Fresh off two successful finishes at Rally West Virginia and Susquehannock Trail Pro Rally this summer, the Saab rally team of Sorensen/Iden arrived at the 2007 running of Black River Stages with high expectations. Held in the far reaches of the western Adirondacks, the quaintness of the surroundings belies the intense and demanding nature of the local roads. The surface ranges from loose and sandy to hard and smooth gravel. One neat feature of this rally is the abundance of jumps; the roads wave up and down like a rollercoaster ride reminiscent of the world rally championship in Finland. 

The day started ominously for the team. A hasty cold morning start left the rally car with fouled spark plugs. While the crew was trying to get the plugs changed only minutes before the rally, a plug wire was pulled loose from the terminal. Not having any spare plug wire in the service truck we had to be resourceful. We borrowed a plug wire from a Subaru legacy and found that it fit in place perfectly. We changed the plugs and got the car running just in time for parc expose.

The first stage is a brilliantly twisty 5 and a half mile climb. The surface is very soft and loose and in times it is hard to get out of 2^nd gear. We slip-slided our way through the stage and finished fastest 2wd car overall by 14 seconds!  The 2 stage was the same as the first stage, just in the opposite direction. Having some knowledge of the stage from the first time through, we started the stage with a blistering pace, knowing any speed we could carry through the corners would help prevent from getting bogged down in the deep gravel. Only a mile or so into the stage we took a high speed yump over an old vacant railroad bed and when we landed we heard an awful squealing coming from the front end. Shortly after this we setup for  a sharp off camber left 3, and the car lost all steering. We hit the brakes hard and were able to slow the car down after running into a couple small saplings. We jumped out of the car to assess the situation and saw that the right front wheel was hanging at a precarious angle, the upper ball joint had snapped in half! Because of this, the axle had dislocated and the inner driver was damaged. Not having enough spare parts in the car to fix it on the spot we had no choice but to sit the stage out and hope we could contact our crew to have them bring the spare parts out to us. Luckily our crew got the word that we were in trouble and needed parts. After the stage closed they drove the van out to us and we were able to repair the car on the spot within a few minutes. We drove the car back to the service area and alerted the officials that we wished to continue on in the rally. (we had missed only two stages). We had a quick lunch break and then departed out for the afternoon stages. Because we had missed two stages, the rally master had decided restart us in last position for the remaining stages. We had protested because we felt we would be able to catch cars in the back of the pack very easily but the official said “the stages are very short there is no way you will catch anybody on them”  That sounded like a bet to me… so we made it a point to catch cars on every stage. We did just that, in fact almost catching two cars on one stage.

The afternoon stages were fast and flowing with some large yumps. We were once again setting fastest 2wd times on most of the stages, even with having to wait a while for slower cars to make room for us to pass.  On the “powerline” stages we averaged almost 62 mph, topping out at 120 mph on the “fullerville” stage. We returned to service before the final two stages with the car running flawlessly. During our routine service checks we noticed that the ball joint that we had replaced earlier in the day had begun to fail as well, although still drivable it would have been a safety issue to go out on stage knowing that it could fail at any moment.  Not having any more spares (other than on a crew members street car) we made the tough but necessary decision to withdraw before the last two stages.  

Analysis after the event revealed that our shock absorber bumps stops were very worn out and were most likely the primary reason for the failure as they were allowing hard bottoming of the suspension on the large jumps.

Looking forward to next season we will have a revised upper control arm and ball joint along with new longer bump stops. The car is otherwise considered sorted and has been very reliable.  Luke has become very comfortable taking the car to its limits of adhesion and John has really matured as a co-driver. Next season the team should prove to be a force to be reckoned with.

 

There is some great in-car video of event here:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-747121616046990845