Short version: Black River Stages was awesome! 4th in class, 7th overall, beat all but one 4wd car, bent some stuff, caught fire (but only a little) twice, and have a lot to do to the car over the winter. Long version will be posted once I've got some pictures to work with and time to write it.
Was the intercom working? It sounds like your wife is adorably yelling course notes at you. Does she ever not sound adorable?
And that looks awesome. I need a rally car.
The intercom worked on every special stage but seemed flaky occasionally right after we plugged it in- I need to go through the actual headset wiring in the helmets, since it still seems a little funky and this is a completely different system apart from the actual headsets.
Sara almost always yells on stage, so we set the microphone volume accordingly, and yes, it more or less always sounds like shes talking to a puppy 
. Her voice is actually great for this car, since it's a completely different pitch than any of the noises the car can make- if it were me reading the notes, my monotone would blend right in with the tractor noises the engine makes and it might be hard to understand.
Hells yes!
So no dubstep in the intercom at least?
In reply to paranoid_android74 :
Nope, it would cut in and out a few times right after plugging it in and then be fine. I really think it's a loose connection in my helmet somewhere- I haven't exactly been nice to it, I tend to either pull it off and lob it behind the seats or keep it on and hop out to jam my head under the car.
In reply to mazdeuce :
Too many times where our intercom has cut out to not yell 
. I think on SS1 Chris was driving one-handed trying to fix his intercom connection...we got lucky everywhere else. The intercom completely cut out right at the finish of SS12!
Ha! If I had ended up as your navigator, it would have been me yelling at you with a southern accent. For some reason, my yelling voice is rather different from my normal speaking voice.
So awesome! I love to see normal people driving on stage rather than pros. Really helps me think its more attainable.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:Sara almost always yells on stage, so we set the microphone volume accordingly, and yes, it more or less always sounds like shes talking to a puppy
Just got a mental image of you both in drivers suits and her leading you through one of those dog agility courses like a border collie, haha!
I can't say the sports are entirely dissimilar:
bluej said:Just got a mental image of you both in drivers suits and her leading you through one of those dog agility courses like a border collie, haha!
What's funny is that between my co-driving and training my dog in agility, both of the skills have improved! They are quite similar. Except a late call in agility results in the puppy going wherever they want, and in rally...well, last year we luckily only ended up on a stump!
Black River Stages 2017 Day 1, Tech and Parc Expose
We arrived around 11AM Friday for tech, with the car pretty much ready to go except for a few decals. The tow up was uneventful, and we felt pretty confident that the car would pass tech with minimal effort. Sara applied the new decals and immediately headed off to the NCO, while Simon (our crew chief) and I took the car through tech- no issues, cleared to rally!
We milled around for a while and bullE36 M3ted with our competitors until Sara returned, then went and got some deliciously fried dinner at Josh's Riverside Restaurant over near the Croghan Island Mill, avoiding the pizza place which had given our usual crew chief (Brian aka paranoid_android) a severe case of the pukenE36 M3s last year. Then we drove a whole 100 ft to the mill itself where Parc Expose was. As is the usual for Parc Expose, we all wandered around aimlessly checking out our competitors sweet rides:
Josh (irish44j) was sort of our teammate for this event, since we were sharing crew and planning to set up our service sports next to eachother. Gary, the owner of the glorious v8 rally truck next to Josh's boring e30, was just ahead of us on the road:
There was a band of future rallyists walking around collecting autographs, Josh and Jim were obvious choices with their fancy professional looking suits, but they didn't discriminate and got mine too even though my suit has duct tape and sharpie on it:
There were a berkeleyton of bikes at this rally too, I guess once I stop doing something it finally becomes cool:
Then we set off to run shakedown, at night. Our light setup proved to be excellent, with a set of cheap Auxbeam LED spot lights throwing plenty of light down the road and a curved LED bar gifted to us by Brian lighting up the corners while we were sideways. We parked the car at rally HQ with our trailer and retired to the hotel for some much needed sleep.
Black River Stages 2017 Day 2, Actual Rally Stuff
We woke up bright and early, grabbed crappy Tim Horton's breakfast, and made a beeline for Rally HQ to look at the car. I had a nagging feeling that something was loose, so we put it up in the air, and found and subsequently tightened the loose bolts on the rear halfshafts, noting that they should be rechecked at every service. Then, we got gas, discovered that the fuel filler neck had sprung a leak, and went to rally start. We were set to leave after Josh and before the most excellent Starion:
Feeling like my exhaust routing (sidepipe in front of the rear wheel, 3ft from the gas tank) was a very good choice, we carefully dodged cigarette butts on our way to the start line, and set off on an uneventful transit.
SS1, Thomlinson, is a fast stage with a long straight at the very beginning- so naturally, we wasted no time getting the car up to a GPS indicated 107mph. The brakes (bias adjustable as of last winter's modifications) had no trouble hauling us down from that speed, and the whole stage in general felt great. Suddenly, I remembered why I spend all my free time and money on this stuff 
Then we transited over to SS2, Jayville In, where we had had an unplanned high speed parking incident involving a stump last year. No such issues this year though, Sara remained consistent on the notes, the car kept being awesome, and with the exception of nearly overshooting into a pond as we jumped some railroad tracks, everything went beautifully. When we opened the hood at the end of the stage, though, it was obvious that a great deal of the oil from inside of the engine had decided that the underside of the hood needed more lubrication than it was getting. I wiped it up, added a little, and added a few strategically placed shop towels to try to determine the source of the oil. There were certainly other competitors who were worse off- the Jonas Racing M3 had had a strut separate from its' tophat, and the Starion's cooling fan had died.
Then, we raced back out (SS3)- this was yet again, very good, except that the finish had been moved back several corners causing a very disconcerting combination of full boogie and zero notes for the last 10 seconds of the stage. Only slightly shaken, we headed back to service, yet again smelling oil.
Once we arrived, with only 20 minutes to work of the car, Matt and Simon immediately set about finding our leak:
It turned out to be from the dipstick, which was being blown out under boost and allowing oil to go basically everywhere. The solution? Bungee the dipstick down, wipe up the excess, and top it up. I checked the rear halfshaft bolts (still tight) and noted that the fuel leak had stopped since the fuel level was lowered- we decided not to top it all the way up.
The Starion had made it back, but they were having issues with cooling. Josh gave them a spare fan, and I gave them a suggestion- remove the hood. I was overjoyed with the result:
SS4 was Thomlinson again, and it went similarly to the first time through, but a little faster. The oil leak was being held at bay by the new bungee dipstick, and in spite of an ungodly amount of top end clatter the engine was running well. We then transited to SS5, Goose Pond In, land of the big yumps.
Goose Pond In starts off like pretty much any other gravel stage, but slowly escalates into ridiculous jumping madness. We went at what I thought was a reasonable speed, but landed several of them very hard, crunching my back and bottoming out the suspension to the point that the skidplate and exhaust touched down, and the rear trailing arms bent slightly- rear grip was effected but the turn in suddenly got really good! I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of the car flying through the air yet, but here's one from the turnaround at the end of the stage where you can sort of see our newfound stancenificent rear camber:
SS5 was not without its' casualties, Sergei's Subaru had a more drastic adjustment to its' rear suspension:
We drove a bit slower on our way out (SS6) but still had a decently quick time and got some air. The service afterwards was 50 minutes, almost as if the organizers knew everyone would break their cars on the big jumpy stage
The crew put some fuel in the car, tightened everything, and installed the lights. They also searched for a strange underhood noise which had started in addition to the lifter clatter, but couldn't find anything.
We had some food and water, surveyed the damage to the rear suspension with a "meh, those rear tires are at least 10 years old anyway," and restocked the car with water. Before we knew it, it was time to go again:
So go we did, transiting to SS7, West Texas, a relatively fast but smooth stage. On our way though, the car stopped charging, and we watched in horror as the voltage dropped to 12, then 11, then 10 throughout the 15 mile transit. Upon arriving at SS7, I shut the car off and immediately got to work, eventually finding the exciter wire had come off the back of the alternator- so I reattached it, the car fired up after a few slow cranks, and we checked in on time anyway.
SS7 was largely uneventful, but the following transit was amusing- for whatever reason, people on the transit route between SS7 & 8 like to have cookouts in their front yards during the rally, so the transit is full of inebriated upstate New Yorkers chanting at you to go faster or do burnouts. Two honks of the horn and a sneeze from the blowoff valve are my standard response, and seem to be appreciated.
SS8, Henry, is a short stage similar to 7 but with a bastard dry riverbed full of rocks the size of basketballs in the middle. We hauled ass, the stage went well, and our new skidplate made short work of the rocks while a few particularly large ones made similarly short work of our exhaust- but it stayed on, albeit with a number of new dents. Then it was back to West Texas again for SS9, this time whilst staring directly into the sun:
It went well, again, although we were yet again smelling oil. A quick inspection after the stage revealed that the new leak was on the opposite side of the engine bay somewhere, but I couldn't pin down its' location, so we decided it could wait until service and returned to Henry for SS10 which was again quick and tidy with the exception of the boulder field.
We returned to service and unsuccessfully tried to find the oil leak, tightened the valve cover bolts hoping that was it, tightened the rear halfshaft bolts one last time, observed the horrible things a buttload of negative camber does to gravel tires, and straightened the exhaust tip with a jack:
We had other tires but decided not to put them on since they would just get eaten, and set off into a gorgeous sunset:
SS11 (and 12) was Tinney Corners, a combination of the old Jerdan Falls (fast as all hell with consequences for leaving the road ranging from "hammer your floor back down" to "life flight") and a new road with tons of medium speed turns over blind crests, totaling over 9 miles. On the way to the time control, we saw a porcupine waddling down the road but failed to photograph him in the name of being on time.
After a long wait while marshals cleared drunk spectators off the road, we finally got to set off with our lights blazing onto this fast, scary, and partially unknown stage. The grip from the now completely wasted rear tires was severely lacking, but we tried to keep the pace up anyway, knowing that we were just off the podium in 2wd heavy. Throughout the stage we smelled oil, but in the last mile or so the car began to fill with smoke- I told Sara to tell me if she sees flames and we kept our pace up.
At the finish control, smoke poured out of the hood- something was definitely wrong! I killed the engine and popped the hood to find our turbocharger on fire, but moments later the fire extinguished itself since the engine was no longer pumping any oil to fuel it. Justin Hughes (writer for The Drive) was volunteering at the finish control and pulled his Subaru around to point the headlights at our engine bay so that I could see- and as he did, I came up with a cunning plan:
No oil to the turbo, no fire, right? I was careful to only mostly crimp off the feed line, so that the turbo would have some chance of not seizing and throwing hot shrapnel everywhere, and bypassed the boost controller so that it would only make 10 psi (hey, we wanted to finish, but not any lower in the standings!) and got first degree burns for my trouble. Then we transited back to do it again for SS12, the last stage.
Upon arriving at the time control, I borrowed some rags from Josh and cleaned up what oil I could so that when we inevitably caught fire again it hopefully wouldn't engulf the entire car:
Then, we entered the time control, and got some excellent news- they were inverting the run order for the top 10, so we would get to be first on the road for the final stage. This meant we wouldn't have to worry about finding a car off, or part laying in the road. It also meant that if we broke down, or caught fire, every single goddamn car in the entire rally would pass us before we got cleaned up, and that instead of running in front of us, Josh would have to eat our extremely oily smoke for over 9 miles.
So, we hauled as much ass as an XR4Ti with bald rear tires, spectacular blowby, 20 psi of oil pressure, and 10 psi of boost still can through the night, with the oil fire igniting yet again mid stage but going out as the revs dropped towards the end, pulled into the finish control, got our time, transited to Rally HQ, and handed in our time card. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
The winners sprayed champagne, we ate delicious chicken smoked in a trash can, and everyone tried to collect everyone else's insane stories:
In the end, we got 4th in class, and 7th overall, which we're more than happy with:
The winners (Wages/Montplaisir) had DNFd this rally several times, so everyone was ecstatic to see them finally victorious. The rally was awesome as always, the weather was perfect, and the volunteers and our crew did an amazing job. My back hurts, I've got a nasty cough, burns on my hands, and a broken car, and I couldn't be happier.
Sorry to anyone who was trying to read that as I wrote it, the last post was edited like 6x to keep adding to it. All done now!
For reference, our rear camber now:
Rear tires:
Exhaust:
So when's the next one?
So much awesome, you guys are truly an inspiration!
Enjoyed the read, very entertaining. Thanks for posting it up.
You continually redefine what "broken" means in reference to a race car. I love reading about your adventures.
In reply to bluej :
Whenever the car is in fighting shape again- there's too much going on with it (and the house) this fall/winter to pick a next event yet, although we'll be volunteering at ESPR.
In reply to mazdeuce :
My cars are always broken, but rarely broken enough to stop
Hey! Welcome to GRM Kodachrome!
I'm still smiling from reading the write up. It sounds like type A fun was had by all!
Did you notice any difference with the new aero?
In reply to paranoid_android74 :
The ass end certainly felt fine at speed, at least before we bent things, but I can't claim with any certainty that it made a difference.
The more noticeable aero effect was actually from the new lights- the old Hellas blocked so much of the grille that the car would get hot with them attached. No such issue with the LEDs.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to bluej :
Whenever the car is in fighting shape again- there's too much going on with it (and the house) this fall/winter to pick a next event yet, although we'll be volunteering at ESPR.
Keep me informed. You guys are more exciting to crew for than Josh. He barely breaks stuff.
bluej said:¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to bluej :
Whenever the car is in fighting shape again- there's too much going on with it (and the house) this fall/winter to pick a next event yet, although we'll be volunteering at ESPR.
Keep me informed. You guys are more exciting to crew for than Josh. He barely breaks stuff.
Did anyone tell him he *is* allowed to use the pedal on the far right?
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