My OTR Story
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From: Puyallup, wa
My OTR Story
Words can not express the emotions that Cody Crane and myself experienced this last weekend. The Oregon Trail Rally will truly be a weekend that nether of us will ever be able to forget.
Thursday morning Cody and myself arrived in Portland at 7 am to register for reconnaissance, where we get the opportunity to drive all the stages in a street car at a speed not exceeding 25mph. After driving all the stages and making our appropriate changes to our stage notes we headed back to Portland to finish up the last little bit of prep we had to do on the #649 CRX.
Friday morning came very early, we got the car race ready and the service truck loaded and headed out for tech, event registration, and a night of racing at Portland International Raceway. Everything went smoothly all evening. We started out on stage on with a third place finish in Max Attack (a 2wd national series) Behind another Local favorite Tom Burress and last years 2wd national champion Dillon Van Way. On stage 2 we took a second place time and stage 3 was our first 2wd stage win of the weekend. The final stage of the night we lost a little bit of time due to spending quite a bit of time sideways making several rally America event photographers run in fear for the lives. Friday nights events left us sitting in second place behind Dillon Van Way by just 3.7 second.
Saturday morning we headed out to stages in Hood River, the Dalles and Dufur Oregon. The first stage of Saturday morning was not a stage a that was nice to our car, It was very rough and with about a half a mile remaining in the stage we heard what sounds like a flat right front tire. We finished the stage checked the tires, witch all looked fine. After a 10 miles transit to the next stage we had become reasonably sure that we had a broken axle. Trying to make sure we finished the stage and could get back to service we took it very easy, letting Dillon get out to a 1:02.8 minute lead. At service we learned that we had a failing motor mount. A trip over to Van Ways trailer to borrow a motorcycle strap from a motorcross champion and we were ready to go back out with our side motor mount tied tightly to the front strut car keeping the motor from flexing and binding the passenger side axel. Stage 7 was up next, but after 3 cars had made it on stage the stage was canceled due to Ken Block coming up on a spectators car driving on the stage road. We did not mind this at all due to the very rough and unforgiving nature of the stage. Stage 8 has always been a favorite stage of Cody’s and mine (it also happens to be the stage he totaled his first rally car on.) We were able to beat Van Way by 44 seconds on that stage while also beating every regional car and several national open and super production classes. On stage 9 there is a large down hill section leading in to an acute right hander through a gate. On the base of the hill a police offer was set up shooting all the cars with a radar gun. We came through that second at 89 mph, witch was over 5 mph faster then the next fastest car belonging to ACP in his open class Evo 9. After winning stage 8, 9, and 10 we began stage 11 trying to make up more of the time we had lost in the morning. We flew through the stage, unfortunately after the stage we went to put the car in gear and were surprised to find that we had no gears what so ever. Dillon Van Way finished the stage 2 cars after us and agreed to tow us back in the last control so we could finish the day and keep fighting with him for the Max Attack win. While we were hooking up the car Dillons co-driver Ben Slocum became sick due to a huge dust issue inside of Dillons car. So to make it back safely I co-drove back with Dillon while Ben road with Cody. We made it back to the control on time and ended the day 1.2 seconds ahead on Dillon, but a 30 second penalty against him put us up by 31.2 seconds.
Unfortunately this turned out to just be the beginning of out day. Once we got the car back to our crew we found out that the tranny was done for good, along with the radiator hanging on by the hose and a few other small issues such as a cracked wheel and a sagging front strut. A local kid approached us with an offer of a broken b series tranny that he could bring over and use the good parts to rebuild our tranny. At 7:30 am the tranny was back in the car and we were ready to race, sleep turned out to be something that was not needed.
Sunday morning started out with more issues. We ran the first stage with no v-tech for some reason. We were still able to win the stage by a tenth of a second. At the start of the second stage of the day we discovered a flat rear tire, witch we were not able to change at the start of the stage due to being in a control area. We decided to run the 7 miles stage with the flat and lack of v-tech. Some how we ended up only dropping 7 seconds on the stage. Leaving us up by 25 seconds with 3 stages to go. Unfortunately on the next stage we went in to a really soft corner pretty hot sending silt air born covering our car. The air filter ended up clogging starving the motor for air and limiting us to about 25 miles per hour for the final 2 miles of the stage, giving Dillon back a max attack lead of 1:30.
The next stage we were able to take almost 30 seconds out of his lead, but with 1 stage to go and being back by a good amount of time we took it a bit easy and cemented our second place Max Attack finish.
The weekend was a ton of fun full of great challenges. Dillon Van Way and Ben Slocum made the race a ton of fun, they are really great competitors and class acts! Cody and myself are looking forward to our rematch, witch hopefully will ether be a the Max Attack finial in Michigan or in October at the Mt. Hood Rally.
A huge thanks goes out to everyone who made this race possible for Cody and myself.
Scott, Mike, Andy, Ray, Matt, Kristin, Charles, Eric ,Gene, Brian, Kris and everyone else who gave us a hand this weekend, we could not have done it with out you!
Thursday morning Cody and myself arrived in Portland at 7 am to register for reconnaissance, where we get the opportunity to drive all the stages in a street car at a speed not exceeding 25mph. After driving all the stages and making our appropriate changes to our stage notes we headed back to Portland to finish up the last little bit of prep we had to do on the #649 CRX.
Friday morning came very early, we got the car race ready and the service truck loaded and headed out for tech, event registration, and a night of racing at Portland International Raceway. Everything went smoothly all evening. We started out on stage on with a third place finish in Max Attack (a 2wd national series) Behind another Local favorite Tom Burress and last years 2wd national champion Dillon Van Way. On stage 2 we took a second place time and stage 3 was our first 2wd stage win of the weekend. The final stage of the night we lost a little bit of time due to spending quite a bit of time sideways making several rally America event photographers run in fear for the lives. Friday nights events left us sitting in second place behind Dillon Van Way by just 3.7 second.
Saturday morning we headed out to stages in Hood River, the Dalles and Dufur Oregon. The first stage of Saturday morning was not a stage a that was nice to our car, It was very rough and with about a half a mile remaining in the stage we heard what sounds like a flat right front tire. We finished the stage checked the tires, witch all looked fine. After a 10 miles transit to the next stage we had become reasonably sure that we had a broken axle. Trying to make sure we finished the stage and could get back to service we took it very easy, letting Dillon get out to a 1:02.8 minute lead. At service we learned that we had a failing motor mount. A trip over to Van Ways trailer to borrow a motorcycle strap from a motorcross champion and we were ready to go back out with our side motor mount tied tightly to the front strut car keeping the motor from flexing and binding the passenger side axel. Stage 7 was up next, but after 3 cars had made it on stage the stage was canceled due to Ken Block coming up on a spectators car driving on the stage road. We did not mind this at all due to the very rough and unforgiving nature of the stage. Stage 8 has always been a favorite stage of Cody’s and mine (it also happens to be the stage he totaled his first rally car on.) We were able to beat Van Way by 44 seconds on that stage while also beating every regional car and several national open and super production classes. On stage 9 there is a large down hill section leading in to an acute right hander through a gate. On the base of the hill a police offer was set up shooting all the cars with a radar gun. We came through that second at 89 mph, witch was over 5 mph faster then the next fastest car belonging to ACP in his open class Evo 9. After winning stage 8, 9, and 10 we began stage 11 trying to make up more of the time we had lost in the morning. We flew through the stage, unfortunately after the stage we went to put the car in gear and were surprised to find that we had no gears what so ever. Dillon Van Way finished the stage 2 cars after us and agreed to tow us back in the last control so we could finish the day and keep fighting with him for the Max Attack win. While we were hooking up the car Dillons co-driver Ben Slocum became sick due to a huge dust issue inside of Dillons car. So to make it back safely I co-drove back with Dillon while Ben road with Cody. We made it back to the control on time and ended the day 1.2 seconds ahead on Dillon, but a 30 second penalty against him put us up by 31.2 seconds.
Unfortunately this turned out to just be the beginning of out day. Once we got the car back to our crew we found out that the tranny was done for good, along with the radiator hanging on by the hose and a few other small issues such as a cracked wheel and a sagging front strut. A local kid approached us with an offer of a broken b series tranny that he could bring over and use the good parts to rebuild our tranny. At 7:30 am the tranny was back in the car and we were ready to race, sleep turned out to be something that was not needed.
Sunday morning started out with more issues. We ran the first stage with no v-tech for some reason. We were still able to win the stage by a tenth of a second. At the start of the second stage of the day we discovered a flat rear tire, witch we were not able to change at the start of the stage due to being in a control area. We decided to run the 7 miles stage with the flat and lack of v-tech. Some how we ended up only dropping 7 seconds on the stage. Leaving us up by 25 seconds with 3 stages to go. Unfortunately on the next stage we went in to a really soft corner pretty hot sending silt air born covering our car. The air filter ended up clogging starving the motor for air and limiting us to about 25 miles per hour for the final 2 miles of the stage, giving Dillon back a max attack lead of 1:30.
The next stage we were able to take almost 30 seconds out of his lead, but with 1 stage to go and being back by a good amount of time we took it a bit easy and cemented our second place Max Attack finish.
The weekend was a ton of fun full of great challenges. Dillon Van Way and Ben Slocum made the race a ton of fun, they are really great competitors and class acts! Cody and myself are looking forward to our rematch, witch hopefully will ether be a the Max Attack finial in Michigan or in October at the Mt. Hood Rally.
A huge thanks goes out to everyone who made this race possible for Cody and myself.
Scott, Mike, Andy, Ray, Matt, Kristin, Charles, Eric ,Gene, Brian, Kris and everyone else who gave us a hand this weekend, we could not have done it with out you!
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