Gorman Ridge Rally

[jrally]

Aug. 16th (Sat.), Gorman/Frazier Park CA. If anyone in the SoCal area is interesting in checking out rallying and my EGT rally car, this is where I'll be. You can find more details at www.californiarallyseries.com , under the calendar, there is a link to the Gorman Ridge Rally.

-Jon R.

[TurboProto]

Ill be there with my buddy who is running his rally spec WRX. hopefully I can get my car done in time to drive it there.

[jay]

iirc, there's some fantastic spectating at Gorman.

[jrally]

I've never spectated Gorman, either crewed, raced it or ran sweep when the X-Games ran the stages. But, yes good spectating on the one stage, that's run 6 times. TurboProto, stop by and introduce yourself.

-Jon R.

[TurboProto]

If my car is running then you wont be able to miss me there..lol Im sure ill be the only 4wd mazda protege there with the Subaru crew. Ohterwise ill be in my truck.

[jrally]

When you say Subaru crew, you may want to look at the entry list first, there are 7 Subarus entered... :-)

-Jon R.

[MATT91GT]

maybe thats the crew lol. good luck. if i were still out there i would come watch

[TurboProto]

All I know is im going with a few friends and I'm meeting up with my buddy who is racing a Suby

[jrally]

No problem, I should be easy to find, the guy with the red/white EGT, just come by and introduce yourself. The Escort is nearly back to rally trim, about the only items left: more lights, shoulder harness bar that will work better with HANS devices and possibly door bars.

-Jon R.

[jrally]

It's been another year since I've rallied, Gorman '07. Last year I was very frustrated by my car, mostly due to the failing tranny. Since then I've had to rebuild the engine twice and I now have a transmission more suited to racing; stronger case and axles, lower final drive, limited slip differential and a first gear synchro that actually works.
The weekend started out a bit rough, while trying to get out of town before a monsoon storm rolled into-town. I had to drive west, the monsoon storms roll in from the east. While grabbing a few soft drinks and ice for the road, trouble one, my refrigerator decided,
this was the afternoon to break. Oh well, deal with it when I get home. (jump ahead to Sunday, bad move, the house smelled like a slaughter house, rotting meats...) Next trouble, in my haste to leave ahead to the rain, I left my garage door open, I’m grateful for watchful neighbors. Trouble three, forgot to change out the CDs in the truck again, that's about two years of 4-7 hour drives with the same music. But, I didn't let these things dampen my mood. I drove out to Palm Desert for a free place to sleep for the night and to check on mom's house while she's in Colorado. It gives me a chance to sleep in a little and have a much more relaxing Friday morning.
Again this year, they allowed us to pre-run the race roads, and take our own notes for use during the race. It was interesting this time around to say the least. I drove us in a borrowed truck, turbo diesel 4x4 Dodge. Now the comedy ensues. We packed 5 people in there, Tom Smith, my co-drive, in front and joker Chuck Wilson, Aaron Laeng (truck owner) and newest rally driver, John Black all in the back seat. While Tom and I were trying to take this opportunity serious, our beach bum buddy Chuck just wanted a fun ride in the dirt. Oh well, Tom and I have both run these roads plenty of times, so between calls, we all had a good laugh with Chuck’s jokes, and still were able to modify the notes from the last two years to match the current road conditions (some areas smoother, some rougher). Interesting side note, turbo diesel engines make no vacuum for brake assist when coming off of high boost, spookey moment in passing slow competitors who were taking too many new notes... :-) (Aaron made me do it!! LOL)
I know, get on with the race stuff, sorry. Saturday morning was nice and relaxing, first car out wasn't until 11:00am. And for the third year in a row, I lost my sunglasses at Gorman, this time, before the race even started. One call to my buddy Jim, who was driving up
from LA that morning and a quick stop for him into a Wal Mart, replacements on the way. (I wear clip on sunglasses) Thanks again Jim. A few more interesting changes for me this time around. New co-driver, Tom, who's only co-driven for one other person before, for
many seasons, George Duganis. Next, this is the first time for me to wear a new safety device, HANS (head and neck restraint device). Think of it as a horse collar, that's held down by the shoulder belts and tethered to posts on my helmet to limit how far my head can move
forward and side to side. I forgot to actually attach it to my helmet for three of the 12 stages and Sunday morning my left collarbone was a little soar from it digging in, otherwise no issue with it during the race. And finally, Laengworks service crew helping me out. The Laeng family are rally friends of mine for the past several years now (since '04), who service for cars as a side business. I wouldn't normally be willing to afford such a luxury, but after helping them crew for Chuck and George up in Idaho last month, they wanted to return the favor by crewing for me here.
With 30 competitors starting the race, this time around, I started 14th, not too bad considering it's been a year, and only two races with my current car. (Escort GT) The first stage was dissapointing, about 1/2 mile into it, the road was blocked by a broken down competitor, Chrissie Beavis in her VW Jetta with a broken axle. I think 5 of us got this experience, and ended up with a set time (same time as the last car that completed the stage before the trouble). In our case, this was 5.10 minutes and as it turns out, pretty much what I did every time we ran that stage. The next stage was the longer, rough one. It's a love hate feeling, there are some great corners and fun jumps, but mostly it's just really rough.
By the end of the first service break, we had been re-seated to 10th place, not bad for only having run 3 stages. This is pretty much where we stayed for the rest of the day until a competitor DNFd, my old car, the Festiva, not sure he's learned the fact that the car is
fast, but it's also fragile, for a rally car. On to my competitors in CRS-2, the Festiva was one of them, Larry Gross was actually the first to fall away on stage two, bad fuel pump. Larry re-joined the race a stage later, but only for the fun of driving. As the stages continued, another dropped out, Eddie's VW Golf with fuel pump issues also. One of my competitors, first time driver, had a rollover in a slow, soft corner, which just happened to have stage works standing around. They were able to push is shoebox Volvo back over and he continued on.
As is usual with my races, it's mostly uneventful with the car itself. Not to say it didn't have a couple items, lost an engine mount nut and bolt half way through the race. The bolt fell mostly out, but got caught by the still installed cruise control. I hadn't even noticed this while driving, Tom Laeng found it when we were talking about the clearance the oil plan usually has to the skid plate that's under it, which should be close to 1", it was 1/4" or less. The only other race issue had to do with the rear suspension over heating and starting to fail at the end of the long stages, this happened during two of the stages. And the one non-race issue was my cruise control on/off switch cover broke. LOL
Our race went pretty smooth, Tom did an exellent job reading the notes and keeping me going down the stages, pushing me a bit. If you look at my stage times, you’ll see I’m mister consistent. Even taking it easy on the car in the later stages only lost me 10-20 seconds. We only had a few moments, like landing a bit to sideways off of a few small jumps and drivng up the side of a bank because I just couldn't turn the steering wheel fast enough. By the end of 12 stages, around 60 miles, we finished 2nd in class and 9th overall. We were beaten by a 20-year veteran of rallying and someone who lives near the stages, Bill Malik (did I mention how much more car he has, 200hp plus Volvo that cost over 100K to build, I'm sure). It sounds bad, that he beat me by just over 3 minutes, but last year he beat me by more than 6 minutes. I guess the time and money spent on the drive train was worth it, 3 minutes is sort of a lot of time in rallying.
A big thanks goes to everyone who helped me out before and during the race; Mont’z for building the tranny and latest engine (it worked great all day), Eric Olson for helping re-install the engine after it was finished being built a few weeks ago, Tom Laeng and his crew for their great service, Jim Pierce for his continuous encouragement in developing the Escort and instructing with my driving skills and finally the rest of my family and friends for there excitement about my racing. If I didn’t have people to share it with, what fun would it be..?
http://gormanridgerally.com/ (click on Live Results to see how the stage times went)
-Jon (Escort GT, Car# 306 (14 at this race)

[jay]

Rally, the last real motorsport. Well done man.

[TurboProto]

Dam I was so busy I couldnt make it.

[jrally]

Too bad. The race was great, as was the afterparty, the 2 cycle magarita blender, El Blendaro II was fired up and making pitcher after pitcher of crappy magaritas...

-Jon R.

[TurboProto]

Yea sounds like a good time. And I should of been charge of the margaritas cause I make them all the time for my chick roomates. And they love them so much usually after a few drinks there dancing on the tables out side bumping music and swimming in my pool with almost nothing on!! ..lol

[jrally]

That's who you needed to bring up then, chick roommates!! I dind't get too many complaints, w/ a 50/50 liquid mix ratio, after one drink, everyone was plenty drunk. I guess you'll just have to try again next season.

-Jon R.