Rim of The World

Final Report - May 9, 2003 Congratulations to Murat and Hakan Okcuoglu for hanging in to finish Rim of the World and winning Group 5. The rest of the trip went well though the population of rattlesnakes in Arizona has been reduced by one very large diamond back who had made a poor choice of sunning himself in the middle of interstate 40. The team is eager to head to STPR... we just have to fix the motormount and remove 200+ pounds of California mud.
Report #6 - May 6, 2003 Correction - Dave Kean did co-drive on Saturday though we kept Peter Watt up with the spare parts in the back of the truck just in case Dave's stomach bug returned. In total our team finished 3 stages though if you include the three the truck went through, and the 3 our support car drove. Plus the one the car did on the trailer and the one transit stage on Saturday we logged a total of 11 stages. Hopefully they won't be included in the speed factor. The car did well and will be ready for STPR in 5 weeks. We would like to thank Antelope Valley Volkswagen for lending us their service area on Saturday morning. With the skies dumping buckets of water on us it was great to be able to just drive truck, trailer and car into a warm dry building. A great thanks to Gary Charbonneau and Roger Jackman, our service crew and a big thanks to Peter Watt for helping to drive the rig to and from California and for 'hanging' out with our spare parts in case we needed a co-driver. We are headed down the road home, we did try and cross the Hoover Dam - rather optimistic of us considering the race fuel in the truck. We were turned around at the security point and sent back to the detour, only 22 miles out of the way.	The stage conditions were as miserable as any we had ever seen. The car collected well over 100 lbs of mud which didn't help progress through the stage and took ages to clean off at the car wash.
	Crew-Chief Gary Charbonnea checks out the engine which is encased in mud. A motor mount broke on the rear of the motor, engine movement then caused the turbo hose to come loose.
	This is at 3:30 am on Saturday morning as we loaded the car. My apologies for the poor quality of the picture but despite standing on the lee side of a truck the 50-60 mph gusts kept moving the camera. It was as miserable as any of us ever wanted to be.
	Someone brought by one of the off road radio controlled cars and put on quite a show. One service crew donated their pylons and another helped set up a jump for entertainment.
Report #5 - May 4, 2003 Well it will go down in Rim history as one of the more unusual events. The rally was cut short yesterday due to weather and road conditions. Emergency service crews were having great difficulty getting to their stations, at least one spectator area was closed for the same reason. Who could have figured there would be snow in southern California in May? Our team did not finish the event, a motor mount broke and the turbo hose came loose because of engine movement. Two wheel drive cars could not get any traction to speak of and most teams were not enjoying themselves. I will do an update next weekend to fill out more of the details of the event for us and others. We hoped everyone who read our notes enjoyed them and we hope to continue with our reports at STPR in June.
Report #4 - May 3, 2003 - 1:30pm The VW is fixed and ready to roll. We arrived at the service area with little time to spare. Peter Watt will be replacing regular co-driver Dave Kean who has been suffering from a stomach bug since late last evening.
Report #3 - May 3, 2003 - 5:48 am It is now 5:48 am and our team has just returned to the hotel. Unfortunately a half-shaft went on stage two. The team continued down the stage but came across Bill Malik who had become stuck part way across the road. With just one-wheel drive the Golf also became stuck and the second half-shaft went. End of the ProRally. Chris and Dave hope to continue on in the club event today though there are a few challenges. The car has to be in parc expose at 9am and ready to rally at 11am. None of the team has had any sleep, the service crew left the park at 9:30pm last evening to pick up the trailer and head up into the Angeles Forest. The car had been taken to the end of stage two but as stage three was to be run a second time the service crew had to drive all the way through stages 1 and 2 to get to the team. We arrived at 3 am and the car was on the trailer by 3:30. A great thanks go to Gary Charbonneau for driving the panel truck and trailer through fog, driving rain, snow and 50mph gusts of wind on some incredible muddy roads. We are fairly sure we did not want to see what was over the embankments on the mountain road. we will update with our progress and other Group 5 news as we can.
Report #2 - May 2, 2003 Midnight. It's 8:30 pacific time and the cars are off to the first stage. Though it would be great to report on all the teams we will be primarily focusing on the progress of the Group 5 competitors. Besides the Metalmarks team there are 5 other entries in the class. #52 Doug Sheperd #51 Jay Street #48 Lon Peterson #93 Bob Olsen and #321 Murat Okcuoglu Before the start we have heard that Jay Street is having a problem with a bearing on a drive shaft. Everyone else has reported things are going ok for the moment. There have been showers off and on through the evening, fog is reported on some of the stages. First car is due back into service at 9:30 pm, Chris is due back into service at 9:55. A thank you goes to Chris Putzier for the loan of his pop-up canopy. John Cassidy reports an uneventful 3500 mile journey across the country to compete. Mad Mike from Tulsa wasn't quite so lucky. He found a hole at a construction site with two of his trailer tires. The damage was heavy, two rims and tires ruined beyond repair. He limped back up the road and through some friends on the internet found a couple who loaned him their trailer to continue to the event. In the meantime they are fixing his trailer so he can pick it up on the way back. Service this evening is less then 5 miles up the road from our hotel, hopefully I will return after the first service with another update and more photos. Cat	A thanks to VP. New race fuel and gas can. As we are still not 100% sure the range of the fuel cell we will be taking advantage of the offer of the organizers to send a 5 gallon tank out to the stages with them so the car can be refueled.
	Dave explaining to Los Angeles County Deputy Schlecht what a prorally is.
	Before handing out the timecards the organizers had teams pose for a group photo. The first row can be seen kneeling, Nicki Grist is just to the right of center in the first row wearing a red and black jacket.
	The start.
First Report. - May 2, 2003 the trip out was, for the most part, uneventful. We averaged 650 miles a day, the truck runs well and the trailer tracks without a problem. We did see some torrential rains in Iowa, hail in Colorado and snow in Utah. I'm sending along a pic of the truck and trailer tucked underneath an overpass during the hail storm.. it's one drawback of running with an open trailer. No damage was done, we managed to get under cover before the big stuff fell. Peter Watt is helping drive the rig out, he's been a great help and seems to be enjoying the scenery as we go. We picked Chris up at the Las Vegas airport, I'm not sure which he was happier to see, me or his rally car. The trip went so well I was worried what would go wrong this weekend, then our co-driver called from the hotel and informed us we did not have any reservations for the team. We did eventually get it all straightened out, somehow our rooms had been cancelled the day before but they did find rooms for us. Express registration was handled last night along with a few last minute details on the car like aiming the lights. Weather report calls for a 90% chance of rain this evening, 60 % tomorrow - good for keeping the dust down. There is a chance the rain could get heavy in the foothills - reports vary from 2-5" tonight. The team is off doing odo check and tech, we're pretty ready to go. More later this evening. Hopefully an update on how other teams are doing too. Cat	#1 under the bridge on 76 in Colorado.
	This is just past Eisenhower tunnel on I-70. Very cold and windy.
	Utah.
	Visit the official rally web site at http://www.rimoftheworldrally.com/