Winter workshop -- Posted by andy on Sunday, November 28 2010
Our crew of kidnapped Oompah Loompahs have been busy tearing down a donor mark II Jetta. A new shell awaits parts and the phoenix will rise from the ashes reborn yet again. The Jetta Part II coming in a couple months. The "Classic Jetta" will remain in tact available for rental or barter.
Corporate spies say the timeline of the the build really depends on how quickly before Matt finds a J-O-B since he'll be the guy fabricating most of the car. The talk around the water cooler is that the first Jetta probably only got built because he was bumming around and had nothing better to do. Will mortgage slave Matt have to get a job and have no free time to build the new car? Stay tuned to find out...
New England Forest Rally -- Posted by andy on Tuesday, August 24 2010
It was hot in Maine. Saturday our left rear axle snapped and the wheel fell off and flew away into the forest. 30 sec into the video we are jumping with three wheels. Awesome video by Chris Meegan.
STPR 2010 -- Posted by matt on Tuesday, June 15 2010
Following 2 frustrating events earlier in the spring, the Bent Mettle Team was ready to mix it up with other 2WD competitors. Returning to lovely Wellsboro, PA for the first time since 2005 after troubleshooting the electronic issues, the team felt confident that the event would be a quick romp to the podium.
The lure of competition, primarily from Chris Greenhouse in the mighty Green Neon (Greon?) and Chris Duplessis in his Golf drew us east to the Keystone state.
After setting up camp at the Fairgrounds, we set about trying to locate someone to crew for us and drive the van to the Germania service on Saturday. The struggle to find reliable, consistent service help continues - this weekend Oscar would volunteer to pilot the Vambulance.
The transits around town left us feeling good- the car sounded good, the alignment was good, and the doors even opened and closed a bit better after some attention over the break between events. That good feeling faded quickly, however, after the first 1/4 mile into the first stage, when the engine began running very rough. Car after car passed the barely mobile Jetta on stage- we eventually were the last car, and limped the car through the stage.
We elected to withdraw and return to service to try to salvage the 2nd regional event for the weekend. After hours of troubleshooting, a low voltage condition on one of the supply wires to the ECU was discovered. We re-wired to pick up a more reliable 12 volt supply and crossed our fingers our re-entry into competitive stages on Saturday morning would go better.
With the sort of disbelief only Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back could understand, the Jetta once again started missing after warmed up to operating temperature. We again pulled out of competition, but luckily this time, the first two stages of Saturday were part of the first regional, leaving us time to attempt to fix the problem for Saturday's coefficient 3 event.
Back to the electronics, this time replacing the "new" crank position sensor with the old one removed after it proved unreliable at low engine speeds at 100AW, knowing that as long as we kept the engine running, we could at least run competitively on stage.
What a difference! We ran neck and neck with Greenhouse, until his roll, but were consistently down 4~6 seconds per mile against Duplessis.
Our times were good enough to net us a 2nd place in class, even with the substantial time incurred to clear a stage blockage when Sullivan Van Way rolled his Subaru Baja immediately in front of us. Unfortunately, not only did we lose time, but a good number of other G2 competitors did also. Such is rally, and the nature of Force Majeure.
With a short turnaround before the first Max Attack! event of our season, we hope to fix the buggy sensor issue once and for all, as well as trim away at the gap between us and the other front runners who have already entered the event in New England.
Stay Tuned!
First Rally -- Posted by andy on Thursday, March 4 2010
We started our rally careers very early. This was the first and last time Matt let me drive.
Short Sno*Drift and 100 Acre Wood wrap up -- Posted by andy on Tuesday, March 2 2010
Sno*drift was a super slick hockey rink. There was lots of pushing out of the snow banks for me and 3 or 4 flat tires to change from ramming the drifts but we finished both days. Damage report included a broken spindle and a steering rack that arched like a rainbow.
100AW was fast and furious as always. There was a large G2 field and lots of VWs. That's always nice when we need to borrow parts. Thanks to Gary Wiggin for the fuel pump.
Our dad Barney and brother Marc crewed for us and helped Matt keep the old beat up pos car going. The dust became a factor later in the night and slowed us down a bit. We ran fast on Friday and went to bed with a second place to Gary and Kim Demotte.
Not being able to get the stalled VW restarted lost us 3 minutes on Saturday on a hairpin turn.
The good side of this was that we ended up closely following the Huebbe brothers bug. They really ripped it up nicely.
After the last service we taped up some loose wires and changed the ECU board and the car ran better than it had all weekend. Matt drove the last two stages hard and we surprisingly jumped from 9th up to 4th for the night.
We were again surprised when due to a scoring error we ended up with a first on Friday. We also won a $100 gift certificate from Hawk brakes. Thanks to all the great volunteer workers and the increasing G2 competition that made this one of the best 100 Acre Woods ever!
2009 Recap -- Posted by matt on Sunday, January 17 2010
2 weeks out from Sno*Drift 2010 and we've left both of our fans who stumble onto the website in the lurch news wise.
NEFR was a mild disaster. I'd apparently dropped a bolt into the transmission housing while putting it back into the car and it beat a hole in the bellhousing. We poured an untold amount of fluid into the thing over the weekend, until we finally (thankfully?) rolled the car, smashing the roof in on some rocks.
The upside to the trip is finding that the van had mostly been restored to it's previous glory, if not better, with the transmission repair. AND having a decent garage to work out of was looking promising.
August- I'd managed to get the car stuck back together enough to compete with the help of some of my mountain biking friends. It was actually looking to be in pretty good shape, even with a mismatch of panel colors.
Kim Demotte rode shotgun, and my youngest brother Marc and my dad crewed. Despite breaking an axle on the first super special stage, and needing to again replace axles on the overnight, and finding a broken rear rotor, then a loose rear stub axle in parc expose, we managed to slog towards a 5th place finish in MaxAttack.
The NOS Hankooks I'd purchased for the event were totally awful and ruined by the end of the weekend. $600 of tires gone in about 30 hours.
The takeaway from Ojibwe was that I seemed to be letter the car go deeper or something. At times, everything was just faster than it used to be, although we were still not too close to the front runners.
For LSPR, Andrew managed to make it out for some co-driving. The first stage was a bit rough as I'm pretty challenged by super specials due to the lack of obvious visual clues, and he hadn't co-driven in the car since the motor was swapped.
We'd apparently picked up the pace quickly, though, and by the first running of Passmore, we were the 2nd fastest regional car through the long stage. A lapse in concentration on the next stage would find me driving up into the woods, and taking us out of contention for the evening.
With a serious thrash (and help from all sorts of folks) on the car in a parking lot, we managed to get it together enough to appear at Parc Expose Saturday morning, ready to compete. We pulled a 3rd in class the second day, narrowly edging out Greenhouse, who had some issues with a flat, and ending up in awe of Silas Himes.
LSPR seems to be the event where we go, work hard, and get smoked by guys who run 1 event every 5 years.
The upshot is that we were damn fast overall when the car was ok.
SnoDrift Prep- somehow, after sitting for a month, a loose wire on a relay smoked the ECU in the car. Both of those issues are fixed, and mostly straight front end parts, including a newer hood and light pod, are slowly being prepped for the car.
I have today, and next weekend to wrap things up. I need to pick up the pace a little bit over the course of the coming week, but I think I'm in the ballpark...
Runup to New England -- Posted by matt on Saturday, July 4 2009
Ahhhh, moose country. The last time the team journeyed to Maine was all the way back in 2006. The 2006 season was a breakout year in many ways, but also plagued with suspension issues.
With those problems cleared up, and the new engine installed, we're heading back east, spurred on by the Genius Discount Entry fee of a mere $400, and the lure of the MaxAttack! Big Check.
Dave Shindle is sitting right seat on this one; Dave has plenty of co-driving experience and should be able to copy with the Mighty Power of the Jetta.
So far, the majority of prep work has gone into fixing the Van. The run down is substantial : New Transmission, new tires, oil change, new tranmission coolder, new master cylinder, new front right caliper, new rear shoes, new rear drums, new wheel cylinder, scrubbed down the interior, new fuel heater assembly, new glow plugs. The end result is a service rig that starts everytime and doesn't spew transmission fluid and oil behind it like an overpriced mosquito fogger.
The car is getting the gearbox rebuilt. Not many other parituclar upgrades are planned- the car ran well at SnoDrift, aside from the bearbox and halfshaft issues.
I'm also attempting to get in-car video and audio set back up again. I'm not quite in the zone on that yet as I'm camped here, typing.
Sno*Drift 2009 -- Posted by matt on Sunday, February 8 2009
I made it back to Atlanta, MI this year to compete in the Sno*Drift rally. It's been a couple of years since I've been there with a car and it continues to be a challenging event.
The runup to the rally was, to be blunt, completely miserable. I've been fighting some mechanical problems in the service vehicle for a while and spent twice as much time on it as the rally car.
The rally car needed some additional work following the roll at West Virginia, and an all around buttoning up.
I eventually drug it into a warehouse at work and turned some friends from work loose on giving it a once over. The test drive revealed a horrible pulling tendancy, and when it came time to load it up on the trailer, the van, again, wouldn't start.
I borrowed a truck, got the car loaded up, and headed up to Atlanta. Tech was a bit of a trial as we found a loose wheel, and some burned out lights that had been intermittent.
Friday morning, Ben and I headed for shakedown followed by our service person, Robert Conens. The evil little Jetta was darting all over the road, giving me a bit of a "what in the hell is wrong with this thing" sick to my stomach feel. When I looked down at the gas gauge in the car, it was in the red, further adding to the sickening feeling I just wasn't really ready to put 100% into this effort.
We fueled up with some gas I had in the service truck and headed off to the practice stage after hastily adjusting the new belts in the car. Once both wheels were spinning, the car handling improved somewhat, giving me a boost of confidence that the weekend may not end up a total disaster.
We headed back through a 2nd pass, and near the end, I looped it into a snowbank, getting stuck, and apparently breaking a halfshaft. I should have realized there was a problem when the remaining driveshaft seemed to have no traction- the car is supposed to have a limited slip that will provide some power, even with a broken shaft.
After the long flat tow back to Lewiston, we set to work on swapping the shaft. This is about a 30 minute job. Really. Except when working outside on the street in the dead of winter.
After about 2 hours and rotating through nearly everyone who walked by, the skidplate had come off, and we had to pound some mystery spline tool into a couple of the bolt heads that had stripped out.
Amazingly, the group effort was able to get it back together after I decided frostbite was imminent and ran into the house. I'd been working under the car without gloves to get the CV bolts started. Seriously miserable.
We arrived at Parc Expose, me still damp in my driver's suit from working under the car, and proceeded to stand around for hours wishing we were someplace else, anyplace else warmer.
The pace on the first few stages was plodding. We would stop to try to yank out a few people as time seemed to no longer matter, and we'd already fallen into survival mode. Miraculously, the others in class fell victim to the slick surfaces and with the exception of Paul Koll, the evental class winner, the others lost more time than our measured pace put on the clock, leaving us in 2nd place in class.
Following a heaping bowl of Gumbo, I drug Ben back outside to check the alignment on the car, thinking there had to be a problem causing the darty crappy where's the car going feeling. After a few adjustments it was somewhat better, but still pretty bad.
Morning came early Saturday, and we loaded up the service truck and trailer to head to Atlanta for day 2.
Stage 1, Hungry 5, went surprisingly well, with us putting up a time within 4 or 5 seconds of Paul Koll. Stage 2 also felt pretty good, but we'd gotten a bit creative, spinning a complete 360 at speed, and near the end of the stage, a more reserved 270 degree spin, requiring more recovery time.
I backed off slightly, although at this time, we were definitely more in the groove and having far, far more fun than the previous day, and made it through stage 3 only overshooting one corner massively, and spinning through a recovery attempt.
The car seemed to be fine, and although completely unmanageable on transits, was reasonable to drive on stage. A cursory glance at everything during the service looked fine, and off we went to the super special, the halfway point of the day.
Here we sat for likely an hour as they got the stage prepped to use. I took a nap, then another nap, and finally we were paraded through the stage twice.
Once on stage, things were going pretty well until we heard a loud pop, and the car stopped going forward when I pushed the loud pedal. I'd broken another driveshaft.
I threw a temper tantrum, got the car drug back up to the service area and waited for Robert to come with the trailer and drag us all back to the house.
A seriously dejected feeling after starting to put up good times at an event that always seems to kick my ass. Just miserable and awful. Adding insult to injury, it appeared the the halfshaft had essentially fallen out, the newly installed bolts needing to be retorqued after the initial installation. We'd forgotten about this in our haste and lack of time between the first day and the 2nd.
After getting back home, I jacked up the car and tested the diff to reveal the clutch pack is essentially totally shot from having been driving one legged too many times.
