Success and failure both happened at Rallye de Paris. (Paris, Texas that is)

• Photos during the race: http://www.321govideo.com/rallybug/photos/album/11_24_2007/
• Photos of tow back: http://www.321govideo.com/rallybug/photos/album/11_25_2007/
• Photos of the damage: http://www.321govideo.com/rallybug/photos/album/11_26_2007/

Tuesday: After John and I got off of work (with the help of my father) we pre-tuned the carbs on the engine so that I could drive the bug to get it dyno tuned. The sound inside the car on the highway was deafening. The engine, transmission, and every panel inside the car was making noise. As I was driving I constantly looked over at my gauges to make sure the engine wasn’t overheating. John was tailing me in case we had any problems, but we made it to Tuxedo Park racing without any issues. Steven was very helpful and during the tuning session we found out that the engine was running a bit rich. We changed out some jets and got the car in a fairly good state of tune. It wasn’t perfect, but given that I didn’t have huge selection of jets we got it close. The bug made about 147 hp to the wheels, which is about 167 at the crank. I think if we increased the compression ratio and got the air fuel ratio just right we might get 160 to the wheels. We finally finished at 10:30 PM and drove home. Thanks to Steven for being so accommodating and staying very late!

Wednesday: John and I woke up at 6:30 AM and immediately started working on the car. We had to finish the rear skid plate, exhaust wrap, notch front skid plate, carb filters, make tow eyes, roll bar padding, NACA vents, pop out air window vents, decals, and make a cover for the front wire harness. During lunch I drove down to Archway Auto Imports and picked up some spare parts from Jim. He loaned me some CVs, Axles, and boots just in case we broke one at the rally. Big thanks to Archway! After I got back home we finished up everything except putting the decals on the body. John and I got to bed around 11:30 PM.

Thursday: We awoke at 6 AM stumbled down to the garage and finished placing the decals on the car by about 9:30 AM. My mother came over and helped us pack for the trip. We wanted to leave by 10:30, but we had way to much crap to stuff into our loaned tow vehicle and we rolled out by 11:15. (Big thanks to Doug Varble for loaning us the Jeep)

About 15 minutes into our trip John asked me, “did you grab the helmet and HANs?” Ohh crap! We turned around, went back home and picked up the helmet. Note to self: double check helmets before leaving. After being on the road for about 4.5 hours we stopped at my uncle Mike’s house south of Springfield Missouri and had Thanksgiving dinner with him and his wife. The turkey was delicious.

Friday: It was a very cold morning, about 23 degrees, and the bug had frost all over it. By 9 AM we were on the road and at around 3 PM we arrived at our hotel in Paris, Texas. John and I still had to put a couple of decals on the car, put some roll bar padding on the co-driver’s side, and bolt the co-driver’s seat in place. By 5 PM some of the guys from St. Louis came over and watched us work on the car. Kim DeMotte dropped off his helmet, HANs, and intercom. Thank you Kim for loaning us your equipment! At 6:30 PM we registered at headquarters, drove over to tech inspection near 7 PM, and by 8:30 PM we went to the novice class. John and I finally got to bed at around 10:45 PM.

Saturday: 6 AM came too quickly and both of us stumbled out of bed. We needed to show up to Camp Maxey by 7 AM to setup our service area and drive the odo check route. The bug started right up even though it was very cold. The forcast for the day was cold, clouds and rain. It’s good we borrowed an ez-up from Bud because we needed it the whole day to keep dry. Thanks Bud! During the odo check John adjusted the correction factor on the rally trip computer and I avoided the deer jumping in front of the car. Shortly there after we attended the driver’s meeting and by 9 AM we got into the car and headed out to the first stage.

Originally I had envisioned being nervous but actually at the starting line I felt quite calm. During the odo check the car felt fine so I wasn’t worried about anything mechanical breaking on the car. The guy at the start line counted me down… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO. I let out the clutch at 3k rpm and whoooohoooo wheel spin! I shifted to 2nd at 5k and more wheel spin. The same happened going into 3rd gear. Wow, this car is fun! The first stage starts out with a long straight and then a 90 right. We were at about 5k in 4th and then comes our first turn. I setup wide, brake and get a little bit of a flick going entering the turn. It seems about right up until mid corner and then wow way too much rotation. I get it settled and start figuring out how the car handles. I’m used to rallycrossing my AWD 375 HP Subaru STi and not a tail heavy, tail happy RWD Beetle. At first I felt a bit cautious entering turns but by about 5 miles into the stage I started to push things a bit harder. But at around 6 miles we caught the car in front of us. (Cool, I guess we’re not going to be one of the slowest cars at the rally.) We finish in their dust and come in on the same minute. Our engine temps during the 9.5 mile stage were about 220 oil, 300 heads, and 1200-1300 EGT.

We drove into our service pit and inspected the car all over. The suspension looked fine, skid plates were still attached, and nothing looked wrong on the outside of the car. John then looked thru the inspection cover on our dry sump enclosure and noticed oil leaking from the tank breather. Hmm… maybe we over filled the dry sump? Or maybe all the bouncing around caused oil to splash up into the breather line? We only had about 15 minutes to fix it, so we only wiped up the oil and drove out to the second stage.

The second stage was a repeat of the first, so I knew where I could go a bit faster. The stage started out with lots of wheel spin again, I spun at the first 90 right, and at about 1.5 miles into the stage the car started to sputter. What’s going on? Finally we come to a dead stop and get out our triangles to warn the car behind us. The engine temps seem fine, so what’s the problem? GAS! “Hey John, did we fill up the car?” “Nope” “Well CRAP!” Things were going so well and to have something so simple like running out of gas take us out really is brainless. We got towed back into service and promptly filled the car with 10 gallons of gas.

On the third stage things finally started to click. It started to rain lightly so that kept the dust down, but consequently the road got a little bit slick. John was reading off the notes right on time and I was feeling very comfortable with the car. I could keep the car in a steady drift without fearing the rear end coming out from under me and I had confidence with taking the engine to 6900 rpm. There were a couple of straights that we topped out in 4th gear at 96 mph and the car felt really skittish. We never got the rear end aligned, so I can only guess that we had a bit of toe out. We finished with a stage time that was on par with some of the other competitors in our class.

The forth stage is where things really got interesting. During the third stage I had John write down in the route book where the tricky corners were located and where I could go faster in others. I spent most of the time in 3rd an 4th gears at around 4k-6k rpm and it sounded glorious. At the spectator area we came down the hill full tilt, flicked the car sideways, clipped the inside of the turn and had the rear end kicked out spitting gravel for a good 1/8th mile til the next 90 right. That’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a car. When we rolled into service we removed the co-driver’s seat, took out the breather and drained a good 1/2 quart of oil from it. I think were splashing oil up into the breather line during hard cornering and all the bouncing we’re doing on stage. We cleaned up the oil, ate some lunch and put the seat back in with minutes to spare before we were due out to the fifth stage.

Two words, tank trap. All four afternoon stages would go through the infamous tank trap. Stage five was 10.5 miles long and about half way thru it was the tank trap. The car felt great and the first half of the stage was very fun. John called out “four tenths tank trap… two tenths tank trap… one tenth tank trap… ok here it is.” “WTF is that?” I said. I entered in first gear very slow and then we heard this huge *BANG* from the front skid plate. I gave it a bit of gas to climb up the other side and then heard another *BANG – CRUNCH*. The crunch part was our downfall. We drove about another four tenths and things seemed fine. I entered what I remember was a 90 left and stalled the car. I hadn’t stalled it all day, so something seemed wrong. I cranked the engine twice for about 10 seconds each and finally got it started again. Apparently we were shooting 2′ long flames from our exhaust, so I bet the engine was running rich and got flooded. (Mark & Rob can attest to the flames as they put their Mustang off in the same corner) We got about another tenth down the road and the generator light came on. Ohh crap… I instantly look over at my head temps and they are soaring to 450+. I knew what was wrong and quickly pulled the car to the side of the road. John put out the triangle and I opened the deck lid to find very hot, rubbery goo (that used to be the fan belt) spread all over the engine tin with little specs of aluminum from the crank pulley. Apparently a rock found its way between the crank pulley and the fan belt. But how the rock got into the engine bay is even more interesting. When we went thru the tank trap that crunch noise was the exhaust being ripped off the engine and destroying the rear apron and creating a gap between the deck lid and apron. When I slid into the 90 left a pebble must have jumped into the engine bay and sat on the pulley. When I restarted the engine the pebble gouged out the aluminum pulley and shredded the belt. Rally over. The sweep truck towed us back into our service area and we loaded the car up onto the trailer. It’s a shame that a little pebble took us out of the rally because I was really looking forward to running the back half of those last four stages. I guess we will have to wait until next year.

I’d like to thank all of the volunteers at Rallye de Paris for putting on the rally. Without you we wouldn’t be able to have fun.

Also I would like to thank my Father and Mother for all of their help getting the car ready. Additional thanks to Mike Houser for use of his trailer, Doug Varble for use of his Jeep, Dennis Martin and Kim DeMotte for use of their helmets and HANs, Bud Scott for use of his EZ-UP, and Archway Auto for spare parts.

We have been working at a feverish pace for the last few days.  We got the engine installed over the weekend, plumbed the oil lines, created a custom oil tank enclosure, welded mounts and installed the racing harness, and tons more little things.  The grind is really starting to wear down on the both of us.  We are so close to finishing the Bug and making it to our first rally that we must press on regardless despite our low energy.  Tonight we are driving the bug over to Tuxedo park racing to get it dyno tuned.  We hope to finish everthing off on Wednesday.  Wish us luck!

We have good news to report, the Rally Bug passed the Missouri State safety inspection yesterday afternoon.  Now we can drive it on the street and put some very needed break in miles on the new engine.

Last night John finished up installing the engine tin and we both worked on installing the alternator and cooling fan.  The only thing left to do on the engine is setup the carbs and linkage.  I got about half of the carb setup completed and hope to get the rest done tonight.  I also finished welding the oil cooler mount and fitted it inside the car.  I’ll have to wire up the fans and thermostat before we install the new engine.

I took a photo of the engine last night.  John got the cylinder tins clearanced for the larger intake manifolds and test fitted the cooling shroud and exhaust.  He’s going to assemble the alternator to the shroud tonight.  I finished welding up the oil cooler fan mount, but I still need to cut an opening in the parcel shelf and weld it in place.

The past few days have involved working on the engine or engine related items.  (I need to take some photos of the engine in long block form.)  Over the weekend I fabricated some mounts for the 12 qt dry sump oil tank, oil filter mount, breather mount, and oil cooler mount.  I still need to weld the oil cooler mount to the rear parcel shelf and fab some tabs to mount the twin fans.  I hope to get that done on Monday night.  John will be working on clearancing the cooling tins to fit the larger intake manifolds and mount the alternator to the cooling shroud.  After that we need to setup the carbs, linkage, and air cleaners.  We only have 11 days til the rally, so we’re cutting it close.  I really hope to get the engine installed and running by the weekend so we can break it in.

We towed the Rally Bug out to a rallycross event this past weekend.  This was a sort of mini shakedown for the Bug.  We found out that it moves forwards and backwards, shifts, stops, turns, and goes slow.    That little 40hp (more like 30hp with 140,000 miles) engine just doesn’t have any ummph to it.  The only real issues with the car were a metal clank noise that happened on one tight right hand turn and the air cleaner clogging up with dust.  We didn’t have the engine bay rubber seals installed, so all of the dirt and dust under the car was getting into the engine bay and clogging the filter.  Eventually it got so bad that the car was running super rich and would not go worth a crap.  I hope installing the seals will cure our dust problem.  If not, we will have to use a more elaborate baja style air cleaner.

Divx Video of the Rally Bug in action.

Dad and I got some more work done on the engine.  We attached some block off plates to the engine, threaded in the head studs, installed the oil pump, and test fitted the crank pulley.  The oil pump bolts were a bit too long and when I threaded them in for the first time they bottomed out before touching the face of the pump.  All I had to do was cut about 5 threads off with my Dremel cut off disc and they went in just fine.  We packed the two-stage pump gears with grease and bolted it up.

John was at home fixing a bunch of loose ends on the car.  He tied up the front brake lines out of the way, cleaned up the wire harness with some cable ties, put in new tail light bulbs, bolted the driver’s seat back in, and finished installing the second hood hold down strap.  We plan to drive the bug around at the rallycross this Sunday.  I hope we don’t find any major problems with the car, since the Paris TX rally is only three weeks away.

My father and I got the new engine put together in short block form.  It rotates freely and looks fine.  We plan to put on the pistons, cylinders, and heads tonight and on Friday.

Last night John got the aluminum side trim installed and one of the two hood hold downs.  Next up should be the mud flaps and fender liners.