So, the event was almost over before it began.
The turbo seized first thing Thursday morning before the start.
We made it to the workshop, somehow found a replacement, fitted it, a quick road tune for the Motec and on our way to Forrest Place. If we didn’t make the start line, that was it, rally over. We made our start time with 1 minute to spare.
We were on a high having made it to the start.
We took off on the first stage at Wanneroo, only for the car to suddenly die after 300m.
We were at a loss as to why. We withdrew from Day 1, got it back to the workshop on a flatbed.
We discovered that a bolt that seals a hole in the dump pipe off the back of the turbo had come out, and that resulted in hot exhaust gas being blown out directly onto the main wiring loom of the car, which it promptly melted.
So, fix the hole with new bolt, strip, solder and rewrap the wiring, attempt to start. Nothing.
The $4000 Motec aftermarket
ECU was fried. This looked to be rally over, but amazingly after some phonecalls and much hope, we actually found the exact one we needed that someone was willing to lend us for the weekend. So we go a hold of it, installed, another retune at 11pm and we were up and running and able to re-enter on Day 2.
Day 2 went well, we set some good times on long stages, and the car behaved very well.
Day 3 was the longest day of the rally with the most stages. We started off well, again the car was quick and working well. I couple of miss-timed pacenotes from me gave us a couple of hairy moments, but didn’t result in any damage.
Then unfortunately in the afternoon, the car began feeling sluggish. So at a refuel we double check the bolt that cause our issue on Thursday again and found it was coming out, and nothing we did was going to make it stay in place. BUGGER.
We weren't prepared to risk ruining another
ECU, especially as it was borrowed. So we withdrew from the remaining 4 stages of the Saturday, got the car home, pulled out the offending piece of pipe, put the bolt in place and proceed to weld it in place for eternity. Finished up putting it all back together about 1am.
Re-entered Day 4. Malaga and Perth City stages went really well, we had a blast and managed to cross the finish line with smiles on our faces. It wasn’t the weekend we wanted, but we made it to the end.
Best part was seeing my kids beaming faces as we crossed under the finishers archway and got our finishers medal. Massive thanks to STechnic and ASG for keeping us going.
Now to start preparing for next year....
Will add some photos later.