August 26-27, 2005

Ojibwe Forest Pro Rallies

Bemidji, MN

Racing is a combination of highs and lows, good weekends and bad weekends, and I am sorry to say that OFPR (Ojibwe Forest Pro Rally) 2005 was a bad weekend for us! We fought 4 major issues this weekend, two before we started the race, and two that kept us from finishing.

Our “issues” started late Sunday night, 8/21/05, when we went to put the car on the trailer. We had made some minor adjustments and repairs to the car in preparation for the weekend and I decided to take it for a quick run up and down the street to make sure everything was “tight”. Upon returning to the house I noticed a long thick trail of oil up and down the driveway. Immediately I checked the oil pressure, it was running strong at ~40 psi… so where was the oil coming from?

Upon further inspection I got under the car and looked up. I found myself staring directly at the transaxle ring gear! The cast aluminum transaxle housing had a 4 inch long 1 inch wide gouge ripped out of it! WHAT! Not only had I not done any high power maneuvers, but I had not heard any loud noises!

Regardless of how or why the transaxle broke, it did. It was 9:00pm Sunday night, and we found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma. The plan was for Tom, Peg, and the rally car to leave Detroit on Tuesday afternoon to start the trek to Bemidji. We had Sunday night and Monday night after work to get the transaxle swapped out and get the car on the trailer! We had a spare transaxle of different (not preferred) 3.50 ratio. We pulled it out and immediately started dropping the broken unit out of the car. We were determined to make it to OFPR.

Monday night we finished the installation of the replacement transaxle and after a 5 mile test trip the car was put on the trailer. Things were back on schedule and Tom and Peg left on Tuesday afternoon. I would stick around and work through Thursday. The plan was for me to drive to Chicago after work on Thursday to join three of our service crew members: Alan, Matt, and Ryan. The four of us had planned to book a four seater Cessna and fly up to Bemidji. Ryan is a professional pilot and the opportunity was an awesome way to only take one vacation day.

Not all great plans work out as planned, especially this weekend. I got a call from Alan on Wednesday night that someone had taxied the plane into the hanger! The wing needed repair and it would not be ready to use for the weekend! We had no choice but to put together a plan to drive straight through to Bemidji after work on Thursday.

We stuck to our plan and at about 7:00am, after driving non-stop from Detroit (via Chicago) we arrived! We walked into the hotel rooms that had been previously checked into by Tom and Peg. SURPRISE! I didn't know what to say, but my girlfriend Torie was there! After telling me she was going out of town for the week, she hitched a ride from Detroit with my parents and had come to the rally instead! AWESOME. I had never been surprised like that before, and after a 15-hour drive/ride, I honestly didn't know what to say! It was awesome having her there for her first rally.

August 26

Paul Bunyan's Ride Regional Rally

After a couple hours of sleep, we were up and working on the standard pre-race activities. We filled gas cans, organized tires, and got everything on the rally car ready to go. There was a parc-expose and from there we headed out into the woods.

About 7 miles into stage #1 we noticed the engine was REALLY HOT!! The temperature gauge was swept around and was pointing to about “M”. That is the “M” in TEMP off the scale of the gauge! We pulled to the side of the road immediately. We shut the engine off and turned on the radiator fan. Upon inspection we found that the belt that runs the alternator and water pump had come loose and fallen off. The alternator support bracket has a bolt that goes through the bottom that had vibrated loose and fallen out onto the skidpan. This had allowed the alternator to rock down and the belt to fall off. We received a tow out of the stage by sweep. Once the engine cooled down we were able to find the bolt that had come loose and was sitting on the skidpan. We re-installed it in the woods and actually drove the car back into town! Unfortunately we had received help from sweep and thus we were disqualified from the rally. The good news was that the car was fixed and we were going to be able to run the second club rally on Saturday.

August 27

10,000 Lakes Regional Rally

On Saturday we started out optimistic that we might be able to salvage our weekend by having a good run in the second regional rally. The park expose and first special stage of the day took place at the Bemidji motor speedway. It is a great spectator venue where race teams and fans can watch the rally cars. We ran strong on this short spectator stage and had completed our first stage of the weekend! Optimistic and looking forward, we were off to stage #2.

We were FLYING through stage #2 and everything felt great. About 1 mile from the end of the stage, I noticed the oil pressure was low. I was so focused on the stage that I kept one eye on the road charging full speed while the other was trying to figure out was going on. I noticed we had “mud” all over the co-driver's side of the windshield and Dad started yelling “OIL!!” Well, needless to say the “mud on the windshield" was actually motor oil and in a matter of seconds we had dumped 3 quarts of Mobil 1 all over the engine bay, hood, and windshield.

By this time, we were within sight of the finish and there was no safe spot to stop so we pulled through the finish control and out onto the main road. We jumped out and grabbed the fire bottle. Luckily there was no fire and we started to investigate what had gone wrong.

It turns out we had one of the strangest failures I have ever seen. The braided steel high-pressure line that runs to the oil cooler had been rubbing up against the hot lead side of the alternator. The braided line acted like a file and rubbed through to the bare wire carrying 130 amps of output. At that point the alternator arced electrically into the conductive steel hose and burned a hole in it! Once a small hole had been burned through, oil came squirting out at 60 psi.

We fixed the problem by bypassing the oil cooler and screwing the oil filter directly onto the block. Unfortunately by the time we got this fixed (in the woods) and found 3 quarts from control workers, it was too late. We had been time bared for the second day in a row!