Well the Plan B Rally in Ridgecrest, California was an interesting experience for us. It was our first stage rally, so we knew there would be tons to learn. We did two pass recce with Scott Leonard (winner of the Idaho Rally, 2008), who was our Pit Boss. Scott was very helpful and we were glad he was around to give us pointers and fix the car (too bad that was needed). Our recce notes ended up being quite good. The course was super fun, undulating desert roads with lots of sharp turns, dips, ravines, and sandy washes. Unfortunately despite good notes, and a lot of high hopes, we ran into an early mechanical on Stage 1 at mile 3. Our bump steer reducing kit fractured which demo'd the left axle while in a sharp left. We got a ride back to the pits - went back out to the car with Scott and after two hours of work were able to get the car towed back to the pits. We fixed the axle, and planned to re-enter in time for stage 5.
The plan at that point was to "take it easy" - as fixing a car in the desert is back breaking work. Unfortunately, though we ran at 40% speed, we suffered the same problem on the right axle - bump steer failure again. This time we waited till the rally was over to pick up the car.
We took our tow vehicle and trailer out to pick up the car after the rally - unfortunately we got the whole rig stuck in some scary deep sand while trying to exit the course. Took an hour, and a tow from the sweep team to get us out. Learned that the Baird (sp?) Tow strap is the tool to have. A Ford Exursion easily pulled the F-350 Crew Cab, trailer, and rally car buried to the top of the wheels with that device - it works like a giant rubber band. I gotta get one!
On a positive note, we learned quite a bit, recce was awesome, and Jack was making terrific calls, the car was otherwise handling very nicely, and I feel we would have been extremtly competitive in our class were we able to finish.
Chalk this one up to a good test run, and lessons learned!
Roger
