Here’s a quick photo collection of the damage from Galway (not words we ever thought we’d use together) and Black Bear.
To be fair, both rallies had torrential downpours immediately before (or during) the rally after weeks of no rain, so the runoff really messed with the road conditions. Also, our suspension didn’t seem to be able to keep up with higher speeds on rougher roads so we were banging everything on the bottom off the car off the road, the rocks, and other parts of the bottom of the car. Some of which were moving.
We can’t control the weather – yet – but we can and did get a set of honest to goodness DMS suspension, so we’ll be running that at Pines. We will try not to get TOO enthusiastic with the speeds, of course, but we are definitely looking forward to trying it out.
So starting at the front of the car…we bent the skid plate mount as well as the skid plate itself.
We also had a few scrapes and at least one big hit, but that’s what it’s there for. Sure, ideally we would avoid the rocks, but…
That’s a bent skid plate mount.
That’s a bent prop shaft hanger bearing. Maybe shifted over also. We did the ‘fill it with goop’ trick so still turning. Which is good. It also means it was still spinning when the exhaust got crushed into it. Still better than not turning.
Here’s what the rock damaged end of the exhaust looks like. Note that it was 1) already reinforced and 2) re-built and installed literally the day before we did this to it.
Another view. May not have helped power either.
This is where the spinny bits of the prop shaft were hitting, after we crushed the exhaust up to meet it.
Yeah, like that.
How’d the gas tank do? Well, we might be down on capacity slightly but still holding go juice.
The wheels didn’t escape either. And these are the ones that didn’t break.
Hell, that’s almost round still!
So there you have it. Oh – and gratuitous shot of the new suspension.
More updates when we get back into the car work!