Tuesday October 23, 2007 Alan Perry's Blog
Tuesday October 23, 2007 I haven't blogged about rally for some time, but I have still been doing it. This season I have continued co-driving for Gary Cavett. At the beginning of the year, I had announced that this would be my last season as a rally competitor.
I was going to retire this season, but Gary asked me to postpone my retirement a year. At the end of last season, the engine broke and Gary decided to rebuild it with a larger 2.5L block. The car was going to be very fast and he was going to make a serious run at the regional championship.
The first rally was Doo Wops in February. With the larger engine, the car was much faster for most of the first stage, then it lost a piston because of detonation because of insufficient fuel pump capacity. The car left an oil streak a half mile long.
The engine was rebuilt and we ran the Oregon Trail Rally in April. The car died on the first day of the rally because of a fuel pump issue. The fuel pump failure seemed to occur at the exact moment that I closed my door, so I think that something else was up as well, but what do I know? I am just the co-driver. We restarted the second day of the rally and the gearbox got stuck in third gear and we withdrew.
The gearbox was rebuilt and we ran the Olympus Rally in May. About halfway through the day, the clutch started to slip badly. There seemed little point in continuing, so we withdrew to allow additional time to replace the clutch. We restarted on the second day and blew the engine again with a failure similar to that which happened at Doo Wops.
Gary rebuilt the engine, installed higher flow fuel hardware and had all of the fuel injectors tested. Dyno tests showed that the engine was running well. We skipped the Wild West and Mt. Hood rallies and ran the Pacific Forest Rally last weekend. The engine died about 6km into the first stage, just like how it had died at Doo Wops and the Olympus Rally.
And that was the end of my co-driving career.
I will continue to work on the Rally America rulebook and bulletins and I will continue to help organize the Olympus Rally, but I won't be a co-driver anymore.
I am not sure how I feel about it. This past season has been so frustrating that I am happy that it is over. However, I enjoy co-driving and think that I am pretty good at it. When I watch the in-car on the WRC coverage, I want to be in a car co-driving. Also, not finishing a rally in the last year is not really how I wanted to end my career.
Who knows? Maybe I will be back in a car after I stop thinking about this season.
( Oct 23 2007, 12:46:23 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [4]
