Thursday, September 23, 2004
The Saga Continues
Well the amazing alignment lasted into the first special stage, one tough corner compression and out it went! Luckily later in the day we banged her again and low and behold the alignment was better!
We had a great day racing, beating all of our targa times and having a ball. Lunch was in a small community called Burin that was by the sea and a beautiful little cove. The community had all come out and put together a great lunch and show. We had a little extra time here and were able to do some shopping and even visited the local museum. There was alot of history here including material on a tidal wave that destroyed the village early in the 1900's. Upon leaving Burin we ran another special stage, collected some weeds (the road seemed to go left and we went straight! - damned welded diff!) On our way to our next special stage, the damn overheating problem resurfaced. We pulled over on the highway and proceeded to contact our support team and begin working on the car. I went to get water from the neighbours while Geoff worked on the car. Luckily a local resident was out watering his garden and was more than willing to lend a hand. In the end we had to fashion a couple of "corks" to bypass the problem and Basil, the local gentlemen sacrificed a perfectly good wooden handled shovel so that we could cut off pieces to act as corks. We tried to pay him but he was having nothing of it. He was proud to have helped fix a "Targa" car in front of his house. We signed a BMW Racing sticker and left it with him as a momento. We missed two more stages but took a shortcut cross country and picked up the final two stages. Even with our limping machine we still managed to make our times and even kicked some ass in Marystown.
Into the diagnostic mode, we determined that we likely blew a head gasket. We decided that we had to replace it and to our relief this was in fact the problem and at 3:30am, thanks to the herculian efforts of Peter and Dennis we were back in the game. Many thanks to Jack of Marystown who knew everyone and even let us use his home garage that came loaded with tools and even a four post hoist.
This meant we were set to race the final day.
We had a great day racing, beating all of our targa times and having a ball. Lunch was in a small community called Burin that was by the sea and a beautiful little cove. The community had all come out and put together a great lunch and show. We had a little extra time here and were able to do some shopping and even visited the local museum. There was alot of history here including material on a tidal wave that destroyed the village early in the 1900's. Upon leaving Burin we ran another special stage, collected some weeds (the road seemed to go left and we went straight! - damned welded diff!) On our way to our next special stage, the damn overheating problem resurfaced. We pulled over on the highway and proceeded to contact our support team and begin working on the car. I went to get water from the neighbours while Geoff worked on the car. Luckily a local resident was out watering his garden and was more than willing to lend a hand. In the end we had to fashion a couple of "corks" to bypass the problem and Basil, the local gentlemen sacrificed a perfectly good wooden handled shovel so that we could cut off pieces to act as corks. We tried to pay him but he was having nothing of it. He was proud to have helped fix a "Targa" car in front of his house. We signed a BMW Racing sticker and left it with him as a momento. We missed two more stages but took a shortcut cross country and picked up the final two stages. Even with our limping machine we still managed to make our times and even kicked some ass in Marystown.
Into the diagnostic mode, we determined that we likely blew a head gasket. We decided that we had to replace it and to our relief this was in fact the problem and at 3:30am, thanks to the herculian efforts of Peter and Dennis we were back in the game. Many thanks to Jack of Marystown who knew everyone and even let us use his home garage that came loaded with tools and even a four post hoist.
This meant we were set to race the final day.
