Saturday, May 2, 2015

UAE Rally Championship R3

Now we're off to Ras Al Khaimah for the 3rd round of this championship, to compete over three gravel stages, each run three times with service halts after each repeat.  Friday morning practice, Friday afternoon stickers and scutineering, back home for a nights kip and then back up to RAK on Saturday morning.

Time for a quick check under the car to make sure nothing important has come undone or fallen off.  Oh dear, the rear diff is weeping.  Not because it's feeling depressed about the caning I'm about to give it, but because several of the ring bolts are loose.  This I can cope with.  Moving forward, I give the exhaust a wiggle and it nearly falls off in my hand.  One of the flange bolts has lost both its nut and locknut, and the other one is completely loose.  A quick scratch around various competitors' toolboxes yields the requisite nuts,but and I'm still doing the business while Sheila attends driver's briefing.  Today we don't have the benefit of a service crew, so we're relying on luck to get us through the day.


The first three stages go pretty well, apart from a slight navigational error, and I feel pretty happy heading back to service.  But on checking the power steering, I find we're used a lot of fluid.  It's leaking out, but I can't find the source.  So I just fill up the reservoir and cross my fingers.

Halfway back towards stage 4, we have no power steering. At all. And no fluid.  So the next six stages are going to be hard work.  In the desert it's doable, but on a tight gravel track?  Hmmm.  But we persevere and get through all remaining six stages somehow - not quick, but, as I have pointed out before, keeping going is the main thing.  I quickly learn that I cannot change gear and steer at the same time.  I have to plan my gear changes where the track is straight, so I can use both arms to heave the Beast round the turns by brute force. My arms are still paying the price.

We end up 7th overall and 3rd in class, and Sheila gets a special trophy for being the only lady finisher. Overall, we are now second in T1 class after 3 of the 6 rounds!  Result!

Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge 2015

The dust has settled on the 2015 25th Anniversary Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.  And what dust there was, blotting out the landscape on Day 5.  But already I’m getting ahead of the story, so let’s start with Day 1.

DAY 1
Everything was going so well. We breezed through PC1, no problems, passed a few cars, and didn’t get passed by anyone.  But just 600m before rejoining Deadcoach Gatch, it all went horribly wrong.  The steering became heavy and almost immediately the engine temperature began to climb.  ‘That’, I said to myself, ‘will be a serpentine belt failure.  How fortunate am I that I have a spare 6PK2040 in the ‘get-out-of-jail’ bag’.  But it wasn’t the belt that had failed.  It was the power steering pump pulley, which was hanging on by the last of its 6 spokes, the remaining 5 having broken for no apparent reason.  And a spare pulley isn’t something you expect to need.  What to do?

With nothing to hold the serpentine belt on, the water pump won’t work, and neither will the alternator.  But the oil pump will, as will the fans – until the battery gives up.  So after the engine had cooled, I made a bid for freedom with only oil cooling – and escaped onto the gatch.  We short-cut the next section by heading south on the gatch, running in 5th gear, 1500rpm, 2WD and watching the temperature gauges all the time.  By the time we reached PC2 and service, panic had already set in, and the service crew had disappeared!  Fortunately help was at hand, in the friendly shape of a non-team member (no names, no pack drill), who kindly agreed to tow us to the finish on the highway.  (Which of course is technically illegal, but only if you get caught – which we didn’t.)  But to score a finish we had to drive the correct way through the speed control and finish zone, which did rather put a strain on the temperature gauge.  But we made it, and rejoined the road where the service truck was waiting to tow us the last few km to the bivouac.

By now, half the service crew were back in Abu Dhabi, trying to pick up the trailer (locked – and no key) and to find a new power steering pump (no joy, but they’ve got one in Sharjah.)  SHARJAH???  That’s a long way from Abu Dhabi, especially in the rush hour, and they shut at 1930hrs.  But our resourceful hero (Rick) and heroine (Kate) managed to sweet-talk the nice people at Liberty Autos in taking parts home with them when they shut, so early the next morning (I kid you not) they arrived back at the bivvy with a new pump, pulley and belt.  However – events had overtaken them.

Robbie, Saluki Motorsports’ fabricator, can weld anything.  Richard had a TIG welding set.  But Robbie was deep in the desert, with the Saluki team trying (unsuccessfully) to recover their Predator.  Then Streaky mentioned that Powertec had a good welder, and Ivan was kind enough to lend him to us.  Richard cut reinforcement sections for the pulley and prepped everything, and the welder welded it back together.  And it was good.  So good that it lasted the rest of the rally.  This was truly bush engineering at its finest.


We’d missed a load of waypoints and picked up 10 hours of penalties, but at least we were ready for the start of Day 2 – even if 42nd overall isn’t much to brag about.

DAY 2
The second day was a run west from the MZ road to Ghayathi Road, then a couple of diversions to the west of Ghayathi Road ending up at Arada before heading south of the crescent to Moreeb.  After half an hour I decided that the engine would have an easier time of it if I aired down a bit, so I lost 4 minutes doing that – which is less than I’d lose if we got stuck.  After overtaking Emil, I then made a beginner’s mistake and got cross-axles on top of a dune – fortunately within sight of the sweep team, so that was quickly resolved.  The back end of the day featured some technical climbs south of the crescent, and overall not a bad day.  27th on the day could have been a lot better without the stops, but 37th overall is some improvement.  Local hero Yahya Bel Hilli distinguished himself by putting his pickup on its roof within sight of the start, and shortly after Raptor 227 crewed by a Slovakian couple very sadly burnt to a crisp due to a fuel leak.
A marshal leaps into action at passage control

Several of the front hub nuts had come loose, and were in fact the wrong thread – which damaged the thread on the studs.  This must have happened when Mebar rebuilt the axle.   Fortunately we have spare studs (much to Richard’s surprise!) and nuts, so it’s not a disaster.

DAY 3
I don’t have happy memories of Day 3.  We started off by getting stuck on a very innocuous dune heading from the bivouac towards Moreeb, and narrowly avoiding a collision with the car I’d just overtaken.  Then we ended up in a huge bowl just before Moreeb where three cars were already trying to extricate themselves.  We got out of that by taking an alternative route, which ended in a Patrol-sized hole.  Getting out of that involved digging, sand ladders, letting the tyres down to 8 psi, and an inordinate amount of bad language.  Then of course more time to re-inflate the tyres and load up 3 of the 4 Maxtrax  - the 4th having disappeared into the sand.  By this timewe were flat last, be fore we’d even reached the first PC.  It was some time later when I realized that 4WD probably hadn’t  fully engaged, which was why we were suffering so much.  At some point I was persuaded to be the Good Samaritan by stopping for a biker, thereby getting hopelessly stuck for a very long time, thus proving the old adage the ‘a good turn seldom goes unpunished’.  Only after PC2 – back at the bivvy – did our day improve and the rest of the stage went off rather well.  But not well enough to reach Page 1 of the results – 32nd on the day, 30th overall.  Which only proves that if you keep finishing every day, your position will improve – if only due to attrition.

Under the car, Richard finds that the bush on one of the rear control arms has disintegrated.  Once again, I’m able to surprise him by having a spare control arm in one of the boxes, so another disaster is averted.
 
The bivouac: Jason lifts something heavy

 Looking for sponsorship from Oztrail!

DAY 4
Day 4 is almost a re-run of Day 2 – starting from the MZ Road heading west to Ghyathi Road, continuing west and then south to Arada before crossing the crescent road and looping back to Hameem.  We got stuck trying to avoid a climb where another vehicle was already stuck, and Yasser Saidan (215) was nice enough to give us a tow out.  West of Ghyathi we encounter a chaotic dune area with various cars stuck, and I spot an exit route.  Just before reaching the edge of a small dune, I spot the roof of a car beyond the crest, and revise my route to avoid it.  As I go over the crest, I find that there is another car in front of the one I saw, which it is now too late to avoid.  My front wing and headlight take the brunt of the impact.   It turns out that Yasser was in the process of recovering Hamad Al Thani’s Patrol, so he transfers the tow strap to my car, gets out of the way, and leaves me to recover Hamad.  
Impact imminent: Yasser's co-driver realises he's about to get run over..
At PC2 service I stop for oil (we’ve been using a lot) and head into the dunes beyond.  Then I make the worst mistake of the day, bailing out of the dunes to find an easier route, even if it means missing a waypoint or two.  But my route leads me into even more trouble, and soon we are totally stuck.  Several attempts with the jack and sandladders fail to improve the situation because now we’ve lost 4WD.  Finally the cavalry arrive in the shape of Al Shanfari’s massive International MXT truck.  Mark Powell has persuaded him to detour from his mission to recover the other Predator to help us out.  The sweep team arrive and escort us back to the road, and we decide to try ‘stamp collecting’ at PC3 and the finish.  PC3 give us the stamp – after a lengthy detour to Khis quarry – but by the time we reach Finish, the team has packed up for the day.  However our tracking proves we were there within limit time, so we ‘only’ get penalized 8hrs 30mins for missed waypoints. 

Work starts on the Beast that evening to find out why we no longer have drive to the front axle. I suspect the transfer box, but when we get the car up in the air, the front propshaft is rotating.  It turns out one front half-shaft has broken, but fortunately Emil has brought one with him in our sale-or-return stock. Then we need a couple of oil seals which Technosport trade with us for a couple of beers, and some 75/140 oil for the diff which costs us a few more beers.  It’s just as well that we brought a couple of cases of bivouac currency with us.
Richard flying the flag

But all this good work is in vain, because Day 5 dawns under a real sandstorm.  With no hope of getting helicopters airborne, the day is abandoned and we trek back to Yas on the tarmac, to put our vehicles in parc ferme for finish scrutineering.  But this is where the real drama begins.  Nasser Al Attiyeh in Mini 202 has led from start to finish, but the scrutineers pick up on the fact that his suspension travel is outside the permitted 250mm.  Despite the fact that the extra mm confers no advantage, and is due to damage sustained in the event, he is disqualified.  His protest will be heard by the Court of Appeal at a later date, so watch this space.  But for now he’s out, and that leaves us finally 24th overall.  48 cars were on the start list, and 34 finished.
 
Day 5 sandstorm

Rick, Jason, Richard, Ian, Sheila and Kate

Medals all round

So, how do we rate our performance?  Was our glass half full or half empty? Well, after a totally unpredictable failure on Day 1 we were always going to be amongst the also-rans.  Penalties of multiple hours start around 18th place, so even if we’d been perfect from day 2 onward, 18th would have been the best we could hope for.  But at least we kept in the event, technically completing each day, and there are 24 competitors who did worse than us.  I was disappointed, but maybe I expect too much.

But the highlight was the spectacular performance of the team behind us – Richard, Rick, Jason and Kate.  Having three mechanics on the job divided the workload, and most nights they even got to sleep as well. Jason’s electrical expertise saved us from a potential fan relay failure, which could have ended our chances.  Richard’s enormous inventory of tools and equipment kept us in the race after day 1.  Rick’s ‘give-us-a-spanner-I-can-do-that’ attitude kept everything moving.  Kate flashed her credit card when it was needed most, and made sure everyone ate and drank enough.  Sheila didn’t put a foot wrong in the navigational department, and endured my frequent profanity and general ungentlemanly behavior without complaint.  All in all, it was a real team effort.


And next year, we’ll do it all again.