I bought a used trailer for general hauling. The previous owner'd modified the frame to suit his primary use - toting his bike to PIR for the Thursday night MX races - but the bracing wasn't quite right for hauling rally tires (my primary use).
So I'm hackin' on it. Basically I'm just adding a central runner with a couple captive nuts for screw-on stacking poles. The design is largely driven by the materials I had on hand, like the grey 6' piece of U-channel in the photo.
Since there'll be a plywood platform as a base, I wanted the U-channel to be as flush as possible to the rest of the frame; but the P.O.'s modifications had already put an 1/8" step on each edge. That relieved me of having to carefully craft three braces and weld 'em in. Instead, I could just lay the flat of the channel atop the crossmembers and keep its length intact. But I still needed to trim back the sides of the channel to get it flat.
So I had eight sections of the side metal to remove. I spent a bit of time thinking about clever ways to extract 'em, but couldn't think of anything that didn't require more tools than are available. And then I saw this on XKCD:
I realized I'd almost spent the amount of time thinking about the problem as it would have taken to solve it by the most direct means. So I mounted the coarse wheel in my bench grinder, put on earbuds for music and earmuffs for hearing protection, and just ground those mothers down.
Now my jacket's covered with grey specks of steel, so it'll probably rust up real good.
I guess it's time to choose which car to run in.
The wagon, despite being a station wagon, is probably the fastest and most capable. And Renee's out of town, so I could theoretically violate the rule that "one doesn't take a car to a track unless it's paid for" without being caught. As I think you know, in today's world, not being caught is completely equivalent to not violating the rule a'all.
But (and it's a big but) the wagon's seats don't go down far enough to run with a helmet on. The helmet shell mashes into the headliner and my vision winds up tilted. If the wagon was the only car, I'd stay up all night building some kind of custom seat mount to gain .75" more room. I can get that obsessive about little stuff, and now that I'm > 50, I'd be happy to avoid such fiddling at the last minute. But this ergonomic objection is enough to drop the modern wundercar's ranking a bit, and I look further.
Is the red car ready to run? Oh, yeah: it gets maintained like a parachute.
And Niner's got good tires, plus some headroom for a brain bucket. But it's not fast, even with the 4.10 diffs left over from its automatic-transmission days. A fabulous poor-road or poor-weather car, its best features are somewhat underutilized on a cone-filled paddock. It's certainly the practical choice; like a karate student working the kihon katas, it's always beneficial to refine my control of the iX. Would it be fun? Fer schure... just not overly fun.
"Overtly fun" is the secondary definition of 'ur-quattro'. Look it up.
The reason is simple: it's a brute. No dynamic stability control; hell, not even antiblockiersystem. The brake pedal pressurizes simple hydraulic cylinders. The throttle pedal opens a butterfly valve on the intake manifold. There's no speed sensor, no MAP, no yaw restrictor... You won't find a single thing that just "supplies a position signal to the sensor integrator component of the vehicle attitude controller." And on this car, some previous owner neutered the US-version's boost limiter, so the turbo can reach 2 bar absolute.
Just one problem: the car's running in limp-home mode when I test it out tonight. Get the revs just over 4000, and the rudimentary fuel injection controller sees something it doesn't like, and cuts the juice to the fuel pump relay. This is a Bosch Kontinuous injection system -- the fuel pressure's got to be over 60 psi just to open the injectors. So turning off the pump drops the pressure below 60, and that right quick. It's a cycle: revs drop below 4000, the controller re-energizes the relay, the motor surges to life again, bests 4000 rpm, triggers the cut-out, buck buck buck buck. The only amusing part is that it scares the hell out of other drivers.
It simply won't work for auto-x - but I didn't discover this condition 'til tonight, after 7 p.m. The quattro gave no hint of it in its last outing a couple weeks back. Question is, can I fix it by tomorrow?
I pulled the ancient manual out and found the troubleshooting method for the cut-out condition. The method requires only a multimeter. The method has only four steps. And then I immediately jumped over step 1, because I recognized my old nemesis in step 2: the electro-mechanical interface. That is to say, a switch.
In this case, the "idle switch", mounted on the intake manifold, opened and closed by the butterfly. When closed, with the coolant temp below 140 degrees, and the bi-metal strip in the warm-up regulator is unbent -- well, then, there's cold enrichment. That is, the system calls for cold enrichement - and the Byzantine arrangement that accomplishes cold enrichment is nothing compared to the Goldbergian O2 feedback loop. But if the idle switch shows closed when the revs go over 4000, the fuel injection controller calls B.S. and chops the relay circuit. Testing showed the switch action was intermittent, and it has a reputation (on the web) for flakey badness. Still testing, I pulled the contacts off the switch.
Ooooo, she revs up now, you betcha. Doesn't have the closed-throttle coastdown that it should, but that may not matter in cone-land tomorrow. I'll order up a new switch, and put one more check mark against the EMI (electro-mechanical interface, please pay attention) for future diagnosis-es.
With the full fury of the turbo five restored, I stopped at my local petroleum emporium to fill up before tomorrow. $68.25, wow. I remember filling up motorhomes and not spending that much.
Totem, the annual gravel TSD rally that starts in Cache Creek, British Columbia, is in the books for 2008.
Detailed results are already available from the RallyBC website, so I need not relate every score now, but a few hints follow. To accurately set the stage, I should mention that there’s a Historic class for Totem. Historic cars can run full Unlimited equipment, and I’ll venture to say that Historic teams are those that find too little challenge in running late model machinery (!). This year’s Totem allowed anything older than 1983 into the class. Think for a moment about what that limit makes available to competitors…
I’ve only run Totem twice, but I think I see a pattern: the last section of each day runs over a slippery hill. Last year’s final Saturday section put us in 125mm of slushy snow on a foggy ridge, and last year’s Sunday finale had us descend a winding one-lane covered with packed-down white stuff. The challenge of Saturday’s hill was to stay out of the ditches (not all of us did) and off the concrete bridge abutments (all of us did). Sunday’s descent had no ditches, and the trick of it was to keep the odometer more or less accurate vis-à-vis the sliding tires.
This year, Saturday’s last section was called Over The Pass, and if that name didn’t give it away, the Drivers’ Meeting included an announcement that we might not run that section at all…. “We’ll decide once we send some control crews up it,” was the Rallymaster’s comment. Saturday had five sections — the first four were “routine” (meaning Canadian brisk TSD routine), and we saw roads mostly of dry gravel, a bit less in heavy frost, and even less in mud. Perennial favorites Russ Kraushaar & Satch Carlson, running a ’69 SAAB Sonett in the Historic class, were carrying a whopping 1 point at the end of the first four sections.
We left the start of the fifth regularity in full darkness. By the time we reached the first checkpoint, we were in medium snow — shortly after that, we were in hella deep snow, and I was getting a bit nervous, ’cause we were still going uphill. The rally computer showed us steadily losing time, and before long it was impossible to keep the CAST. Impossible for us, in our Hakkapelliita-shod AWD car — what must it be like for the RWD Toyota captained by Gary Webb (running Historic)? We were bouncing off the sides of the ruts, sometimes slewing sickeningly toward the unbroken flanks of the road, and dared neither back off nor go faster. SPIIIIIN the steering wheel to the right! When the iX lurches back from the edge, SPIIIIIN the wheel back! And keep your foot in it! But don’t go too fast! It had ceased to be fun.
The only relief and release came near km 25, when we saw brake lights ahead, and clawed our way up to the first four cars… which were stopped while Cars 1&2′s occupants were helping to unstick the advance car. Ahhh, justice: the Rallymaster’s stuck.
As you can imagine, chaos took control at that point. The folks who’d pushed the Rallymaster free heard “Just follow me out” (meaning treat the remainder as a transit or free zone), but those of us with HAM radios heard a different direction from rally officials, and believed that the remainder would be scored. A cascade of Time Allowances followed, as Car #3 took 2.5 minutes to start with (and so must everyone else in line as there would be no passing), but later had to take more… We were a herky-jerky train of motorcars struggling over the summit and finally down to safety… Off The Pass, thank our lucky stars.
Heh. And we were indeed the lucky ones. The Sonett, being singularly svelte of track, could not take advantage of the trail broken by the broader beams of the cars before, and had to make its own path the whole way. The points situation was as torn up as the snowbanks. There was a two-way tie for Second, and a three-way tie for Third, and the driver in First place on Saturday night called it a virtual six-way tie. By the start on Sunday, though, it was clear that Saturday’s Final Section had dispatched the leading Historic team; with the SAAB refusing to hold second gear, Russ and Satch headed south.
Sunday’s sections were a bit snowy, a bit muddy, mostly dry… until (you know it’s coming!) the last, “Pavillion“. Now I can’t give great details about the challenge here, ’cause my delightful!intelligent!skilled! navigator and I zeroed the sucker. But I also know that at least two two-wheel-drive cars were unable to make the climb, and had to abandon the section and go back down and ’round to Cache Creek. Novices? Don’t bet on it: AlCan veterans, both, and both AlCan winners. Here again there was a Historic entry, and the other car’s just two years away from that venerable status.
So the moral of the story? Expect a slippery hillclimb for the days’ last sections at Totem. Bring your studs. Bring your traction control, or your skilled throttle foot. Bring your gumption, but also bring your snow shovel and tow strap.
And about those Historic (and near-Historic) teams…
Gentlemen, you have my deep respect. I hope one day to find the “regular” Totem too easy, so that I’m drawn to join you in less-modern machinery and so feel afresh the quiver of uncertainty and the thrill of unknown adventure. At this point, I get that from the regular Totem — and this year, I got more than I needed.
Normally the previous year’s winners are assigned Car #1; running that spot is equal parts honor and duty.
The honor should be obvious, pride of place wot wot. And there are benefits to running up front: you never have to wait in line for the pump at the gas stops; the locals that you see still have no idea that their road is hosting a mass migration of four-wheelers; the low, wet spots on the section aren’t chewed into mudholes; where there’s snowpack, it isn’t all shiny and slick; and there are no deep tracks in the snow leading off the road … yet.
But there’s a price, too, for running out front. You’ll be the first to find the one really slippery corner, or the blown-down tree, or the nodding control crew. It’s like being point man on patrol. On balance, giving #1 to last year’s winners is probably a handicapping method, sort of like the NBA’s allocating the worst draft positions to the best performing teams. More evidence: The rallymaster calls it “The Curse Of Car #1″.
Well, then, who won Totem 2008? Glenn Wallace & R. Dale Kraushaar did. In winning last year, those two zeroed the entire second day. If ever a handicap was called for…
But we got to the Bear’s Claw, and #1 was not on their car; instead, they were carrying #2. Whaaa? Those guys are veterans, they know the drill — how’d they miss the duty?
Pffft. Veterans? I’ll give you veterans. The team in the lead car included a man who first ran Totem in 1959. APPARENTLY, if you show up with a pedigree like that, they just bow and hand you the #1. This time, the award of first position is all about honor.
Near the other end of the train, running #20, a novice team’s in a 4×4 pickup with 31″ tires. They’ve strapped down some big chunks of wood in the back… is that for weight? Or is there a bonfire later? I feel a mild sense of dread on their behalf, but I can’t think of a way to warn them without sounding like a jerk or a fuddy-duddy. As Glenn Wallace put it, ‘Nobody likes the “you’re doomed” speech.’ Same goes for the very pretty Golf, with its supercharger and roll cage; the car doesn’t seem quite right for where we’re headed.
And finally, there’s a leviathan of steel, a sled so wide and so long and so heavy that calculations of its polar momentum outstrip our calculator’s registers: it’s the Rally de Ville.
We went through Tech in the midst of snow flurries, a delightful hint of what was to come. Snow’s what we hope for; snow’s what makes Winter rallies such a draw. And Totem did not disappoint: we had light coatings that looked like drizzled icing on a Bundt cake; we had 6 or 8 centimeters of slightly moist snow in granules, like beach sand; we had, early Sunday morning, some churned up brown slush. There was snow, snow, snow, gravel, and snow. Reliable wit Eric Horst opined, “The snowiest Thunderbird I ever saw was a Totem in 2009.”
What we didn’t have a lot of was ice — and no one was complaining. You might remember that the final section on Sunday last year was mostly ice and mostly hilly. Some 2-wheel-drive cars didn’t make it over, and some AWD cars struggled to. This year, there were lots of new-looking studded snow tires scratching their way around Cache Creek before the start.
To balance out the snow and ice, the B.C. winter rallies grant three flavors of time relief.
The first is a one-second-each-way grace period around perfect time. If your team crosses the timing mark up to a second before, or up to a second after, the time the rallymaster’s calculated, you get a zero.
The second type of relief expands the grace period after you’ve taken points. If churned up brown slush forces you to slow below CAST, and you’re, say, 20 seconds late into Control #1, you’ll take 19 points there — but if thereafter you’re able to hold the CAST, you’ll still be 20 seconds late into Control #2. It would be uncivil to give you another 19 points for the same shortcoming, so the grace period expands, for you alone, to encompass the amount you were late at the previous control. So your second 20 seconds late is accorded zero points. You can nibble away at your lateness up ’til the end of the section, and so long as you get closer to zero seconds off, you’ll not take any more points.
The final variety of relief is a garden-variety time declaration. Time decs were only recently adopted, and there’s still a certain distaste for them. Long time competitors disparage their use, preferring to just run late and take the points they take.
A time dec “should” only be claimed for delays out of one’s control… but that meaning is obviously fluid. We found a 400 pound Angus heifer standing sideways in the center of the road; it took us ten or more seconds to slow, avoid, and creep around her. Is that delay time-dec worthy? Normally we’d just hump it up above CAST and catch up — but this was on the slush, and I’d been near to my limit just to reach CAST. Faster wasn’t an option. Perhaps if the scores were, on average, larger, the hyper-competitive folks would be more willing to take the points — but ten points is about five places in Unlimited.
Saturday night scoring came together quickly (more about that in a bit), and Paul circulated the provisional scores. With his charming oscillating timbre, Paul the rallymaster always sounds slightly surprised. He had this comment:
“I’m going to be pressed to abandon Winter scoring.”
“Why?”
“We have multiple teams with one point.”
So we knew it was going to be tight. In Unlimited, it was 1-1-3-4-5 on Saturday night.
Sad to say, the 4×4 truck didn’t make it to noon on Saturday. They slid off with enough forward vector to deploy the airbags, and the shaken co-driver wisely called a halt. The race-ready Golf wasn’t winter-rally-ready, and rolled early on. So far no serious injuries, and I trust it won’t spoil it for you if I say there were no serious injuries over the weekend. There were, though, plenty more excursions into the B.C. scenery. I think Sweep did six extractions the first day, from a field of 21 cars.
Saturday ran late into the evening. I guess it usually does, but I recall feeling surprise when I glanced at the Timewise clock just after the midpoint break, and it read 5:30:00. It was fully dark, and there were four sections left to run. Just before the start of the last section, barely outside Williams Lake, the snow was falling in earnest.
The route took a loop off the Frasier Road, and two control crews were heading in to their worker locations from the backside, running counter-course. After a long straight stretch, there was a flat-to-off-camber 90 right on the edge of a ravine, and the sticking snow at the outer edge lay atop withered grass. The leading car braked, set up, turned, and drifted just a skance wide — too much! Despite AWD and snow tires and a thorough driver warm-up on like conditions, there was not enough room to save it. They went forward, off the edge.
The folks in the trailing car either saw it or caught on very quickly, and were immediately on the radio.
DIGRESSION: If you do not hold a HAM license, stop reading this and go begin studying for the Technician level exam. You may pick this up again later.
The first radio report gave chills to everyone listening. The car was invisible, out of sight somewhere down in the trees. No one else was nearby. Cars #0 — #6 were already on course, but some 30km from the location. There was no cell coverage. The organizers quickly dispatched one of the workers towards town… and then there was a collective sigh, like a half a hurricane, as the workers in the leading car (who’d gone down the ravine) came on the radio sounding practically conversational.
We continued, on route, on time, following the rallymaster’s lead, along the quickest path to the spot. The hillside was steep, slippery, and unclimbable. Rescuers made up a lifeline of towstraps, and tossed one end down. We arrived just as the workers were pulled over the top. They and their bags were quickly bundled away to the hotel, seemingly no worse for wear. The car was left to slumber in the deepening snow, and (not to foreshadow too much) so too slept an overlooked control log.
We went on on Sunday, while Ron stuck around Williams Lake to get the car. After the slushy first section, there was a lengthy regularity along Spring Lake that was simply marvelous, in deep, tacky snow, and lacking the usual underlayment of ice. Two more sections took us to the end. As usual, Sunday’s scores were better than Saturday’s. Back in Cache Creek, it appeared that both the front-runners had taken a single point on Sunday, and it looked like breaking a 2-2 tie would be necessary.
But the control log that’d been lurking in the ravine was retrieved with the car, and delivered to the rallymaster. That score sheet dealt a critical blow to one of the leading teams. With those latent scores included, the second place team had half again as many points as the winners!
That is, they had 3 points total, and the winners had 2.
I sense the day is near when a team will zero both days of a B.C. Winter Rally, and perhaps as close is the day when we’ll need to break a tie at that score. It could happen next February, at The Thunderbird. I strongly recommend that you go to The Thunderbird, and when you do, bring your two-meter radio. You never know when you’ll need it.
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