Headwaters Reminiscing
By Kerry FreundThe following are excerpts from numerous competitors on their adventures at the Headwaters Club rally. Most of these appeared on Rally-MN.
Jim Cox, rally truck number 558 says....."I learned five things (at least) at Headwaters that I’d like to share with any rookie/future ralliests out there:
1) Route books aren’t to be used as Pace Notes! It wasn’t until the day after the event that I realized why I’d made my two big mistakes (more on this later). Throughout the rally I was unconsciously assuming that if a corner wasn’t in the route book instructions, it wasn’t going to be sharp. Thus I was frequently surprised by how much I had to slow down for some of the corners that weren’t in the route book.
2) Computers may not be a good idea for beginners. In hindsight, I think we should have run without a computer for a few more races. At SnoDrift our computer didn’t work, so I was forced to drive by sight-only, and this resulted in a smooth/fast/successful race. We had the computer working for Headwaters and this allowed me to visualize the corners before I could see them. This allowed me to drive harder, but added risk since the corner didn’t always look like/start where I thought it would.
3) RallyTrucks are easy to roll over. I’m still stunned that we rolled. All it took was a 6" high sandy grader berm at the apex of a corner in SS#3. We were coming into a sandy left hander a little too hot (see item 1). I was sliding into the corner with the rear end out (RWD style). When I saw the corner was tighter than I
planned (see item 1), I pitched it a little more sideways to scrub some speed. I probably had the steering wheel at about 1/2 turn of opposite steering (wheel turned right while for a left hand turn). Since I’m in an oversteer powerslide, my rear wheels hit the berm first. This INSTANTLY rotated the truck 180 degrees clockwise (aided by the opposite lock steering used to regulate the slide through the corner). As soon as the truck rotated to perpendicular to the direction of travel, we did a soft 360 and landed on the wheels with the motor running and off we went. Service was frantic. The tech inspectors were very nice and told us what they wanted: we fabricated metal tabs to hold the windshield in, laminated it with clear packing tape, and built duct tape window nets. The roll itself was surprisingly not scary. The scary thing is this could easily happen again when sliding around almost any deeply rutted corner.
4) Be sure to tie your roll cage to your roof pillars. I was too cheap/in too big of a hurry to go Rallying to tie my cage to the cab anywhere but on the floor. This may have cost me big. The cage is in perfect condition, but the cab was able to deform until it hit the cage tubes. I could have easily replaced fenders and doors, but if I have to replace the cab, that means the cage has to come out, which is almost like starting over building the truck: (I think if I’d tied the A and B pillars to the cage, I’d just have to put a new roof on the cab instead of what i'm facing now.
5) Recognize mental fatigue and adjust your speed accordingly. Remember I mentioned "two big mistakes". Well #2 was late (SS#10?) in what had been a very stressful rally for us. We were tired, vision was poor (it was raining AND dusty so the dust was sticking to the windshield and it was fogged). When Kaari called a "90 Right" somehow I heard "Sweep Right". We launched off a 20' embankment into a thick stand of 1-2" re-growth poplar. We stopped about 100' off the road. After we stopped, Kaari got out and headed for the road with the triangle and "OK sign", and I got out, found an old skidder trail that didn’t have quite as many trees on it and seemed to go toward the road. I put 4x4Rallytruck in low range and "made a new road" to the skidtrail then back toward the stage road. Some boulders (and no reverse due to bent shift linkage) stopped me 10' from the road. Sweep was there before I got out of the truck, and I was back on the road after losing about 5-10 minutes. After yet another frantic service where we changed two tires, removed an exploded shock, unstuck the shift linkage, jumped on the hood until it would close, and calculated our MPL, we nursed the wounded RallyBarge in for an official finish. Jim later reported that the "patient" was not as bad off as first appearances indicated. He has a LARGE shopping list but stated "It looks like MUCH less work than I thought I was going to have to do". Good luck Jim. Other competitors were not quite as lucky. Here is what Larry Warrington, #557 FrankenJetta, had to say about the event.... "Our weekend started out on Friday night in the C’Mon Inn parking lot with the revelation that I forgot the driving lights. With lots of help from Doug Davenport and others, that problem was solved. A huge thank you goes out to Doug and Leah for that one. On an evening when you didn’t need one more thing, you helped us out greatly. Thanks. Then
Headwaters, cont on page 4
Tonneau On-Line July 2001
Page 3
Copyright 2001, Land O'Lakes Region Last revised: March 13, 2003
