3l GTV6 PRC project

[redalfaracing]

Horse Gully Rd, Balmattum. Rick Anderson - Benalla


Taken at Assembly Start by Sean Carney

Well i survived the 2010 BP Ultimate Rally.

Over 2000 KM's of the states best and worst roads, and some of the most obscure instructions to find the most unlikely tracks. We were taken along National Highways, Major roads, minor roads, sand tracks, train lines, drains, wheat paddocks, walking tracks and visited National Parks, Flora and Fauna reserves, Conservation Reserves, Private farms and places that time forgot.

3 days with only 9 hrs sleep, lots of jelly beans and mars bars, salad rolls, and 1 great rib eye steak from a bar in Swan Hill, all washed down by a couple of litres of Gatorade.

As mentioned earlier, division 1 had our name on it. 1st outright, we were chuffed. Drove the wheel of that GTV6 all night. Dale was acting like he drew the maps. ( 1960 broadbents were used ) Dont think he looked out the window once, just studdied the map and the compass. How you do that without chucking is beyond me! Tour start was in Stratford, then off to Bairnsdale and then Dargo, via a walking track in the Mitchell River National Park. From Dargo straight up the high plains road to Mt Blow Hard, on the Great Alpine Road. How much fun do you think that was? Rounded up so many cars passing most of them on the inside at corners. The Alfa owned that road. Down the mountain to Bright and west to Benalla.
Total time lost, 7 minutes. Quick chat to Paul, bacon and eggs, then off to the motel for 75 minutes sleep.

Division 2 started well. cleaned the first 2 stages then DISASTER! just could not find the road that we needed. we wern't alone. rally cars going around in circles. finally we gave up and missed 2 vias (60 points) and by the time we finished lost 28 minutes. rest of the day was good but at the end we were 105 points. Still most crews dropped time and missed vias so we still kept 9th place. Still happy.

Arrived in Swan Hill around 6pm. Car now as noisy as, rough roads taking their toll on the exhaust. Now i think they built the car then someone noticed it had no exhaust, dont worry, just hang it anywhere underneath. What a stupid place to put the muffler. Definately going to the later cross member to get it all up higher. Anyway, a good feed and 8 hrs of broken sleep, 6am rise and off to Division start to do some repairs while Dale plots todays route. 30 minutes to plot then we are off. 50 km transport in which Dale continues to plot. Stage 1, what a blast. sand roads full sideways. Then we found the deep sand. Love that V6 torque. We had let the tyres down to 20 psi and although the car wandered on the deep sand, it never looked like getting stuck. Our strategy was to hit it hard and keep up on top. worked well until the sand hill from hell. Got up it just fine, only trouble was it had a sharp rise at the top and although the hill went down the car kept going up. Never flown a car that far b4. Would have won the money at the birdman rally. we thudded down next to the escort with the broken wheel and the Mercedes  with the rurptured fuel tank. Couple of bounces and off we went. No damage. Service at Hattah then up the highway and into private land. great roads/train line the the wheat paddock. Pictue a hundred acre paddock with rally cars driving all over it looking for the way out. Stage was called Iron Clad Tank, will make BP history books. finally twigged and got out down this sand track, rough as guts and by the time we reached service at Walpeup we had a hole ripped in the muffler as big as an a4 sheet of paper. Even though we had aviation headsets on, we had pounding heads. Closed it up a bit in the 20 minute service the back out there. more sweeping gravel roads and sand paddock tracks. then i'm told to search for a drain. find it an  we have around 8 kms along the top of the drain bank, deep sand tight twisty corners and only about 1 metre wider than the car. Navigational advice " dont fall off" right!
off that then back to the sand roads. Flying along over the dunes, hitting them at 120 km/h to get over, rise over a particularly high one to find a beached Torana XU1. How i pulled up in time i dont know. No way around so it is out to help dig. Soon joined by a few other cars. My advice is never take a tarmac car on a BP rally. anyway, a lot of digging, some sand mats and 9 people pushing we get it out. Next problem the Alfa is stuck too. Locking up all whells dug it in somewhat, so some diggind and pushing we free it too. All other cars stopped b4 the dune so they had run ups and cleared it ok. Funny thing is, we wernt supposed to be there! Should have turned left some 2 kms earlier. So much time has gone that we decide to cut and run so as we dont run out of late time. so we wd the finish control and head to Division end at Sea Lake.

Now 17th. Exhaust comes off, we find an oxy and weld a patch on the muffler. Lock nuts on the flanges and plenty of wire to hold it up. just make our start time and its off with a reasonably quiet car. 60 km transport sth out of the sand belt (we had all had enough sand by now) so east of Birchip we take off down a gravel road. great rally roads. 6k's straight the turn left, 8 k's straight then turn right, you get the picture. Then the unthinkable happens. going down a hill and the steering went light. thought it is slippery untill the car turned sharp left by itself and hit a tree. I found i could turn the wheel with no resulting action at the front wheels. Lucky for us it was a tight section and we were only going relativly slowly at the time. Got on the anchors and brushed of a fair bit of speed so damage not too bad and certainly not terminal. As they say in the classics "nothing but a flesh wound" Steering collumn has come off the top of the steering rack. dont know how as yet as it had the bolt through the spline so it's not supposed to happen. pull the bolt out and refit it. mind you the manifold is red hot so i did it with my driving gloves on. didnt feel a thing. Okky strap the bonnet down and we carry on. Still not knowing what to make of it i am just a little tentative on the go pedal and it takes  a few k's to be brave enough to find the rev limiter. Of course we now are down a couple of driving lights, the light pod being destroyed by the impact, and the other two a bit skew whiff, but i had gotten used to driving in dust on low beam so i no complain. 2nd last section we get a tad confused and take a wrong track. About 10 k's it peters out at a dry creek so i back up and go to turn around. bang! dropped the lh rear into a big hole in the grass. wheel free spinning and rh front wheel about a foot off the ground. Now about 4 am Sunday. Needless to say we needed that like a hole in the head. Got out, had a look, had a wee, then i wondered if Dale sat on the front right and i slowly fed out the clutch with the handbrake on, the diff would ramp up and i could just drive out. Well, i thought it was worth a try. I was amazed. It actually worked. Just as well, coz 10 ks down the wrong road, no one would have found us. Back tracked and found the right road and headed to the finish control. Trouble was, we never found it. We drove round and round a town called Barkly for half an hour trying to find it. Then at 4.45 the sweep car found us. Apparently we drove right past the control at 4.13 and they booked us in as a wd. So time to cut and run. 90 kms to Ballarat Light car clubrooms , we find Jamey our service crew in Lexton on the way, sent him to the van park to sleep, we skip the final stage at Amplitheatre ( just as well as everybody got lost there) Story goes that they had to move the finish control because of a complaint from a resi, result, 30 cars driving round and round the town all night instead of in then straight out. Every dog was barking, I think it would be a brave director to send a rally car through there again.

Final provisional result, 796 points, 14th outright, 1st c grade crew, 2nd in class, and i think maybe 2nd team home.
Am i happy, you bet. finished the hardest rally in vic, car still goes as good as when i started it. Proved itself as a robust, reliable, comfortable car with ample power to show the boys the way over the high plains. Even Dale (who is a datsun man) conceded that it does tick all the boxes.

The event was tuff, demanding, and tiring exhausting, but it is the best thing i have ever done in motorsport, and even though Ross Runnalls the director will probably never read this i have to say i take my hat off to him, spending the 18 months to set this up, and for that i thank him and his team very much and hope he finds the drive to do it all again soon. It was so good i would do it all again next week end.

All that for a $450 entry fee including a 2 course luncheon at the Ballarat race course. Great value for money i think.

[Sheldon McIntosh]

That's freakin awesome Greg.  I tip my hat to you sir, you are an inspiration, and I'm glad to have you out there waving the Alfa flag.  I would so love to do some rallying, but as we concluded at a recent club night 'you could do 20 years of sprinting and drive at 99% and have little chance of crashing, but rallying - you're definitely going to hit something in every rally'.

Excellent work, and great to see the GTV6 is up to the job, just as you thought it would be.  Shame about the low exhaust.

[redalfaracing]

Sheldon.  it is not mandatory to hit something in every rally. There are guys out there that never hit anything , i have been rallying since 2004 and have had only 3 impacts. It all depends what you want to achieve in the sport. A half decent driver in a decent car can rally at 95% and never come to grief, it's the guys who try and drive at 120% their ability that do all the damage.
Have a go at an intro trial, drive within your capabilities , you would love it.
And thanks mate. I appreciate your comments on me and the GTV6

[redalfaracing]

I was talking about the sand hill with attitude altitude



Cramanton Launch Pad from the North (landing side)



Cramanton Launch Pad from the South (approach side)



Portrait version of Rawson's Rocket - and this after slowing down before the crest at the behest of experienced navigator Simon Brown.

need i say anymore?

[116gtv]

OMG, that looks like a 4wd track to me... no wonder tarmac rally cars would be in trouble!

so whats your opinion of the V6 over the 4 banger after this event? had you done anything that challenging with the alfetta previously?

congrats, and thanks for sharing!

[redalfaracing]

OMG, that looks like a 4wd track to me... no wonder tarmac rally cars would be in trouble!

Martin, believe it or not, that was one of the better roads. have a look at the pics below.

so whats your opinion of the V6 over the 4 banger after this event? had you done anything that challenging with the alfetta previously?

The 2l did a lot of rallys, always left me yelling " give me more horsepower" .That phase did not exit my lips this rally. However, in a special stage rally, the 2.5 may be a little underpowered to keep at the pointy end. I'm sure the 24 valve 3L will fix that! The torque of the V6 made the sand quite easy. the last thing you want to do is grab a lower gear, just dig you in. The 2.5 was happy to slog along at 2500-3000 rpm without spinning wheels and digging holes.

Photos below are from John Doutch. Fronts up at most rallies and can be relied on to always provide a couple of good shots of your car. Sells 10x8s for $15, very reasonable. Have had some pearlers over the years.

[redalfaracing]

found some more pics of the GTV6, taken by car 37's service crew.



   

[alfagtv152]

Hi Greg,
Talking about lighting,what headlights are you using?,I have a few ideas for improving your lighting considerably over standard if your interested.
Cheers
Andrew

[redalfaracing]

Andrew, i have improved on the standard lighting 2000% I have fitted Hella H4's to the outside lights and Hella H1 to the inside lights with 35 watt HID (zennon) kits. With these running on 6mm wires each with their own relays you can see forever. The light pod i made had Hella Predators ( i say had as it is completly munted now) with spread beams. with all those firing i could read a street sign from 1 km away. The big issue was the reflective signs, particularly the chevrons on corners. Had to shield your eyes as the reflected light hurt! Really couldn't have wanted for better lights.



If you look at the electrical panel, top lh corner you can see the 2 double relays.

In the pics below you can see the lights and the conversion to Alfa mounts. only took about an hour and some sikaflex ( worlds most handiest substance!)

If you think you can improve on those lights i'd love to hear about it.

[alfagtv152]

Hi Greg,
I think you have it pretty well covered but there may be one more little thing you could do.I have the same conversion on my GT except that I put a change over relay in the wiring tail to the H4 with a signal from the high beam to change it from low beam to high beam so that you have 4 high beams if you want.I guess in rally you might want to keep the low beam for short distance lighting.
The car looks awesome and I love the pictures and stories,keep up the good work.
Cheers
Andrew

[redalfaracing]

Thanks Andrew. I too have an extra relay so i can run just the outside 2 as high beams or all 4. ( the inside beams are classed as driving lights so they can be zennons). ADR's preclude high or low beam lights from being zennon except when they have self levelling capability and washers. My neighbor is a whizz bang auto electrician. Peter usually only works on earthmoving equipment but he does all my work on the rally cars and they never let me down electrically. Amazing how many DNF's are due to electrical faults.

Next event i am planning is round 2 of the VRC which is at Bega on June 13. Very fast forest and shire roads. See how she goes in a forest race!
Then The Xtrial. Round 3 of the HRA rally series at Dunolly July 10th

Thats if i get the damage fixed from the last one!

[redalfaracing]

Started the repair on the front of the GTV6. Chained it to a tree and used a 1/2 ton chain block to attempt to pull out the indentation in the front. A sad thing happened. The radiator support panel ( which is a sheetmetal box section) just tore into a few pieces. The panel is painted on the outside, but not the inside. Consequently the tinworm has taken hold.

Back to the drawing board. Cut out the panel and have Tigged a piece of 20mm x 1mm lygal shs in its place. Tomorrow i will fold up a sheetmetal panel that goes over it and to the front of the car. I have a panel from a wrecked 2l GTV to put over it to complete the job. Hoping minimal filler will be necessary to achieve a reasonably neat job.

Wont have this done by Sunday, so it's no Khanacross for me

[Fylnn]

Greg,

I have been setting up the suspension for my PRC GTV6 over the weekend.   I have raised the ride height an inch over what I had which gives about 400mm from centre of axle to lip of guard, which is what I think you said here.  Car looks good, gives me about 180mm clearance under the sump and 200 mm under the chasis rails.  It seems about right for gravel.  But I am a little concerned about the droop of the suspension.  One side is on the rubber bump stop and the other is close.  Did you modify the droop stops on your car?

As a trial I jacked the front up until the front tyre can spin and I have only got a about 25mm of droop.  Not too excited about the prospects of regularly going over crests with the front wheels doing not much. 

Any suggestions on mods or even the need for them?

Peter

[116gtv]

Funny you are asking that Peter, I was doing the same on my GTV4 last night and realised i can barely get the upper arm balljoint back onto the upright because the lower arm is pointing so far down.. i was going to ditch that mount for more droop but then thought I'd better check.. perhaps skimming it down to half size would work best...

[Fylnn]

Strange how these things happen.  My thought for next weekend is to take out the hacksaw and cut the bump rubber in half.  At present it is about 25mm thick, I am hoping 12-15mm will be enough.

I remember reading somewhere some time back about I think it was Greg Carr's GTV6 where they made up extended spindles, but that is way too hard.

So unless there is a better idea I am thinking along the same lines as yourself and cut it down.