Rally Otago

[rolla_fxgt]

So who alls going? Who has a favourite stage? favourite spot to take some photo's etc?

I myself love the classic rally a bit better, seems to me to be more skill involves in flicking an old escort etc round roads quick without powersteer or 4wd.
Not to take anything away from the main feild cause they have huges skill too. Top marks to all the drivers entered.

Hopefully will make it too the the tarmac special, maclaren gully, the service park & the last forburay special since thats always fun.

See there's a fair few toyotas of various kinds running in the all commers, kiwi 2, & classsics.

[CozmoNz]

Im an offical... or some crap... lol

Write all the times down, record it all, bla de fuking bla. i get to wear a shiny coat, play with walkie talkies and get a free beanie, so im happy haha.

best of all, free entry to any areas in the rally stages (ie - pits in fobery park)

[SkylineObsession]

I organised a Skyline club meet for the same day about a month ago so thats what i'll be doing tomorrow. Might be able to make it to the street course though i hope.

[passenger pete]

i'll be there.

[AJz]

just got back from the forbury park blats. Must have got there a little late but i must say it def wasnt worth the $10 they were charging !!!

Emma got the quickest time of the night from what i remember.

[CozmoNz]

Never ended up going, the person i was waiting on never got back to me, so just didnt go.

Why wasnt it worth it?

[MasCam]

It wasn't worth it because it wasn't actually part of the rally so some of them wern't really trying but mostly because as it wasn't part of the official rally half of the cars didn't run including a large portion of the interesting classics.

They will all run on sunday however (well the ones that are left) as it is the last oficial stage.

[AJz]

I came into a bit after it started and was down the front the whole time, wasnt the best view but i think ill only go the wharf special tomorrow and that will do it for me. hopefully they arnt chargin a bundle for that aswell.

[Lloyd]

$5 for that one dude

[AJz]

oh ok, cheers.

Anybody know what time the wharf stage is "supposed" to be at ???

I cant find any itinarery )spelling), on their site.

[SkylineObsession]

AJ, check out mjb's posts on this page: http://southernskylines.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1452

[rolla_fxgt]

Wharf stage was okish, not as many crashes/dings as normal, i susspect it might of been since it wasnt the last stage this time round.
Was a good show though, saw one spin, it was the ae101 levin with the rally style light bar.

saw hrt & pyro there, but only at the end, who else went down?

dissapointing not to see the monaro run though, that always put on a show last time i saw it run.

[SkylineObsession]

I was there from about 5pm onwards.

Saw one car spin on the second last corner.
An EVO on its first lap follow the car on its final lap into the pits before realising, braking and then swerving inbetween the cones that divide the pits/final straight, getting really sideways after getting between them (at speed, without even touching them! - looked so awesome) and then carrying on as if nothing happened.
Also saw the Celica which kept bottoming out at the corner i was at (last corner), on the two last laps there was a shower of sparks.
The white WRX which kept getting the tail out was quite good viewing too.

I thought it started at 5pm, but apparently it started at 3:30pm which would be why i only saw about ten cars racing.

Didn't have to pay to get in though luckily.

[MasCam]

Have got a LOT of photo's of a couple of stages of the rally and will post some up soon.

Anyone got any cars they particularly want to see??

I got most of them apart from the allcomers cars at the end, we had our two year old with us and he was getting a bit to bored by that stage.

Chris.

[Mr Revhead]

cars 1 and 6 please!!

my rally report....

got on the ferry at 3am thursday morning and drove straight to dunedin
started work straight away sortign things we hadnt sorted before leaving.
then at scrutineering they wanted to inspect the turbo on todds car (no6 BYACAR) so dues to space limits we had to tow the car back to the motel and put it back together there. unfortunatly the oil line broke (faulty weld on the fitting) just as it was just about done, so we had to pull it out and go get it welded. lost of other stuff left to do and we finally got it to forbury park with abotu 5 mins to spare.
then it spat all the coolant out faulty fan switch, lucky it didnt overheat the engine and it was sorted.
so day one..... we arrive at lake waihola to find 3 cars parked in our service park.... one was owned by a rally team so got that shifted no problem, but the other 2 were owned by duck hunters.... so out with the jack and shove them out of the way!

first few stages went ok, richard won 1st stage, then 3rd and 2nd. todd dinged the rear left over a 7 crest..... reckoned that was a scary moment as he said if he was in a mitis hed have been in the trees.....

so first service was pretty busy, sorting the damage on BYACAR (btw car 1 richards has the plate EVOETA, quite good i thought) i think therell be some footage of us rushing around on that as there was HEAPS of media there. may even see me trip and fall flat on my face

2nd service was more routine, again recheck the alignment on todds car as he wasnt happy with it.
richard ended up winning day one and todd 7th, so all in all we were very happy.

now todds car had an annoying habit of pulling hard right under throttle
so back the motel we started looking into that.
going over the alignment etc.
the damn thing still pulled right.... at about 8pm the motel staff were starting to get a bit shitty with us making noise..... so rich was on the phone trying to jack up a workshop. alister gilmour (emmas dad) was kind enough to let us use his workshop. so we started on yet another alignment check, wheel base check and looked for stuffed bushes cracks loose bits etc etc.
NOTHING
so we changed drive shafts, and the rear diff.
we even jacked it up locked the diffs marked the tyres and counted the revolutions to make sure all the ratios were correct.
NOTHING
so we gave up at about 11 as alister had to go.
so parked on the road outside the motel after that we start to put new tyres on the cars ready for the first stage of sunday.
then we noticed something...... the left side tyres on todds car were bulged.... as in the tread wasnt flat across the cross section but bulged out like a bike tyre....
the wear marks also showed they didnt wear like that, thats how they were made! so we looked at the new ones and found a lot of the left hand ones were the same!!!
so a frantic search for 8 good ones saw the cars with good tyres and todds car going straight!

so day 2 saw some of us off to waihola, and 2 of the guys off to find a tyre shop to fit some good tyres.

services went as planned, only issue was a horror flap coming off on richards car, no issues from that, youd be suprised how fast a suspension arm can be worn away from gravel......
during the day we found out that several others had the same tyres issues... so dunlop nz will have some explainging to do....

last stage of the day was forbury park. we were second by about 10 secs from chris west. but overall we were 0.1 seconds ahead for the rally win....
so they decided to run rich and chris seperatly as opposed to in pairs like the others. it was pretty intense.... chris set a time 0.2 faster than rich so he took the rally win
however it was timed by stopwatch.... not the same system as used for the stages.....
so we left dunedin tied first in points. but theres a long way to go yet!

[rolla_fxgt]

Well at least it wasnt boring for you guys anyway

Let us know what the outcome of the tyres is, would be interesting to see how they got so bad.
why wasnt the last forbuary stage timed properly?

[Mr Revhead]

i dont know why they timed it like that

but no biggie... its jsut for bragging rights, its the points that matter and that stage wouldnt have been enough for us to win day 2

[Alex B]

Good to meet ya big fella

[Lloyd]

Dont suppose anyone got any pics of the Evo 7 rolling/resting on its roof?

[MasCam]

Hi

MasCam's Wife here, if anyone is interested in looking at some photos of the rally, goto http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~talorza/.

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Enjoy.

Tracy