About summer (2) - The first hillclimb

As summer reached it's mid point the hill climb event was approaching. The car had the same old tires and the same damaged gearbox. I was also lacking a critical safety equipment...  A race suit.

I managed to find a suit that still had valid homologation, but it was quite expensive. With race day fast approaching, in the end I bit the bullet and bought it.

My good friend Artan, who helps me with the mechanical side of things managed to extract a few more horse power out of the 210 000 km old engine. But this meant that we had no more time to change the gearbox.

I was going to complete in what was the most competitive class 1.6 to 2 liters 2 wheel drive mostly against hot hatches. So in order to at least keep up with the competition we decided to change the diff to a shorter ratio one. I managed to find a rare 4.44 ratio one and I promptly welded it up and installed it. It was late at night when we finished installing the diff... Next day was race day

With all the suspension settings done I headed out to the local touge. The car felt good, when I was accelerating the car was oversteering just a bit, in a very controllable manner.

Race day came... So I packed my stuff and went out to the hillclimb event. I was all alone so I started chatting with the other competitors. I told them about my mods and because I welded the diff they all said that I would be oversteering all over and that I will be slow.

And they were right I was all over the place... I was oversteering in every corner whatever the gear I was in. On two occasions I actually went offcourse. So I let some air out of the rear tires and that solved only 20% of the oversteering problem.

But I was not slow... Not at all... In my class there were two 200 hp + cars and the rest of the front wheel drive were all at least 250 kg lighter and had around the same power I had.  I did more than keeping up to them... I managed to beat all but the 200 hp cars...

I was competing in the debutant class where one of my adversaries was a 300 hp 4wd Subaru. I ended up being just. 0.02 seconds behind him with my 150 odd horse power BMW, earning second place.

I was amazed that not only I could keep up with the fwd competition but even beat them if we had similar power.

Next up will be the Covasna winter rally, a 90 km or so rally held on snow and that will be quite a challenge for me with no rally experience and no real snow driving experience... 

About summer (1) - Now let's race

This summer came with a lot of changes for me. I moved to a new city and left the car back home, but this didn't prevent me to start testing my skills and my metal.

I managed to register my car as a competition vehicle, a friend kindly gave me a set of old racing tires. They had plenty of thread left, but due to their age they were really hard almost like plastic. The good thing about them is that once they are warm they grip unlike any tire I've had.

With the car ready, me and a couple of friends headed to Făgăraș rally, which was more like a city special stage. It ended up being a battle between drift and grip. After the first timed run I went to check the time and I had quite a surprise... I was first and I had a 6 second lead.

The main competitor ended up being one of my friends with a Toyota Aygo. The small car is very well suited for this kind of event. It's light has quite a bit of power for its size and turns on a dime.

My drift buddies stole the show, but the clock wasn't ticking in their favor.

As the course got cleaner the times started to improve and the Aygo was improving at a faster rate than I was. 

So I pushed harder and harder until I shifted from first to second gear hard and damaged the synchro mesh in the gearbox.

I was still first but would the gearbox hold till the end?

Although a sharp noise accompanied every gear change from first to second the gearbox held. In the end I managed to win the event by a healthy 10 second margin.  

As the event ended I set sight to a way greater challenge... A hill climb, but that in an other post.