating the extent of the damage (~April...) I sent an MSpaint picture to Matt Bushore's brother (of Bent Mettle Racing) for a sawzall request, and a couple weeks later, that car chunk arrived at my house! (Thank you!)

Overall Damage (un-crashed grey fender on outside is mocked up to show 'before' shape)

Requested frame-part to Bent Mettle (not his or my car pictured!)

After deciding I could live with the crumple and wasn't going to pull the chassis, I cut the left frame horn off with a $20 Harbor Fright reciprocating saw.  Awesome tool/dollar, went through like butter.

Hehe, looks like a bad photoshop...

I think by now it's late summer, about 8 months after the tree...  like I said, I was embarrassed and procrastinating...

I matched up the pieces, and reassembled all the body panels to serve as a 'jig' for the frame.
I thought this was pretty rally.

I even used a ruler to jig it!  Pro.

Then went through and welded the pieces together.  I was very pleased with quality of the welds I was able to get with the little mig.

After removing the panels again, finishing the welds and painting, I reassembled.  Maybe the car isn't as square as it used to be, but wow, the reassembly was much easier than before the crash, thanks to the jigging method!

Finally, it was back together. 

(Oh man, I will miss the exhaust sound on it, it was great in the final iteration:
Supersprint stainless long tube 4-1 header, high flow cat, Hushpower muffler, then about 5 feet of 2.25dia tube.  Highly recommended) 

Driving it: Got it out for the September 2012 DRSCCA rallycross in which I hit almost every cone (9mos after tree), and then at Thistle Hill in December.  I took the win in that one, unbelievable mud, but the car was good and apparently I was trying to impress my girlfriend: I took overall FTD (not just 2wd), and caused all my in-class competitors at least one max time.  Sweet.

The car at its first return event, 9months after tree

The car at second return event, December, now with lights and grill...

Sno-Drift 2012 back-from-the-dead update, and the 'State of the Rally'

All the way back on July 1, 2012 I excused my lack of posts, and mentioned that Sno*Drift had not gone as planned.

At the time, I'd said: "Coming up soon: rally storytelling, fabrication and repair explanation and pictures, and future plans."  Well, it's taken 2.5 years now, and I've almost forgotten the story.

Mostly, I was embarrassed.  About both the rally (and letting down the most amazing crew ever by withdrawing after the first day), but maybe more so that I would probably be quitting stage rally, but didn't want to rush to conclusions.


     Sno-Drift Recap
We were so ready for Sno-Drift 2012.  The car was all set up with the new 2.0L, and electrical was all proven with Black River Stages under its belt. As mentioned in the older post, the goal now was to go fast.

Final Touches before Tech

We had the F150, which is a bit of an adventure but worked great.  The truck was on great new tires, all of us could fit (and did! three across the front, two in the back...hehe, I sat in the front middle and mostly annoyed Jon), all our stuff was under the cap in the bed, and we were pulling the rallycar on a trailer behind (Side note: the F150 had a 3.2:1 final drive, a broken leaf in one of the rear springs, and no factory tow package... so we were REALLY overloading it - - - worked fine)

Recce (special stage) with the truck...

And the lodging situation was awesome.  We were sharing a cabin with Billy Elliot and Dmitriy Martynov

Looking at the pictures now, we really left to start the rally all bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

Unfortunately, the next bit of the story goes "At Sno-Drift 2012 (which 2.5 years later is the last rally I've done or have plans to do) we had, in fact, hit a tree"

We were moving well, driving fast, and it was even still daylight.  (I know, pics or it wasn't fast, but we didn't have charged batteries in the camera to get any of the in-car when we were really cooking in those first couple stages)

The tree was entirely my fault, I caught my foot up on the brake when moving over to get some gas, and missed the inside line on the turn in.  The conditions were unforgiving and off we went!  I remember quite clearly my mild curse, which probably got Kenneth's head out of the route book in time to see we were NOT making that corner...  We went off, and as we hit the tree I thought 'crap.  I'M the one, the third owner, on this car's 14th stage rally, who finally totaled it.'

However, checking out the damage, the wheels were still attached and the car still held its fluids.  We started waving for a tow and (after almost getting hit a couple times as other cars came sliding our way) we were yanked out by a fellow awesome competitor!

We were able to continue down the road, it was only another couple corners to the finish of the stage.  Quickly we slashed a tire on the bodywork during the next transit (bummer, new tire!) and had to pull bodywork as best we could and get the spare on there, but we held enough schedule to keep in the game before the next special stage.  We tiptoed through another special stage, and brought her home to service.

Us coming into service after ~5 stages

The crew sawzalled us and we went back out, but my confidence was gone.  The car was pretty fine though.  Miraculously, the alignment was intact better than most events, and we had re-aimed the driving lights.  Another shake (I almost forgot, was this during this rally?) was that we cooked a relay halfway through the night!  We smelled this terrible burning, we lost all lights (!) and I could see something glowing hot behind the fusebox!  I pulled over, telling Kenneth quite urgently to get the fire extinguisher out, and shut off the car.  However, without power, it cooled down before becoming a bigger problem.  Brutal acrid smoke all over though, really bad.  We limped around, using as little electricity as we could by turning off the driving lights (I really don't remember, this may have been at Black River!)

Finally, after midnight and with the transmission making a heck of a whining noise (turns out the fill plug had been knocked out in the tree incident and it was very low on oil) we finished out the day, and got it back to the cabin.

After looking at the car (but really, I was already done before we even pulled in), we quit the event and didn't start the second day.  Sleeping in was really nice on Saturday...rally really is brutal.

Heading back out after the first service

Post-day inspection

Ooof

Goodnight bruised car

Over a year later, I checked the results.  We had been running 2nd in the regional 2WD classes through the first 3 stages, and reached 10th overall, but the 4th stage, where we had the off, we lost 10 minutes and dropped back to 10th in G2, 11th in 2WD, and 29th overall.  Disheartened and having lost my confidence, we tiptoed through the rest of the day, ending up 7th in G2, 8th in 2WD, and 22 overall (of 38 competitors).

Those results are actually better than I had expected.  And I am glad to see our pace on the first 3 stages!  We were running ahead of all our friends, and many other much more experienced competitors.  Of course, their experience showed.  The race is 2 days long, 20+ stages... we found the tree early.

The big thing was that I really didn't WANT to rally the next day, and had felt that way since night fell.  I was embarrassed by that, like I was giving in.  So, hence the delay...

I'm hoping to finish out this story so I can face up to this blog a bit better, and get back to updating it with all the awesome other motorsports stuff which has been going on!

(most of these pictures from Kyle, thank you!)

Transmission Transitions wrap up

Thought I'd finish this one up because I think people would be interested in how one could weld a diff, and how it affected the car!



warning... welding a diff at all, or doing it this way, may not be the best solution.  But it was fun, and effective in sno-drift.

About a year ago I had taken the trans apart to get to the differential, in order to weld it (turn it into a cheap and very heavy spool type).  Unfortunately, most transverse engine transmissions require a complete disassembly to get to the differential.  In this case, the differential is pretty much the LAST component to remove if you were to make the list.

This was a 'rally' build.  Importantly (to me), if you just take it apart, and put the same parts back in, there's no need to worry about shimming anything to get the preload correct, it should all go back together 'rally' functional if that's how it came apart...  and it did.


First: disassembly.  Matt of Bentmettle helped (and supplied the odd torx I didn't have)  Ripped it apart in 30minutes, and I'm thinking 'ooooh no slow down' pretty much the whole time.

Then it sat for...maybe 2 months.  But then!  Welding time - - the one thing I didn't want was for the welding job to fail, and take out the transmission with it.  Of course, as long as the differential is stronger than the halfshafts it should be good.  But I really didn't want the diff to fail.

After cleaning as well as I could (pretty poorly) I preheated it...on my old grill.

Got it up towards 450degrees and then went at it with a Hobart Handler 120 on max and flux core wire.  I welded the spider gears together, and then used small squares of .25" steel to fill in the gaps, and welded the spider gears to those too.  I had plenty of penetration. (hehe...)

Notice that I even left the bearings on...  certainly not best practice, but it was effective.  I took care to keep the gear but especially the bearing surfaces covered while I was welding to keep them clean.  They certainly picked up some heat discoloration though.  I really didn't want to have to set bearing preload in this thing...

Finally, I put the trans back together.  Used all the old synchros and even most of the old seals.  I think I only replaced the output shaft seals, case gaskets, and some of the shift lever seals, but I forget the details.  I think it took... two 3hr sessions.  It was my first ever trans reassembly, and I learned a lot about how a manual transmission works while doing it.  I thought I already knew, but some details, like what really engages the synchros (spring tension working on a ramp, not shift lever effort...) I had no idea.

Thinking back it was interesting to note that the reverse gear was chewed up on the edge from previous owner not adjusting the shift linkage and then not correcting it, but more interesting was that the pinion has somehow lost a small chunk of one of its teeth!  Maybe a piece of metal from the chipping reverse gear got in it.  But judged both minor, and it did turn out that the trans was fine.


So how'd a FWD with a spool drive?
A little different than I expected.  In that, at normal speeds, it does NOT feel like a limited slip.  Going around corners of any kind, even with power steering, takes serious steering effort.  Much more pronounced than anybody could ever complain about even with a tight and chattery clutch-type diff.  The tire traction and scrub just wants to pull the wheel straight, and you can feel the tires grinding.  Corner radius depends on inside-vs-outside tire traction, and which one 'wins' the battle it's in with the other one.

And then when you're heading straight, under power, and with variable traction, the car is all over the place!  When one wheel has more traction than the other it kicks back through the wheel.  But even if you hold the wheel straight, it'll still drive the car to the other direction.

First we rallycrossed the car, and it was pretty terrible.  All tight corners, the front end would grind and scrub and push...  definitely made the car a much worse rallycross car.

And in sno-drift, it was difficult to turn and pick line the same...until going sideways at speed, then you could really pull the car through with the throttle.

But maybe most importantly for this event, we never got stuck!  Which is a lame problem to have, but most 2WD cars had it.  Between siped altimax arctics, and the welded diff, I didn't even know that the rest of the field had some serious hill climbing touble.  For us, it wasn't a problem.


So I guess the welded diff was a success.  Through other means however (tree), it seems we've toasted the trans.  I'm not heartbroken, I'll put the spare, open diff 020 back in for now, then later maybe a limited slip in the 02J.

Transmission transitions (oof, sorry)

Side pre-note: Today we're registered for Sno*Drift, though we've known we've been going for a while. I'm looking forward to the event weekend for both our ICEngineering autonomy and teamwork: autonomy in how we'll finally be support self-sustained with my new favorite truck, and teamwork in our lodging, where we'll be lucky enough to be renting a cabin and garage with both G2 teams Billy Elliot/Mary Warren and Dmitriy Martynov/Jon Tinsey. It'll be a full house, hopefully an idle garage.

As for the GTI
I've got a spare transmission, so I've got it in my head to weld the diff. I figured: a) It can't hurt, and more importantly b) I've always wanted to try it. So I've turned my working (if tired) 2nd trans into a useless pile of gears (that's called progress, right?). I haven't done anything in the past week to weld it and put it back together...


But for a long-term solution I've found that the original 020 transmission for the mk2, while decently durable under 140hp, lightweight, and decently geared...is too old. Final drives, differentials, and especially gearsets are either too expensive or simply not available. Luckily, VW's are made like legos, and literally any 4-cyl transmission is likely to fit. I'll be bolting up an 02J (as opposed to 02A only because that's what I found available) once I get the internals sorted. Thanks to the VW community in Michigan here, I've been able to round up nearly all the stock parts I need, and for a really decent price. Side benefits include supporting all the torque I could ever make, eliminating the shift linkage mechanism, and an elevated shift box placement option thanks to the same. Below picture shows my 2(!) 02j boxes, both uniquely broken, a bucket of gears which is likely junk but maybe has some spares or little pieces I can use, and the cable shift box with cables. I'm only missing a cable-clutch adapter setup and starter.

Regarding the standard repairs after Black River Stages, everything's together except for the exhaust. See the shots below for the boxed transmission brace, new PU trans mount, and PU inserts on the new rear mount. That engine doesn't wiggle a bit. Also, see if you can spot all the engine-as-pinball damage still present from BRS, including some light inadvertent machining work on both halfshafts. Nothing past cosmetic though. And yes, there's a lot of oil all over the place, both the engine and trans have ...significant weeps.














As for the exhaust, we could just replace the cat with a spun, metal core one, but we'll do a little better. The exhaust was too loud. Apparently, I could have figured this out before trial by some basic research, and found naturally aspirated motors of all types require more than a useless resonator and a cat to pass sound requirements. Not to mention it was a bit difficult inside the car to hear each other. I've ordered a short hushpower 2 to replace the stock resonator; we should be more reasonably-toned, and also a couple pounds lighter.

Current exhaust v.1 setup on left. The 4-2 section of the 4-2-1 headers are on the engine. Exhaust v.2 will replace the resonator with the hushpower, replace the busted stock cat with a spun metal-core one, have another v-band instead of the slip fit, and welded-on hangers throughout. Hopefully v2 lasts a couple events without necessary revision. We can only hope...

Sno-Drift Upcoming

Our next stage rally event is Sno-Drift 2012, in Lewiston MI. The event promises to be fairly epic - the rumor I've heard is 24 special stages in 2 days. Last year there were 18, and we didn't feel short-changed then... We'll be looking to put together some of last years first day (2nd in G2) with a little bit of Black River's full-weekend smooth execution, and hope to finish top 5 G2, at the end of the whole weekend. Top 5 all 2wd would be even sweeter.

Quick car update - it's torn down to reveal all damage, and the broken parts tally is a kill switch (odd), 2 engine mounts, 3 engine mount stays, and only a loose lower ball joint to cause the wandering steering (!). It'll be back together in time for the next local rallycross, December 10.

In an attempt to even out the wrenching+expense vs seat time (plus a load of fun), I've managed to pick up a 125cc shifter kart for a great price, and even got it out on track before the season changed too much. So here it is. It's proven to me about 10x more clearly than even rally that being fit, strong and healthy is a huge competitive advantage - and when I can drive this for 20minutes without fatigue I'll be able to drive the rallycar all weekend without straining.

BRS Recap

Heading out!

Been a couple weeks since BRS now, and since Kenneth and I decided it wasn't in our schedules to get more time for LSPR, I've taken the opportunity to see the fall colors from my mountain bike and generally get away from the garage for a week or two. And get a truck, more on that later...

Kenneth said it correctly when we didn't really believe all the NASA schedule rumors (as in, lay out the picnic blanket a couple times a day) - but sitting at what would be the start of the second special stage, with the sun going down and no lights on the car, we began to believe it. The rally was scheduled to start at 3:30, with ~30 miles of stage and transit before the first service...maybe that was part of what I was looking for. It was most important to me to run a smooth weekend, and the breaks certainly made it easy for us in the car, keeping us more rested. If I do another NASA rally I'd bring a camera to prove it.

Thanks to our small but awesome crew, Kyle Steinkamp and Matt Bushore (of Bent Mettle racing, certainly not where he likes to be instead of competing for podium as driver, but a huge asset to us that weekend), the weekend was smooth outside the car as well.

Having finished with no offs, and only 1 close call (those jumps in that video is the wildest it got, tame compared to the number of close calls at sno-drift), it's easy to say we should have driven faster. I've found that we actually did manage to destroy 2 of 3 engine mounts, but hey, the skid plate held it up in there!

So, to recap for now:
BRS Goals: All achieved
1) Find way to both rally AND eat and sleep (= have fun, all weekend)
2) Finish with no driver-error damage
3) Run the car with engine swap and custom electric

Next rally goals: As above, + actually drive fast
Also, with no MAJOR changes planned for the car, I look forward to all the finishing and sorting work which has been put off so far.

Some pictures:



Also I have a truck. It's not pretty, I've promised to keep it's name (Tank), and look forward first to wheel to wheel ice racing this winter enabled by it, not to mention actually being able to go to rally when my previous tows are themselves racing.

Black River Stages - Actually Rallying

I'm lazy so I didn't update yesterday after our first day of rallying in New York. We had heard a lot of stories about waiting around at stage starts during NASA events, but we didn't realize how totally un-exaggerated those stories actually were. At the very first special stage, everybody just sat and waited for nearly an hour because the emergency crews weren't in place yet to be able to run the stage. We waited around a lot more than that at other stages, though one time was because two Evo X's went off badly enough on SS4 that the stage was canceled. In the end, we only ran 4 of the 9 planned stages. So...that was disappointing, but a good way to get familiar with rally again.

Here we are leaving Parc Exposé

Day 2 was more interesting, though we still ended up with a stage cancellation due to delays. The stages were really exciting though, with some big air on the first two stages and some fast but fairly technical elements on the other three. There was a lot more waiting around too, which can be fun when used to socialize with our fellow rallyists, but not as cool when it causes a stage cancellation.

One of the most exciting stages was Goose Pond which is known for being pretty heavy on the jumps. It did not disappoint. At one point, we ended up so detached from the ground that we had no chance of correcting our trajectory and ended up shooting off toward the side of the road. Sean had the wherewithal to correct it though, and I didn't really understand the severity of the situation until I watched this video. Excuse the terrible camera placement that heavily overemphasizes the importance of the rear view mirror...

Crazy jumps at about 0:30

As much as I'm complaining about missing a stage though, we ended up being very lucky that the stage was canceled because our fuel gauge lied to us and we ran out of gas while on the transit back to service. If we had tried to run the final stage, we would have ended up with a DNF. Which would have sucked. Thanks to Michael Hall and Carl Lynn in the super badass Mitsu Mighty Max for flat towing us back to the finish of the rally.


The adventure wasn't over though, as when scores were posted, we were showing up as last place by a MASSIVE margin due to a one hour (!) penalty. The penalty notice said "At TC14B was due at 16:39:00 but arrived at 15:39:00." This was ridiculous because it meant that we traveled at least 30 minutes back in time during service, so I filled out an inquiry form to get that changed. I didn't really know how to state it, so I did it bluntly.

This actually worked

So we got our hour back and ended up finishing in 3rd place in Open 2WD Light, just a single second out of second place. I'm happy with it though.


The other thing is that this was Dmitriy's first rally in his new car and on the suspension that I built, so I was being paranoid and asking him about it after every stage. It seems to be holding together just great and Dmitriy has been saying that it's performing well, so that was a huge relief.

Gorgeous car!

They ended up third in Open 2WD Heavy, so overall this rally was a great success! Huge thanks to our crew chief, Kyle Steinkamp, and our transporter/random advice giver Matt Bushore for getting us through this weekend.

Black River Stages - Day 0

After a long-ish tow through Canada, we've arrived safely in some part of New York. I'll go look for it on a map now.

I suppose it looks something like this

Thanks to Matt Bushore for towing us out in his pretty scary ambulance over such hazardous terrain as narrow-ish bridges and Toronto traffic. Some nice scenery though, especially over these "Thousand Islands."

There's a thousand of them! All apparently inhabited by rich people

Upon reaching our destination, we put some stickers on the car and got it through tech with minimal hassle. Then, we sat through a 3 hour long novice orientation which was surprisingly helpful and entertaining.

Tomorrow, we don't have to get to Parc Expose until 2 PM, so we have some time to sleep in and work on the car. Unfortunately, we discovered that our skidplate doesn't quite clear the new motor's oil pan and we have some loose relay connections that make our lights stop working. So luckily we have some time to fix these things and hopefully shop for some snacks. Yum.

Sean has mandated that everyone have fun, so...wheeee!!!