Great Race Posting #3
Well, for a couple of alleged veterans, we sure made some rookie flubs today! After a morning clean-up session (bodies and car), we sat the de rigeur Rally School to get reminded of all the details of doing this sort of event (at least from the competitors' perspective � a tiny part of the total scope of the requisite organization and effort to plan and put on something of this scope. Thanks to Corky Coker and Jim Menneto (of Hemmings) for making it possible, and to John Claussen, Rally master and his staff who do the work of thousands for making it real.
Today was a 'trophy run,' a kind of one-day practice rally, with its own placing and prizes. We had five legs (Well, not us, the rally had five legs, as measured by the secret checkpoint locations along the way. We wound through the hills above Chattanooga, going up to the overlook at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility, where there is a huge 500-acre lake high above the river, with pump-turbines that move water up to fill the lake at night (when electricity is cheap) and run it back through the turbines to produce electricity in the afternoons, when demand and prices are high. The vertical lift (for both water and our cars running today) is about 1,000 feet, and the station can produce over 1,000 Megawatts (about like a typical large nuke) for over 20 hours. We had to hold very low speeds (18 mph) over much of the access road up AND down the mountain. That's not easy for us, as it's near the flat-land creep speed in Drive. Even in 1st, it needs miles of steady braking on the way down. Several cars didn't make it. We saw at least 3 waiting for the sweep truck.
Side note: NO XQS is 50 years old this year. We are not the newest car here (of the 60+ competing, there are two or three between us and the 1969 cutoff), but this Imp is just one half the age of the oldest car here, a 1911 Velie. Those guys are riding something like a powered buckboard!
Another hot and sticky one today, and the lower speeds provided little breeze. Fortunately, many of the roads were in the hills, with heavy tree cover, so there was some break from total sun.
We are given a start time each morning, based on a random draw for order, with each car leaving in turn on one-minute separations from the start line. That start line is usually a few miles out of town, so as not to clog up the works where the roads are crowded. As this first day began in the afternoon (after the school and prep hours), we left from a lunch restaurant to go to the start point. Alas, we misread the directions right away and missed that the start was 1.5 + 10 miles (two instruction steps), not just 1.5 miles from the restaurant. By the time we realized the start was not that close, we knew we would be many minutes late for our turn at start. So we raced ahead (at full legal speed of course), and managed to pass several cars that should have started behind us, before we met the first checkpoint. Bleahhh. We were still over 3 minutes behind. The next leg timing starts from there, so� deep breath � go again fresh. And we did. We had a 2-second leg, a 7-second leg, and then we missed a turn! Fast thrashing about enabled us to hold that one to just a 23-second error, helped by the fact that we were between two other cars that had skillful drivers, and could tell about where we should be relative to them, even though we hadn't got there by careful rally work ourselves. Then the last leg was another 2-second score. So, if we can avoid the errors, we can do this pretty well.
Back to the hotel. There is a definite miss at idle I want to check. Dinner and charity auction and awards for the day's run were given in the museum at Coker Tire Co. They have lots of cool old cars and motorcycles � I hope I can post this later with pix you can see. No, we didn't win anything. Our total score was several minutes off the pace, given that disastrous first leg. The first place went to a team with a total 2.1 second error today.
I checked the plug leads, pulling each one off in turn. All had good jump spark at the distributor terminals, but one did seem like it was not inserted fully. Maybe that's the source of the miss? It seemed better after I re-set all the terminals there, but we'll see� We also have that weird gauge problem: they always come up with the ignition, but either stay on a while or drift back to their off positions within minutes. AS disconcerting as it is to run without temp, oil pressure and fuel level info, it's too dark to tear into it at night. Maybe tomorrow�
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The Shady Parkway
And Style comparison: "Then and Now"
Sad news from home � a very sick pet, and we just lost one last month, too. Super Sue says to keep going, though.
We start for real at 7 AM, the first leg toward Vermont! IF the miss doesn't get worse, we should do well.
jc
Day 4, June 11, 2011:
Great Race Post #4
Well, now we're getting serious (or as they'd say aroun' here: gittin' seerus). I love the accents in this part of the world and it's very contagious. We flubbed our first mark again this morning, but it didn't matter, because it was on the untimed transient out of Chattanooga to the official start point. We just fit in a little extra sightseeing and got our nerves properly jangled for the real run. It must have worked as we placed 6th overall for the day! We scored 21 seconds total error, including our first Ace (a perfect leg). We hauled up the Great Smoky mountains to well over 4,000 feet (bear in mind, we started at under 700 feet in Chattanooga!). The haul up into the Nantahala National Forest included a 15+ mile steep grade! I expected some of the older, lower-powered cars to suffer and die, but only a couple were passed on the roadside along the way, and only two rode into the evening show late or on the sweeper.
We had an unavoidable delay of about 50 seconds at an intersection that we made up with our formula; and it worked, we got a �11, -9, -1, and 0 second errors today. The brakes survived the long ride back down � lots of engine braking helped.
We met Robert Soule of the IML (and AACA) in Chattanooga before leaving this morning. He came out to see us, prodded by Kerry Pinkerton. He arrived in his 1937 Imperial Limousine in formal black. Lovely! We talked it up a bit but as competitors, we have pretty tight time constraints. Thanks for coming out, Robert! The cars rolled out of Chattanooga around 9AM, and we went west on I-24, instead of East. Whoops! Where we were supposed to use the freeway time for calibrating our speedometer, running at 50 mph. Instead, we high-tailed it back east once we found the next exit on I-24 to reverse. We ran some of the marked distances at 55 and 60 mph, to test our catch-up algorithm (go 10% or 20% faster and save 10% or 20% of the time over a set distance). N fact, it didn't work out too well, as it is intended to be "go 10 or 20% faster for a fixed number of seconds to recover one tenth or one fifth of the seconds at higher speed. It's a subtle difference but seconds matter!
Anyway, we made it in time and made a good start (unlike yesterday). The gauges dropped out again fro most of the morning run, though. But we did OK.
We had our Lunch Stop in Athens, TN. Athens is a classically laid-out little town, with a courthouse square In the center, and a commercial core around that block. All those were closed to traffic for us and we had a fine lunch courtesy of the local C of C. Hot, hot, and hotter describes the day. The Duke thermometer was into 3 digits again. And my left arm, which seems involuntarily to go up on the window sill, is getting a little reddish. Fortunately, these Athenians thought of that and most of their commercial fronts include shady porches. Dave insisted that we put up the wimp-rag (convertible top) for the afternoon.
Back in the cars, pulling that long grade to elevation, but Ahhhh, the air is fresh and cool! I'm starting to trust the car, even when it's not telling me any gauge data. We had that very gratifying big correction (50 second delay from intersection waiting) and it worked out well. We cruised down into Maggie Valley, NC for a picnic dinner and car show at the Wheels through Time motorcycle museum. Unfortunately, all that atmospheric energy let loose just before we arrived with a whomping thunderboomer and waterballer of a storm, so we were a bit wet and so were the picnic tables. But the rain let off long enough for a brief, good dinner and show there and we retired to the local Holiday Inn in Asheville, NC.
Before relaxing, we did a little maintenance: we only burned a 1/2 quart of oil, and we checked that the spare is, in fact, inflated (after seeing another team changing one on the road). I also re-set the wiper pivots , because the passenger (or navigator) side arm was whacking the sidepost of the windshield � very annoying. No wash=up tonight, the clean mountain rain did a pretty good job. Oh, we also shot some VERY nice image of the 1911 Velie that we ran behind through the rain � its open wheel throwing 15-foot rooster tails of North Carolina's very best cloud juice as they drove on in full rain gear.
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The VELIE and "No Excuses"
And The COKER Museum
Not much else needed to do tonight. We should ever do so well again as we did today! We'll stick the Ace awards on the car tomorrow morning! 7:30 AM from Galax, VA, running to Salem, VA.
jc
