This was the final 20 mile stage at Prescott 2012. The rallynotes.com team is flying in the hopes of beating Fiorelli / Smith. Even breaking their personal record by 30 seconds, it was still not enough. Twisty at the start – this stage is fast downhill into high speed sections.
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We take second in 2WD @ Prescott Rally!
Great rally! Great competition! We take second in 2WD! We’re packed up and heading home.
Live Scoring link for Prescott
Live text http://rallydata.com/ColdFusion/LiveText_Display.cfm
Live scores http://rallydata.com/Results/Prescott_2012_NatScoreBoard.htm
We are car number 9!
First car off a 3:00pm
NEW LIVERY REVEALED AT PRESCOTT RALLY!
Since shaking down the car at North Nevada, the rallynotes.com graphics package and body work have been applied. The cute Dodge Neon is transforming into an SRT-4 beast! Driver Kristopher Marciniak talks about the new livery: “One thing that’s always exciting is when the rally car finally matches the logo design at the top of our website. That rally car logo is a sort of talisman for me in that I envision what the rally car will one day become and then work towards it.” The cars silver and red paint scheme was done by Danny’s Auto Body in Long Beach; Seibon Carbon hood; Vinyl by Streetwise Motorsports.
Set in one of the most iconic landscapes in the Southwest, The 25th annual Prescott Rally travels through red rock canyons for miles on winding dirt roads. These roads are considered to be some of the best rally stages in the country. The rallynotes.com team fell in love with the area in 2005 and have been back every year to race or volunteer. This weekend (September 28-29) will mark their 5th year of competition at this event. The team is really looking forward to it!
The competition in the USRC Open 2WD class has 10 entries vying for the win for the final round of the championship. In the regional CRS class, a win at Prescott could mean a podium finish in the California Rally Series CRS-2 class championship. After setting 3rd fastest stage times at North Nevada, the goal is to place well with the new car. “I’d like to do exactly what we did at NNR without getting stuck on a berm for 20 minutes. We love Prescott and we’re going to have fun!” said co-driver Christine Marciniak.
Live updates from this weekend will be on the rallynotes.com tumblelog and APRS rally car tracking will be active starting Thursday! The Prescott Rally website is http://www.prescottrally.com
2012 #twitterrally Contest Winners!
The contest is closed – thanks everyone who tweeted!
All eligible entries were listed and handed to the random.org list randomizer.
Here are the results!
1: @MegamanEXE: I want to win a new rally watch in the @rallynotes contest!
2: @MagnumBrew: RT @rallynotes: Rallynotes Twitter Contest!
3: @CarolinaSRT: In rally you need to finish to win @rallynotes twitter contest!
Patrick @MegamanEXE wins a Casio Rally Watch!
Eric @MagnumBrew wins a LifeHammer!
Mike @CarolinaSRT wins the Grab-Bag!
Congratulations! – Kris
Sneak peek!
Image
Out for paint and vinyl!
A fuzzy mock-up of the new rallynotes.com paint scheme!
The scheme reflects the rallynotes red and the days of the P-Car (Ze’Neon). Instead of red and white, we’ve opted for a silver and red. This will keep the heat out of the cabin and show off the SRT-4 / 2GN body lines. The goal is to have an instantly recognizable design that makes you say – “That’s the rallynotes.com Dodge Neon!” even if you only catch a glimpse of it on stage. 😀
Cool Suits Revisited
There are two companies that manufacture these products: Fresh Air Systems Technologies (FAST) & Cool Shirt Systems The shirts we currently have come from FAST and continue to be great after many rallies and repeated washing. Cool Suits are made up of several feet of capillary tubing sewn onto a heavy duty T-shirt. Tubes connect to and from a cooler full of ice water, the pump pushes ice water through suit, and you stay comfortable while attacking stages in 100+ degree heat. The sensation is a lot like wading into a cold pool, but after a few minutes you stop sweating. Sure, you’re racing around with 15 pounds of water, tubing, and a 12V pump, but calm and comfortable does a lot more for the psyche then hot and sweaty.
I’ve seen a handful of homemade cool suit shirts, but I still believe that the technology and labor that goes into making the shirt is worth their cost (around $150). I would be stabbing a needle into that thin tubing for sure! The supply tubes, cooler, and pump on the other hand remain entry level and parts are easy and cheap to come by. If you built or even mildly prepared your rally car, then a bilge pump and some epoxy won’t be hard. Setting it up exactly how you want while saving $100 is nice too. Our original cooler has seen better days. A softer plastic Coleman Cooler, the top needs to be ratcheted down tight (read; squished), and now both companies use a harder locking cooler in their design. My connectors were damaged by a spare tire, so I decided to upgrade the whole kit.
Cool Suit Cooler Recipe:
Engel UC13 13 Quart Dry Box Cooler
Rule Submersible Bilge Pump, 500 GPH
51545K24 Polypropylene Quick-Disconnect Tube Coupling Socket, 1/4 Cplg, 3/8″ Male NPT
Supply Tubing:
51545K74 Polypropylene Quick-Disconnect Tube Coupling Socket, 1/4 Cplg, for 3/8″ Tube ID
51545K91 Polypropylene Quick-Disconnect Tube Coupling Plug, 1/4 Cplg, for 3/8″ Tube ID
Insulated Gray Silicone Rubber Tubing 3/8″ ID, 1/2″ OD, 1/16″ Wall Thickness
All of this, some 3/8″ PVC, and some glue can be sourced for about $200
McMaster-Carr
“Intended for recreational marine use only”
& cool suits apparently…
I still feel a little jaded at buying a $19 bilge pump in a $15 cooler for $200, but at least I came up with the supply tubing the first time around. We still make sure the ice water line goes to the Swedish kid first, and then over to the Italian girl after being pre-warmed. :p I added some additional insulation over my existing silicone tubing. Keeping those tubes off the floor helps with any heat transfer from the 120 degree car. The next step is sourcing an off the shelf 12V DC speed controller for a little less then the $150 one offered. A small 10 Amp circuit should do, and oh look at that – around $20. 😀 I’m thinking of making an even simpler circuit that will just pulse the pump on for 10 seconds and then rest for an adjustable amount of time with a MOSFET and a 555 timer. If that’s not in your bag of tricks – stick with the switch on the dash 🙂
What makes it a rally car? The suspension.
I’m going to break into a topic that is critical for your success in rally, costs a lot of money, was once a bit controversial on rallynotes, and a subject I’m still learning about after 7 years in the sport: Suspension.
Suspension makes the car a rally car: Regular street car struts / shocks are just not designed to take the abuse and friction that rally cars can see. First is the springs: Often 100+ pounds more force then a street car with more inches of travel. Second is the side loading: Engineers wish for a strut centered directly over the wheel that only travels up and down at a perfect 0° angle. The reality is camber, caster, toe, rotation, and side loading. The center of the tire is 4″ from the bottom of the strut, it’s at a 10° angle to the ground, the pivot for the control arm changes this angle as it goes up and down, etc. Then you go over a giant jump into a tight right hand turn – fully unloaded to fully loaded in 2 seconds. All of that energy has to go somewhere.
The first way to overcome these issues is with an inverted shock / or strut. This takes the single point of stress that is a narrow 14-19mm rod, turns the assembly inverted (upside down) and protects the damper. Now the side loading is spread over a 50mm housing and the damper piston is happily sealed from the elements. The second way is to give the damper a higher volume of fluid with a separate reservoir. It takes longer to heat up more fluid and it cools outside of the strut. You can control how fast or slow that fluid moves into the reservoir giving you adjust-ability. This is why ‘remote reservoir inverted adjustable struts’ are used in rally.
“But Kris said that he finished a rally on stock struts!” Yes. I did. It sucked. You just can’t go anywhere near as fast as you can on a proper rally setup. Unfortunately it took me a long time to get there with the P-Car (Ze’Neon). I was making a pretty good show in rallycross and had survived my first two rally events on stock dampers when I started to work with Bilstein in 2006. Their sponsorship for us consisted of a set of inverted motorsport inserts. (Just the part on the left, not the whole strut on the right.) It was up to us to have the strut housings machined as Bilstein did not make 1st Gen Neon struts. With a budget of “less than no money” I had someone with some experience build a set of housings out of stock struts. This was a miserable failure (Read the complete Rim of the World 2006 story here). Looking back, I downplayed it as much as I could to not let my new “suspension” sponsors down. The truth was the damper rod bolt shot out of the bottom of the strut INTO the CV joint on one side after the housing failed. I lost all the seals and bearings on all 4 struts, and my buddy Harry became my personal hero for rescuing us with stock spares. As far as Bilstein is concerned, their equipment is awesome! It was the cheap housings that caused all the drama. Bilstein replaced the broken rod for me, later re-valved the rears, and those dampers are still on the rally car to this day! The combination being a set of Bilstein PT cruiser fronts (that accept the motorsport inserts) and a reworked set of rear housings. Even though it works, and was able to get us a championship winning setup, this hodge-podge mismatch of housings and inserts is not something I ever want to go through again.
What should it cost? What should your budget be? I’d start at $1500 – $2000. If someone says to you they have a new rally suspension setup for less then $1000, you are going to get what you pay for. Non-inverted, junk coil-overs, with thin metal housings. Save up for the real thing!
Being able to open up a catalog and order rally struts for the 2GN (after the fiasco with the P-Car) was rewarding. Hot Bits has a ton of applications for all kinds of cars. Their full on rally setup is expensive, but you get a lot for your money. Hot Bits RSI Rally includes Camber plates, bound/rebound 35/40 way adjustable, inverted dampers, adjustable coil overs, and an out of the box rally setup that helped us set 3rd fastest times @ NNR in a brand new rally car! If you’re considering building a car, consider very carefully what options you have for an “off the shelf” rally suspension setup.
TEAM WARMS UP NEW CAR FAST AT NORTH NEVADA
Rallynotes selected to run Saturday for the North Nevada Rally on July 7th, 2012, on roads they last raced in 2008 located near Gerlach, NV. This was the first competitive stages that the Marciniaks have run since winning the USRC in 2008. This was also the first competitive stage miles the new rallynotes.com 2GN (Soon to be SRT-4) Dodge Neon would tackle. Kris tells us more: “New car, new suspension, new everything! We wanted to shake out the bugs and test the handling before adding 150+ HP. We also wanted to shake out 4 years of not competing by not jumping into a really powerful car!” The team by no means has been absent from rally; They volunteer for the California Rally Series and organize their own event – The High Desert Trails Rally.
There were 8 cars in the CRS-2 (Group 2) 2WD class at this event, which meant there was ample competition to judge stage times. Right off the bat the team set 3rd fastest overall on SS9 (the first stage on Saturday). On their second stage, SS10 “Purgatory Pass,” a small mistake over a sharp left hand turn pulled the car into a soft berm. Kris struggled to keep the car’s momentum, but they got stuck in what would become their own personal “Rally Purgatory.” Kristopher describes the scene: “Going over the berm de-beaded the front right tire. We went into the scenery a little bit and almost made it back onto the road, but got stuck on the berm coming out of the corner. It then took us 30 minutes to dig out the front right and get a spare on there, while car after car continued by us. It sucked, but the car was fine, the team was fine, and the competitive pressure was off. Now we just had to have fun and finish.” Pressure or no pressure, the rallynotes.com team proceeded to set the 3rd fastest time on the last 3 stages of the day! “The last stage we made a personal charge to be fast. The car was running great, Christine was once again used to the pace that we set in the notes, and we set a fantastic 10:03 time for SS14. We missed 2nd by only 1 second, and were 32 seconds off the rally leader Andrew Lockhart, who won the event overall.” said driver Kristopher Marciniak.
The team would like to thank Kevin Patterson for his tremendous efforts in helping to service 3 teams at North Nevada!
Our next event: The Prescott Rally in Prescott, AZ. Join us!
Husband and wife team, Kristopher and Christine Marciniak, have been rallying together since 2005. They are three time USRC Production 2WD champions. Kristopher handles technology and operations at Warm Your Floor in Laguna Hills, CA. Christine has a PhD in molecular biology and is working in the field.