1998 Reno SCCA Club Rally

Fernley Nevada, July 1998

After Rim, the Bridgestone's that came with the car were "toast." I ended up replacing them with six (2 spares) 13" Michelin M4 rally tires bought from Sube Sports in Huntington Beach. These were serious rally tires, so I was surprised when I took them out testing. They were better off the line, but in turns they seemed to break away at much lower limits than the Bridgestone's. I kept lowering the tire pressure in an attempt to get more lateral grip. It was getting better. I had no idea what the pressures were, having stupidly forgotten my gauge, but it felt better. Wow, 20 psi was what the gauge read when I got home. On the phone to Chad D. at Sube he recommended not taking it lower than 28 psi, otherwise you seriously risk flatting. The tires were initially disappointing.

After more testing and trying to figure out a way of carrying more speed through the turns, I gradually changed my driving style. It went from a more autocross/road track style to fully pitching out the tail for every turn. It was a blast but who knows how fast it was. It seemed kind of slow. As I got used to driving like this, the method became faster and faster. Well before the apex, I would pitch the GLC sideways. This would slow me down for the turn and allow me to stay on the gas at or near full throttle. Reno was coming up fast, and still not quite used to driving like this, I started to worry. High speed crash horror stories and big unforgiving rocks was the information I gathered prior to the rally.

Driving out of LA Friday morning was the usual bumper to bumper. Fifteen, or whatever, hours on the road seemed terribly long, but at least the scenery of the Sierra east side should make up for it and I had the company of Mike and Gerry. We were planning on meeting Matt and Mel at the rally headquarters: the Truck Stop Inn. It didn't exactly sound like Vegas; surprise, it turned out nothing like Vegas. It was a truck stop town. The great thing about this place was that it was cheap. Once we got there, all the excitement of rally came back. There were lots of killer cars in the parking lot. A crew was working on a Celica Gt4 trying to replace the main bearings and I started to get "rally fever" again. If you haven't checked out one of these events, do so. It's pretty fun just hanging out. Matt, Mel, Gerry, and I went for drinks and to do a little bit of gambling. Mike went to talk to some of the other crews.

Saturday morning was bright and sunny with temps in the 90s expected. The sun was intense in this high elevation (5000ft?) desert community and I could really feel it in my double layer of Nomex. Parc Expose was held at the far end of the expansive truck parking lot.

Stage 1: Short spectator stage right off the parking lot. There were a lot of smooth dirt roads cutting out of the lot. This stage was hard to read as there were many forks in the road. It formed something of a kinked up loop that started and ended at the same place. It wasn't totally flat either. There were small 5-10 ft. hills. We got disoriented and had to stop on the stage to make sure we didn't take a wrong fork. Write off that stage.

Stage 2: Miles of long straights were frustrating. I would have the GLC floored only to be going 65 mph in the gravel. Otherwise the stage consisted of a few kinks and blind crests. The stage prenty much went straight north for many miles following a wide flat desert valley and then turned west heading up a low pass in the mountains bordering the west side of the valley. The mountains were not very steep and not very tall so this pass wasn't tight and twisty. This was definitely a horsepower rally and we fell far back in the field.

Stage 3: This was a bit more interesting. It started in the pass and went down into the adjacent valley to the west. There were more turns in the pass and the driving was getting a lot funner until we got into the valley. Another horsepower section where I had it floored, and still too slow. We were nearly caught out because there was one very acute turn in all this and I was going too fast. We came very close to some big rocks on the outside of the corner, but no damage and no time lost. And then over another very small pass through some hills and the stage was over.

Service: The service break was off the side of a paved two lane road that headed north from Reno and dead-ended about a hundred miles later in a small town. The small town would serve as the dinner break and the turn around point. Stock class was being led by Bender in the Rabbit, followed closely by Oyague in the Corrolla. We were a distant third. I asked Eric what top speed he hit on the straights. He said 90 mph. The fastest the GLC would go on the straight was 75 mph. No wonder we were so far behind. This was really frustrating and Matt and I hoped for twistier roads later, but the deficit was already so huge that catching up seemed unlikely. The Mazda was holding up fine. I checked the ball joint I had replaced at RRE before the rally. It was OK, but play was starting to come back in the front end.  (There was a lot of play in the front end for RIM and initially thought this was normal for the beater. Replacing the ball joint helped.) Eric's car was holding up well, but Steve's car had a broken clutch cable. They didn't have a spare. Matt, a Volkswagen person himself, tried to help them rig up something. It didn't work, and they started the remaining stages in gear with the starter motor.

Stage 4: The stage started as a wide (six lane) straight semi truck packed gravel road. It went gently downhill absolutely straight for I think over 1 mile. We were able to wring out 75 to 80 mph of the GLC. This stage was about as exciting as the 405, but at the end of this straight was a series of high speed sweepers that were an absolute blast. The first was a 90 degree right taken at about 55 mph followed by another 90 right (50 mph) into a 90 left (45-50 mph). The pitching sideways stuff was working well. Things were good until we crossed a dry and rocky river wash. There were big granite rocks everywhere so I picked what looked like the cleanest route. With one smallish egg shaped rock to go under the center of the car. Thwap! The rock hit the plastic skid plate under the car. Shortly after this the oil light came on and the motor died. Man did that suck. We were having a great time with this twisty stage.

Parked on the side of the stage, out went the triangles. From the outside, there was oil leaking from the bottom of the pan. Waiting for the sweep truck, we watched the other cars pass. One particularly memorable one was the Tissot Volvo. That thing sounds so trick and is absolutely beautiful. Once the sweep truck arrived we were in for another new experience. Being towed behind the sweep truck was frightening. The dust that the truck kicks up means zero visibility and it was a big powerful truck so that we got going pretty fast; too fast for my comfort. Often times, the only way I knew there was a turn is when I hit the berm on the side of the road then I would try to correct like a madman. Matt did his best to search for upcoming turns. It would have been easier had our battery not died. Then we could have used the route book and Terratrip. I worried too much to look down at the ODO; definitely did not want to get pitched off some steep bank. We finally made it past two stages and the dinner break. One big problem. The trailer was 100 miles back in Fernley. Driving to Fernley to pick it up was sounding real unattractive. Steve Bender and Craig M. generously offered the use of their trailer as long as they didn't dnf. Fortunately they didn't and they went on to win the rally.

Tearing down the engine back in LA, we saw the oil pan, which was already banged up before I bought the car, got bent by an additional eighth of an inch in one spot from the impact with the rock. I didn't realize the chain driven oil pump hung down off the block into the pan. It pretty much served as the oil pick-up.

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