photography by regine trias
After having a mechanically blessed and blunder-free rally in Idaho, prepping for Mendocino was seemingly a snap. I simply reorganized the already loaded trailer, rolled the car in, and was ready to go. My co-driver, Nick, showed up Wednesday night only to discover that he had left his helmet and HANS at home in Ridgecrest, three hours away (not sure why Mr. Hans likes Ridgecrest so much, but it seems he consistently decides to stay there when he is needed most). One of our crew members, Peter, volunteered to make a wild dash to retrieve these items while we slept. The problem was that Ridgecrest was a seven hour round trip from the shop and we were scheduled to leave in four hours. We engineered a plan in which we would meet up three hours north of the shop in order to buy Peter some extra time. To our dismay, our other teammates that were supposed to meet up with us at 6 A.M. and caravan up highway 101, decided to take the I-5 instead. We took advantage of this minor fluke and caught an extra three hours of sleep while we waited for Peter to return.
We got off to a later start at 10 A.M., but there was really no rush. The trek went smoothly; we arrived in Ukiah around 8 P.M. and shortly made our way to our friend's room where our team enjoyed rally videos, reminiscing, and good company with a background soundtrack of 90's punk rock. A couple hours later, we headed down to our trailer in the Walmart parking lot to put up for the night.
Bright and early, we went through the registration process and proceeded to carry out our recce. Having overlooked a few instructions in the recce notes, we went the long way around and ended up driving 68 miles to the stage start. The roads of Bear Valley had some sections that were quite treacherous. It was a bumpy ride in the dually, but despite the rough areas, large ditches, and prominent exposures, the road looked like a blast! Due to the unnecessarily long route that we took, we did not have time to recce the Cow Mountain stages before our time was up. Luckily, we knew that we could trust the writers of the stage notes and would have to drive the roads blind just like we did at Idaho Rally.
We showed up to tech inspection ready to go at 4 P.M. where we took the time to become acquainted with one of the new competitors while we awaited inspection by the S.R.D.C. (see link for details on this prestigious event official http://www.rallyanarchy.com/phorum/read.php?1,86257,page=1). We pulled our car up for inspection a few minutes later. The S.R.D.C. informed that we needed to fix our horn and get new fire extinguishers before the next event, but we would be allowed to run. The car was jacked up to check wheel bearings and tie rods and as it turned out we had a bad driver's side inner tie rod that had to be replaced before the event. The car had failed tech for the first time.
The scrambling to locate an inner tie rod began and O'Reilly Auto Parts came to our rescue. I went to work on the car in the Walmart parking lot while Nick went out to round up parts and supplies. Upon crawling under the car, it came to my attention that two of the bolts that held the skidplate and control arms to the car were missing. Lucky enough for us, I had spare bolts in the trailer. Failing tech was a major blessing in disguise. With two bolts and some elbow grease, a catastrophic failure was thwarted. The rest of the crew showed up and we made quick work of a few other small projects. The tie rod went in without much trouble and I realigned the car with my home made trammel bar. Our friends from RalliCandi stopped by to make sure that we were covered, but we were near finished. It had gotten to be 12 A.M. by the time all of this was finished and our team gratefully retired to our bunks in the trailer.
First thing in the morning, the car returned to tech inspection where it easily passed and was immediately loaded into the trailer. We attended the novice meeting and then took off to set up spot at the service area. Tarp out, canopy up, we were ready to go. The excitement finally hit as we anticipated starting the rally. It was going to be a hot day so I made sure to stay hydrated. After the usual fine scramble of the last teams coming in, the routine drivers meeting, and final checks, we departed for MTC (main time control) out. Only a few minutes later we were rushing up what proved to be a bit of a daunting stage. It took a couple miles to fully get into our groove, but today was going to be a good day. The stage was a welcomed challenge with a few surface and speed changes throughout it's approximate 15 miles.
We reached the end of the stage to find some excited rally volunteers both impressed by our stage time and our relatively unique Legacy amongst a sea of Imprezas. It appeared we were on track for a class win and possibly an overall podium. The transit back was relatively long especially at the 25mph speed limit. After putt-putting down a dirt road for what seemed like forever, we finally reached pavement which signaled only a few more minutes of transit left. We made a right turn onto the highway headed up a grade towards service. A few feet later the car just suddenly shut off. We immediately pulled onto the shoulder and began attempting to trouble shoot the car. Without much luck we were frantically checking fuses and relays as we watched several more rally cars drive past. As we determined that we were not getting power to the fuel pump, our friend Jason Lightner pulled up behind us in is Porsche. He too attempted to help, but there was no quick fix.
Hastily securing our tow rope from the pink and white air-cooled wonder to our blundering awd pig, we prepared ourselves for a new kind of adventure. With the determination of the Little Engine That Could, the Porsche pulled our two ton paperweight (okay, okay, its 1.5, but who's counting?) up a series of grades. We had to make a couple stops because the tow rope kept breaking, but we made it to service and to our surprise, we were hardly late!
It was in our best interest to utilize our short service break as efficiently as possible, skipping some of the normal checks with the hope that we could get the old girl running again. I checked for power at the fuel pump and had none despite the fuze and connectors being intact. In quick response, I wired in a new power wire from our cigarette lighter to the fuel pump in an act of pure desperation. It worked. The car then started right up, just in time for stage two.
Finally relaxed again, we departed from the start. The relief was short lived as the car died less than no more than 100 yards from the start. Nick start wiggling the fuel pump wires which were on his side of the car, but it was of no use. Great. DNF on stage two. Definitely a contrast to the easy going Idaho Rally.
After rolling the car back into the service area and doing some diagnostics, I was able to determine that the problem was the fuel pump itself. I called around to all the auto parts stores and was able to find a fuel pump, but it wouldn't be available until morning. While hanging out in the pits, we heard over the radio that one of my teammates had rolled his car, but was O.K. We eagerly awaited the photos that were to follow, wondering how bad it was. Lightner and Brown came in with an epic selfie with the rolled car. It looked like a complete loss.
We stuck around at the end of the day to help out in the recovery of the Rally Kings car 142. With two awesome Land Rover Discovery's with their drivers and winches, we were able to extract Jason's car from its temporary resting place and return to the hotel for a much needed nights sleep.
Throughout the evening, we debated whether we would be able to continue for day two. Part of me just wanted to let it go and bring the car home so that I could spend more time prepping it to avoid future mishaps where the other part of me held fast to the "press on regardless" spirit that lies at the heart and soul of what is rally.
When I woke up in the morning it was obvious to me that I had to go for it. We picked up the fuel pump and got to work at our makeshift service area in the Walmart parking lot. After rushing to replace the pump, the car wouldn't start. It was clear that the fuel pump was not the issue because the new pump was whirring away. It was cranking a little slow, so we figured the small race battery had run a little low. We hooked up our jumper cables and she started right up. Running low on time, we drove immediately to park expose where the MTC was located. We pulled in literally the minute before our start minute which gave us just enough time to get in line and wait for our start time.
Our transit began in good spirits-- until we missed a turn and went 3 miles off course, putting us a solid 8 minutes behind schedule. We did eventually make it to the ATC of stage one, where the volunteers were as confused as we were. After finally sorting everything out, we were able to get our start time delayed for an extra minute to ensure that we wouldn't catch the car ahead of us.
We never had a chance to recce the road, so we were driving the stages of day two blind. Thankfully, we had some excellently written stage notes that were provided for us and we had no problem keeping the pace. It wasn't until the very end of the stage that we began to encounter the dust of the car ahead. We crossed the flying finish feeling great about our new start, but the penalties from our transit were still in the back of our minds. A short distance from the finish control, we encountered a pink-hooded white Porsche pulled off to the side of the road. How ironic, the same car that had towed our broken down car into service the day before was now broken down on the side of the road. Without hesitation, we pulled over and offered them a tug.
The tow into service was just as interesting as being towed into service the day before. We even made it on time! Feeling happy with the previous stage and our time, hearing that there had been an error in the routebook and that penalties for the transit were being dropped was just the icing on the cake. We gave the car a quick once-over and were ready to begin the next stage. As luck would have it, the car wouldn't start and of course we were running short on time. My crew jump started the car and we took off in a hurry. We made it on time, but decided that at the turn around before the next stage, we were going to leave the car running so we wouldn't have this problem again.
Stage two went as well as the first. We reached the turn around where we were greeted by some tables in the shade. We enjoyed the break and conversing with other competitors. Stage three started with no issues, but that soon changed. The car decided to stop about three miles in. Nick was quick to get the triangles out while I fiddled with the car. I tried everything I could to get it started, but the sweep truck beat me to it. Our time card was collected and our day was over. Nick took the sweep taxi back to service, but I elected to stay at a ham blockage to watch the rest of the rally. It was a bit of a bummer. The car had to be towed back to service, but just like any mystery problem does, it disappeared and the car started right up and drove straight into the trailer under its own power.
I think a mechanical DNF is always going to be my least favorite way to end a rally. Sure, nothing that happened to the car this time was terribly expensive to fix, but the feeling of helplessness when the car simply won't go is what gets to me. If I crash, at least I know I was going for it, but that's rally.