RyanHuber
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Sure enough, about half way into the stage the car started to get too hot again, and John pulled over. He took the bottles and set to refilling the rad, while I ran up the road with the triangle. Shortly after the next car passed us (2 minute intervals) John yelled that he was ready to go and I ran back to the car, belted in and away we went. We managed to limp to the end of the stage, and a short way into the transit noticed John's parents ahead of us, leaving the spectator area. No doubt they figured we were out, having not gone over the jump when we were supposed to. We flagged them down, and John told them to tell Iain "to get a rad and a big hammer". We stopped shortly thereafter and poured the last two bottles of water we had into the car and limped it back to service, just checking in on time. We had 20 minutes to fix the damage to not incurr more time penalties.
As soon as we pulled in our great crew descended upon the car. Iain, Stu Lumsden, Peter and even Stewart Hoo were working franticly to get the damaged radiator out and replaced. In the meantime, John and I set to taking the rear wheels off and cleaning them out. John noticed at this point that the pins were falling out of the right-rear brakes and there was nothing holding the pads in! Andrew Comrie-Picard, there with ATV for the TV production, asked what we needed and ran off to find parts. The whole while the TV crew was circling the car filming as the repairs were undertaken. Once again, I owe our crew guys a huge thanks, as they managed to repair the damage sufficiently to get us back into the rally with two minutes to spare. We were on time leaving service!
Incredibly, the next stage we were right back on pace, tieing for third fastest time, bettering our previous running of the stage in the morning by 6 seconds! On the next stage we never did notice our exhaust, undoubtedly some Quebec spectator has a nice trophy on their wall! Without incident, we were taking it easy on the stage, not wanting a repeat of our problems previously. We were also worried about the banging strut top. Then the skies opened again, turning the last run of Camp Brule into a total mudbath. Rounding the hairpin at the spectator area, we go into a fast right hander up the hill. The car decided it really didn't want to turn, and the best way I can describe the sensation was like being in deep snow and having the car follow ruts. No matter what John did it just plowed off into the weeds, mowed down some little saplings, and bounced back onto the road. Oh, and did I mention that we broke the driver's side wiper blade in the same stage? Needless to say we took it very easy and just got the car to the finish of the leg. Exiting the stage we both noticed an odd knocking sound and a clunking on the floor under my feet. Not knowing what it was, we added a full front end check to our list for service.
With an hour lunch stop next, we had plenty of time to fix our issues. Foremost on that list was the strut top. As it turned out the problem was simply that the centre nut had worked loose, but as a precaution, while we were on the stages, our service crew had descended upon my street car and pillaged the top mount off of my hotbits! In that spirit, I took the wiper blade off my car and replaced the broken one on the rallycar. The other big issue was the clunking on the right-front, which turned out to be a half-shaft that was sheared clean off. It had an obvious amount of twist to it before it broke, so somewhere we put down sufficient torque to snap it. We still don't know how long we'd been running RWD only, thankfully the 20KG centre diff held up like a champ.
Into leg C we felt that, other than the missing exhaust that prevented us from using the antilag (flames coming out under our seats would likely not be a good idea) and the somewhat naked front end, we were in pretty good shape. In stage C1 we set 4th fastest time, only 6 seconds off the leader. Unfortunately there was an incident with another competitor in this stage and the second running, C4, was cancelled. C2 was a very rough, intimidating stage, and John took it pretty easy, though still setting 5th fastest time.
The third stage was a super special stage set up for spectators. At a dirt-track racing facility, it would have been a very cool place to run - if the conditions were dry. They most certainly were not, however. The clay soil, plowed down grass trails, and 8" deep puddle that had water coming up around the shifter made it incredibly slippery, and our 20KG centre diff made using the handbrake in the hairpins impossible. We nearly went off, stalled once, and took it very easy to a 7th fastest time.
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