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As folks start arriving home from Sno*Drift, hopefully they will post their stories from the event.
Here's mine, though it isn't too interesting.
I was doing another one-off co-drive ride with Roland McIvor in his 2nd gen Eclipse in Pro PGT (I had previous co-driven for Roland at Ojibwe).
Roland didn't have any service crew, so I drove the rally car during the pre-event stuff (tech, fueling, etc.) as well as to Friday's parc expose and Saturday's start. I have never driven a 2nd gen Eclipse before, so I don't if this applies to them all or just Roland's car, but I thought its handling was diabolical. The way that the back end behaved was just weird. (I drive my own 323GTX in brisk TSDs in the snow in Canada and can keep my car under control; I am not sure that I could keep that Eclipse under control under the same conditions.)
Anyway, I mention this, because we did a lot of spinning, at least one major spin per stage (except for SS7). I know Roland is a better driver than that, but the car set-up was just too far off. And with each spin, he seemed to have less confidence in the car and kept slowing down. We started Friday 34th and started Saturday 45th.
It was a little embarrassing to start Saturday behind a Club Chevy Cavalier, but this was only my second ProRally event and I wanted a finish of any kind. However, it was not to be. At the end of SS9, Roland noticed that the car wasn't running right and on the transit after the stage, we pulled over to check it out. After he switched off the engine, it continued running, even with the master switch off. After stalling the engine, he checked the oil level and found there was almost none. Then he discover a gear driven by the timing belt was a bit askew. The cover that it was normally behind was gone and the gear was extending out and rubbing against the accessory pulley (the pulley was stopping the gear from coming completely off). And there was oil all over everything in that corner of the car, though no obvious leak point. We were out.
Anyway, it was a great event with really great organization and what looked like really good roads if only the car was up to it.
alan perry
Here's mine, though it isn't too interesting.
I was doing another one-off co-drive ride with Roland McIvor in his 2nd gen Eclipse in Pro PGT (I had previous co-driven for Roland at Ojibwe).
Roland didn't have any service crew, so I drove the rally car during the pre-event stuff (tech, fueling, etc.) as well as to Friday's parc expose and Saturday's start. I have never driven a 2nd gen Eclipse before, so I don't if this applies to them all or just Roland's car, but I thought its handling was diabolical. The way that the back end behaved was just weird. (I drive my own 323GTX in brisk TSDs in the snow in Canada and can keep my car under control; I am not sure that I could keep that Eclipse under control under the same conditions.)
Anyway, I mention this, because we did a lot of spinning, at least one major spin per stage (except for SS7). I know Roland is a better driver than that, but the car set-up was just too far off. And with each spin, he seemed to have less confidence in the car and kept slowing down. We started Friday 34th and started Saturday 45th.
It was a little embarrassing to start Saturday behind a Club Chevy Cavalier, but this was only my second ProRally event and I wanted a finish of any kind. However, it was not to be. At the end of SS9, Roland noticed that the car wasn't running right and on the transit after the stage, we pulled over to check it out. After he switched off the engine, it continued running, even with the master switch off. After stalling the engine, he checked the oil level and found there was almost none. Then he discover a gear driven by the timing belt was a bit askew. The cover that it was normally behind was gone and the gear was extending out and rubbing against the accessory pulley (the pulley was stopping the gear from coming completely off). And there was oil all over everything in that corner of the car, though no obvious leak point. We were out.
Anyway, it was a great event with really great organization and what looked like really good roads if only the car was up to it.
alan perry