LCCC Safari Rally

[Trinity]

Are any Excels competing at the LCCC Safari Rally this weekend?

[bek82]

I think Fro maybe going???? I will be a wedding far far away from the hideous place:splat:

[fro]

Three.

Damo, Brothers Cullen and KG & myself.

Cars 18, 21 and 20 respectively.

[Crazy Dave]

There will also be some fellow skadacians up there Trinity. Matty James, Andrew Kohler, Dennis Stanford (maybe more).

[Bargy]

I will be on start control for Pipeline.

Good luck to all Excelsiors*!!!

* a Latin word meaning "superior", "lordly", "ever upward"

[Kirrilee]

It's a goer! The utes packed and the cars ready to go! YAY :clap:

Should be a good fight :)

[Trinity]

Should be getting some footage of the Excels.

[Trinity]

At the end of SS6. The Cullens have DNF (don't know why tho), Fro is coming 13th OR and Damo is coming 15th OR.

Really good rally, Great speccy point. Should be some Excel footage on Youtube soon.

[Trinity]

Final Results(unofficial): Fro 14th and Damo 16th.

[Damo666]

Hi Trinity, you should have come past and said hello.

We had a good fun day.
It started pretty well on the first stage, where we managed to get into a pretty good pace straight away, but pretty quickly turned to poo on stage 2!!

One of the cars in front must have overshot a hard to see corner and taken down some bunting at a crossroads, so we continued on unaware and wrong-roaded for another 1.5kms or so till coming to a completely blocked off road!! :mad: By the time we had backtracked and worked out where we were, we rejoined just after Fro and had lost about 4.5 minutes to those around us.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful - apart from the red mist that then descended on stage 3, where I absolutley ran out of talent on a really fast downhill section and stuck the car a good three meters down an embankment and off into the blackberries. I thought our rally was all over, but tried reverse, and the little 1WD magically pulled itself back up onto the road! :clap: The only other excitement was at the following service after our refuel, where it appears the seal that sits inside the top of the fuel tank had dislodged, and resulted in the full petrol tank spilling it guts all over the ground and near the hot exhaust....this caused the fire marshall guys a bit of heart attack, but was magically fixed by Fro's awesome service man, Matt Searle, and we were on our way again.

Overall, we still had a really fun day "battling" with Fro and the Cullens in the other Excels.
Even if you discount our little stage 2 excursion, Fro would have beaten us. He still had about 9 seconds on us over the the remaining 7 stages, but frankly I was pretty happy to be able to stay that close! I really enjoyed the shared service & comraderie from being with the other Excel guys so, thanks for that, it made it one of the more enjoyable rallies that I've done. :grouphug: (I really need to actually get to an Excel round soon, dont I?).

To sum up;

- A massive thanks to Fro, Naomi and Matt Searle for allowing me to throw all my service crap in the back of the truck, and being their usual fantastic selves.
- Comiserations to Matt & Ben, who seemed to be having a good day, but got caught by one of the tricky Canberra roads later in the day.

[Damo666]

Just had a quick look over the car in the light of day. Looks like we picked up this golfball sized extra in the last stage.

I was wondering why the steering was so heavy as we left the club!!! :eek:

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff126/damop/Picture446.jpg

[Trinity]

YouTube - 2009 LCCC Safari Rally - Excels

[Matty C]

Congrats to Fro and Damo for finishing:clap:. That's one up what I did at this event.

SS1 started off promising - though lost 20 seconds due to a spin, would have been on Fro's pace there abouts - Damo smoked me though.

SS2 was 2 seconds faster than Fro, who later revealed had a lesser wrong way moment than Damo at the same point (That sux Damo!), But clearly still not quick enough.

Went out hard but Fro still got me by 50 seconds on east-west. So was a little annoyed with my speed, or lack thereof.

SS4 was a nice short 7km blast. Last 2 km were fat and got to wind the car up to 150km in places. Though still slower than From and Damo.

SS5 got a HTF from ben and went for it. Was going well until 6km on where i went off, thought the call was slightly incorrect in the book (will post happy snaps of where we went off so you can judge for yourself), and got beached.

We were stuck there for 2 hours until the sweep and recovery arrived to pull us back out. Before than 2 other cars almost collected our car while parked. Ben had spoken to at least six competitors at the club who also had moments at this corner - so wasn't just me.

So yeah a frustrating end:splat:

Once out no damage, only a slight geometric change is required at the front, would not have slowed me down if decided I wanted to the stage again.

Ben convinced me to allow him to drive the car out at transport speed to stage end, and almost hit 2 kangaroos/wallabies 1 almost had its ar*e imprinted on our bonnett - all parties involved got a scare!

Big thanks to Fro and Naomi for putting Ben and me up for the event at their place:grouphug: and Ben for having the courage to get back in the silly seat.

Bring on the next one.:attack:


Mat

[Matty C]

So here some happy snaps of where I went off at the safari.

Where I got the call - "100m road goes right, gutters left and right downhill"
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2699/dsc00145uni.jpg

What I thought was the road goes right
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8321/dsc00144thu.jpg

A blind crest not in the road book - doing 80kms at this stage.
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/4513/dsc00141jaq.jpg

Crest starts to open up
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/7508/dsc00142cho.jpg

Everything still ok - look even says it on my car!

[Matty C]

The conlcusion - from part 1

Maybe this was the road goes right? (Road not where it should be)
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9424/dsc00139x.jpg
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/3805/dsc00143v.jpg

And where I finally beached it.
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/6637/dsc00140vns.jpg

And If you look at the last picture you can see where someone has lost a mudflap, where they have overshot by more than a car lenght than me and managed to keep going :confused:

[swill]

The call in the book should be RGR on crest 100% for that corner. Checker should of picked that one up

[haggers]

Overall, we still had a really fun day "battling" with Fro and the Cullens in the other Excels.
Even if you discount our little stage 2 excursion, Fro would have beaten us. He still had about 9 seconds on us over the the remaining 7 stages, but frankly I was pretty happy to be able to stay that close! I really enjoyed the shared service & comraderie from being with the other Excel guys so, thanks for that, it made it one of the more enjoyable rallies that I've done. :grouphug: (I really need to actually get to an Excel round soon, dont I?).




Damo

Within 9 secs of the Fro-Meister !! You were close to GOD!!

Haggers