Well, the guys from Vesuvio racing provided a shop with an engine hoist and a lift. It rained cats and dogs and would have been impossible to do outside.

We toasted a front shock so we quickly swapped it out for a spare. And had a bad plug wire causing a misfire. In spite of all this carnage, we finished.

2nd in grp 5 for the first rally and mid pack overall for regional....decent considering we had boost issues and 1 gear. looks like 2nd in class again for second rally...both times loosing out to healy by 20 or so seconds

It was indeed an event... I am fairly amazed we got the trans done as quickly as we did. Every member of the crew was "task oriented" when we needed to be and worked great together. Between getting the motor out, taking everything apart and putting it back together it all went very smoothly, fairly quickly and relatively easily. Changing a 99/900 trans in the field with a good group of people is entirely doable. The timed services were fantastic too, everything got what needed to be done, on time and we even successfully tracked down several "bugs" we'll call em. Center nuts loosening up as well as that bad ignition wire causing the bad misfire/ no boost issue were a couple. By the super special stage, I think it was running/driving just about perfect?

Also, I'm glad that trans worked out. It was one of 5 that had been sitting in the basement of my "ski chalet" for about 3 years... Back when I pulled it, there must have been some reason I figured it was good! Typically before I pull a trans at the yard, I have to know it was under 100K, I pull the side cover off and "go fishing" with the magnetic tool to make sure there are no metal hunks and observe the condition of the reverse gear idler. If all that is good, 90% chance it's a pretty good trans to just install and run, at minimum an excellent unit to rebuild. Thankfully, that method worked in this case :)

Sorry we had to take off so soon after the super special stage, but we were beat and need to get to an air show today!

Day 1, stage 1 or 3 not sure.



Day 2, Stage 6 I think. This corner saw a car roll in the exact same spot on both 6 and 9 and we had to scrub a lot of speed coming through there.



Stage 9

Friday superspecial....3rd gear only.

A very very scary crash. Both driver and codriver survived with concussions and related symptoms.

Stage 14:

http://youtu.be/jrFZSFW6ZbM?t=5m32s

First roll over on this corner
http://youtu.be/5GuAMqE3FGc

Second rollover on same corner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9C3KlOb ... ure=relmfu

first stage pre gearbox detonation:
http://youtu.be/chhsBf-7mu8?t=7m10s

Getting out of bed this morning was a bigger accomplishment than the trans swap.

SwedeSport wrote:Getting out of bed this morning was a bigger accomplishment than the trans swap.

I concur. Spent about 9 hours in the van yesterday.

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for the unbelievable effort that went into finishing this event.

Jason, Nick, Jeff, Paul and Jared all worked seemingly non-stop to keep us on the stages.

I also want to thank out sponsors for the weekend, eastbilt.com, rallyfanusa.com and Dynamite auto in wellsboro, Pa.

The first snafu of the rally started friday morning with a tech inspector deciding that the angle of one side of our seat belts was not suitable (even though the same inspector had signed the log book on the car multiple times before)

The crew quickly rounded up a welder, found a power source and welded a new lap belt mount onto seth's side of the car.

As mentioned earlier, the first stage was a very rough and technical road with lots of 2nd gear hairpins, and about 3/4 of the way through the stage, 2nd gear decided it had had enough. At first we were able to shift around it a little bit, but as the gear chunks were pulvarized into smaller and smaller pieces, they began to jam up the syncros and forks.
We made it out onto transit and Seth and i started talking about the options, for a while to considered going back to town and calling it a weekend. We were able to get a text out to the crew to let them know of the issue, Then as we appoached the fork in the road where we would need to turn to go to the next stage - Seth pointed out "well the next stage is only 3 miles and the car is still moving..." I yanked the wheel toward the stage and said "well, lets see how far we can get".
The next stage went fairly well, but by the end of the stage the transmission had become completely locked into 3rd gear.
By this point we had made the decision that we were going to see how far we could go... We sent anothet text out to the crew, and got a reply that they were making plans to aquire a gearbox and a place to do the work!
The next stage was completed using one method - momentum. With good note reading and full commitment to slower sections, the car was able to power though the incredibly tight stage in 3rd gear only, finishing mid pack overall on the stage!

By the time we arrived back at service after completing the stages in 3rd gear - Paul and Jeff had taken off in the 99T to go and fetch a spare gearbox they had a few hours away. Meanwhile Jason, Nick and Jared has already made some phone calls to local mechanic to see if there was the possibility of utilizing some space fovernight for the swap. While the crew continued to make plans, Seth and I navigated through 2 runs of the super special stage.

After the super special was completed we got the car on the trailer, as soon as the car was on the trailer the sky went dark and it started downpouring. Seth and I ordered some pizza's and went to pickup supplies for the swap as the crew made final arrangment (begging) to get a dry place to work.