USRC, Trailers, and headers Oh My!

[A1337STI]

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

[A1337STI]

Morning comes, way to soon and we drive out to the start of stage 5. there's a long line which surprises me as we are getting here at 6:40 and most of the field should be out doing recce. Well apparently the Notes hadn't arrived yet so everyone had to wait. only missed out on 20 minutes of sleep, or a stop at McDonald's for breakfast. John had some food in his car that he shared with us and shortly after the notes showed up. and we were off! the crew got to check out the stages and got to nap just a little bit. hard to nap when you are on the side of a cliff, with cars coming the other direction in mostly a lane and half road. We managed to get off the notes several times in recce. the lack of sleep was definitely affecting us, towards the end we were doing great.

we ran back to the hotel and unloaded the car and got ready to head over to Tims. got slightly confused on the way there but managed to find it. Man i felt tired.. Well lets get ready for tech. i signed up and got ready for tech. i grabbed food and ran back to the crew to see what they wanted. i asked nick to register the jeep , grab food around the corner, and i'de grab Thad food. I was hoping to change my springs before the Rally.

We got out of tech and i was set to change my springs.. I asked Odi if he felt it was an okay idea. he looked at me kinda funny and said no i shouldn't try to do that with only 60 minutes left. (Good Advice!) i mulled it over and decided not to. The event started with a demo autoX course.

Sweet. new diff... why not go 10/10ths and really test it ! I Rev hard to about 4K and let out the clutch, i smell tires! i lay down 2 black lines and take off hard. after about the 3rd corner i get really really bad engine hesitation in 2nd. wtf... didn't warm it up first.. damn it oh well press on. I was able to drift a few of the corners, though i pulled the ebrake on one of them . i pull out and start transit. Unlike last year we didn't get lost, but the route was actually the same ya.

we reach the start of stage 1 and unlike last year its not pitch black already, the sun is setting and in my eyes pretty bad, and my wind shield is very dirty. We set off, and i still don't really know how this differential is going to feel in the dirt. but now is the time to figure this out!
Its way less predictable than an open Diff , that's for sure. which ever side has more traction gets more power and the front end tries to rotate the car. it feels a bit wierd.

I keep working with it through stage 2 and maybe sort of am feeling it out, a late call (sorry john) causes me to go through a ! Dip Keep Right at full speed and on the left. and the car just got a whole lot louder (broken exhaust Y-pipe (manifold)) and a nifty lil check engine light. I keep left and 80% throttle through ! Dip keep left. we mob the rest of the stage with out any major issues.

like last year the Quiet zone next 1 mile gives us an issue. and we got caught up in slow traffic for a penalty, but John wisely files an inquiry and we get the penalty taken away.

I had won day 1 of my prod-2 competitors 2nd place in P-stock. (performance stock cars can do some mods that prod-2 cant, battery relocation, Final Drive, Motor internals... i might be allowed to do final drive i'm not sure)

Our over night service was frantic, i roll into service, and can't find my crew. we go up to the hotel and they are trying to take a nap. Can't blame them consider no one has slept yet. but i'm all pissy and i want to try and fix my car. Thad springs up and Nick gets up after a moment, he had Just fallen asleep and was dying for some rest. We attack the car, putting it on jack stands and thad tears into the exhaust. i decide to check my drums. the left one is having a problem. its all seized up, guess it was that way on stage. i get it off and its adjusted a bit wrong and wearing funny. after fighting with it with john we get it into place. next i decide to change the springs. when working on the back right i see that the toe is just free to adjust by hand... hmm, maybe that's part of why i had a hard time figuring out the diff. Thad ran back and adjusted it while i held the tire straight.

I continued working on changing the springs. left rear, Easy. right rear.. damn metal top spring (plate?) won't come off i get frustrated and Thad tells me to just keep working on it. I do, i put some PB blaster on it, try prying it, tapping it, everything, eventually it comes off and i change my back right.

I had been using 6.5/5K (350/280) which seemed too stiff and Odi who does suspension even said so at my last rallyX. I got my right rear 200# spring in, and thad had a 250# front in, wanting to go 4.5k/3.5k. the right rear smaller washer/collar piece wouldn't come off. Thad fought with it for a long time and we couldn't get it. everyone was super tired and almost not able to stand up. Nick cleaned up tools , trash, and fluids, john helped me zip together the rear end of the car. ( I later found the rear camber bolt was loose on the right side and the camber was adjusting on me)

Thad returned the front left to the 350 and we buttoned it up. and went to bed. finally, wow!
http://www.rallydata.com/Results/Pre...ub1Results.htm

[A1337STI]

Headed off early in the morning for day 2, everyone was down at the car with 15 to go. checked fluids, and was about to set off. John ran up to use the restroom... and came back to the car with 90 seconds to go. cutting it close again

we left towards stage with a slightly quieter motor as thad had done some work to fix up the header, but only thin metal tape was on hand. I drove as hard as i could but the car always seemed to handle a lil funny , at times i could see the dash shaking hard, once it stopped suddenly but i could see the horizon shaking violently.. which meant my skull was rattling, but no reason to lift from WOT . damn i could definitely feel the heavy flywheel killing me (Again much faster than no clutch at all) I wasn't sure if i would win or not. I only check the scores at the end of the day because i just try to drive as best that i can, no faster, no slower, all the time, no matter what's going on.

On the uphill stage 5, same corner as last year, i lost it going into a 4R+ after a long straight away, maybe it was a 5- ... I got the car WAY sideways and lined up for a tree right into my door, and then i looked down the straight away and tried to dig the car out using the gas, got it catch enough that we only had 2 tires off the road. .. i kept fighting through out the day.. one of the corners is "the Cut"

that's the sample pic waiting on the order to go through,
(down hill, stage 6 2nd of the day both are 22 mile stages)
Its almost at the end of the 3 miles where there is a 2,000 foot exposure off to your side (it would make nice a double diamond ski slope, but a bad place to have an off) shortly after this i saw what at first looked like a navigator climbing up with a triangle, but then i notice he just had one sort of risky step, and 2 other triangles laid out and a car on the side fixing a flat. i slowed up a bit to make sure i was in full control and zipped by as they had their OK sign out. i drove on. ears ringing from the open headers, check engine light on, and heavy fly wheel to boot. lets WOT this damn thing all the way

We finished, sweet, but where? we wait and wait, eventually john black comes in and says he had issues and we won. we run over to the score board to see this : http://www.rallydata.com/Results/Pre...NatResults.htm
first in class and 7th over all out of 22 cars!

later we got our Champaign bath and my navigator had a lil slip trying to get step down from the hood:

[Kevin M]

Congrats Alex!

[moose]

Congrats Alex. It seems like everything worked out in the end. Awesome.

[WRX06TR]

Congrats! That picture is sick!

[A1337STI]

thanks and thanks to Kevin again for the super last minute hookup on the clutch kit!

[cody]

Awesome! Seems like you keep overcoming the odds.

[Dean]

Congratulations Alex. Now start preping for next year!