Roshambo Racing!

Introducing.... www.roshamboracing.com.  This is the new place to keep track of Dan and Doug and rally racing.

Olympus Results

The Olympus Rally was April 24-25.  The rally was based in Ocean Shores, Washington.

This rally was a Rally America National Championship event, so there were teams there from around the country and Canada.  The fastest cars were there, including Travis Pastrana, Ken Block, Antoine L'Estage, and Patrick Richard.

Luckily, those fast guys were competing in the National rally, while we entered in the regional rally.  Our new car is fantastic, but still worth 25% what those cars are worth.  One cool thing about national rallies is that they offer "stage notes" which describe ever turn in the rally, and this rally also included recce, which gave us a chance to see all the stages in advance.

Dan drove on Saturday.  This was his first time driving the rally car in competition, after having driven the car maybe 10 total miles before that.  His goal was very simple:  Finish the rally and learn the car.  He drove slowly for the first few stages.  His goal to finish was challenged by some really rough twisty, and sloppy first few stages.  Dan did very, very well for his first time in the car.  After 64 stage miles, he finished 4th in Open class, and 10th overall in the Regional rally.  He tried left-foot braking a little bit, and got used to the traction of the new car.  He said that he felt like it was much more stable in all conditions than our old car.

Despite Dan's moderate pace, I got carsick during the 4th stage, Crane Creek.  This stage was very, very twisty and rough.  I never barfed, but it was close.  For the last three stages, Terry Hanson kindly agreed to navigate for Dan.  Terry normally navigates for his son, Travis, but they had crashed out of the rally earlier in the day.

There were no problems with the car all day and the most that our crew did was fuel the car and check fluids.


On Sunday, I drove.  The stages on Sunday were ones that I'd just driven at the Doo Wops rally in March, so I felt very comfortable on them.  We pushed on a at a moderate pace while I continued to learn the car, get more comfortable with left-foot braking, and learn to listen to the stage notes.  In the end, we finished 4th in Open Class and 5th overall in the Regional.  We were just 8 seconds behind 4th place.


We were joined by a crew from RalliTEK, who helped service the car and took lots of video over the weekend.  HUGE THANKS to RalliTEK for their support of our efforts. 

We also were joined by Bill Kostich, Bryce Nash, and Jessica Sutton in the service area.


Here are some pictures and video from the race:

This one is one the first stage, Wreck Creek.  Cool view of the ocean in the background.

Here's what we saw rounding a corner at the very beginning of the first stage: Two cars crashed.  Luckily, we didn't join them!

Here's Dan negotiating a mud pit.  I think this is the Crane Creek stage.

Here's Doug on the Brooklyn Stage.

Here's another awesome video put together by Sean Sexton of RalliTEK:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RalliTEK2008#p/a/u/0/PEqnBCh0BHU


Our next race is the Oregon Trail Rally, April 15-17.  The rally is based in Portland, but has stages as far away as The Dalles and Dufur, in the Columbia River Gorge.  Hope to see you there.

Mt. Hood on the hood

Here's the car with the new graphics on the hood.  It looks great!

Almost ready for Olympus!

A few more details... And the Olympus Driving Order

We've been plugging a way at some smaller details since Doo Wops.  Here, the gauge panel is finally done. 

We also got both radiator fans working.  We were thinking that one of the fans only ran with the A/C, which isn't installed in our car.  So, we figured that one fan wouldn't work- and that's how we ran Doo Wops.  But in fact, both fans run as long as all the relays and fuses are plugged in.


Dan has been working on adding some grating to the front of the car, to protect the radiator from rocks and sticks.  Dan has also finally solved the puzzle to allow us to hook up the oil pressure sensor.  That should be done soon.

The car gets some more RalliTek vinyl tomorrow!  It will get Mt. Hood on the hood of the car.  Now it will be even harder to discern from Mark Mager's car.  But we have black wheels and he has gold.  So that helps.

Dan got to choose if he'd drive first or second at Olympus.  Day 1 has 75 miles or so.  Day 2 has only 38 miles or so, but the Day 2 roads are somewhat preferred because they're more smooth and flowing. 

Dan chose Day 1.

We're going to do the recce at Olympus, which means we get to drive the roads once in advance of the rally.  We're also running the Jemba notes, which detail every single corner on the road.  This is different from "route book" that we usually use- which only shows the most dangerous corners. This should be fun!

Olympus is April 24-25 and is based in Ocean Shores, Washington.

Doo Wops Video - In Car

Here's some in-car video that I mixed together.  Some forward facing video, and some facing Paul and I.  This is from the Smith Creek Stage.

Terrific video from Doo Wops

Here's a really good video put together by Sean Sexton from RalliTEK.  It features both our car and Mark Mager's...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spius5nDiM4

Cool Doo Wop Photo

This one is from Matt Young at WorldRallySport.com

First rally, Finished! Doo Wops was great.

The first rally in the new car was this past weekend. The Doo Wops Rally, in Aberdeen, Washington.

The rally went FANTASTICALLY.

The only down side was that Dan couldn't make it.

However, at Dan's insistence, I took the car and shook it down along side longtime rallier Paul Eklund, who navigated for the event. Paul filled in at the last minute, also after having provided lots of advice on the build of the car, and providing many parts through his Primitive Enterprises.

Our goal for the weekend was modest: Finish the rally.

We set the car up for the minimum turbo boost on Saturday and I set out learning how to drive a turbo all wheel drive car. The first stage was tarmac- a good thing because it's more predictable than gravel. Then we moved to a couple of gravel stages. Our stage times were upper third. On the last two stages, which were 80% tarmac, we set top 5 times. On the Saturday rally, we finished 4th overall, out of 28 entrants.

On Saturday night, we washed the car and put some fuel in it. It's nice to have a car that's perfect, especially on the first rally. And this just shows how excellent the work was that all of our supporters did.

Sundays stages had more gravel. I learned a lot about using my left foot to brake- A common technique for making the car turn better on loose surfaces. We did turn the boost up one notch, and the car's power really was surprising. The first two stages were very marbly, and my confidence was still not high enough to be very fast. As the day progressed, we got faster. In the end, we finished 6th overall, behind some very formidable competitors.

Here are some links to some photos, videos, and results. Also keep an eye on the blog for more media as it becomes available.

Video by Doug Powell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afTGK_Myzr4


Video by Mike Schmeling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA6q8yIW2KQ 



Some good photos:

Here's the car at Parc Expose...

Here's our car parked next to the other RalliTEK car owned by Mark Mager. Mark's wing is cooler than ours.
Here's an awesome photo taken by Timm Von Derau on the Palix Stage...

Paul is way better at spraying champagne than I am...
Here's the whole 2010 Doo Wops team: Nicole Carrick, Sean Sexton, Bill Kostich, Paul Ekund, Doug Heredos, Doug Powell, Patrick Carrick...

Saturday Results
Sunday Results

Our next rally is the Olympus Rally, April 24-25. Hope to see you there!

Doug

Details...

Here are some progress photos. Lots of little details getting wrapped up now. Well... they appear "little", but each little detail represents a fair bit of time. Fun stuff, though.

Here are the door cards that Dan fabbed. Awesome work. they look factory. Well, the top part is factory, but the bottom part is custom, to clear the roll cage.


Rally intercom mounted... Actually in a place where we can reach the controls (right between the seats). In the old rally car, one had to perform Chinese contortionist moves to change the volume...

Spare tire mount, along with a fire bottle and first aid kit...


Tool bag mounted just behind the seats (left) and warning triangles, tow rope, and spill kit (right)

Flappies and Brakies - Steady Progress

This Saturday and Sunday were long work days. Thankfully, we had good help from Bill, Ian, and Doug P.

Here some of what is now done...
We have new Hawk brake pads and dba front rotors installed.
We have good mud flaps.
We have working gauges. Just need RalliTek to hook up the senders for us.
We have properly adjusted seats and harnesses.
We have a Terratrip mount.
We have a mounted Terraphone intercom.
We have a nicely waxed car.
We have some of the decals on the car.
We have door panels.

We still have lots to do. In particular, the rally computer is being an issue. The transmission came with some random, non-stock wires sticking out of it. However, the don't seem to drive the stock speedometer or the Terratrip, so we need to install another probe somewhere to get the rally computer working.

We also have to mount/tie down lots of stuff inside the car like tool bag, spill kit, triangles, etc etc...

Here are some photos from the last couple of days...

Doug Powell, lightening the shift boot bracket.

Mud flap. Nice work by Dan...

Ian working on the brakes. Ian does nice work. He also brought a cool dog named Zach.

dba rotor, The new Hawk pads are hard to see in this photo....

Joy took this. Apparently this is my best side...

Dan, painting the rear doors white...

It really looks like a rally car now...

Big work day today

Today, we were joined by Gabe and Joe at Gabe's work. They have an AWESOME shop there, including a lift and every machine tool you can imagine. Gabe was kind enough to invite us to work on the underbody protection there. Having the lift made things almost easy.

Dan did an excellent job in selecting the materials for this project. Square tubing, HDPE sheeting, and VHMW sheeting were all used along with some nifty floating nut plates to hold everything together. This stuff will be very strong and easily serviced.

Pix here:

In this picture, you can see some of the new graphics on the car- More on those later when I have a better photo.


Here's Joe hoisting the 100 pound wire wheel...


Gabe pulls up the gas tank skidplate using "Load rated" zip ties. I would think that all zip ties are load rated.... just some are rated much lower than others.


Doug doesn't just take photos... seen here using the lightweight wire wheel--- Joe sneering at me for not using the big one.

Trailing arm protection... These rivets could hold up an Abrams tank.

Almost done. Dan's pleased.


Pretty much the finished product... Need add a few more fasteners...


Almost ready to rally!!

Cardboard Mudflaps and Roshambo

After a couple of beers, it was time to decide who would be driving the car on which days of Doo Wops. Usually, you want to drive on the first day- just to make sure you get a chance. If something breaks, the car might not be ready to go on day 2. But at Doo Wops, the roads on the 2nd day are so much better than day 1, that you generally want to drive on day 2 if possible.

The plan was to do a best of 7 rock-paper-scissors match, with the winner deciding which day he'd drive.

It went like this:

Round Doug Dan
1 Paper Scissors
2 Paper Scissors
3 Rock Paper
4 Scissors Rock

So, Dan took it with a clean sweep and decided to drive on Day 2. Not so bad for either of us, really.

Dan spent the night planning our mudflaps. These cardboard templates are the result.

I spent the night finishing the mounting of the gauge and switch panel. Now that this is done, it's time to start running wires to all the stuff.

This car looks mean

Tonight, we fit the new wheels and tires. No problems. The black wheels make the car look mean.



Dan installed the Primitive skidplate. Look closely, and you can see that Paul applied a "Roll Me Over" sticker to the bottom the skidplate. Very funny.


I made a little progress on the gauge panel. Tomorrow, I'm buying a 2" hole saw. Using a jigsaw and file for the round holes is a huge pain in the ass.

Mounted Tires and Gauge planning

This weekend, we had our tires mounted. Scott Huhn of Black Sun Racing Services mounted up a couple sets of Hankook rally tires on Team Dynamics rally wheels. These tires, with their stiff sidewalls, and these particular wheels are VERY difficult to mount. Scott worked his butt off.

Today, I spent some time planning our gauges and switches. The wiring in the car is still a disaster, with all of the stock stuff laying around, mostly not connected to anything (since we removed so much stuff).

My plan is to use the large space on the dash where the radio and heater controls once were.

The first step is to cut out a piece of aluminum in the right shape... which is usually accomplished by cutting out a piece of paper or cardboard in the right shape, too... In this case, I did both before cutting the metal. A nice rubberized edge piece (Thanks, Gabe!) hides the ugly edges...



It's a great fit. I had to put one bend in it, and I nailed it the very first time... Not bad for a press brake made up of clamps and 2x4's...



The next step is to figure out where everything goes. We have 3 gauges, and 15 switches to mount. Here's my first pass...



Next step will be to carefully drill holes for everything, sand and paint the panel, and then begin wiring. That's going to be the fun part! And a huge pain at the same time...

Dyno Day!

Today, the rally car made a visit to the dyno at Surgeline Tuning. Dyno day is exciting, but can still come with a little anxiety. Did we remember to bring everything we need? Is everything assembled OK? Will this new, barely broken-in motor just explode when revved to redline?

Sean from RalliTek joined us there to team up with Tim Bailey of Surgeline to do the tweaking. Our car uses a Cobb Accessport which is pretty much the standard for Subaru tuners.

The very professional techs at Surgeline strapped the car to the dyno, and Sean and Tim sequestered themselves in the car, armed with laptops.

At first, there was some anxiety- The car only wanted to make 10 pounds of boost at high RPM's. Not good. But then, everyone remembered that the car is fitted with the required-by-rule 34mm turbo restrictor. Ouch. But to Tim and Sean, this just represented another element of challenge. In no time, the proper tweaks were made, and the car was turning out really solid numbers.

Some video of the very first pull:


The final results on E85 fuel:
240 hp at 4000 rpm

and

328 ft-lbs of torque at 3800 rpm.

Dyno Chart:

Surgeline has a really cool site that stores dyno results. You can see the results from you car and many others. Ours is here.

The results are just about what we expected. The turbo restrictor does its job- which is to keep power down so cars don't go too fast.

We owe huge thanks to Sean Sexton from RalliTek and Tim Bailey from Surgeline for the excellent service today. These guys really know how to tune Subarus.

Now, it's time to start prepping the car for the first rally: Doo Wops. We need to wrap up all electrical stuff- gauges, switches for all the rally accessories, and install some serious underbody protection.