I’ve been more than a little lax in team updates, but we finished up the 2009 season at LSPR this weekend.

It was a fun weekend, with plenty of problems. Hoping to get an update posted soon.

Until then, here’s a bit of in-car:
SS9 - Menge Creek. This corner caught out over half the field (as you can tell by the nicely plowed path up the bank)

SS15 - Burma 2. I was pushing a bit too hard on this stage. I’d set the fastest G2 time the first running, and was looking to improve.

I finally made it back, surprised that Chad didn’t updated anything here yet.  Hopefully he’ll do a full recap soon with in-car.

The big news for the weekend was we came in 3rd in 2wd for the weekend in the Max-Attack event, winning a prize of $1000!  It was a tough battle that was tougher on the car than it appeared from the outside (we did over half of one of the 16mi stages with only 3 tires, bending a few suspension pieces in the process).  Overall, it was fun to be out east and race with lots of new people and a few familiar ones.

We set up a twitter profile just for the team that I plan on updating at the rallies we’re at this year.  It should end up being the best way to keep up stage by stage with what we’re up to (if we have cell coverage!)

http://twitter.com/step2racing

Step2Racing is currently seeking crew members for the New England Forest Rally on July 17-18.

VW experience preferred, but not required. Reply with your contact info if interested.

What happens when you take a rally car on a moto-x course? Air, followed by the crunch of steel hitting dirt.

I was prepared for a rough event at the Gravity Park Twin Performance Rallies in Chilton Wisconsin, yesterday. I wasn’t expecting quite so many jumps. The Gravity Park event is run in and around a moto-x track. The organizers set up a two mile stage that we run multiple times in both directions. The day is two events each consisting of five laps around the course.

We started out with a two-pass “route familiarization” in the morning, so we could note all the jumps and corners. That went well, and John Huebbe (taking a break from navigating the rally bug with his brother) and I were able to put together some solid notes. That helped us start off on the attack, and we set the fastest overall time on the first two stages. A mistake in the field on the third stage saw us drop some time, and at the break to reverse the course, we were in second overall, with a healthy lead in Group 2.

During the break, it started raining, and the warning from zero car was that the field was extra-slippy this time. I decided to take it easy for the last two stages of the first event, and slipped to fourth overall, but maintained the Group 2 victory.

Looking at the last times from the first event, I knew that Paul Koll and Chris Greenhouse were pushing hard, and I had to drive at the edge if I was going to get the class win in the second event. I pushed a little too hard on the first stage, and lost time when I almost spun through the hay bale chicane at the finish. That gave Chris a two second advantage. I was able to take one second back on the second stage, but at a price. I didn’t brake for one of the jumps in the moto-x course, and nosed the car in hard. After the stage, my neck was sore, and so was John’s back. Paul unfortunately suffered an axle failure (his second of the day), so it was down to Chris and I to battle for the class win.

My luck with no car damage came to an end on the third stage. I hit a jump a little crooked, and the uneven landing was too much for my transmission to handle. I lost second gear, but was able to finish the stage using first and third. Inspection after the stage revealed that the damage to the transmission was terminal, and we were forced to put the car on the trailer and watch the final two stages.

Much thanks to Gravity Park and the organizers for a well run, albeit tough event. I’ll be trying to get the new transmission installed for Nemadji II, but if I can’t make that our next event will be the East Coast MaxAttack! round at New England Forest Rally.

Step2Racing headed up to Minnesota for Nemadji I this past weekend. It was a last minute entry, as I wasn’t sure the car would be ready in time. That meant Jay had made other plans so Colin stepped in to codrive for me. Colin codrove this event last year, so we both knew what to expect.

I started out a bit too tentative, knowing I had to drive clean if I was going to keep the car together for upcoming events. Comparing times at the turnaround, I was 4th in G2, and 30 seconds off the pace.
On the second stage, I started pushing a bit more, and was able to take advantage of others’ misfortune to finish third in G2 for the first event, and eighth overall.

The second event was a repeat of the first two stages. I knocked 10-15 seconds off of my earlier times, and finished the second event with a 2nd place G2 finish, and 5th overall.

It was enough to keep me on top of the Cendiv G2 Regional standings, and with no damage to the car, I can run Gravity Park in two weeks.

We had some issues with the camera mount, so I didn’t get any good video, but if you turn your head sideways and take some Dramamine, you should be able to watch.

Finally got the van unloaded and started to figure out what’s wrong with the car.

First, some pics of what we bent/broke at 100AW:

Stage 3:

The tire is still holding air…I love rally tires.

That caused the axle to self-machine the subframe over stages 4 and 5:

My trip into the woods on Stage 14 sliced up my tire:

And did some damage to the door (which I’ve “fixed” using a BFH).

It took all of my 20 ton press to get the spherical bearing out of the bent A-arm and into a new one. I got that installed and took the car for a test spin. The nasty on-off steering issues are now fixed, but I get a really bad pull to the right on heavy acceleration (only at WOT at high rpms). I’m not sure if the rack is bad or if I broke something in the subframe. I guess I get to pull it all apart and find out.

It looks like he was holding a camera. I’d love to see what pictures and/or video he took.

This was “the corner” on Stage 3. I think it was about 9 miles into the stage, just a mile and a half from the finish.

P.S. Thanks to all the workers, organizers and volunteers for making 100 Acre Wood a great event.

I went into 100 Acre Wood knowing it would be a battle. My goal for the weekend was the RRC, with a secondary goal of 2wd overall. I had no idea we’d take so many knockout punches. But, much like Rocky, we made it to the finish. Unfortunately, this was Rocky I, and we lost.

Round 1: We started out fast and aggressive. I wanted to put enough time on Greenhouse early to make him either push hard enough to crash, or give up and try for second. We set the fastest 2wd time, and took an 11 second lead in the RRC.

Round 2: I was having trouble committing to the 5’s, and we lost the 2wd time to Burak, but put another 3 seconds on Greenhouse.

Round 3: Seeing the results at service, I decided to step it up a notch and try to beat Burak again. I lost the rear end over a crest in the middle of a R6> and almost saw the end of the rally. After the impact, the car was noisy and the steering wheel was cocked 90 degrees to the left, but we finished the stage (and put another 3 seconds on Greenhouse). After the finish we saw that the front right tire was now rubbing on the fender, the axle was banging against the subframe, the right side tires were full of treebark, and I no longer had any rear brakes (tore a line).

Rounds 4 & 5: Surprisingly, the car wasn’t actually handling too bad. But braking was sketchy, and with no rear brakes, I couldn’t use LFB to get the car to rotate. Also, anytime I compressed the suspension, the axle noises got a bit worse. I passed Greenhouse stopped on SS4, and decided to take it easy to keep my RRC hopes alive, giving up on the 2wd victory. Amazingly, we still finished in first place G2 for the Friday regional, and were seconds out of 3^rd in 2wd overall.

After we got back to Salem, I called Ron and made him drive back down from Rolla to help fix the car. We got the rear line changed, bled the brakes, changed the front A-arm & steering end. The good news was, I had spares. The bad news was they weren’t in great shape. The spherical bearing on the A-arm was loose, and the tie rod was rusted frozen. We used the ball joint to adjust toe and eyeballed the alignment the best we could.

Round 6-9: Snow was back at 100AW for day 2. I still had a decent lead on McClelland, so I played it safe. The car was floating around under power, and I couldn’t trust the handling on the high speed corners. We gave up quite a bit of time to Greenhouse, but maintained our lead in the RRC.

Round 10 was short and sweet. Greenhouse tried to goad me into a side bet for the SuperSpecial, but I was sticking to my “drive to finish” gameplan.

On the transit to number 11, the ISV started acting up. I unplugged it and the car was back to normal.

Round 11 looked to have decent grip, and I opened it up to see what I could do. But whether it was the car or my driving, I wasn’t able to match Greenhouse and only got the 3^rd fastest 2wd time. Then, pulling up to a stop sign on the transit, the car died. We tried to push start it, but it wasn’t happening. Greenhouse towed us to the start of 12 so we could work on it there. We fiddled around under the hood, and eventually the car fired & we took the start.

Round 12: Another knockdown. I started the stage hard, shifted into second, and the car died. We stopped, and I set about fiddling under the hood again. Nothing was working, so finally I decided to check if the fuel pump was running. It wasn’t, and from the back of the car it was obvious that the wire that was bypassing the fuel pump relay had come disconnected. I got it fixed just as sweep pulled up to us, and we took off. This was a repeat of stage 3 from last night, and I considered stopping to sign my tree, but thought better of it and finished with a 22 minute time.

Round 13: Luckily this was a short stage, so we didn’t have to worry about passing all the cars that had gone by us on 12.  We made it through and my duct tape wiring job held.

We were now sitting in third in the RRC, and too far back to make it up on the final two stages.

Shortly before service ended, the rally officials came by and told us that there was a lot of snow on SS14 & 15, and they were recommending snow tires. Since our only hope of salvaging anything was to finish, we changed tires, ensuring we’d make it to the finish.

Round 14: They weren’t joking about the snow. This was deep two track. And the car’s handling was getting worse. Every time I stepped on the gas, the front end would jump around. I finally got too far out of control on one straight and ended up in the trees. We bounced back into the stage, but had de-beaded the RF tire. I decided to try to drive to the finish on the flat. Then the tire started slipping on the wheel, so I couldn’t go over ¼ throttle. I still tried to finish on the flat. Finally we came to a big hill, and could only get halfway up. I had to change the tire. Too stupid to back to the bottom, I told Jay to stand on the brake pedal and tried to jack up the car. It didn’t work, and we broke the jack. I had to back down to bottom of the hill and convince a handful of spectators to lift up my car so I could put on the spare. We took another 20 minute time. On the transit, Jay reminded me multiple times that I needed to take it easy on the last stage because conditions were nasty, we didn’t have a spare, and didn’t have a jack to try to rotate a flat to the back, so if I had another off, we’d probably DNF.

Thankfully, the officials called the fight and Round 15 was cancelled. We followed Richard Miller around for a while, then Jay looked at the map in the route book and we headed back to Salem.

I’d say this year’s 100 Acre Wood was more disappointing than last year. I kept hitting things, the car broke down, and I was consistently off the pace. Oh well, I’ll get the car together and be back for the next event.

I’m thinking Chad will be working on videos and stuff, but just to update-

Friday we finished 1st in G2 after a surprise turn and brush with tree that almost ended the rally.

We go the car all repaired and other than alignment issues Saturday we did OK, with the exception of a stage with an electrical issue and a major flat where we couldn’t continue on another stage.  Those two things on Sat gave us a last place finish (but a finish anyway) in G2.