Here are a bunch of my pics from lspr. http://public.fotki.com/snbrd4evr/car-related-photos/lspr07/ Here are some shots I like
Very nice shots! Any chance I could get a high-res of the pic below for my new wallpaper? There were a lot of pix to look through on the Fotki link. Thanks!
Anytime! I have another pic of yours I like but I still have to crop and make it look a bit better. Maybe tomorrow, I have to work all day today.
Mayhem Rally Recap LSPR 2007 will always be one of my fondest memories in rally. There are a number of reasons not the least of which was that we were allowed by the Himes family to run Jake’s number and name on the car as a tribute to Jake and his love for the sport and participants. Our event started with a new record. The car was ready two weeks prior to the event! We left home 1.5 hours late on Thursday which meant we missed tech by 5 minutes, damn. I blame the doe that ran across in front of us 20 miles south of Houghton…I’m awake now! We got to registration after a dip in the hot tub and then went to the Rally Seminar at MTU. Thanks to Heath for organizing the event. Dennis Martin presented a good primer on rally using the big screen to show a power point and wild videos. I talked about Pike’s Peak for a little while. Andrew Pinker, Robbie Durant, Tanner Foust and Christine Beavis then answered questions from the students and others. On the way to parc expose, we found that the rally computer wasn’t accumulating mileage. After some hectic diagnosis we determined that a front rotor change weeks before had opened the distance between the pickups and the metal trigger. A quick adjustment had the miles clicking. We did not run the practice stage but had heard about how rough it was. Our plan was to go fast where we could on stage 1 but not take chances in the rough stuff. We were going along good near then end of the stage when we came across Kyle and Mikael with the Focus on the side of the road. Mikael was out of the car with the tow rope in hand. There was only about .3 left in the stage so we stopped and pulled them out and back to service. We lost about 30-40 seconds on the stage but never got caught and never had a safety issue. I had a VERY difficult time trying to give enough throttle to keep us moving without destroying the front of the Focus with roost. After service it was on to Herman. I really enjoy this traditional first proper stage of LSPR. We set a good pace and we got more air on the jump than we have before in the Mustang. On to service and transit Bob Lake 1 due to local resident issues. I will tell you now I have renamed a stage. Echo Lake will hereby be known as F-ed Up Lake (can I get an Amen). I will use only the name F.U.Lake from now on. Last year the stage was bad but F.U.Lake 1 was worse. After the turn onto the two track the car started bounding like a deer. I’m not sure if it was me, my eyes, my brain, the car, the planet or what but when we got to the FTC I swear the control car was hopping two feet up and down. Things weren’t normal for about 5 minutes after. On to Passmore 1. YEE HAW. This is the type of stage the Mustang loves. I’m a little partial to them also. No drama, just big speed. Bob Lake 2 was fun but I was worried about F.U.Lake 2. We started F.U.Lake 2 and made the turn onto the two track. At one time we entered a REALLY rough section doing about 60, got air off one berm and augered into the next like a lawn dart thrown sidearm. Then we got thrown back up in the air and did the same process two more times. My foot never came off the gas and never touched the brake but we went from 60 to 10 in about 200 feet just from plowing dirt. Unlike others I talked to, the kicker at the flying finish didn’t affect us much since I saw it in time to stay in the gas to keep the front end up to clear it. Torque is good. Passmore 2 was more of the same fun but the minor rutting from the first pass slowed us down by 9 seconds from Passmore 1. Saturday dawns and the crew has the car ready and clean. The traditional LSPR Saturday stages make up my favorite rally day of the year. There is something for everyone. Gratiot Lake was what I expected this year. We had been told about the water hole but we just powered through. Delaware 1 was awesome. I love that road. I think I went through the first spectator point (4th gear left sweeper) faster than I ever have. I am sure we threw gravel a long ways. We did the Delta well. Had a little carb hesitation at the acute but no drama. That was NOT the case with the finish line. The back end was swinging from the last corner of the stage and would not hook up. I could see the finish line so I didn’t want to lift. We got really light (maybe air) at the yellow board and got air at the finish line. The problem is that car was rotating in the air after the finish line. Things got VERY busy but I finally got the back end under control about 100 yards before the control car. Sorry for the scare guys. Mike Hurst and Doug Havir were at the flying finish and the both said they saw us disappear over the crest airborne and rotating. They cringed but then realized they didn’t HEAR a crash so I must have saved it. Burma went well with no big issues. Brockway was good and bad and then good again. We started the stage with too much wheelspin and ran out of road at the exit of the first left. We recovered quickly but saw the evidence of someone that ran out of road worse than us. We were going as fast as the Mustang should over the jumps and approaching the finish when we saw one of the Huebbe (sp?) brothers running reverse course waving his marshall or press vest. We slowed down expecting the worst. After two corners there was nothing and it occurred to me they might just have been cheering us on. Unfortunately, around the next corner we found the incident. Justin Pritchard and Bill Westrick were right in front of us on the road and they had an off and impacted a big tree. Justin told us to get the ambulance rolling so we quickly proceeded to the stage finish which was about .3 further. Thankfully, the radios on the stage had already gotten word to net control and the process had started. Thankfully, I talked to Bill at service hours later and while they are both sore, they are both ok. At service, our team had a long conversation about whether to install the lights or not for the last three stages. We weighed the pros and cons and determined to put them on…damn. More on that later After the delay and cancellation of Brockway 2 it was off to Burma 2 in a snow burst. The standings were fairly spread out so we backed off slightly to make sure we finished. Delaware 2 was going great. I said it was. Before the stage, Rob and I discussed that there is a left 5 a little before the left 2 going into the delta. I said I have never driven in there deep enough and felt I could go a little deeper….idiot. We came in with maybe 2 mph too much, over rotated and drove straight into the berm on the left, destroying 3 of our 5 lights. I was in reverse before we quit moving and backed over the shelf at the acute, grabbed first and we were off in a fury of gravel spray and rev limiter. We backed off a little more for Gratiot 2 and finished the event third in G5 and 2WD. This is where we expected to finish so I was happy with it. After the champagne spray and a quick catalyst check at impound we were off to the hotel to clean up. Thanks to all the Max Attack folks for the support and the Big check (and the little one) at the awards banquet. As is tradition, it was on to the Library for me. Rob and I joined Greg D, Poitr W. and many other Polski rally crazies in the back. Rob and I had the first drink before the big crowd showed up. After that, we had a couple rounds of 1812s, nummy. I was offered a taste of Mustang Vodka and told them it would be much more appropriate if they actually sponsored a Mustang! I then introduced Andy Pinker and Pat Moro (the u-boat commander) to the wonder that is an 1812, a fine mix of Chambord and vodka. We needed another round of shooters and Carrie Carlson and Emily Burton decided it needed to involve Malibu rum. I told the waitress and she looked at me like I needed to go change my skirt. A few minutes later a tray of blue shooters arrived. Forget about ruffies, these are the real date rape drug. After much yelling, laughing and carrying on, the waitress finally got up on the chair at 2:15 and yelled “get the F out of my barâ€. That has been the tradition for a few years now and we just can’t leave without it. Thanks to Amy Springer for the ride back to the hotel. Thanks to all of you that had kind words throughout the rally. Thanks to Danielle and Jake’s parents and family for the support over the weekend. Thanks again to the Max Attack folks. Thanks to Rally America and the LSPR workers and organizers. Thanks to all the competitors and fans for a great rally. Special thanks to Rob for masterful efforts in the silly seat and our crew, Ryan, Megan, Amanda and Kevin. I can’t express my thanks to Mary for 20 years of support and marriage. Finally, thanks to Jake for being my hero.
What an incredibly fun weekend hearding cats. Um, I mean running 000. Had a couple of strays to take care of and was bummed that one got in behind all the course openers on the first run of Bob Lake, sorry guys some of them cats are sneaky like that, we figured out where they got in when we ran second pass and will plug that hole for next year. Have to say I was glad I didn't have to run the second pass of Echo Lake. The other 000 lost the plastic tray under their engine on their Audi in there, pretty brave to go there without a proper skid plate (I was glad I had my Primitive skid plates a couple of times). We took a sizeable hit on the front plate second pass of Gratiot and found myself watching the oil light for a bit. You guys are nuts trying to go race through them there stages. We finally got to see some cars at speed after finishing Gratiot, the final stage of the event, and doubling back to park way off to the side at the flying finish. It is hard to describe how fast the first few open cars came through there (Travis, Andrew Pinker, Ken). We were glad to get through the event with nothing broken and all our assignments met. We had lots of fun hanging out with the various teams, especially Mark. The gathering at the Library was great fun. I kind of figured I would be driving someone to their hotel in the end. The funniest part of that is we get to the first intersection and he says, "go left" and points right, the street was one way to the right. I was very tired but definitely sober so I went right. Next intersection same thing, points right says left. I called him on it and he says, "Did I say left? Follow the finger not the words" Big "Thanks" to my codriver, Carrie Carlson, for keep me on track and on time all weekend long. After seeing all the work she put in to getting our route book ready, I am Hope you all made it home safe. Good to see some of you guys in person. See you at Sno*Drift! Boy do I need a nap... Amy
Nice write up, made me feel like I was there without the hangover. Sorry we mised it Derek was off racing in Vegas. Congrats on the great finish. See you soon Mike
I slept 12 hours last night, and I want to go take a nap right now. My rally started out about noon on Thursday with a call from Mark "Mayhem83" asking if i could please stop by his house and get the in-car video gear they left behind. Taking cue from this early stop, I managed to extend my trip to over 9 hours. Had a semi on 35 toss a golf ball sized rock and take a good chip out of my windshield, but amazingly it didn't grow over the weekend. Met up with Kelly for a couple of pints at the KBC. True craft-brewed beers for $2/pint! Both WI and MI treat beer like it's a food staple, not a luxury. Headed out to marshal the super special, didn't see a lot of cars there (just because I can stand in front of everyone as a marshal doesn't mean it's a polite thing to do). Did see Mark U towing Kyle back to service. Kelly and I headed over and grabbed some groceries to feed us through the evening and grabbed some food at Toxic Hell. Because we were running late at that point, I fired up the mapping software on the laptop and plotted a least distance course to our stage. Ok, we star out on a nice state road for 20 mile or so, then onto a nive, wide, sweeping, smooth gravel road. Whee! Then we turn off onto a slightly smaller, but still smooth gravel road. Then Kelly points to a set of tracks heading off to the right and says "that's our turn." Hmm. Ok. Well, it was as rough, and narrower than any rally stage I've ever been on (including F.U. Lake), but we made it through, albeit slowly. Got one rock to the skidplate that really rang the car good, and many water holes that could had hidden suspension eaters. After one in particular, I entertained Kelly by saying "No problem, I have new struts for the car at home." It felt like 20 miles on that stretch, but was probably only 10. Stopped in the middle to ask a guy in a 4x4 if the road went through the whole way. He looked at the car for a while, looked at me and Kelly like we were crazy, they said "Umm, yeah." I think he decided if we'd made it that far we could make it the rest of the way. After that, it was relatively smooth sailing on the broken pavement of 16 through the forest, and then a little more gravel and a short two track to our marshal point. We had about 50 spectators, who were really good to work with, and the TV2Go crew, which included the Rally Chicken. Fun guys to hang with. After the stage finished, we set up our canopy and all the marshals brought out their grills and we had burgers/brats/beans/chips/cookies and stayed out of the rain which stated shortly after the canopy went up. We and the TV crew also pulled several large rocks out of the road that had been torn up. One in particular had been throwing lots of sparks off of the last 1/3 of the pack and could have been a suspension eater if hit wrong. Fortunately (?) by that point everyone had been so slowed by plowing gravel out of the way with their front fascias that they could only hit the rock so hard. The rain lightened up and mostly stopped by the second running of the stage, where we had about 20 people. It was brutal on the cars at our turn. The 000 Audi (not to be confused with Amy's 000 WRX) left his skidplate (actually a fiberglass reinforced polycarbonate thing, not a simple plastic one), then the 0 car tore out his passenger side fender liner. One of the front runners tore out a matching driver's side liner, so we had a full set. Later we got some underbody armor (not the heavy stuff, but the disposable stuff for the less sensitive parts of the underbody), and finally a bumper from a VW GTi, skin and the impact foam. Made quite a pile. Kelly got the biggest cheers from the crown whenever he'd pull another part out of the road. One of the TV crew lost his scanner during the second running, and only realized it later. The lucky SOB found it 1/8mile of the way up the road, half covered in gravel from where the cars had been missing it by inches. We packed up, cleaned up and left about midnight, and made good time taking a gravel shortcut (but not the same one) back. The car was vibrating badly at speed on pavement though, and I stopped once to figure out what was wrong, but couldn't. At the hotel I jacked up the back, and once the car was unloaded, the problem became clear. The lugnuts had backed off (torqued on Thu at 80 lb/ft) on all four wheels to varying degrees. but not enough that the wheel would move when I'd checked it on the ground. Same thing happened with different wheels, but the same lugnuts when running 00 at Shooting star, they're cheap nuts, so I'm going to put the blame there and get some real OEM ones again. Saturday stats ealy (but not as early as for some), we leave at 9am and drive to the Delaware delta where we set up tape and eat some hotdogs from the Auto Value tent. Things go smoothly for the first run. Only a few cars really baked the turn, one taking down 1/2 the tape at the outside of the apex, another finishing it off, and the third drove way deep because the tape was down. By then I had new tape out and Kelly did the running to string two new runs in under a minute, just in time to get showered by rocks by Jim Cox's S10. At least Kelly wasn't one of the photographers there, he could hear rocks pinging off their gear as he ducked and covered. Moved to the other Delaware spot for the second running, no drama there, but had a few tense minutes listening to the radio after the Prichard/Westrick crash on Brockway that brought out the emergency medical crew and canceled the second running of the stage (driver was OK, co-driver was treated and released at the local hospital and both are singing the praises of the HANS, which they credit with their lives). Very fast spot for the cars, fun to watch the more committed guys come though without lifting, and the less committed braking. Head about how much gravel Mark U threw going the other way, but this direction didn't involve any huge gravel from anyone. Listened as stage 16 got stopped due to a multi-guilty-parties cluster-****. (Well, it might have been stopped even if everyone had done the right thing, but they didn't). Headed home and grabbed a shower, went to the awards dinner ate enough food to support an evening at the Library and then headed there. I've got photos of the shot glass pyramid that Mark U built. We got it bigger this year than ever before, I think. The waitress was actually cool about it for once, but eventually she had to collect it because they were out of glasses to serve the rest of the people in the bar. I want to say we were around 40 glasses. Went to sleep at 4am with the room spinning. Woke up at 9am and it had mostly stopped. Took about an hour long shower, packed all my crap up and headed home. Took just under 6 hours, or more than three hours less than the trip out had taken, and I was under 10 over at all times, and 5 over mostly, and stopped twice to pee and move a little to wake up. Edit: There are so many typing errors in that that I'm not actually going to bother editing them. Cope. I'm tired.
Yep, that's pretty much it. Except for my story at the library... I basically decided to be a bartender. I was behind the bar telling the bartenders what people wanted so they could make drinks faster. I like to think of myself as the "get people drunker faster by getting them their drinks faster person." After close I went to the frats to beat a bunch of people in foos, then wandered back to the hotel around 5 and woke up at 9ish with a really bad headache and then headed home. Awesome rally though, tons of thanks to Mark for driving around the whole weekend and thanks to all the workers and drivers for making this one of the most fun rallies in a while
This rally was run out of Houghton, MI. The best way to get your foot in the door is to come to a rally and volunteer to help out. The next rally in this area (very generally speaking) is Sno*Drift out of Atlanta Michigan on Jan 25 & 26, it is part of the national championship. The next rally in MN could be a Headwaters event, but location and dates aren't set yet. Typically Headwaters has run in May out of Park Rapids, but it is in flux currently. It is generally a one-day regional event. Shooting Star will run in June out of Mahnomen, MN. I'm biased because I'm part of the team that puts on this rally, but frankly, it kicks ass, and the HQ hotel is cheap and has great amenities. Shooting Star will be a two day regional event. Then there is Ojibwe Forests on August 22 & 23, this is the only stop on the National Championship in MN. Then LSPR again next year, on October 17 & 18, which is again the final event of the national championship. Lots more information at http://www.rally-america.com
^ So say I had a STi all tricked out and ready for rally racing...Would I be able to sign up somewhere and be able to race or is it alot more complicated than that? Or does anyone have tryouts for drivers?
I remember converting this car from RHD to LHD 2 days before 100 Acre Wood a few years back. I really wish I could have made this rally.
Well ****...I thought maybe I had a chance I guess ill have to stick to just having fun on the road tours.
I'd have to say that there are probably next to zero body pieces in common with the car you did that to a few years ago and the one you see in this picture. I can't imagine Dennis hasn't mangled all but one or two little pieces of that car.
Never said you didn't have a chance. It's just a lot more complicated than buying a fast car and showing up. Now, if you have a few hundred thousand to spend, every year, than it can be almost that easy. If you have a lot less than that to spend, you can still compete, but you have to do a lot of work to make it happen, and you aren't going to be competing in an STi for sure.
yeah LSPR was sweet this year, we had a good time. It's cool having a rally in my backyard (I go to MTU). Anyway, here's the pics of mine that turned out well: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v253/Korsch/LSPR 2007/ Here's a few of my favorites:
I really enjoyed reading the awsome write ups and pictures, they'll be my wallpaper for awhile. Thanks for sharing your weekend. I hate being a spectator unless its on TV. I would like to get to more events next season and start volunteering and get to know the community and hopefully get some ride, pick some brains and get scared a little. I'd like to get a rally car on gravel, but than again, I'm tooo chicken. I'll stick to tarmac for now. LOL
Yeah- after he rolled it last year or the year before you are probably correct. He is also very good a wrecking stuff.
Sign up to volunteer for any and all events you can make it to. Bring a willingness to do anything they ask you to do, marshal, time controls, spectator marshal, whatever. Be on time, eager to work and drive responsibly with a reliable car and you would be surprised at what you may be asked to do. Don't turn your nose up at marshalling (usually a good view of the racing) or working controls (you typically have time for a bit of small talk with the drivers) and check out the rally 101 thread http://www.mnsubaru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17532 . Ojibwe 2006 I was a newbie working finish time controls and LSPR this year I was very surprised and delighted to be asked to be a course opening car. Amy
Not necessary. New competitors in Rally-America are in fact not allowed to have AWD cars, nor turbocharged 2WD cars (or big engine 2WD cars). A new driver must first run a number of events in a low-displacement 2WD car in either the Production or Group 2 classes. An old VW GTI is the perfect car to start in. An old Sentra can be fast too, but there are fewer competitors to scrounge parts and knowledge off of.
I will add that I think a FWD Impreza would be a good choice for a novice in rally. There is a huge amount of rally specific parts for them (suspension, light pods, skid plates, etc.).
I was thinking about doing this. Then when I'm done with all my coefficients I can swap a awd drivetrain into it and have the kind of fun I like . Maybe one day :hsdance:
