Hunstman Heroics
but no prize
Carlton and District Motor Club - Huntsman Rally 30/31st May 2009
After the Great Bustard we had a fair bit of sump and tank guard bashing to do! This combined with trying to sort out the fuel guage and replacing a couple of bushes took a bit longer than expected!
The Huntsman set off at Nottingham University and made its way South East to the Leicester Village of Great Dalby for a run around the arifield. This went OK, except for a missed cone that we had to reverse for, but not great at 15th fastest. 2nd time round was slightly better with equal 12th. The car was feeling down on power though, which didn't seem good for this higher speed test.
The weather was gorgeous though, which made the event more enjoyable - better than rain anyway! Trouble ensued though, and once again we were badly let down by the tyres. Something not very big in the undergrowth of Keepers Cottage 2 did for both our nearside tyres causing time loss and of course great annoyance.
We did start to get a bit worried about the lack of fuel - regs said 100miles to be carried and road book would show where to refill (it didn't). A couple of errors in the road book didn't help either sending crews the wrong way twice. Anyway we eventually found our way back for a couple of last runs around Great Dalby.
Suddenly the car seemed to start working again - maybe it was the cooling outside temperature, and with the power returning and we managed 6th and 9th despite having to reverse on both selectifs (one driver, one nav error). I did enjoy these last two sections though with some proper fast stuff in there as well. By the end of the day we were 11th overall.
During the tea break we had a look at the car with Jamie Turner, who gave us a new rotor arm - apparently a common failure item due to the resistive element contained within it. It seemed to work.
The night section started with some good old road rally plot and bash. We were a bit rusty, but quickly got the hang of it, and judging by the chaos going on around us, made up a lot of places! A couple of marhals caused us some concern (one giving us the time of the previous car at the end of a regularity and the other refusing to give us our requested time when we enterered the control in the preceding minute as we had at every other control....).
Then we were onto the selectifs again. This started with at Twyford with a big section around an airfield. It was very dusty and not entirely easy to find our way, but we were making good progress. On the second lap we went the wrong way slightly, handbrake turned, applied the power and BANG! Lots of smoke. The diff had blown taking the bottom off the diff housing as well. No drive, game over.
We went and chatted to the stop/go marshalls while the rest of the field went through, then acquired a tow out of the stage (thanks guys) and were much much later recovered home on the back of a recovery truck. A real shame as I'm sure we'd have been right up the field following the road rally section.
Thanks to Dave Town for lending me a spare tyre for the evening, and to Colin Davies for bringing back to Wales the flat one I'd given to Dave! and thanks to Andy Manston for the on event photos http://www.mandh-photography.co.uk. Just got to find a new gearbox now before the Exmoor!