Southern Ohio Forest Rally is this weekend

SquareLeft

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
586
Location
Southern Ohio, USA
Car(s)
2019 Mazda6 Sport, 2002 Subaru WRX, 1961 Morgan
I would have already posted something on this if my life hadn't been in such a tailspin. My wife spent six days of the last week in the hospital with some pretty serious heart problems. Since we don't have any other close relatives, any run-and-do jobs fall to whichever one of us is healthy... As I've said before, getting old ain't fun!

Back to the rally. It will be held in the state forests near Chillicothe, Ohio. The actual racing will take place on Friday and Saturday, May 18th and 19th. As usual with this type of event, spectating, except for the super-special stage, is free. There's probably a small fee for printed spectators' guides, but everything you need to know is available on-line. When I first signed up, the worker chief assigned me to tech on Thursday and radio communications on Friday, but then Carol's health problems cropped up and I decided to stay home with her. Until... My good friend and sometimes rally partner, Jeff, who is chief of tech, called and said that he was extremely short of experienced people on the team. At that point, Carol said that I should go help him. With tech, 95% of the work happens on Thursday. So, I'm going to drive up early tomorrow and work until we get as many of the cars through as we can. There are always some teams that show up with problems that can't be solved easily and thus require a second appointment on Friday morning, but there's usually not more than a handful of those. Jeff says that he and his wife Barb can take care of those early on Friday.

I'm hoping that the organizers don't come up with some emergency and ask me to work on either Friday or Saturday... And, given the nature of working tech, I probably won't have time to get many, if any, photos - but I'll try to keep my camera and cell phone handy in case any really interesting shots present themselves!

All4now
SL
 
As I posted above, I knew that I wouldn't have much time to take photos, and I was right. The steady flow of cars through the tech garage kept us hopping. Jeff and Mike are both licensed scrutineers, Mike is the Chief of Tech for RallyAmerica. Barb and I are experienced, but neither of us is a licensed scrutineer. We also had some extra helpers that we weren't really expecting, so we put them to good use on the simpler tasks. I only got two photos...

First, the Seamus Burke/Martin Brady Escort has become my favorite rally car in North America. For a 2WD, it's got gobs of power and is stupid-fast. It's built out of a 1977 Escort Mk II, but is state of the art under the skin...

[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","height":"1932","width":"2576","src":"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/e9aTOjS.jpg"}[/IMG2]

Here's a nice short YouTube video of the Escort scooting down a dirt rally stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9YoEcdiHYQ

The other photo is of the fuel system on the 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evo of Joseph Burke and Ole Holter. There's some serious plumbing going on here!!

[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","height":"1932","width":"2576","src":"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/HEcOaex.jpg"}[/IMG2]
 
Top