So my first Navigator and continual rally Advisor Wendy once told me "The rally begins the day you decide to sign up".
Well I never really believed that, I always thought the rally starts when you start your first stage! Prescott would teach me about my misconceptions.
Well Before Gorman rally i tried to get my OBX LSD installed into my car. But the area for the differential was just a touch too small and it wouldn't fit. So i had spent some money for nothing. now i got my mechanic take apart my 95 transmission and confirmed it would fit in there. Great! He said i needed some bearings and seals. no problem. Oh and i needed a different clutch, becuase the 95 transmission's input shaft has 24 teeth, compared to 21 of the 93 transmission. No bigie i thought.
I called up Reno Subaru and they wanted $100 per bearing and 150 for the clutch. Way too much i thought so i went internetting. Found an online subaru vendor for 60 a bearing and 100 for the clutch. Awesome Placed the order 9/10 . found a lil note on their website that they were out on vacation for a few days, though i received a non automated email that day. well sure enough it was 4 days before the order got processed and the parts were back ordered.. and the order got delayed again, so I asked for overnight shipping.
The order finally came on Monday the 28th , My mechanic Tommy got a chance to look at everything around 3. the Bearings and the clutch were wrong.
Damn it, I'm stuck using the open diff Again. booo! or maybe not...Tommy got to work and pulled off the old bearings and checked them for any sort of part number. Think it was 30208JR , well he called over to someone @ applied heavy industries, and it happened to be a friend of his from high school. well he put some on order, but said probably Wednesday, he happened to ask why i wanted them and i said for my race car, and he said he raced too and would try to have them specially put on todays order, and it worked! they showed up and my mechanic was able to get everything pressed back together, But i still need a clutch I had only that barely fit into my clutch cover and was really worn down. Kevin stepped in and really helped out. he had a flywheel,clutch,pressure plate that all fit and would bolt to my EJ18 (from an RS 2.5) the clutch was 24 tooth 1" ID, perfect. The entire assembly is Much heavier than my stock, not really a good thing on a race car, But a hell of a lot faster than a no clutch setup
.
Car ready at the last minute and i was able to pick up my car tuesday night.
Going on the same night a good friend of mine Nick drove down to placerville to get a buddies trailer.
i was interested in buying this trailer and was doing a rent to own. Having drove to my last 3
events i really wasn't sure about buying a trailer, i knew eventually i want one to make carrying spares
and cargo much easier.
Wednesday night we met up after work and started packing everything and loading up the car on the trailer.
problem #1 was that the lights were working ... at all, okay the plug came out, plugged it back in
and the lights, still aren't quite right. only 1 marker light, and 1 brake light, when you turn on
your left blinker the right light blinks, and when you turn on your right blinker nothing.
Not a great start at all. I told nick don't worry about it we'll stop at the first auto store and get
a wiring kit or some lights. and we kept packing. we meet up the next morning. nick had no spare tire for his jeep
and was worried about driving with out one. He ran over to Puals and borrowed one and came over
as soon as he could. We hopped in the jeep and we were off. Towing out of town was fine and we took
spooner slow, we got down to the napa and looked at our options. $40 to fix it (and time) or $60 for lights
if i'm buying this trailer i should just get the stuff to fix it.. but i'm in a hurry so i grab the temp
setup and we are off. shortly out of town we hit our first 70 mph zone... and issues
Nick has a steering rack issue on his jeep, and unkown to us at the time 2 of the trailer wheel bearing
nuts are set right (too loose) . And the trailer starts to sway back and forth quite a bit. This
freaked us out pretty good and we slow down. a bit later i ask at what speed it happened , we weren't
sure exactly so i asked if we could try speeding up slowly to see. think it was at about 65 happened again
we stopped and checked everything at a lil gas station, we moved the trailer back a bit and set off
as we went it did it again but we couldn't tell if it was better or worse, then i realized i had
set my cell phone down on the trailer and it fell off, we drove back to the gas station
loosing time, and searched, no luck
checked in side, no luck. Nick had to move the trailer to let
someone out of their spot, and then he spotted the cell phone, it had been under the jeep when we pulled
up.
so we set off Again. and as we are driving i realize we are going the wrong way.
so we headed
back one more time , and decided to move the trailer back a lil more to test it out. again loosing time.
we headed out still catious, when we got into a high speed zone it seemed worse. 60 was dangerous now
we had a Really bad wiggle that scared us both, causing the jeep to slide around slightly at the rear.
we stopped and re thought things. we backed up the rally car, all the way on the trailer, so that it was
as close to the jeep as possible. and again set out. this finally seemed stable up to about
65 , with the occasional slight wiggle that would start left to right, but nick could get it under control.
Very Stressful Driving for nick. he was wearing out very quickly fighting a bad steering rack,
and an unstable trailer. also by now i've realized making it to prescott by midnight had no chance. 2 am maybe, but
for the most part Nick just soldiered on we didn't have any Major issues until Vegas. we going in up a bouncy road which created issues for the trailer.. and through a turn
all of a sudden the trailer started waging back and forth VERY bad. we had a car on each side of us
the car on the right slammed on his brakes to avoid us and the car on our left went WOT to escape.
the front tires of the jeep even got dragged about 8 inches to the left during the worst of it.
we were both freaked and slowed down. after that any time we got going even 60 it was highly unstable.
finally after a few hours we discovered the car had slid back on the trailer. Eeks.
We met up with john in kingman at maybe midnight or so and had about 4 hours to go. John took a turn
at driving the unstable beast to relief nick of his nightmare. I can't recall if thad or nick
drove johns wrx. As we were headed up john went to about 65 or so and the trailer started wagging bad!
he tried to correct, he tried more gas... now we were doing 75, wagging a lil worse and still needed control
braking made it worse too but he stayed on it, letting up at times and finally we were doing 50
with everything behaving.. we set off at a slightly slower pace and made the hotel by 4:05 am.
John was awesome and paid for the hotel, and got us all checked in. the friendly and helpful desk attendant
was taking care of processing his card, and doing our room keys. then he started explaining
all about town and where things were, etc.. which was very nice of him, but we all just wanted to go to bed.
we finally got to the room, with cots, and checked out the supps. you could start reccee up until 7 AM
thank God! what time is it now? uhm 4:30 ... great. lets see i think if we wake up at 5:45, we could
leave by 6:15 am, becuase john needs to change his tires and i want to shower. okay sounds like the plan
.. i lie in bed not able to fall asleep right away due to all the nervousness and excitment.
I need to win prod-2 to win the USRC west coast