Thursday: Load up the Bug and hit the road
Rally Bug loaded up on the tow rig
John and I got the Bug and all our spares & tools loaded up on the tow rig and left St. Louis at around noon. We picked up my parents in St. Charles on the way, since we needed them as our service crew & biggest fans at the spectator stage. After a rather boring trip down I-44 we stopped in Joplin Missouri for the night. Friday morning came and went and we finally pulled into Paris in the mid-afternoon. With the help from my father we quickly unloaded the Bug and did some last minute tune up work in the Hampton Inn parking lot. John checked over the suspension and my Dad and I checked the valve lash.
Checking the car in the hotel parking lot
Everything looked fine so we made our way over to Technical Inspection. One of the rally officials looked over all of the safety equipment and then gave the car a good shake down for any obvious mechanical problems. The Bug passed tech and we stayed a bit longer to talk with our fellow competitors. One of them was a nice looking 1963 SAAB 96 2-stroke. (A very popular European rally car in the 60s)
Technical inspection (SAAB in background)
The morning dawned a bit too early for us, but we had to be at Rally HQ by 7am to setup our service area. We picked out a good spot next to another team that came down from St. Louis.
Our service area being setup Saturday morning
After a quick drivers meeting we got belted in the car and headed out to the first stage. Our goal was to take a moderate pace and compare time to other teams after the first stage to see if we needed to go faster.
Waiting at the start control (Mark Huebbe)
The first stage was fast with speeds between 60 & 80 mph. We ran the rally last year so I knew where to go fast or be cautious. The experience helped because we set the 4th fastest stage time of ~9min30sec, about 30 seconds off of the pace of a guy from Colorado in a MR2. However our joy only lasted a few seconds until we rolled into the finish control and a worker said “hey, you know your exhaust is dragging on the ground”, I start yelling in the car and panic insues. We quickly drove into service and diagnosed the problem. What happend amazed us since we ran all of Rally West Virginia with no troubles. The 4 into 1 exhaust collector slipped off of the 4 pipes. How this happened I don’t know, but it must have vibrated loose on stage. Anyway, we took the collector and muffler off and tried to fix the mangled mess. A few minutes in we realize that our tools are useless and nothing we do will work. I decide to skip the next few stages and go into town to try and get a muffler shop to fix it. After about 1hr & 45min. of dealing with (this is a quote from the shop manager) rednecks, I come back to our car with a halfassed fixed collector. We quickly put it back onto the car and get going again to make stage 4 of the first rally.
Fixing the exhaust in service
S&S collector & muffler that fell off
Stage 4 starts up and we are doing pretty good. I drive conservativly to see if the exhaust will hold up and by the end of the stage we notice that the exhaust note gets louder and louder. When John opened his door at the finish control we both knew the exhaust had fallen off again. Now panic ensues… again. We have about 1hr & 30mins for the lunch break to try and solve it. John jacks up the car and takes off the skid plate and smashed exhaust while my Dad & I went into town to the local Advance Auto and O’Rileys auto parts stores. We bought all of the 1.75″ flexable pipe they had and hustled back to the rally.
Flex exhaust pipe slipped onto the 1-5/8 ID pipes
By the time we got back into service we had about 15 minutes to make the fix. Luckly the pipes slipped right on and we secured them with sheet metal screws. Our exhaust system now became open headers! The exhaust worked like a charm, just a LOT louder.
Stage 1 of the second afternoon rally started up and we again took it easy to see how our fix worked. This is the same stage that took us out of last year’s rally. There is a part of the stage called the “Tank Trap” that is like a V with a steep decline and then a steep incline. Last year our car sat a bit too low and we ripped the exhaust off going thru it. This year, with the help of a sidewinder style exhaust, we hoped the Bug would fare much better. When we got to the tank trap we drove slowly down to it, tipped towed through, and out the other side without any loud noises from the underside. Success! We finish out the stage with no problems and pulled into service. I quickly inspect the car and we are back off for the remaining three stages. The final stage of the day started around 5:15pm or so and started after sunset. There was just enough light we didn’t need to turn on the auxillary lights at the start of the stage, but by the time we got half way through we decided to turn them on. I flip the switches and only one of the four lights turns on. Oh no! Oh well… we made due with the stock headlights and finished the stage with limited visibility. We pulled into the final finish control and breathed a sigh of relief. We finished!
Besides for the problems we had a lot of fun at the rally. We completed 6 of the 8 stages and finished in first place in the Historic class for the second afternoon rally.
Bumper cam YouTube video
