In reply to irish44j :
Probably dropping all the heavy stuff at the hotel and doing recce in Chief, but we'll see how I feel on Friday I guess.
In reply to irish44j :
Probably dropping all the heavy stuff at the hotel and doing recce in Chief, but we'll see how I feel on Friday I guess.
I do hope there is snow on the ground for the weekend, and not this freezing rain crap we have going on right now.
BTW Chris, are you good on 4x108 wheels? (Not for use at WMWR obviously). I have an ok set I can bring for you.
In reply to paranoid_android :
It's looking like a mix of ice and mud but we'll see. I've been watching the weather as well as a couple of the public webcams like this one to see the road conditions there, things look pretty good right now but it's supposed to get warm (melt) then really cold again Fri-Sat: https://www.wunderground.com/webcams/TiogaCounty/3/show.html
I'm good on wheels at the moment, you should keep those for your Saab!
WMWR 2019
Friday:
We loaded up Chief, hooked up the trailer, and hit the road:
Upon arriving at the Canyon Motel, we checked into our rooms (which were upgraded to suites for free!), dropped the trailer, and took off in Chief for Recce while Alex (masterchef604) and Brian (paranoid android) stayed behind.
Recce was about what we expected- in other words, a massively sloppy mess. Ice, mud, gravel, slush, and a little bit of snow were all on the menu:
The big spectator jump had, much to everyone's disappointment, been turned into an obstacle course, with big pivot turns around hay bales to slow the cars down both before and after the jump, and caution tape and cones defining the line to take. At some point somebody hit one of the cones, causing the caution tape to blow in the wind, which led to it getting wrapped around Chief's roof rack and us finishing recce with a big streamer hanging off our vehicle.
After recce, we picked up Alex, Brian, and the car, as well as Ian (Ian F, volunteering for WMWR) and headed to registration, where I was immediately shaken down for extra money since nobody on my team is an SCCA member. Then it was off to tech inspection at All Wheels Driven, where they were being extraordinarily thorough since there were only 8 cars entered this year.
It was at this point, waiting in the tech line, that Josh (irish44j, last year's WMWR 2wd winner) and I discovered that we had worn matching outfits- this turned out to be a good omen:
We passed a very long tech session with only the addition of some roll cage padding, applied our event decals, and headed back to the hotel to drop the car off. Then our crew and Josh's crew headed out to Johnny'z Hot Rod Cafe to get some excellent Mexican food for dinner and to harass eachother about the icy, muddy disasters to come. Late that night, more reinforcements arrived in the form of Ashley and Simon (adventure piggy) driving our second service vehicle- the Roadmonster (manual swapped, all-terrain tired 8 passenger wagon of excellence next to Chief in this shot of the service park):
We called it a night and planned to reconvene over breakfast in the morning.
Saturday, race day:
Our crew met up again at breakfast at a place in Wellsboro I can't recall the name of, and went over the road book and rally map (Sara and I look on as Brian chooses an interesting finger to point at the map with):
We then headed back to the hotel to warm the car up, check tire pressures, and generally get stuff ready. Alex ran out and filled the fuel cans. The 2wd pack descended on us while we were preparing (Josh's e30 on the left, Alan's Neon on the right):
Just before leaving, even more reinforcements arrived- our friends Emy and yet another Brian. They both drive Neons so I had extra incentive to try and keep up with Alan, since I knew there would be endless ridicule about Mopar superiority. We checked a few final things and headed to Parc Expose.
After a brief driver's meeting where we were told that the organizers were more or less planning to play Calvinball with the service and transit times, we set off towards SS1. The car felt good, we felt good, and we had the biggest crew we've ever brought to a rally, but I was really nervous- if you page back through this thread you can see that the only critical parts on this car we haven't changed since the last rally are the transmission, driveshaft, and rear shocks. Everything else was largely untested so we planned to take it at a reasonable pace.
We launched onto SS1 and it was icy. Most of the wet spots from recce had become full blown sheets of ice, but the car felt good, I started to get used to the hydraulic handbrake, the notes were good, and things were going smoothly... until partway through the stage our intercom cut out. Intercom failures have become a recurring theme for us, and Sara immediately switched to yelling the notes while I silently cursed everyone who has ever worked for Terratrip. About 2/3 of the way through the stage, we came across the #929 Subaru, who had slid off the road, and quickly found out why- despite our reduced speed, we nearly slid into them on a downhill sheet of ice into a R2.
We finished the rest of the stage cleanly, and hopping out of the car I was amazed to find that nothing (other than the intercom) was broken. Not only that, but we had set the fastest 2wd time for SS1! So much for a reasonable pace...
I narrowed the intercom issue down to the fuse holder, ripped the fuse out, and used a quick splice to junction the wires together. We then set off for SS2, more confident in the car and hoping the intercom would last.
On SS2, we pushed too hard and scared ourselves silly on several occasions. It was still very icy, and in a fast section we found ourselves kicked toward the trees with very little control a few times. Then, in a tighter section, we came into a L2 too hot and slid off the road, luckily into a place with enough traction to back out. This approach resulted in a relatively fast time but didn't seem sustainable, and our off cost us a few seconds.
On SS3, we made a conscious decision to back off from our scary SS2 pace- this resulted in a relatively uneventful and clean stage, despite the conditions getting rougher as the road thawed out, but we lost about 30 seconds. Car was still feeling good, though!
After SS3 was service- and not only was the car not broken for once, we had brought an army. Everything was done in the first 20min of the 40min service, having a big crew is awesome:
Josh was pitted next to us and having similarly few issues, so we knew we were going to be hard pressed to keep up with him. After a quick bite to eat, we got back in the car and were off for SS4.
We had decided to push a bit faster again on SS4, and it was serving us well, although a number of sections had had nasty rocks uncovered by the cars over the previous stages. Then, in the spectator jump/hairpin section, I goobered it big time- we did a great job pivoting around the first bale, but then as I grabbed the handbrake to swing around the second, the car died. After a few seconds of cranking, I realized my mistake- I had slapped the fuel switch on the dashboard as I reached for the handbrake, turning off the fuel pump and killing the car midcorner. I switched the fuel back on, the car started, and we took back off. The rest of the stage went really well but that berkeleyup cost us at least 10 seconds.
Talking to Josh and Alan after the stage, we determined that we were all within a minute of eachother, so Sara and I decided to try to make up a little more time.
On SS5 we had our work cut out for us, since there was still ice, plenty of water and mud from the melting snow, and the sun was getting low enough to give us visibility issues. We went pretty fast, hit a few big nasty bumps that really felt like they might have hurt something, and spent the last 1/4 of the stage being completely blinded by the setting sun. My eyes were burning by the time we crossed the finish line, but we went fast and hadn't damaged the car, although the prefilter on the air filter was completely covered in mud so we cleaned it with snow and a paper towel.
For SS6, we just wanted to keep up the pace and finish without getting a flat. The sun, rocks, and mud yet again made things difficult, but we ran a really quick time and kept it clean. At the finish of SS6, we yet again met up with Josh and Alan, and none of us had any idea what the standings were:
We transited to the actual finish near the service park, cleaned the lights off, and headed out to the awards at the Fairgrounds, where we parked next to Josh:
Then we rolled the car onto the trailer, and took a picture with the whole team:
So, how did we do? Well, we were closer to Josh than we had imagined:
That is a TIE for 2nd overall, and 1st in 2wd. To the second. Holy crap!
We finished the night by hanging out with our 2wd co-winners and watching WRC Sweden footage. What an excellent weekend!
A rally tie. That is pretty crazy! Nice work guys!
Dammit, now what pictures am i gonna use for my thread? ;) lol....you're too damn fast!
Congrats on the good event - it's nice to see you guys not broken, not on fire, and yeah - biggest crew I've ever seen aside from SRT USA!
I am totally regretting that at the final 2-3 turns I pretty much coasted through since stuff was re-freezing and I was like "definitely don't want to have an off on the final turn".....and that's what I get for not sending it til the end!
--
Side note: I was worried on my car that I'd accidentally hit my fuel pump/acc kill switch as well if my hand slipped off the shifter, so I actually moved it higher on the dash just to get it away from any possibility of being hit on accident.
In reply to irish44j :
You have no idea how many times I've gone "I should move the fuel switch... eh, I've never hit it before" 
Congrats!
Sunday, after the rally
The whole crew went to the Wellsboro Diner for breakfast, then we checked out and went our separate ways. We arrived home with a very dirty Merkur:
We decided it deserved a wash, so it got one:
As far as I can tell, nothing is broken and we can probably even get another event out of these tires. I will need to figure out how to clean up the engine bay, though, since there's a large amount of baked-on junk in there that the hose wouldn't take off.
My takeaways from this rally:
The crew- our friends make an excellent crew, no people or things were out of place or late for the entirety of the rally, thank you guys so much!
The racing- Sara is still a great navigator, and I'm a little rusty but can mostly still drive decently. We only had a few moments where I wasn't 100% in tune with the notes, and overall I think we performed really well.
The car- nearly a year and a half of fixing, replacing, and reengineering appears to have paid off in the form of a more reliable vehicle. My favorite features by far, at least for this tight and slippery rally, were the combination of the Supra 4.3 LSD and hydraulic handbrake, which let us pivot the car at will and dig out of corners nicely. This is the first time we've ever finished a rally with no major equipment failures, and I couldn't be happier about that.
Plans- I need to check over the car thoroughly, but having tested the new engine, turbo, intake, exhaust, differential, rear suspension, subframe, struts, and a whole bunch of little pieces means that now we should be able move on to tweaking all of the little things that bother me but weren't big enough deals to merit fixing when the car was destroying major components constantly. I'm pretty excited about that.
Awesome!!!
I'm going to keep editing this post to add more links as I find them.
Clips from our team:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt_kG9OBIV5/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Spectator videos from Sean Burke
We're around the 3min mark in this one from the gravel pit section of SS2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Xqwt8QX2E
Clips from several different locations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6eTVBCJWc
In-car:
Youtube removed nearly all of their online editing, so the videos are completely unedited and not merged together. Sorry! You can find the rest on my channel.
Congrats again! It was great seeing everyone and working the rally was a good time (if a bit chilly) - although I'd obviously rather be driving. Maybe some day. After some 800 miles of driving on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I'm back in NH. I'll try to get my phone-video footage edited and uploaded ASAP.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
Spectator videos from Sean Burke
We're around the 3min mark in this one from the gravel pit section of SS2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Xqwt8QX2E
I was stationed at the hairpin turn after the cars go around the gravel pit. You can see my van at the left end of the line of cars - used for holding caution tape.
Totally sad about low entry count. How does that influence the future of the event? Prior to a head cold I was considering driving out to spectate. Glad now I did not for an 8 car entry.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Yeah, it is a bit of a bummer- it's a really rough rally, so despite the low cost of entry I think the roads scare people away. Also doesn't help that they keep neutering the big spectator jump with chicane/hairpin configurations every year.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to TurnerX19 :
Yeah, it is a bit of a bummer- it's a really rough rally, so despite the low cost of entry I think the roads scare people away. Also doesn't help that they keep neutering the big spectator jump with chicane/hairpin configurations every year.
How do the road conditions compare to ESPR? I've heard little more than horror stories of road conditions any time that event is brought up.
In reply to artur1808 :
WMWR is similarly rough, but usually much colder, wetter, and icier. ESPR also runs different stage configurations through the same road a ton of times so it gets really chewed up in places.
I don’t have any idea why I was middle-finger pointing. I never do that!
The rally from the crew perspective could not have been much better. Chris’ hard work on fixing/prepping the car obviously paid off- and that was great to see. Having not been to any rallies last year, I was definitely out of practice for setting up the service area. But having our full and very capable crew more than made up for all the stuff I couldn’t remember.
The only actual casualty I witnessed was a jack stand that had given up the ghost. Quick examination showed the roll pin connecting the handle to the “stop thingy” had failed, so the stand wouldn’t lock in position at the height we needed.
For me personally, the only oh E36 M3 moment was the fuel switch incident on the double hairpin stage. When the engine didn’t fire after the first crank it certainly got my attention, but the worry was for nothing.
So really for me, the experience was much like the one that got me hooked on rally in the first place- great new friends were made, smiling faces all around, and I got to be the dork I am without any (well, too many) strange looks.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to TurnerX19 :
Yeah, it is a bit of a bummer- it's a really rough rally, so despite the low cost of entry I think the roads scare people away. Also doesn't help that they keep neutering the big spectator jump with chicane/hairpin configurations every year.
Everyone says that, but I don't really think it's that rough overall. NEFR is way rougher, and i hear ESPR is as well. The New England guys all laugh when people say the WM stages are "rough." They just feel rougher because they're not very high-speed, I think.
I honestly thought the setup this year was great for spectators, especially with the low number of cars (and the fact that only a couple of them would hit it hard enough to get any real air if it was a full-jump). I did think the double-pin arrangement could be improved, however..
Also, my boss just posted this on FB...
If it makes you feel better, there wasnt much more organization on the volunteer side. I registered as sweep, got the email saying i was sweep, put the winch on my truck and brought up a whole container of specialized recovery gear, only to be replaced by a truck with a tow strap, and sent to camp on a corner all day..... 300 feet from another vehicle serving the same function. and the Radio net was, well, not much better. lots of spotty reception, and there wasnt a very clear explanation of proper net protocol for the radio either, resulting in some confusing comms at times. still ran relatively smoothly, all things considered, but theres a lot of room for improvement, and I honestly thing them going to SCCA as a sanctioning body has done them a lot more harm than it has good....
Gaunt596 said:I honestly thing them going to SCCA as a sanctioning body has done them a lot more harm than it has good....
Not much choice, Rally America doesn't even exist as a sanctioning body any more and ARA doesn't do rallysprints, I don't think.
All that said, I'm fine with a bit of amateurness at WMWR. The entry fee is substantially less than what it was as a RA event. SCCA does a good job of subsidizing costs for its big member-base. Would probably be double the price if NRS or ARA took it over.
I wasn't aware that SCCA itself has much to do with how WMWR is run - just the sanctioning/insurance. WMWR is basically run by the same local organizers who run STPR (which is ARA/ex-RA).
note: I'm not some big SCCA defender. I actually dislike a lot of what SCCA does. I'm basically just curious as to what SCCA is/isn't doing that they should be (and since I know the national director for rallycross/rallysprint for SCCA, I could talk to him about it).
I think WMWR also feels rougher than it really is because typically we're all on snow tires and therefore very conscious of not hitting anything too hard. I will admit I've only driven one stage at ESPR, and it was probably rougher on average but the dry conditions made it less terrifying.
I would agree that the organization of this event was pretty sloppy, and I wouldn't have any problem with that if it were a little more transparent- "we're winging it, help us out" always looks better than "we know what we're doing we swear, but it's super secret so don't quote the rules/supps/bulletins at us or ask for clarification"
Every time you do a rally write up I want to go buy another rally car but actually get it on stage this time.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
This is far closer to you than it is to me. SCORE legal vehicles are also NASA legal. Just saying...
A few photos from the weekend
Edit: Photos fixed
You'll need to log in to post.
