Here’s a great shot that photographer Ray deGier grabbed from the Prescott Rally 2006.
Windows BMP format: 1200 – 1152 – 1024 – Enjoy!

THE stage at Prescott this year had to be PerkinsView. Witty Tom seemed to get all the attention, but the last stage of the rally was an awesome run for us. PerkinsView is a combination of Perkinsville East (which fans of the rallynotes.com show will remember as one of our best stages last year) and First View. Now, I’ll just say that First View separates the men from the boys. Twisty gravel road on the side of a mountain with lots of exposures. Exposure means: Cliff with no guardrails, or “Don’t go off here as there will be lots of t3h falling.” This year they combined the two stages for a final, flat out, 22 mile dash for the finish.

The stage starts with the sun on our back as we work our way through the 3’s and 5’s. I’m working hard to get a rhythm down and I just can’t concentrate on 2 turns ahead. Christine backs it off for me and as the stage gets faster she has to speed read a couple of times to catch up. I have a good feel for the way this road goes from last year but there is a moment around 3:00 minutes in where Christine calls: “Stay right over crest, 20, right 4, 70.” I think about it and I’m expecting the right over crest then a little bit of a downhill starting to turn into a right hander. I should only need to dig on the brakes a little right? What I got was a crest which went immediately into a hard right. Had I not kept right over crest there – we would have been in the scenery… Upon later review Christine admits that she should have dropped the 20 and called it: “Stay right over crest into right 4.” We normally drop anything less then 40. The notation ’20′ yards/meters is useless to call at 70MPH. In the time it takes to say “Twenty” – you’ve already covered that distance.

That wakes us up and we get focused real quick. Now we’re moving into the faster sections and we will not make a mistake like that again. I start to dig into 4th gear and the speedometer is climbing to a steady 90MPH. I think my 100 last year was wheel spin without a limited slip differential. I think about this only a moment as we fly down into some 5’s and I try to keep the throttle buried in the firewall. Just a few little stabs with the left foot until we get to the “Right 3 don’t cut drop outside – might as well be a hairpin!”

We work our way down and back out of the valley. There is a right hander through a stop sign – which never gets old btw – and we’re into First View. It’s fast, but going this way is a bit of a hill climb so I’ve got to keep up our speed. At 9:10 minutes in there is a right 5 through a cattle guard and up a long hill. It looks smooth on the video but there is one hell of a kick that you have to deal with seconds before threading the needle of the cattle guard posts. We took it flat out, and were able to carry that speed all the way up the hill.

With one mile to go we snake our way up to ‘the cut’. Christine calls out some rocks, but at this point the road is littered with embedded rockadillos. We hit one right on the inside of a rim. It bends and starts ‘whumph’ing’ against the rear trailing arm. It’s loud – but it’s not flat yet. We continue to push and finish the stage. This part of the drama was in the first Prescott video – “Bang On!”

It’s awesome when control workers double check your time. “21:24. Wait… 21? Is that right?!” *frantic re-checking of sums “Yeah. That’s a good time!” Only later do I learn we set 7th fastest. Not bad for a little Dodge Neon ‘eh?

Prescott Rally 2006 – SS14 PerkinsView ‘Highlights’ – 72.7MB WMV
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Two more videos are now available for your enjoyment. The first is Witty Tom. It’s in the dark – faster and clearer then last year. The bullet-cam setup works well behind the front windshield and it takes a pretty good night shot. The rain this year kept the dust down and we could keep up a fast pace the whole way. The second video is Limestone Canyon South. It’s a fast but rough stage that we nick one of the rear rims on.

Prescott Rally 2006 – SS4 Witty Tom ‘See the Light’ – 59.6MB WMV
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Prescott Rally 2006 – SS11 Limestone Canyon South – 37.9MB WMV
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UPDATED: 10/17/2006 – With this years Limestone Canyon…

Prescott Rally 2006 – Bang On! – 43.5MB WMV
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Prescott this year was a rough event with lots of embedded rocks and loose boulders. We carried two spares most of the day on Saturday and we needed them! I whipped up a little compilation of the ‘hits’ and some silliness. Enjoy! Some pictures are up in the gallery. A lot more to follow!

Please note for the little ones: This one has some strong language in it. After destroying the fourth rim on stage, I utter a few choice words.

Just a short little update. We finished and had a fantastic time! This was another USRC win for us! We got third in the ultra competitive P-Stock and set some pretty fast times all weekend for a bone stock Dodge Neon!

We had lots of fun out there – esp. on Limestone Canyon.

We’ll have tons and tons of pictures, updates, and videos to follow!

Thanks to everyone that made this weekend special! Our parents, our awesome crew, the competitors, the workers, the organizers, and all our rally family!

Over the weekend we moved into our new shop in San Clemente. It’s off of Ave Pico which is easy to remember as we used to be off Pico St. in Los Angeles. Pico, pico! *ahem. I have a proper workshop now, so I can begin some bigger projects. Carbon fiber, small metal fabrication, skidplates, electronics, etc. San Clemente is about 20 minutes away and it’s close enough that I can go to the shop from work and get home at a decent hour. On Sunday I buttoned up a number of things that needed to be fixed. New mudflaps, new ‘Hall Effect’ sensor for the Brantz tripmeter, new hood pins, etc. We’re waititng for some struts and I have a hood to paint, but we’re ready for Prescott and in great shape.

Speaking of new projects: I’m really excited to announce there will be a new Dodge Neon Rallycar in the extended family. Kevin and Jake who have seen the crew in action a number of times and helped us service at Gorman have decided to start building their very own Dodge Rally Neon with our help. We’re going to be giving them guidence on the project and it will be a building block for my new venture called RumbleSoft Racing.

The owners of the car were sad to see it go, but it’s in awesome shape and ready to be stripped and prepped for rally. The complete buildup of that car is going to be availabe at RumbleSoft Racing’s website – look for that soon .

Over the weekend I connected my OBD2 laptop up to the Neon. All the sensors are operating normally, the car is not retarding timing or doing anything out of the ordinary. Next, I did a compression test while replacing the spark plugs. With the Neon, you pull the auto shut-down fuse or the coil pack and the fuel injectors. This stops fuel and spark from going into the cylinders. Then, one by one, you remove the spark plug and screw in the pressure gauge into each spark plug hole, crank the motor over for a few seconds (until the pressure peaks) then record the result. Wait a minute and see if the pressure drops (this would indicate a leaky valve or piston ring). This test will tell you very quickly if you have a serious engine problem. I was very pleased with the results: 1 = 200psi, 2 = 200psi, 3 = 198psi, 4 = 205psi. This means I still have a strong motor after five rallies and a season of rallycross events. Should these numbers differ more than 10% you have issues to resolve.

Other Stuff:
This weekend is the San Diego Rallycross! Here are all the details.
For Sale: 3 Hankook – Hard compound – 175/60-14″ used rally tires. They are in ‘fair’ condition. (tread blocks are chewed up, about 1/3 the tread left, sidwalls are fine, tire has been grooved) Great for your rallycross beater! Take all three for $50. I can bring these to the rallycross – for other arrangements contact me.

I had the idea for doing this ever since the control workers handed Christine our timecard on special stage one and she announced that we beat our time from last year by over a minute. It’s setup like GT4 ‘one lap magic’, where the slow car starts and is allowed to get ahead before the fast car takes off. Not only am I faster with the car, but Christine is fast and accurate with the note calling. We are working on calling 1.5 – 2 turns ahead now and it’s clear as Christine catches up with her 2005 pace well before I get there with the car. It’s pretty cool to see what progress we’ve made in only a year.

The second video is a coast down one of the mountain roads after our DNF on SS7. As there is no audio, I threw in a little tune to coast down the hill to. It’s not really THAT exciting, just fun to see what I can do with little brakes and no power. It took Chris Wilson in the pirate sweep a while to catch me. At one point after not seeing me they hesitated and thought I went off – as “He can’t possibly be going THAT fast without power?!” Check it out if you’re bored.

The third video is some outside spectator stuff that Dan Lench (neighbor and friend) took. It’s the finish of SS1 and the start of SS2. It’s small too, just a scant 3.6MB.

“The Final Batch”
SS1 2005-2006 Comparison – 48.6MB WMV
The DNF Runaway – 41.7MB WMV
Outside spectator footage – 3.6MB WMV