I was pleasantly surprised at how well they turned out. But then, anything would have been an improvement over what they looked like before.
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I got my car painted this summer and it looks great now. Instead of the faded dusty pink, it's now all shiny and red again. With winter coming eventually, I thought I'd clean up my winter rims a bit so they didn't look quite so awful. I use an old set of bottlecap rims for my winter tires. But over the years all the paint has come off them and they look pretty ratty. S
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QuoterkjDo you drive your thirty in the bad weather? Define "bad weather".
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2012 Black River Stages SS17 - Finish Another new experience for us, at the awards banquet we were served "garbage can chicken". It was delicious. While we were out having fun on the stages, the banquet crew spent all day barbecuing chicken. This was later served up and dished out from a garbage can! It was because of having my hands (and mouth) full of garbage can
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2012 Black River Stages SS17 - Fullerville 2 : At the arrival control for Fullerville, Reilly/Benthien (having solved their throttle cable problems) came rushing up to resume their spot ahead of us in the running order. The Fullerville stage is insanely fast. I never even noticed it at the time, must have had my head down, but Martin says if we had the intercom audio recorded on this vid
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2012 Black River Stages SS16 - Jayville Out 2: In comparison to the previous stage, this outbound stage is not nearly as relaxed. We're driving into the setting sun, so it's hard to see where we're going. And the road is dug up pretty deep by now, with lots of loose sandy berms grabbing at the wheels. Watch how much harder Martin has to work the steering wheel on this pass.
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2012 Black River Stages SS15 - Jayville In 2: I really like the Jayville stage. Fast, then twisty, and super busy. Smooth with no bone-jarring jumps. I really wish we had the intercom audio for these videos. Again, watch Martin's hands on the steering wheel. He's totally calm. There's no white-knuckle deathgrip on the wheel, just a light touch. In fact, sometimes he l
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QuoteDave_G Just curious about this no-recce-everyone-gets-the same-notes thing: When you're cruising down a flat stretch of road like that (or any road, for that matter) at Warp 9, your notes are telling you about whatever curves are coming up ahead. But do they also tell you about any hidden ruts, roots, rocks, anthills, etc. etc., that might possibly upset the balance of the car just that
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2012 Black River Stages SS14 - Fullerville 1 This stage is crazy fast! The car really gets to stretch its legs here. We were 2nd quickest on this stage. The stage starts off on a wide smooth road, but at 1:55 we turn left into a narrower trail that's hard to see and pops up very suddenly. I was so pleased that we managed that turn without overshooting it, that I screwed up and stumb
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QuoteDave_G Ow, that poor car. Those landings made me cringe just seeing the video. Can the car be straightened? The nose has been bent up and down like that several times already. Martin just ties it down in his shop and sticks a hydraulic jack under it to bend it all back into the correct shape. 2012 Black River Stages SS13 - Goose Pond Out: This is the same stage run back in the opposi
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QuoteDave_G your hot-o-meter seriously needs recalibrating. What, you didn't think she was hot? 2012 Black River Stages SS12 - Goose Pond In Goose Pond is this event's signature stage. It has a good combination of tight sections versus flat out fast sections, and it features some nasty jumps. At 4:00 we bend the car on the first of those jumps. It's a very fast sectio
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2012 Black River Stages SS11 - Jayville Out 1 The start line crew counts us down, "Ten seconds..." This outbound stage is just as busy. No time for relaxing. Constant twists and turns before it opens up to the faster stuff. At 4:25 we come back to the short tarmac portion. Martin goes charging in at full bore, expecting the grippier tarmac (compared to sand and gravel) to
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2012 Black River Stages SS10 - Jayville-In 1 It's Sunday morning, the sky is blue, another fine day for rallying. This video begins while we are waiting to start from downtown Harrisville. The lady walking across the road in front of us (from right to left), she's sort of like Rally-America's Matt Johnson streaming live video to the internet, except with no commentary and de
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One last funny story from Saturday, Day-1... Rally-HQ and all of Sunday's activities are based out of Harrisville, NY. But Saturday's start/finish and service park were all located about 20 minutes south in Croghan, NY, whereas our hotel was located 20 minutes north of Harrisville in Gouverneur, NY. See map: http://goo.gl/maps/4DK7W That meant, at the conclusion of Saturday
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I forgot to mention, in case you're wondering what happened to stage SS07, the third pass on Jerden Falls had to be cancelled because of crowd control issues. Reports of All-Terrain-Vehicles loose on the stage forced the organizers to cancel SS07 for safety reasons. 2012 Black River Stages SS9 - Texas 3 It's the last stage of the night, and we're pushing hard right off the s
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2012 Black River Stages SS08 - Tidd 3 We smoked this stage! 2nd quickest overall, just two seconds off Michael Reilly/Joshua Benthien. Watch how hard Martin attacks that first 200 metre stretch. We're a little slow off the line because it's uphill, the road is dug up pretty badly, and we're only 2wd scrabbling for grip. But once the old car gets her legs under her the sp
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2012 Black River Stages SS06 - Texas 2: During the pre-rally drivers' meeting we were sternly cautioned to obey all traffic laws on the transits to and from the racing stages. Apparently the local police were out in full force itching to write us tickets. Well... somebody got nabbed on the transit to Texas-2 in the little town of "Natural Arch". That bites. It turns out
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2012 Black River Stages SS05 - Tidd 2 As we move up to take our place on the start line, listen how the poor old Nissan 240 creaks and groans from all its arthritic suspension joints. Having seen this stage once already, we now know we don't need to brake before the jump at the end of the initial 200 metre straight. Martin charges over the jump, then hard on the brakes, and Whoa! The
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2012 Black River Stages SS04 - Jerden Falls 2 With dusk approaching, at the service stop we mounted the rally lights on the car. Then it's off for a repeat running of the same three stages. At 3:36 in the video our GoPro grabbed this neato image of photographer Joseph T. Meirose (http://www.fullframeworks.com/) blitzing us with his strobe light. It's cool the way this image is
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2012 Black River Stages SS03 - Texas 1 Going cross-eyed again due to poisonous Saab exhaust fumes while waiting in line. But this is a fun stage. This stage flows nicely. Smooth road, nice variety of tight turns and wide-open stuff. We were given an enthusiastic thumbs-up by the start line crew, and sent on our way. Have a look at 4:10 into the video. There's a very tigh
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2012 Black River Stages SS02 - Tidd 1 While waiting for the start we hang well back behind Luke Sorensen (the original Luke), because his Saab's engine is running very rich and is pumping out poisonous exhaust fumes making our eyes water. This short stage is quite difficult. It starts off with a 200 m straight, then "! Jmp 50 L3+" (Caution Jump 50 Left 3 plus). You can ge
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2012 Black River Stages This is a rally that Martin and I had heard good things about, and have long wanted to try, except it always conflicted either with Défi Ste-Agathe or Targa Newfoundland. Since we were competing at neither of those this year we thought, what the heck, let's give it a go. It was awesome! It's actually the closest event to our home location. From Martin�
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The brake pad wear sensor warning light is triggered when either the pad sensor is worn down to the point where the embedded wire grounds against the brake rotor, or the the circuit is broken (open). Unplugging the sensor will leave an open circuit, unless you insert a jumper wire across the terminals of the empty plug. It's usually a problem with an intermittent connection somewhere, li
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For something a little different, I was asked to co-drive for a first time rally driver in the August 11th Galway-Cavendish Forest Rally. Jeannie had plenty of experience as a volunteer, driver of an official course car, and co-driving for others, but this was her first ever event driving in a performance rally. It was fun. See full story and videos here: http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewt
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2012 Black Bear Rally - A6 Egan South 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSMGucQJo4k Competitors are dropping like flies. We've lost both the Mitsubishis of Michelle and Ian, and the VW Golf of Patrick Rainville snapped an axle stub and shed a rear wheel on the previous stage. Our differential is hurtin' bad and there's a strong chance we may not make it all the way through th
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QuoteArcheo-peteriXI'll wait until there is something worth fixing...or put another band-aid on it in 5 years Perfect.
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2012 Black Bear Rally - A5 Peanut 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsovDqpWUnc While waiting for the start of this stage, we learn that the Mitsubishi of Michelle Laframboise/Dean Hopkins has broken a front strut and they are forced to retire. We hate to see that. Without Michelle/Dean to challenge us, we now have a healthy 2.5 minute lead over the following team, the Grp5 VW Golf of Pat
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While I had that adventure with the heater core in my car, it was out of action for a couple of days. Christoph left his Honda Civic in our driveway for the last two weeks, and it has air conditioning that works, so I've been driving either it or my wife's Subaru Outback for the last week. The Civic is okay, snappy engine, shifts nice, and cool A/C in this incredible heat we've
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Very nice.
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2012 Black Bear Rally - A4 Egan North 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPoCN0QO9zw During the Service break we discovered our differential is leaking oil. We might have been able to patch the leak using JB-Weld epoxy, but we couldn't find exactly where the oil was coming from. There's nothing more we can do. Just keep driving... Always smiling, Chris Major is there to welcome
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