Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 3: The Recovery

We didn't want to make the long drive back to Kenton to get the car out of the woods in the dark, so after a couple of phone calls confirming that we weren't in some sort of deep wilderness tow-away zone, we decided to retrieve the car on our way back home. Armed with a come-along and a ridiculous plan, we headed back to Passmore.

Here's where we went off. The tire tracks in the middle of the photo are ours. This is about where we stopped.


And here's how we found the car. Apparently the lug bolts had all sheared off between the hub and the wheel spacer.


We "re-attached" the wheel by crossthreading a couple of bolts back in, and started pulling it back onto the trailer with the come-along. The wheel was obviously not mounted true.


This took about an hour, but at least the whole hour was hilarious. In that last pic, the car is being held up by that jack in the lower right and an assortment of tree branches that Dmitriy had found (visible to his left). Finally, to get it home safely without tossing a wheel at some poor motorist on the highway, we fastened the wheel back to the hub with a ratchet strap.


Then we drove home. In the end, a disappointing rally but still great fun and a very valuable learning experience. We'll be back at Sno*Drift hopefully with a car that doesn't fall apart!

Lake Superior Pro Rally - Part 2: The Rally

After a good night's sleep, we were ready for the big show. Unfortunately, LSPR was reduced to a one-day rally for 2010, but it was a pretty long day with nearly 260 total miles, 90 of which are on stage. Sean and I spent some time in the Novice Competitor Seminar while our awesome crew tied up a few loose ends before Parc Exposé. Parc Exposé had a totally different feel as a competitor than it did when I had spectated in the past. For example, a little kid came up to Sean and me to ask for our autographs on his shirt! He was actually just asking everybody in a race suit, but I still thought it was awesome. Here's a shot of us leaving Parc Exposé:


Here are the highlights:

Parc Exposé->SS1:Green Acres: Somewhere around our out-time, we left Parc Exposé and headed over to the beginning of the first stage. We had somehow neglected to do an odometer calibration beforehand, so we used that transit as our calibration, which ended up working perfectly. Sweet.

Green Acres 1: Our first competition stage. Green Acres was basically a giant rallycross set up in the Moyle Gravel Pit. We started off the stage Ok, but I very quickly got lost in the notes and told Sean to ignore me. I thought I knew where I was a couple of times but was dead wrong. This was embarassing. The next thing I know, we're getting waved down by the workers at the finish who are getting bigger in the windshield at an alarming rate. "Didn't your navigator tell you where the finish was?" they hollered at us. "Um...we're new at this." That sucked. Now I was worried that I was going to botch this co-driving thing all day.



Green Acres->Houghton Service: We were still a little confused after finishing Green Acres, so we just drove to the end of the gravel pit. This was a bad idea. Turns out the notes start right from the finish, so I was already lost on the transit. Great. So we drove back to service because we knew where it was, but it turns out we were supposed to enter from the other side where a fueling depot had been set up. Workers in service were wondering what we were doing going the wrong way through service. Oops.

Herman 1: Our first stage in the woods. Lots of fun, even hit some sweet jumps! Um...I got distracted by that first jump and didn't call out a hard left in time and we ended up sliding off the road a bit. We didn't hit anything big, but the car got jostled a bit. Finished out the stage, including a really wet section by the end, where we hydroplaned by two cars that had gone off. The GTI took it like a champ, only letting a little bit of water into our footwells.


Menge: Uneventful stage. I'm starting to get the hang of navigating, Sean is beginning to drive a little more based on what I say (which is scary). I think we're both a bit more comfortable in our roles. This stage is beautiful and I'm sad that I couldn't find photos of us on it.

L'Anse Service: Did I mention that our crew was awesome? We pulled into our very well-chosen and roomy service spot where Dmitriy and Kyle had lunch ready for us as well as drink refills. Sean said he was noticing some weird rear suspension behavior, so he decided to pull the right rear hub and stub axle (which he is an expert at). With a little help from Ryan Thompson of Thompson Racing Fabrication, the corner was back together with a brand new stub axle in about 10 minutes. Basically, I went to the Rally America truck to figure out where we had been re-seeded and by the time I got back, we had a new corner. Amazing stuff, really.

Herman 2: Same mistake as last time, though Sean vaguely remembered and I didn't (dammit!) so it was pretty minor. I need to make notes on stage when I screw things up. We managed to stay on the road this time around though.


Passmore: Here's where things got interesting. I had written things like "FAST!" and "GO GO GO!" in my notes in many places on this stage, and it certainly lived up to that. We were going really fast. Suddenly, I look up for the next corner and we're sliding through the leaves off the right side of the road. I'm not too alarmed, thinking to myself, "Oh, Sean just overshot the corner a little and we're getting back on the road," as I keep diligently reading the notes. Turns out this wasn't the case as I looked up again to see us narrowly miss a tree on the right side and then come to a stop as the ditch gets deeper and tilts the car to an unsettlingly steep angle. Sean says "The wheel came off" with surprising calm about him and we run out to set up triangles. Apparently the right front wheel came off and ended our rally. It's scary in retrospect, but I didn't even notice anything when it happened.

So we sat out the rest of the stage (obviously), and at one point, Sean went wandering about to find the wheel that had been launched into the woods at around 70 mph. We eventually got towed out by sweep and the car was left by the roadside because we wouldn't be able to recover it in time for the second running of the stage in a couple of hours. A very helpful volunteer drove us out of the stage back to the Kenton Service where we broke the news to our crew (which had grown to include Jon Tinsey, who was kind enough to drive us back to Houghton).