Into the Night's "Training Wheels Rally".
Sometimes the weatherman gets it right. For the last few days, I checked every weather report I could find, hoping to find something more positive than, "heavy rain at times".
Saturday morning, we woke up to a constant, driving downpour. The Arntz was ready for the rally, the Russo red paint glistening and engine running better than ever. As I looked out of the garage at the waterfall, I am embarrassed to say, I actually thought about taking another car. The "Rally" Altima or the wife's Jag-you-are. The traction control and ABS were enticing.
You see, the logical side of your brain tells you the possibility of getting into an accident goes way up in the rain. Without ABS, airbags, rollover protection, bumpers or even a padded dash, this is a serious consideration. Without a defroster, I have to use towels to keep the windows clear. The interior of the car gets soaked when it rains and it takes a couple of days to dry out the carpet with fans. I knew that the lower half of my jeans would be damp most of the time.
Fortunately, the fun side of my brain kicked in and said, "what challenge would it be in a normal car? Where's the adventure?" I quickly came to my senses, dropped the hardtop on the Cobra and headed out into the water world.
It came down heavy most of the day. There where puddles so large that my navigator, Ron, asked if I brought the oars. Some of these lakes were more than 50' across and 6 inches deep. Every time I got through one of them, I had another big grin on my face and was glad my distributor sits on the back of the engine! We passed a modified Mitsubishi that did not make it. He had installed a snorkel that pulls air from below the front bumper. Not a good idea for deep water! We heard of a Subaru WRX that went off the road and had to be pushed back onto the road because it high centered on a berm. So much for the "the beauty of all wheel drive!"
We had drawn car number 1. I thought that this would be a major handicap, because leading the pack, you cannot see other cars lined up at Checkpoints. However, it worked out very well, in 4 hours of driving we never got baulked by slower cars and almost always had an open road. Being Car #1 would be more difficult without an experienced navigator.
Visibility was our biggest problem. If we kept the side windows closed to warm up the car, the humidity fogged up everything, big time. Turning on the heater made it worse. There were times I had to take off my glasses and hand them to Ron to wipe off because I couldn't see through them anymore. We finally learned to live with the sidecurtains open and raindrops blowing in and down our backs, in order to keep the windows clear.
This rally was created to take advantage of the many twisty roads in the San Bernardino Mountains. We started in Rancho Cucamonga and after a short run on the 15 freeway, headed up Waterman, into the sky. The steep inclines and torrents running across the road kept me on my toes as the wide Toyos happily skied around the tight turns.
We were trying new technology on this rally, Ron brought his laptop with GPS. This was very helpful in the Crestline area. The maze of roads up there is very easy to get lost in. The screen showed our position on a detailed map and kept us right on course. It didn't warn us of the many rocks that had rolled out into the road, though! As we passed through one intersection, a Mini Moog was waiting at the stop sign. I've always liked these amazing vehicles and wondered if the driver was dryer than me.
Once in a while, I would brake a little too hard going into a tight hairpin and slide a little, then ease up on the brakes and make the turn. I was REALLY glad I wasn't sitting in the passenger seat as all you could see over the edge of the road was the tops of pine trees! I have to credit Ron Dunlop for an excellent job navigating us through some demanding terrain and ENJOYING the ride!
Ron and I are both over 200 pounds and our weight over the rear wheels made the Arntz understeer a little. This was a good thing for safety's sake, allowing me to use the brakes to help the front tires turn in. On one Checkpoint, I approached the timing hose a little too fast and when I eased on the brakes there was nothing there! By the time the brake pads wiped the water off the rotors and started working, we had crossed the hose. We got a 2-point penalty. After that, I always pumped the brakes before the checkpoint and we hit the rest perfectly. Those 2 points bit us at the end, dropping us to second place overall.
After all the years I've been driving the Cobra, it's still pretty amazing (to me) that a homebuilt replica can run with and sometimes beat thirty-odd competitors in the best two and four wheel drive rally cars around. Cobras are incredible performance machines. At one Checkpoint I was digging around in the trunk for something and a novice walked up and looked in the trunk and asked where the engine was. I just shook my head and opened the hood for him to see. He was pretty impressed.
All in all, it was very difficult, somewhat uncomfortable, highly dangerous and a total blast! I feel very fortunate to be alive today and the world is a great place. It will take me awhile to get used to the weatherman being right, though.
Paul
Rally Report
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