Fat Albert Stages 27 Oct

[MichaelH]

Well Wish us luck! I have got the stage book and the as yet clean overalls and a TR4 (in powder blue of course)

We are off to try stage rallying

We even have an in car camera but it has not been demonstrated to work yet

there are some good in car videos of the Fat albert stages on utube if anyone wants to see what we are going to attempt

regards

Michael

PS I wil let you know if I use the O/D

[Guest ntc]

Michael

Good luck let us know how you get on,more than anything enjoy it and do not stress

[Nigel 628]

Great stuff, Michael, I've been waiting for four years for someone to join me!

 

Take it easy until you get settled in; there's no historic class so you're on your own amongst the modern cars but don't let that worry you - I've done a couple of events like that where you feel a bit out of place in a sixties TR4 but just treat it as an exercise. At least from your start position you don't need to worry about anyone behind (unless they slot in some late entry WRC cars!!) so the only way is up!

 

I wish you the very best of luck; learn lots, have fun and bring it home in one piece - I'm eager to hear how you get on.

 

Nigel

[MichaelH]

Got back last night

the brief history is that we ran all day (7 stages of 10 miles each) the only problem was that we lost a fan belt - Red light and getting a bit (a big bit) hot - I had to pull off - that was on the 5th stage - so we got a maximum on that stage- soon replaced the belt

the result was that we ended 45th out of 81 starters. However not quite as clever as it sounds as there were only 52 finishers - an incredible 30 cars dropped out. still we beat a few of them- we were the only historic car older than an escort

It was great fun, having spent the last 20 +years building the car it went like a rocket pulling nearly 7 in all gears apart from o/d. I did use overdrive on one part of every lap getting to 5+ in o/d top which was slightly over 100 mph before pulling up for a square left into a narrow lane

The in car video may have worked but the camera is with the nav and I still have the remote so he can't check it yet

There will be photos available at "EPD photography" when there are put up on the web site. we were car 81(seeded last)

We had a fantastic day - the sport was very exciting to do - the car was well recieved -the people were v friendly

We need an intercom as the nav ended with a sore throat

Entry about 200gbp done on maxsport 70 section rally tires

used about 3/4 of a tank so not the 6-8 mpg threatened

Rally - Fat Albert Stages - we will put it on our list for next year

Thought of coming to join us?

[Nigel 628]

Well done! That's a good result first time out with a new car - and you would have been much higher but for the rogue fan belt!

 

Stage rallies put a lot of mechanical stress on cars and retirements are common compared to road rallies, and surprisingly tarmac events seem to have more retirements than even the roughest of forestry rallies. I've done tarmac rallies with over 50% retirements. But my car has still got a 100% finishing record in all the rallies of all types I've done over three years: it just goes to show how tough these TR4's are!!!

 

A good quality intercom is important; apart from your co-driver's throat woes, the bigger rallies are mostly on pace notes now and the consequences of mis-hearing a note on a fast section can be very harmful to your wealth....... There are probably fewer accidents on pace notes despite the higher speeds.

 

Without wanting to resurrect the overdrive debate, would it be fair to say that with a 7k rev limit you could have achieved similar speeds without the o/d, possibly higher as the car would still be accelerating more quickly in a lower (4th direct) gear?

 

Glad you enjoyed yourself, nothing like 10 miles of unrestricted open stage to get the adrenaline flowing. Here's hoping we will be running the TR4's together on an event or two next year!

 

Nigel