Rally route.. Who says this hobby isn’t an excuse to drive beautiful roads?

Mendocino Gold TSD tomorrow, ten hours’ drive from Portland. Had to stop for ice cream.
Was up late last night replacing sensor magnets on the left front halfshaft. Precision!
With the turbo, there’s plenty of power for the Siskiyous passes.

For the wet and rough roads of Targa Newfoundland, 18″ low-profile tires are not the ticket. Something with a bit more sidewall is called for; and to mount the big skins, some rugged Braid wheels.

Despite the additional strength of the FullRace RallyX wheels, they’re each more than 10 pounds lighter than the OEM stuff – taking that much unsprung weight off each corner.

The 996 has twin forward-mounted radiators, one each side. They’re hung in the bodywork just front of the front wheels, at an angle, with large ducts funneling air to ’em. Internet rumors said they pickup a good amount of debris over time, so I thought I’d better check & maybe clean them.

Internet rumors are right.

The only constant is change.

All our equipment was slightly different this time. Same model car, but twice as much power. Same brand of tires, but a different size. Same rally computer, but different sensors and magnets. The results were … different, too.    Normally a team is warming up on Saturday, and their scores are better on Sunday.  Didn’t work that way for us; we fell from a close second place Saturday night to a distant fourth place at the end of the rally.  Boo!

 

Some nice photos, though.  🙂

Here’s our ride, the Bad Dog.

 

The cars line up at the start of a typical section. The surface here wasn’t bad – you couldn’t walk on it without slipping, but studded tires bit well.

Super-dark out in the woods Saturday night, somewhere NE of Carmi.

I ordered a large skid plate.

Roundel is the magazine of the BMW Car Club of America. We’re longtime subscribers.

I enjoy dreaming through the classified ads, learning from the columnists, and laughing in the ‘Letters’ section. I’m not the only one who dislikes ‘run-flat’ tires.

 

And in the December issue, there’s this:

The author got it mostly right…

GS in the parking garage has every little aftermarket guard you can imagine.

Guard on the sidestand switch.

Guard on the Telelever

Guard on the injector above the guard for the thottle plate pivot.

Keyed guard for the extra windshield.

Waiting on the beach(?) for the start of Keels, there was a wee bit o’ wind coming in the harbor.

 

The rally is a series of 40+ closed-road stages linked by transits on public roads.

The stages, together, add to around 400 km.

On those 400 km, I spent more than 50% of the time with the throttle wide open.

Wondering what the BMW’s on-board computer will say to the next service technician that reads it…

 

The two critical pieces of equipment were our intercoms (courtesy of LegitScript) and the supersize brakes on the car (from Roundel).

 

Uh-oh – the bunny caught me. This might be a stage where I still respected the ‘not-to-exceed’ limit.  Simon & Stewart were in the VW. Fabulous folks, fast and funny and indominable.

 

I believe all photo credits are: Ralph Saulnier.  I’ll be licensing several of his shots for memorabilia.