- Christian Fittipaldi, http://speedcenter.com/news98/sc_n0529_98.html

At sometime around 8:00a.m. Sunday morning, my talent, much lower than Mr. Fittipaldi’s, ran out. Fortunately the edge of the road was a snow bank, not a concrete wall as in Mr. Fittipaldi’s case. The occupants of the vehicle behind me, the sweep team, applauded as they got out of their AWD Audi all-road. "What a show!" they exclaimed …

The January 5/6, 2002, Dèfi des Glaces was the first rally of the Yokohama-Subaru Winter Rally Series. The festivities started about 6:00p.m. Saturday night, with the rally proper starting at 10:00p.m., and finishing at 8:30a.m. the next morning. It was the first rally I’d run in over 10 years, and my navigator’s first exposure to rallying was watching the World Rally Championship on Speedvision on New Year’s day. Our plan was to ignore anything having to do with the Time and Speed parts of TSD rallying. Our goals were to stay on the road, finish, and not get lost. We didn’t get lost, and finished in last place. As for staying on the road, well…

They say experience is the best teacher. We were well prepared – or at least we thought we were. If you are thinking of doing your first winter rally, maybe you can learn from our experience. Here are the top 10 things we (okay, I) did wrong:

On my car, the odometer doesn’t show 10ths of kilometers. Only the trip odometer does. Have you ever looked at your trip odometer while driving? I never did until I rallied. Sure, I’d reset the trip odometer after I filled up with gas to see how far I went on the last full tank. I’d read 648km, not 648.2km – or in this car, 648.4km. I know now the trip odometer usually reads xxx.4km, where xxx are the kilometers. Of course, when reset, the trip odometer shows zero, but then instead of going 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 for each 10^th of a kilometre, mine usually goes 1 – 2/3 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 5/6/7 – 8 – 8/9. Thus, most of the times I looked at the trip odometer during the rally, xxx.4 it was.

Looking at the trip odometer was another preparation error. I spent a lot of time figuring out a way to hook up the map light without drilling the dash. Eventually I attached it to the passenger sun visor clip, and wired it into the mirror light in the sun visor. It worked great. With the navigator set up, I forgot about what the driver needed to read. Unfortunately, the dash lighting was insufficient to read the odometer. I normally drive with the gauge illumination as low as possible. Even at that low light level it is possible to read the white-numerals-on-black-background odometer numbers. However, even with the illumination at maximum, the red numbers on a white background that displayed the 10ths of kilometers were impossible to read with these 39-year-old (and holding) eyes. Thus exact odometer readings were infrequent and involved me turning on a flashlight. (We had six flashlights packed. We were prepared.)

I bought the relays for my lights at Canadian Tire – the "Blazer" brand, owned by Federal-Mogul – which I thought was a quality company. The relays were labeled "Made in Italy." (If they said "Made in England," I would have known better.) I had heard that relays were a common item that burned out, so I bought spares, and wired two relays (one for each 100w light) instead of one relay for the pair of lights.

The first relay burnt out Saturday morning when I dropped the dog off at the kennel - before I even left Ottawa for the rally! I was in Kanata at the time, so I went to the Canadian Tire there. The counter person, who was actually knowledgeable and a licensed mechanic, advised that "those relays were crap" and suggested I instead buy the relays they use when they install fog lights for customers (which tells you something). These were bulk "Made in China" relays. I bought two, mounted one, and added the second to my spare parts collection.

The second Blazer relay burnt out on the way to the start point of the rally, to be replaced by the second Made in China relay. Not surprisingly, my other two relays, Bosch ones borrowed from my Porsche spare parts collection, worked without complaints.

Lights are a big expense in any car set up for night rallying. I had basic Bosch fogs and driving lights on my old 924, so I borrowed those to put on a light bar that Stu Trudel made up for me, and did a great job on. (These lights have the exact same Bosch reflectors that are in the Bosch lights Canadian Tire sells for $100. Decent lights, and I don’t think the price/performance can be beaten. I won’t tell you how much Porsche charges for them.)

I still needed a pair of pencil beams (spotlights), though. A few years back I had Walter Boyce’s old rally Swift GT. The light bar on that vehicle had tractor lights with the reflectors thrown out and replaced by H4 conversions. I figured if it was good enough for Walter, a multiple-times Canadian rally champion, it was good enough for me. Unfortunately, it is impossible to find H4 conversions "on-the-shelf" these days. What was on-the-shelf were clones of KC day-lighters, better known as deer killers. (A certain segment of the population buys these lights, mounts them on their pickups, and goes deer hunting – at night. The bright light freezes the deer, then they shoot it.) I bought two. One burned out in the middle of the rally.

Note if you have two pencil-beams and two driving lights aimed to give a nice spread, and one of the pencils burns out, your eyes really don’t appreciate the black hole effect.

I have a bunch of Hella Xenon H3 bulbs on order from Gibson Performance, so I didn’t want to buy spare bulbs that I would never use. However, I now had a virtually brand-new light with a burnt-out bulb. Luckily I had a spare Bosch fog reflector in my spare electrical parts bag (more preparation), so I pulled the 55w bulb out of that to replace the burnt out 100w one. The result was if I was headed right, there was lots of light, but if I was heading left, it was dim. Dim is better than a black hole, but nowhere near as good as what I would have had if I had picked up some spare bulbs.

Doing a night rally without auxiliary lights is stressful. Having your high beams (and auxiliary lights) suddenly turn off (and stay off) while on a dark country road is very stressful. While I doubt many of you are rallying with "backwards" wired Toyota’s, if you are, or if your car has headlamp reminder circuits or low-voltage daytime running light circuits, or other automotive lighting weirdness intended as a "luxury" feature, test the circuit for a few hours. I tested mine for an hour-and-a-half the day prior to the rally. I lost the lights one hour and forty-five minutes into the rally. (In my case I didn’t have a big enough heat sink for one of the rectifiers. Note that rectifiers are unnecessary in most applications.) After that, I had a choice of low beams, or turning the headlights off and running with just the auxiliary lights and parking lights. Driving with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other toggling various light switches, is not recommended.

I knew this and I still screwed it up. I had purchased Blizzaks for this car quite a while ago, and they still had about 60% tread depth – just before the good, spongy, rubber disappears on these tires. This depth might be great for Ottawa city streets, but it is not good enough for snow-covered rally roads. On steep up-hill sections, speed was traction-limited. I could have jogged faster (and if you’ve seen me, that is saying a lot). On downhill stretches, vehicle speed had to be set at the top of the hill (like turn 2 at Mosport), because there was no effective braking grip going downhill (like turn 2 at Mosport). Unfortunately, there are curves at the bottom of many hills (like turn 2 at Mosport). Fortunately, on snow one can pitch the car sideways to scrub off speed for the turn (mercifully unlike turn 2 at Mosport) – if one has talent, or thinks they do.

The Yokohama-Subaru Winter Rally Series (gotta keep mentioning these series sponsors) is run all night long. When I was younger, pulling "all-nighters" wasn’t a big deal (and how I graduated from university). Now that I’m half-way to retirement, however, sleep is, well, very desirable. I wasn’t sure how to prepare. Jim Morrow had scotch early Friday night and went to bed. That is my plan next time. This time my plan was to stay up all night Friday, drop the dog off at the kennel early Saturday morning, then sleep all day Saturday until it was time to go to the rally. The first two parts of the plan went well, but I never did get to sleep during the day Saturday, because, well, I still had more preparation to do. I ended up catching an hour’s sleep by missing the beginner navigator’s meeting.

One piece of advice I got was to eat and drink throughout the rally. This made sense to me, as this is the same advice given to off-roaders – so I prepped like I was going on a night off-road excursion. We packed thermos’ of hot chocolate and coffee, and large containers of sports drink. Unfortunately, there is no time in a rally to fish the thermos out, and/or pour a drink into a cup. Similarly, there is no time to get into the bags of food in the back seat. Doh!

The pre-event information showed the rally starting at 10:00 p.m., with a break from 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m., and a finish time of 7:00 a.m. I had hoped that I could catch a good 40 minutes of sleep at the break. That isn’t how it worked – there was a 20 minute break around 1:00 a.m., where I spent 40 minutes fixing lights. The hour break was around 4:30 a.m., but our break was about 35 minutes. I spent this break replacing the light bulb. Our rally finally ended around 8:30 a.m. Unfortunately, by about 7:00 a.m., the sleep deprivation won out, and we went off. This was a stupid off. A faster car had come up behind us; I pulled to the side to let the car by. So far, so good, but he didn't pass me fast enough, or more correctly, I didn’t slow down enough, so we went into a corner side-by-side. He was on the inside where the rally traffic had left ruts. (I almost always cornered on ruts once I got my lights quasi-working.) My brain forgot the outside of the corner would be full of unplowed soft snow. Understeer city. I might have been able to save it but with the other car beside me, I didn't want to risk fishtailing into him. Whoomph! Snow banks makes for a very soft landing – but we went off just enough that we would need to be pulled out.

Now before the rally I had installed tow straps front and rear. As I explained to Jaak before the event, this is an off-roading superstition. Install the tow straps before you go on the trails, and you won’t need them. I didn’t tell Jaak the second part – that if you do need tow straps, putting them on when you are stuck can be a big pain. The sweep vehicles caught up to us within 15 minutes, and they liked seeing the tow strap all hooked up ready to pull. We were on our way again, making damn sure we retrieved our safety triangle.

Now, however, we were last car – the last competitor vehicle running the rally. Daylight was breaking. The sweep vehicles followed us from checkpoint to checkpoint. I had reached that level of tiredness that makes one giddy. I just wanted to finish the rally, and eat! The daylight made seeing the road easier, so I went faster, instead of slowing down, which is what one should do when tired. Then it happened again!

Going downhill, there was a higher-speed turn halfway through. My speed at the top of the hill was too high, daylight instilling too much confidence (strike 1). With the ice I did not slow enough for the corner – but I thought I had (strike 2). Made the corner, but was understeering on corner exit into the trees. Snapped the car back, dialed in full opposite lock to catch the spin, but was so tired I didn't time it right (strike 3). A couple more attempts at (over)-correction, and, instead of fishtailing into a decreasing pendulum, my pendulum was increasing. I gave up before I spun the car completely, and put both feet in while I could still aim the car a bit. My brake application was just a bit late so we didn't slide straight down the road, and eventually slid into the ditch, coming to rest about a foot from a boulder. The sweep crew was impressed.

The rest of the rally was anti-climactic. Other traffic was starting to use the roads, so speeds were dialed way back – to what one would normally run on an un-plowed, un-sanded, and un-salted road that had been subjected to rain, sleet, freezing rain, light snow, and a snow squall during the night. (No hail, but that was the only form of precipitation we didn’t experience during the rally – there was fog in one section.)

We were just about at the end of the rally when we came up to a "T" intersection. My navigator said turn right, we did, but the sweep vehicles behind us honked, and indicated we should have turned left. This brings me to the most important lesson I learned from the rally – the navigator is always right!

Even with the above, the 2002 Dèfi des Glaces rally was a great event and a ton of fun. MCO was well-represented and did very well, as enumerated elsewhere in this issue. As for us, we can only improve – and be better prepared next time!