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Baie Batteries - 2005/10/25 00:50
Thanks Steve, for this story!
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Hi all! This is long but a lot happened.
Dave Siesicki and I competed in the 2005 Baie Des Chaleurs Rallye in New Richmond, Quebec this past weekend. This was the third event in this Canadian Rally Championship. Dave entered his Audi 4000 Quattro while I was the co-driver or co-pilote in Quebec.
While riding my motorcycle up to Dave's place on Wednesday morning my rally board that I use as a base for making the recce notes fell off my motorcycle while approaching a toll booth on Interstate 95. I noticed that it had fallen off shortly after passing through the toll booth. I ran back through the toll booth to dicover that it was still intact but sitting four lanes out from the middle where I was standing. I was able to run out, retreive the board, and run back to the center median without getting hit by a car! I repacked the board and went up to Dave's place without further incidents.
Dave and I then met up with Tim Penasack and Marc Goldfarb for breakfast and the long drive to New Richmond, Quebec. On the way up we stopped by John Cassidy's house to see the world headquarters of Last Ditch Racing. John was a gracious host giving us a cold drink and a tour of his place. The remainder of the trip to New Richmond was long and uneventful.
Thursday was a busy day doing recce. As our recce vehicle we used Dave's pickup truck - roomy and air conditioned! We were allowed a two pass recce. Dave and I ran this event last year together, so our notes from last year we updated. On Stage C1 we only did a single pass recce because we blew the exhaust off the truck and we coudn't stand the noise. Last year's notes seemed OK in any event. Dave repaired the truck in the hotel parking lot Thursday night.
The rally started on Friday evening. After completing the first stage with attime that moved us up 10 positions we discovered in the service area that Dave's new re-manufactured alternator had failed. It had been re-manufactured using varsol and spray paint. We were classified as DNF due to exceeding maximum permitted lateness. Our rally seemed over.
We then launched a successful appeal to the organizers to allow us the enter the Ontario Regional event and thus be allowed to run the Saturday stages. Now we had to get our alternator fixed! We got the local Volkswagen to dealer to open up his shop and get us the proper regulator. He even delivered the part to us, but alas it was not able to resurect the Audi alternator. We then decided that we didn't need not stink'n alternator - we would run on battery power only. We had a plan!
Up early on Saturday morning, we were at the local restaurant having breakfast when in through the door came a couple of motorcyclists wearing helmets. When they took their helmets off, we recognized them as Forrest and his friend Mark (?). Forrest has co-driven with Vittorio Bares in this event before and Mark was crew. They had ridden all night as the final leg of a trip that started Thursday morning from New Hampshire. They had ridden back roads and trails on their KTM 620s all the way!! What a ride! We then gave them our hotel key and they went back to our hotel room for a good day's sleep.
We then went back to implementing our plan to run the rally with no alternator. Dave bought two new batteries and a battery charger. We then put a new battery in the car and strapped the other new battery beside it in the trunk. The original battery was placed on charge. We then shut off everything that was electric except for the fuel pump and the fan (which we were able to turn off and on). We figured that if we had the battery voltage went too low, then we could change the battery in about four minutes on a transit. On arrival at a control we shut the car down once and entered the control without stopped at the entry. Where possible we parked the car on a hill and bump started it to save on power.
It worked! We changed batteries and put a different battery on charge at every service and it worked just fine.
We had a flat tire while waiting to enter the service area which was convenient. Later that day we smelled fuel and it turned out that we had a leaky fuel line. We were able to fix the fuel line in the service area.
On the stages we had some good runs. By the time we did the last stage, the car was overheating, probably due to us only running the fan part time. The car lost a lot of power and the last stage was a struggle. I think that if the last stage had been 4 kilometers longer, that the Audi would have come to a halt.
We ended up finishing 10th in the Regional event only 9 seconds out of 9th. Overall we were pleased that were allowed to start again after Friday and were able to finish. It was also gratifying to see Tim and Marc finish on the podium and to see John Cassidy and Dave Getchell (the Last Ditch guys) finish on the podium. John/Dave remain in second overall in the Canadian Championship! It looked like fun on the podium, but it seemed like a waste of good champagne.
On Sunday we again convoyed with Tim Penasack and Marc Goldfarb. We left New Richmond in good time. We came across the service crew for Matt Iorio just outside of Carleton, Quebec. They were having transmission problems. We picked up two of the crew members and left Philip Ho to flag down Matt and Ole Holter in the street car to arrange for repairs. The two crew members needed to get to their car in Maine.
We broke our exhaust on the truck again in New Brunswick due to the rough road, but we were able to fix it in a Tim Horton's parking lot in St. Leonard.
On the way back, the safety chains on Tim's trailer broke off the trailer. Tim was able to fix them and continued just fine.
While re-fueling in Maine, Dave was asked to help a local re-install the distributor in the local's Ford pickup truck. Dave with some help from Bill of Tim's crew were able to help the fellow and direct him on how the finish the project.
The remainder of the trip was uneventful.
All in all is was a good rally adventure!
Regards,
Steve
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