Rally New York 2008 Photos

[matt]

I went just on Saturday, ran into Greg, who worked the same stage I did at Black River Stages and managed to hang out with him, his girlfriend Tara and daughter Bailey. They were fun to trudge through the woods with and even were up to fjord (sp?) some streams.

Here is a link to a bunch of pics.
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/aer ... Oct%202008

I took ALOT of pictures, and by ALOT I mean about 2600. Gotta love that continuous shutter action!

I told Greg to check out our site, he's an aspiring hillclimber in western PA (very close to Wellsboro and STPR). That is all for now.

[matt]

Mk2 escort gettin' a bit sideways at the start of the stage


wrx's back end getting a little out of hand


splashin' at the super special stage




more mk2 escort sideways shenanigans


fwd understeer


rwd throttle-steer


Burke flatout passed some spectators


Sad day for the Quattrohaus focus - don't know much except it apparently ended up in the ditch.


and the best photo of the day, ruined by some dude's head

[DeLorean]

Great pics.

So Geoff, how did Bruce DNF? He said it was a bent axle on special stages, but I did not get a chance to chat with him, so I didn't get the details.

[Geoff]

We were going down the Mortimer Schiff road - the third pass though. The road is relatively smooth for the first 1/3 of the stage and then gets really rough. The road consists of clay which was wet due to the snow melt and had gotten really greasy after the cars has gone through the stage 3 times. We were the 000 car so we weren't going all that fast. We came around a corner about 1/3 of the way into the stage and the rear end got loose in the slippery clay. Bruce counter steered and we felt a small 'bump!' and the car went straight again. Then the steering wheel was off by about 45° and the car was crab walking down the road. We had to creep though the stage because the car was tough to handle. We went to the service area and found that the left rear wheel had about 1° positive camber, a few degrees toe out, was about 1" further towards the back of the car, and was about 1" closer to the center of the car than the right side. We put it up on a lift but there really wasn't anything we could do to bend it back. Those rear axles are really strong and it just happened that all the forces were perfectly concentrated to put that kind of a bend in it. We think there was a rock buried in the clay somwhere because we didn't see much of anything in the road.

The car made left turns fine but right turns only took a slight turn of the wheel. Going straight the car wanted to sway back and forth. The rear axle was basically steering the car. No body damage though, just sort of a fluke that we damaged the axle.