RS Motorsport :: Classic Speed Restored

This year's Rally is on next weekend, based again in the forests around Imbil on the Sunshine Coast, 12th-14th July.

Friday night SS at the Nambour showgrounds, with the front of field Classics getting a run too. If spectating on Saturday, my advice is to head out to the Pomona stage, it was a good speccie point last year!

8 Escorts, 2 Lasers and 3 Fiestas are entered, that makes up over 10% of the entire field, giving the small Fords a fair showing!

I thought they were also stopping off at the etomogah hotel Saturday afternoon/evening?

There is a stop-over there, but that is only for the Asia-Pacific and ARC guys, maybe the FoF Classics. Most of the field don't need to go past the pub, and you'll find 1/2 of us in the Imbil Pub!

Linky thing.

are you running TANZ ??

Yup, entered the new car in the All-comers section.

Fortunately I'm doing the family qld holiday thing this week, super special on Friday might be a possibility

The classics will be in stage for Imbil at 7.20am, so was thinking of doing the service park and then heading to Pomona as the first cars about 10.30am. You reckon that's a good spot Tanz? Any dips, jumps, sideways action??

Well it wasn't a good rally for the Escorts, i think by stage two (2) Dunks, Keith and David Hills all where out with dramas, didn't see Anthony come through at Pamona so hope nothing serious?? A couple of pics...

...

Keith rear shock snapped in half and sent the spring into the bush and left a hole in the side of the car

Here are a few Escort pics from Friday night as I could only make it to Nambour due to family commitments.
BTW its the VERY last time I'm going to say "good luck" to Keith as it seems every year I say it to him on the Friday night he has a DNF at some point over the weekend :-(

A few more...

last lot...

Hi All,

Fairly eventful weekend. New car had some teething issues, 1st chance we had to drive it on gravel was the 1st stage of the rally, so took it fairly careful whilst learning what it could and couldn't do (time was around 30 secs slower than I'd expect I'd normally be). 2nd stage, I smelt coolant, but the temp gauge was on normal, shortly afterwards it went off the dial. Pulled up mid stage to check what had blown to hear a gurgling up through the throat of the back carby. As we were going to be in the bush for a while, I pulled out the tool wrap and started disassembling the engine to see how much damage was done. Unfortunately, I didn't have the splined sockets for the head bolts and had to wait before total disassembly! Towed back to the service park, a phone call and round trip to Gympie, I had the head off to see the damage appeared limited to the gasket, so we cleaned the surfaces down and reassembled the motor, refilled the cooling system and it fired back up in around 1/2 an hour with just a slight ticking noise. As we intended to rejoin at the regroup, I didn't investigate the noise. We were now 2nd last car on the road and were back at the start line of the 1st stage again. Somewhere through the stage it dropped to 3 cylinders, but we'd still managed to improve 15 secs from our earlier attempt at the stage. I thought it'd died and was about to withdraw when I discovered a plug lead had fallen off. Refitted we made our way back into the 2nd stage where it'd all gone wrong in the morning, and was quite happy to make it to the end of stage. Beeped and waved to the road closure officials we'd met earlier in the day, they seemed a little confused when we went past as when we'd been with them earlier the motor was in pieces . The next stage was a short run up and over a hill and apart from a brief pucker moment where the rear of the car was hanging out in the air over a 40m or so drop, we had no real issues. Final stage of the day was in complete darkness, and that ticking noise had grown considerably worse. We made it maybe 1/2 way through before it started to lose power and the engine went flat, but managed to drive out of stage and back to service. I checked the plugs again in the hope it was something simple, but the noise was tappet rattle, and we withdrew for day 2. I think in my rush to beat the clock and rejoin, i've bent the oil spray bar down and the camshaft has eaten into it and deprived a rocker or two of oil, I haven't pulled it apart to check yet though. Albeit short, I was happy enough with the cars performance, and it doesn't even have a scratch that I've noticed! We made it through the speccie point twice (just not Pomona) so somewhere out there on the www there should be a photo of the car in action. Overall, we had a great weekend with absolutely no complaints.

Unfortunately, one of our Qld rally mates lost his life on day two of the event, which has left everyone hurting at the moment. The other crew member is in Hospital in Brissy in a serious but stable condition, I understand.

Bad luck with your car but every new race car has teething problems. It's all so sad to hear of one of the motor racing family to loose their life. Mate Michael Ranson was running haven't talked to him yet about the Rally. Racing with Darren Jones this weekend at Morgan Pk Raceway he might have an update on what went wrong to cause the accident.
Darrin