Waste Management Winter Rallysprint 2016
As shown in the above picture, things were ICY for recce on Friday. With predicted temperatures well above freezing, we weren't sure what was going to happen Saturday, but everyone started out on snow tires. We got through tech with the addition of cardboard door panels and made our way to Parc Expose.
GRM sticker at Tech:
Cardboard safety features:
Josh (irish44j to you guys) was starting well up in the order, but we were seeded nearly last (21st seed). Here's a picture of us in Parc Expose before the start (photo credit Josh):
First transit was largely uneventful with the exception of a (quickly corrected) missed turn- blame it on nerves, this was my first rally in a car and Sara's first rally ever (other than dragging my rallymoto bike around as crew).
WMWR is effectively the same stage 5x, 3x one way and 2x the other. It started out rough and only got rougher. SS1 had 4 different competitors off the road, two resulting in DNFs (one of which was on turn one! 
) and a number of flats. We drove fairly conservatively and made it through without issue, but were held up behind a CRX for a few miles near the end of the stage. No big deal, at least nothing was broken (yet) and we ran a midpack time, a bit slower than Josh.
Stuck behind CRX on SS1 (photo credit Tim McBride):
As it turns out, the CRX had slowed down because the water crossing (labeled in our notes as "caution ice mud swamp") had blown their shift boot off and sent a geyser of water into the interior.
Going into SS2, we were BSing about getting stuck behind people and Josh did this to the Golf which was now in front of us in the start order:
Naturally, I didn't listen and went right ahead and caught the Golf on SS2. The stage was starting to melt, and was generally a sloppy wet muddy slushy mess. Rocks were also starting to emerge in the rougher sections as cars cleared the snow/ice/gravel off of them. We ran slightly slower than Josh again, but right on par with most of the 2wd cars, putting us all within about a minute of eachother, with the top 6 or so separated by maybe 30 seconds.
On SS2 I had noticed the engine getting hot towards the end, and sure enough one of our two cooling fans was no longer working. I didn't try to diagnose it at the time, figuring the fan (which came with the car) had died from being submerged.
One of the drier portions of the stage (photo credit Megan Green):
We turned the heat up to full blast to help cool the engine and took off for SS3. It was even rougher, the car got even hotter, at some point we lost our left headlight cover, but we were moving fast and the notes were good. According to the results we had the fastest 2wd time for this stage, and I think we passed a few more cars which had broken something or gotten flats. This rally had a high attrition rate, especially considering the short overall mileage.
The car was HOT pulling into service, and I couldn't hear any cooling fan action at all. I hopped out while we were still in line for the time control into service to check it, and got ambushed by an interviewer:
Facebook link
For those without facebook, I sounded like the idiot I am while explaining that the ground wires for the fans had actually ripped themselves out of their connectors at the battery.
In service, most other teams switched to gravels but I really liked the way it handled the muck on the snows so I left them on to concentrate on other things. We mounted the lights, fueled the car, duct taped over the lost headlight cover so it wouldn't shine back in my face once it got dark, topped up the fluids, and put a buttload of splice connectors and zip ties on the fan wires to get them all nice and functional again.
Crowd of onlookers at tech, did I mention Wellsboro has great rally fans?
The splice connector and ziptie nightmare that I was creating in front of those nice people:
Duct tape headlight cover:
Big thanks to Nater, who was crewing for a different team but torqued our lugnuts for us and checked the car over while we were otherwise occupied. We should probably bring crew next time! We left tech for SS4 with the car yet again fully functional, although it wasn't idling so well thanks to mud on the air filter.
SS4 was the first time running the other way, but Sara had done a better job with the notes in this direction and we had our rhythm down. We clicked off another fastest 2wd time, hit the spectator jump hard, and generally had a blast- it was my favorite stage of the rally by far. We also caught Josh on stage since we had worked our way up in the order to be right behind him, but couldn't get close enough for a pass between the setting sun and the mud spray covering the windshield- naturally, it was this moment that my windshield washers chose to stop working as well. Oh, and the car got hot yet again.
Then we lined up for SS5, and waited forever, giving us ample time to BS and for Josh to describe exactly how he planned to block me:
I also wiped the headlights and the all important motivational message:
It's worth mentioning that by this point the car wouldn't idle correctly and would flood when shut down. Not sure what's going on with it, but using my manual fuel pump switch makes it start reliably. We also had some fun noises coming from the rear suspension.
We set off at our SS4 pace for SS5, but this being the last stage I started pushing a little harder after the halfway point. It bit us in the ass about 3 miles from the finish, in the form of a flat right rear thanks to an overly aggressive entry into a rocky L1. Not wanting to have to stop on stage, in the dark, in the mud to change it, we carried as much momentum as possible to pegleg it to the finish. Thank jibbers I rebuilt the diff! About 1.5 miles from the finish, we passed Josh, who also had a flat- same tire, and I would bet the same corner caused it as well. Oh, and of course the car got hot again.
We made it to the finish, and all we needed to do was make it to service to finish our first rally! I swapped the tire for our spare just past the finish control, and we rolled into service only 2 minutes late to hand in our time card. Rally complete! YES! 
The offending tire:
Honestly, how many of you thought this old ass rally car-turn LeMons car, pulled from a field after 10 years of inactivity, would finish its' first rally? I know I didn't 
Then it was off to the county fairgrounds for the awards party. On the way, I got pulled over- the nice state trooper thought I had no taillights! After I wiped them off for him, he let me off with a warning and I made it to the fairgrounds without further issue, other than my exhaust dragging on the ground (which the trooper had politely pretended not to notice).
This picture is from AFTER I wiped the taillights off:
In the end, we got 2nd in class, 59 seconds out of 1st, and 5th overall. The flat cost us about 2 minutes, so we nearly had it! Josh came in 3rd right behind us, again thwarted by flat tires. 1st place? He had no flats, imagine that. Only 11 cars of the original 18 finished the rally.
We made it home without issue, Chief performed well as a tow and service vehicle. I have some stuff to fix, and some lessons learned, but will detail it all in a later post. I had a blast, Sara had a blast, and we did better than we had anticipated- couldn't ask for much more!
I'll be switching back to snows tomorrow. Recce went pretty well, things have been largely uneventful so far other than us showing up late. It's very icy and very bumpy, and although it'll be warm, I'm not sure that's going to do anything but give us a layer of water on top of the ice.
Photo credit Dave Seasholtz
