Tarmac Rallying Perpetual Thread

[Marlin]

Cracked bum bone I see....... ouchy wowchy!

Pass on my best Dunc, I'll leave the obvious jokes alone mate

[haw001]

Glad to hear Kel is alright. She seemed in good spirits last night, but don't let the story get back to my wife or Targa days are numbered.

Big River stage was carnage. Lots of fun though. Wish my engine wasn't dying, but then maybe if I'd been able to do 260 on the straight instead of 207, I might have ended up in the bank to make it 1,2,3 cars.

[Marlin]

Glad you made it through Mark

I'm patiently awaiting a post-rally wrap up....... amongst many other things I want answers on how Snowpussy got waxed by a dirty old Emo 4...... I need info, so I can start rumours.

Walsh made a right mess of his M3R!

[sav man]

lucky he had a good cage. He was saying at targa the other year that it's a ex diet coke shell.

Was Kel off on the same corner as Reevs?

[Duncan]

yes, first sharp corner after a long downhill. it appears showroom cars have more inertia than brakes on a long downhill stage.

reeves came through about an hour after they went of and rolled at the same spot.

[BLUEGTR]

saw that on rally live. seems a few have been dropping out.

Heres whats left of Matts clutch and bell housing.

Yeah it exploded every where all over the ground and luckly didn't come through the footwell. We cleaned the first two stages then came to the third and it had a massive vibration about 2k's in to the 16k stage. It felt like the wheels were going to fall off so we backed off and when we finished we checked everything and it seemed fine. We took off in the 4th stage and it just went BANG when we hit second gear and it was all over.

[haw001]

M3R went off on the first corner over the bank, Kel and the other showroom car made the first corner, but couldn't make the second which was immediately following. From memory first corner was a 4 or 4.5 Left on the 1 to 6 scale, about a 7 on the 1 to 10 scale. Second was a tight right 3 on both scales, which is basically a 90 degree turn.

Put the math together and the M3R couldn't wash enough speed to get round the first one as it was probably flying at high 200's, showrooms were able to get enough speed off to make the first corner, but you had to hammer down to make the right and had no chance.

They need to either change the course or change the rules on brake to accommodate the showroom class. It's just too dangerous otherwise.

Personally I loved the stage, it was one of my favourites. I hope they keep it. Very tight early on, then fast around the middle and then back to tight. I was sweating buckets by the time I finished.

[haw001]

I can't comment on anyone else, but here's my round-up of the event and how we went.

The event overall was very slick, as you'd expect from Octagon. A few issues, but most would relate to it being the first time it was run. My biggest gripe was doing the prologue 6pm on Friday, then being stuck in town with the cars on display until 8:30. I have no problem with them being on display for the public, but we had to hang around for 2.5 hours, then drive back to Mt Buller, and for those of us staying in Mansfield, drive all the way back again to go to bed. I didn't get back til 11pm then up again a 6am to get back up Buller before the road closures. Park Ferme was a joke, I could just have easily kept the car in Mansfield, had a good night's sleep, and driven it up to Buller in the morning.

The stages were excellent, on the whole more challenging than TT. As stated above, I think they were too fast for showroom class.

Personally we went well. A little slow to start but not bad and picked up pace in the afternoon. The car handles very well, but underpowered for the class. I can get around the corners as well as anyone, but just can't get the top speed to be overly competitive. On the stages with long high speed straights, we lose 10 to 30 seconds easily. We were only going to have fun and get some practice in before over-hauling the car for TT2011 so I didn't really care (too much!). Hell, I didn't even bother with new tyres, just kept the same ones from TT2010 without even rotating them.

Stage 6 was very interesting. We had a decent run, but as we flew through the FF, spectators were giving us the slow down signal. The evo that went through a few cars before us evident-ally gave themselves high fives for completing the stage, and promptly forgot to make the next turn and come to a stop. A tree must have taken care of that job for them because the car was smashed in the front and greatly on fire.

We stopped with others and emptied two fire extinguishers on it but it was a gonner. Nothing will be salvaged from that car.

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This screwed up the times, because we completed the stage but passed a car in stage, and also got passed after the stage was finished but before time control by cars that kept going. We were allotted a time of 8:20, which was wrong. After a bit of haggling and video footage proving different they adjusted our time to 7:14.

Last stage of the day was Mt Buller, which was a heap of fun, but again, the car is not really suited for it. Needed more herbs to pull out of all the chicanes up hill. I think we did it in 9:20 or something, which is respectable. Didn't quite catch the mega horsepower Torana ahead of us, but it wasn't far off. We nearly caught the 33 GTR which was ahead of the Torana and must have been passed by it, so we were happy with the result. We were surprised to see that we were the top Skyline for the day with everyone else quite a ways down the list. I have no idea of the reasons, and I don't think that we were especially quick. I believe that snowman was about 12 seconds ahead of us coming into the last 2 stages, so he was faster during the day. I'm sure he'll post his story at some stage. We ended the day 5th in Early Modern.

The car on the other hand, not so happy, tyres were red hot and so was the engine. I made the mistake of turning the engine off with it running hot (didn't know it at the time) and the temp jumped to 125 according to the powerfc. Not sure if this caused damage or the engine was just tired of being pushed through 2 TTs, rolled upside down, and then a THC, but on day 2 things started going downhill.

The engine just didn't have the same power in the morning and it got progressively worse through the day. Down the straight on Big River, we topped out at 207 on the GPS, and even then it took a long while to get there. The last 2 stages of the day the engine was naked. Took an extra 40 seconds or more to complete Mt Buller. I even bent the gas pedal mount from pushing too hard trying to get more out of it. As if there is some stage in the throttle bodies past 'fully open'.

Couple of things to note for next year. Despite what we thought, there is 98 readily available. We didn't need to get fuel filled privately and went to the pump every time. Also, you don't really need to get there too early unless you are doing a complete recky. We operated of bought notes with some extra pointers from Kel and they sufficed. Thanks Kel! Even getting there early on Friday was a waste of time and involved a lot of sitting around doing nothing. There's only so much to do on Mt Buller without snow.

One last thing, that Wilkenshaw Holden was farking fast. I don't know how it corners, but off the line it left everything else I saw eating dust, including I'd say, the Lambo. It will be one to watch out for in the future.

So, there you have it, my take on THC 2010. Will I be back, I'd say so. In fact if they held 2 of these a year, I'd probably prefer to do 2 HC rallies and skip Targa Tas. It's just a hell of a lot less expensive and if you screw something up, at worst you've missed a 2 day event, not a 5 day event.

[Snowman]

Glad you made it through Mark

I'm patiently awaiting a post-rally wrap up....... amongst many other things I want answers on how Snowpussy got waxed by a dirty old Emo 4...... I need info, so I can start rumours.

Walsh made a right mess of his M3R!

Too tired and busy right now but discovered on Sunday after stage 1 that the "sudden loss of grip" we encountered just before lunch on Day 1 was a busted front sway bar link. We just thought it was the road going off in the heat. And unfortunately the only "timed" stage we had for the rest of Day 1 was Mt Buller and I went to bed confused over my crappy time up the hill with us not actually knowing there was a reason for it.

Spewin too because it was a rocket before then. (Not so much after then as every time I tried to push it the car tried to kill me! LOL)

Sorry to hear about Kel - I had no idea until just now. I was wondering where she was Sunday night (Sunday night was MESSY - Timmy and my nav Matt got a great dose of Brisby power! And Newtons special trophy was a great hit with the ladies!)

[Marlin]

Thanks for the wrap up Mark, good read.

Shame about your engine dramas too

[No Crust Racing]

That evo looks suspiciously like Ben Quick's, can anyone confirm? He's a a local to my neck of the woods. I pass him in that car regularly on the way to work.

Be a shame if it's been sacrificed =\

[Marlin]

I'd heard it was a WA entrants?

[navdan]

Definately was Ben's 10...

Glad to see them both out of the car when we passed

[haw001]

Couldn't tell you who it was, but he owe's me two extinguishers!

[No Crust Racing]

Yeah I confirmed it was Ben also, local news covered it as well.

[Snowman]

We were the 1st car behind the FIV vehicle (was behind it from about half way through the stage) and by the time we got there it was nothing but a shell left.

The fire was massive - I thought we were going to lose half the forest! You would have needed a whole lot of 2KG fire extinguishers to have made any impact on it!

[navdan]

We were the 1st car behind the FIV vehicle (was behind it from about half way through the stage) and by the time we got there it was nothing but a shell left.

...and here I was thinking we'd had a cracking first 9kms and had caught you (then we saw the FIV)

[haw001]

Can anyone find out what caused them to go off. My explanation was a bit tongue in cheek!

[navdan]

Can anyone find out what caused them to go off. My explanation was a bit tongue in cheek!

On our footage there's a nice set of black lines leading from about 2/3rds of the way around that right hander off into the bushes. Didn't have it in the notes? We had it as an 8 and with the speed through the finish it would require a decent prod of the middle pedal.

[Neil]

Poor Kelly must be hurting pretty bad,,,going to bed at 8.45pm tells me she's hurting. No Wine,,,only drugs,,,very sad.

Great to see you TWO did well Marky,,,seems you have a great new nav now in Ray buddy. Go Borgy,,,proud of you tiger.

Nice write up by the way.

Cheers

Neil.