Alan Perry's Blog

Monday June 06, 2005

Dryad Quest/Shitepoke Rally

This last weekend I competed in the Dryad Quest and Shitepoke Rallies, based out of Shelton, WA. This time around, I was co-driving for Barrett Dash in a Subaru Legacy.

I didn't intend to compete in this rally, but it wasn't going to cost me anything except gas to get there, Barrett is one of the faster drivers in the Pacific Northwest, and it was only an hour from my house. That last part was important because I ended up spending the second day of the rally doing yardwork at my house.

The car started the day with cooling problems. Because the coolant temperatures were high, we swapped out the single fan radiator with a dual fan radiator after two stages. However, the combination of high engine speed and high boost proved too much for the new radiator to take.

On Stage 4, with 3 miles to go, the fitting on the radiator end cap that attaches to the coolant hose blew clean off. A steady stream of steam poured out of the hood vent. Barrett did not let this slow him down too much. I let him know how far it was to the end of the stage and he kept pushing the car as fast as it would go. We crossed the finish and the engine stopped. The car coasted to the stop control, where we got our time for the stage. We considered the rally over for us and got a tow back to the service area. I turned in our time card.

However, while I was walking through the service area, telling my friends about our woes, the service crew were reinstalling the first radiator to see if they could get the car running for the rally on the next day. When they got everything reassembled and tested the car out, the engine ran OK. One of the service guys went and got our time card back and we were back in the rally.

We ran the next stage and, while the coolant temps were high, they settled to a spot just below overheating. But it didn't last.

On Stage 6, an 11 mile stage, we started seeing coolant steam coming out of the hood vent about halfway through. Then the coolant steam stopped and the burning oil started. Barrett was going to change the engine anyway and was going to either finish the stage or blow the engine trying. Oil smoke was blowing out of the tailpipe, engine bay and ventilation system (until we turned off the vent). I was waiting for the engine to blow, but it never happened. The car got slower and slower, but, again, we managed to cross the finish before the engine stopped. We got our time and pushed the car out of the control.

When we looked over the engine, there were no coolant in the cooling system and no oil in the sump. There was oil all over the engine bay. The engine was toast.

And I turned in our time card for the second (and final) time.

( Jun 06 2005, 09:33:15 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]