News from STPR

[GRMPer]

Luke is here and has gotten the car running right to join us for the second regional.
We made it through first day. Smacked up skidplate and broke a rear shock on first stage...it was a bit rough. Luke found us a new shock (Gabriel...that's like DMS, right?) about 30 miles from here and we should be back to 4 shocks tomorrow morning.

[DeLorean]

Per you should have heard the crowd during the special stages, they all loved that 99. It looks like you have gotten it pretty well sorted out, can't wait to see it again! I still owe you a beer next rally.

Luke, I hope you get everything sorted out with the new rally car soon, I look forward to seeing it in action again.

[Crazyswede]

just pulled this off the rally-america website:

Car 699 Sorenson/Jenny have rolled. They have no comment at this time.
this must have been on SS7

[paulh]

just pulled this off the rally-america website:

Car 699 Sorenson/Jenny have rolled. They have no comment at this time.
this must have been on SS7

that is accurate, everybody is fine though, I'll let Luke give the details.

Paul

[The Josh]

Had a great weekend at STPR!

We arrived at about 2:30 AM thursday night/friday morning and we all slept in our respective vans at the fair grounds. We spent all of friday getting the car ready, barely making it through tech, and getting the car in great working order.

Saturday morning we talked to the Rally America stewards and they let us start at the beginning of the day instead of waiting for the official start of the second rally which wasnt until 4:30. Since our scoring was off due to not rallying the first 3 stages, we agreed to start from the rear of the pack and work our way up.

Park expose was nice, we got to park next to Per, I think Max got some pictures of us at the start.

The first stage of the day, stage 4 was transited because Pastrana rolled his car rather violently and it apparently caught fire. Luke and I used this as a practice run for me to read the stage notes for him, which was a good teaching aid.

Before we knew it, it was time for stage 5 and we were all strapped in and ready to go! Stage 5 went really well and we were FLYING! I picked up the co-drivers rather quickly and found myself strangely comfortable with soaring through the forest roads. The car was running and handling BEAUTIFULLY and we were sliding the car wonderfully through every turn. We passed two cars on our debut.

At the end of our First stage, on our first run in the car, with a first time co-driver, we beat the 2nd place group 5 car by 56 seconds, and set a respectable stage record for the new stage in group 5.

It was a quick transit to stage 6 and we were off into the woods once again. Things went just as well and the car was performing very well. We passed another car on this stage, and caught a second as the stage came to a close, unable to find a place to squeeze by. Again, we beat our closest opposition by 57 seconds, showing a strong Saab force. After going through our rally computer data, it read that we hit a top speed of 94 MPH, which was rather intense.

Stage 7, titled, Bear was the same as stage 6, but in reverse. We Got off to a strong start in this stage and our quick pace continued. This stage (as well as stage 6) was filled with a lot of high speed sections, and quite a bit of off camber turns, some that even had very high cliffs too close for comfort.

As we came into the 9th of 12 miles in this stage the trouble began. Coming out of a series of 5 and 6 rated turns we were traveling with great momentum. As the turns quickly became 3's and 4's things were well under control. On a routine Right 3 or 4, we were tracking out and we tagged the left rear of the car on a high bank with a firm thud. We hit directly on the rear wheel area which we later discovered folded the pan-hard rod mount. I kept reading in the notes as Luke commented the handling had changed. I called a left 3 into a right 2 and the fun began. With many variables at hand such as our recent mis-alignment and the lack of fine tuning our brake bias, we got our rear end a bit loose under braking approaching our left 3. We started sliding towards the left side of the road where a steep embankment awaited us. Our front left wheel climbed the bank and it instantly sent the car airborne. Before we knew it, we had gone on our side, hitting the top of the passenger A-pillar, getting airborne again long enough to not leave a mark on our roof scoop, and we landed on the drivers a-pillar and front left, before landing back on our wheels as graceful as could be. Amidst our acrobatics I saw the front windshield depart sadly, realizing we needed that in order to continue competing. The side window on my side shattered, cutting my right hand superficially in a few spots. The cage held of fantastically, not showing any sides of being compromised. With what appeared to have been the most delicate roll in history, the car will surely be salvaged.

In about 1.5 seconds after our trouble began, we were back on 4 wheels again, rolling forward. Since the engine never turned off, Luke merely put the car in gear and off we went. We got endless praise from the fans who conveniently occupied the spectator area we just barrel rolled through. We we about 1/4 mile until there was a spot to pull of and then we shut the car down, and began emergency protocol. With such a non-violent occurrence Luke and I were 99% unscathed. We looked at each other in disbelief, completely astounded that we were upside only moments ago.

We waited for sweep and then decided to continue driving the car 15 miles back to service, instead of waiting for a tow. We arrived to Germania where our crew greeted us. We eventually got the car loaded up and made our way back to the hotel.

We all felt a little glum with the roll, as of all of the work it would require, but the car drove perfectly straight and did not leak any fluids on its ride back to service. It will take some time and money but it will be back in no time.

Once we were all situated, we loaded 14 people, and one dog in one of the finest Vanagon's known to man and headed back to the fairgrounds to watch the last stage. With combined intoxicated humor from Matt Joseph and myself, everyone singing Sweeeeeet Carolineeee (bah bah bah), and Buzz warning us of possums, we all found ourselves to strongly salvage the weekend.

Thanks to everyone who came and supported us and helped out, aside of the roll-over the weekend was a strong success. Although there is now remedial work to be done on the worlds best Saab, it proved to be heavily competent from the start and it wont be long until its back in action.

That is all for now, pictures will come online as they become available. Thanks again to everyones help and support!

[max]

Edit- I'm going to move this to Team News.

I'll post up the pics I got at the start. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of you guys on the course, since STPR is such a bitch for service crews to spectate at, and we didn't get to see any of the rally.

Anyways, even though we didn't complete the rally due to the above incident, we still all had fun. Hopefully Luke had fun too in spite of the crash. We're all sad for Luke being that the car was literally just finished, and we know how much work has gone into all this. He'll have his hands full, but we're all going to give him any help we can. That being said, if anyone on the forum has a 99 roof and doors they'd like to donate to a worthy cause, speak up. Sorry, it's not tax deductible.

[Luke]

Thanks Josh for the write-up, you did a really good job describing the day. We are both ok, just a little shaken up. Considering the intensity of the roll the car survived the impact very well and protected us as intended. I think we were both pretty happy to have the head bolstered seats and hans devices afterwards.

Like Josh commented, on the stages that we did complete we were leading the other cars in our class by nearly a minute per stage. So and least we were fast AND rolled, as opposed to being slow AND rolling...

I didnt feel like we were pushing that hard and the car was handling beautifully with the new suspension setup. It was a combination of a lot of factors including the surface change to greasy wet clay that caught us off guard as we went down into the shaded valley where the roll occured.

I'm going to take a few days off to recover from the post event burnout, but then the work will begin to repair the car.


So, without further adue, I have what I know all you rubbernecking gapers want to see.
















This is the light hit to the bank on the R4- that broke the panhard mount and set the stage for the whole incident:

[max]

It really is amazing how clean that roll was. I was just describing to my boss how the roof had almost no damage on it, and how you guys landed on the wheels and kept going. He was like "get outta here... no way!".


Then again this is a guy who said to me just last week, when I describe how nuts rally is- "Well I dunno, I've been known to drive pretty recklessly myself..."

[SaabRoomie85W]

A sincere thanks to Josh for the very eloquent description of the weekend. It was and is indeed the world's most beautiful SAAB - and listening to it run on Friday after a full day of trouble-shooting was to feel the car's vast potential.

[airsweden]

I have a have a straight 99 2 dr roof, might even deliver if greeted with icecream.

JT

[Geoff]

That'll buff out.

Sorry to hear about the roll but it's good news that you're both alright. You have now changed what type of rally driver you are, "those that have."

Is the damage to the roof significant enough that you need to replace it? It almost looks like you could get it straightened, mud it, and save yourself the work of replacing the roof. Maybe you could graft the front of a 900 roof on? Or is it all tweaked? That said I have a loose 99 roof that already has stage miles on it but its 300+ miles away. Wow, Snake's offer looks pretty good.

[Geoff]

so... what ended up fixing the running issues?

[Jordan]

so... what ended up fixing the running issues?

After playing around with fuel programs for hours we found a few suspect hoses and swapped the ECU. The car ran beautifully.

I think Per has some shots of the car before the roll, I hope he will post those up somewhere. The whole weekend was quite a roller coaster of stress and side-splitting laughter. The car IS (no past tense required) still quite glorious albeit in need of a few stitches (maybe like The Josh's head in an unrelated incident). The integrity of the car after such a violent attack speaks volumes of the intelligence and engineering that has gone into it and that is something Luke and all those who contributed can be very proud of.

[max]

Yeah, I think The Josh's "accident" was more violent and dangerous than the roll.

[Luke]

so... what ended up fixing the running issues?

We swapped the ECU, I think the coil packs on the other ECU were faulty and providing a weak spark under high load conditions.

The roof is a close call... The worst part by far is on the co-driver side. The a-pillar is tweaked a bit into the cage, but i think could be pulled back out by someone that new what they were doing... on the other hand I could probably graft a new roof on myself... so hard to say what is the better way of doing it. I'm going to take some photos to some local shops and get an idea of what it will cost. I feel confident I can repair the fenders myself (both and very bent, but drivers side is worse and needs the inner liner replaced as well.