Oregon Trail 2005

The Oregon Trail Rally was to be full of "firsts" for our team: The first time traveling more than one day to a rally (WAY more than one day in this case). The first time I flew to an event and sent my truck with my crew. The first time I teamed up with a Co-driver I'd never met before. The first time I'd been in the state of Oregon. And the first time I'd ever seen a road-race course, much less actually tried to compete on one. It was however not the first time the truck would be run with some un-tested changes I'd made.

In the end, the rally went very well and was very enjoyable.

A lot of things had to come together just right for this event to work for us. We had to correctly guess how long it would take to drive from Minnesota to Hillsboro; my old trailer had to make it the whole way without failure; and Tim Sardelich my navigator had to have zero transportation problems, since he was scheduled to arrive only a few hours before the event began. So in addition to all the "firsts", I was also a bit nervous about logistic complications. Luckily, the entire event went smoothly.

The 2005 Oregon Trail Rally began at the Portland International Raceway with a short day of stages designed for spectator enjoyment. This was to be the first time I'd ever been on a road-race course or driven the truck on street tires and I was very nervous about my lack of experience leading to embarrassingly slow lap times, or worse. The weather also took us by surprise. I'd packed rain gear and warm clothes, but it turned out I should have brought shorts and sunscreen! It was sunny and hot! That is until it got rainy, cold and windy that afternoon. Weather can change fast out there. Turns out that the VERY first stage of the event was the road course, and it started on the drag strip starting line and about a half mile straightaway. I was NERVOUS. I didn't think I'd do very well, so I briefly considered running my old tires doing a smokey burnout off the line and as far down the front straight as I could. I thought the spectators might get a kick out of that, and relieve some of my nervous tension, but that the safety stewards might not approve, so I decided to make a more serious attempt to put in a good lap time. When the clock counted to zero we were off for a full throttle run through the gears all the way to redline in top gear. That should have put us at about 130 mph. Not the way I wanted to approach my first-ever road course turn. Then I saw braking distance signs start to fly past. I remember thinking at that moment how weird it was that road racers get signs to tell them when to brake. I ignored the signs and took a wild guess at how much braking power I had and stood on the brakes, turned into the first corner with a HUGE grin on my face. After it was over, it turns out we put in a non-embarrassing time and I had a BLAST. What a rush. The track laps were a highlight of the event for me. I can see how road racing could be fun. Too bad you get to practice : ). We noticed a little hiccup from the carburetor that would turn out to be a sign of later problems. After the tarmac-only stages there were some mixed gravel/tarmac that was very slippery. On stage two the truck lost power and coasted to a near-stop. "NOOOOOOO, I DID NOT come all this way to DNF 2 miles into the event!!!" I was already kicking myself for not finding time to do testing before I left Minnesota. I started pumping on the pedal to try to get the thing to run on the accelerator pump, but no luck, the carb was out of fuel. Once we were almost stopped, it came back to life. This happened a few more times during the short stage. Eventually I figured out the carb kept running out of fuel, so I learned only to use ½ throttle. With only 15 minutes of service, and tire changes required (switching from tarmac to gravel), we didn't have time to take a serious look at the carb until after stage 4, so I raised the float levels and kept my foot off the floor the rest of the evening. The rest of the stages were an emotional rollercoaster of high speed track giggles and frustration at poor stage times due to fuel delivery problems. At the first long service (after stage 4), we pulled both fuel filters off the truck to try to get it a bit more fuel volume. After talking to all the old-school carb guys I could find, consensus was my new bigger carb had increased fuel flow needs beyond the capacity of my fuel pump, so I sent my Dad to find a higher volume fuel pump if he could. He found one, and we made plans to put it on that night or in the morning at Parc Expose.

The final stage of the night was to be a WRC-style side-by side mixed terrain super-special. By now I was looking forward to this, especially since I was paired with my California buddy Jim Pierce in the other lane. He's a highly experienced road racer and had set some awesome times on the earlier track stages, so I knew he would kick my butt, but I was hoping to put a big hurt on his puny 4 cyl. car down the first straight ; ). It was not to be, however, since the day's event was eventually cut short due to delays in the schedule. Since it was late and there were two more days of rallying, we decided not to stay up late changing the fuel pump.

Day 2 technically started with a 9:00 AM Parc Expose. However, for us it stared at 7:00 outside NAPA waiting for them to open so we could get the fittings needed to install the fuel pressure regulator (that had to run with the new higher-output fuel pump). I spent the entire Parc Expose under the truck changing the fuel pump (and acting like a human spill-kit).

Once on the gravel stages, the rally was awesome. Beautiful scenery (just like the forests in First Blood). Huge trees, semi-mountainous elevation changes, shelf roads cut into hillsides, cool temps, moss every where. The roads were technical, slower than MN, but required more concentration because there was usually NO margin for error. Steep cliffs and boulder filled ditches meant a certain end of the rally if you left the road. The first stage was a bit rough since Tim hadn't navigated in a while, but once he was back in his groove, he was awesome. We knew it was working because he'd ask "how were the notes" and I'd say "I honestly can't remember, it was just like you were in my head, not reading to me". That's a good sign. The road surface was crushed rock of various sizes that was very hard on tires. I'd only brought one set of decent tires for the weekend, so I made a conscious effort to limit wheelsipn and gratuitous use of horsepower. Inconsistent traction made me a bit too confident sometimes, then a slippery spot would scare me back to a more intelligent pace. The weather was rainy and foggy. Many cars did not finish (DNF), but that didn't stop most teams from pushing hard. The pace of the leaders at Oregon was faster than I'm used to seeing in the middle part of the country. I thought we were moving pretty fast, but we could not match the pace of the top pros or local hot shoes. The other MN teams like Olson and Kendall said the same thing when I asked if they felt slow this weekend. The new carb and fuel pump dramatically reduced fuel mileage, and we were lucky to have brought 3 gas cans, because we started with a full fuel cell (22 gallons) and still used all the cans (17 more gallons) each day. Due to our slow start and the tough conditions we decided not to take any big chances and see how our competitors did. All in all, day 2 was a pretty uneventful day for us. We only had one close call, where I hit a bank just hard enough to fill a bead up with dirt and weeds. Each service, we'd put our best tires on the front, in hopes of staying on the side of the mountain. However I could feel the tires getting worse and worse as the event wore on. I joked with the RallyAmerica staff that we started on used tires, which quickly became well-used, then used-up and were approaching use-less.

Day 3 Parc Expose was more relaxed. We got a leaky valve stem fixed by a local tire store, so I now had one good tire. I adjusted the rear (drum) brakes, to try to get them to do something (they had been cool to the touch, even right after stages, on day 1). I couldn't feel a difference in the pedal, but at least they started warming up a bit that last day. Day 3 stages were even more beautiful, the sun had come out and it was about 65 deg. Looking at scores, a group Open class cars in front of us were about four minutes ahead, and thus out of reach, while the ones behind us were 2 minutes back or DNF for the National part of the event, so we decided to keep the pace the same and not push any harder. Again, only one close call today, on the same tricky logged-off corner where our fellow Minnesota friends Kendall/Frieberg fell off the mountain down a REALLY steep cliff.

On stage 18 we came upon something every rally team dreads, a Red Cross was being displayed by Jamie Thomas' co-driver Matt. She had rolled heavily, had neck pain, and the car had been on fire. The car was still on its side, and they asked us to hook up the truck and pull it back on its wheels before it caught fire again (due to fluids leaking on hot parts). Tim had EMT experience, so he checked on Jamie while John Dillon and others hooked my rally truck up to her car and after a few hard tugs in low range it flopped back down on its wheels. I couldn't figure out at the time why it was so hard for me to pull the car over, but once underway again, I quickly figured it out, all that pulling in low range had popped the front axle disconnect open and we now only had 2 wheel drive. We tried to fix it before the next stage, but couldn't, and ran the last stage in 2WD. This was fun in a way, because since the race was almost over, and the tires were completely trash many stages ago, I went into berserk wheel-spinning fun mode on stage 19, just to see how much gravel I could throw and how close I could get the 2WD times to the 4WD times. Interestingly, the 2WD running of that stage was 49 seconds slower than the 4WD running of the 10 mile stage. On both stage 18 and 19 the truck was pulling to the left under acceleration, but I attributed it to running in 2WD which I never normally do. Turns out we had a flat, with something driven right through the tread of the left rear tire (also from pulling on Jamie's car?). Luck was with us this weekend, since by the time we noticed the flat, it was after the last control on the freeway. If we had to fix that on stage, the other Open car behind us in the National event almost certainly would have caught and passed us to take our 6th place finish away.

I was happy to finish such a tough and tricky event, to be 18th overall National in such a tough field, and take 6th place National Open class points home. However I'd hoped the team and the truck would be a bit more competitive with the locals in the regional event. Yah the field was huge, with 17 Open cars in the club events, and yah it's their home event, but our times were not a threat to the leaders. I've got more work to do… I need to find more speed somewhere. There are A LOT of FAST teams out there in the NW!

All the people seem especially nice out there. It was nice to see old friends like the Mark Tabor / Kevin Poirier team and meet news one like Kristen Tabor, some of the Fling Pu team, and others.

This might be my new favorite rally, if not, it's certainly near the top, too bad it's soooo far away.