TSD night street rally on Sat 4/29 starting in Mount KiscoNY

[TurboMike]

Saturday night STREET TimeSpeedDistance rally on 4/29 starting in Mount Kisco NY. Should be a 2 to 4 hour rally from 40 to 120 miles. Registration between 5pm and 6:15pm, drivers meeting at 6:30pm, first car out at 7pm (leaving in car number order). Any street legal car with no lights higher than headlights. Trophys to top scorers and for special classes (all ladies class, husband/wife team, more than 2 people in car aka family class, etc). Cars with rally computers or navi systems (GPS or otherwise) not eligable for trophys.

What you need: TWO people in each car (driver and navigator) more than 2 will be forced to run in family class, pen and clipboard or something similar to write on laps, some kind of lap lighting for navigator that wont blind the driver, a FULL tank of gas before drivers meeting (you may run out on some backroad in the middle of nowhere)

WSCC rallys can be very competitive if you're trying for a perfect score/trophy down to a fun night of driving with your spouse/child/whatever. I see cars from rallied out Subarus with huge lighting to mom & dad with two kids in the back in a minivan. You DONT need a special car for a street rally. The rally is how YOU drive it. Score is based on perfect time (too early or too late to checkpoint=bad points) and hidden signs on the side of the road (missing a sign on your score sheet=bad points) so technically if you never make a wrong turn or stop for a missed sign you would do the entire rally UNDER the speed limit. These are public roads enforced by police, drive accordingly (or dont get caught). 90% of the roads used are backroads in the middle of nowhere and there will be little to no law enforcement but you never know, its your lisence and you're on your own. Your car should be able to handle gravel and dirt roads (splitter 1" off the ground? forget it bring your beater car) but I can do it in my 2" slowered Talon so most cars should be ok.

If you have a CB radio, bring it. Its nice to be able to chat when you come across another car "in the rally". Channel 21.

Link to flier:
http://www.wscc.org/flyers/2006BunnyRunRallyFlyer.pdf

Better description of a WSCC TSD rally:
http://www.wscc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=186

[TurboMike]

Does anyone go to local forums that I can post about this rally on? I already hit up:

i-club.com
nasioc.com
wrxtuners.com
clubwrx.net
miatamob.org
bigapplemiata.org
miata.net
rx7club.com
nyccdsm.com
nj.dsm.org
galantvr4.org
nybmwcca.org
ultimatesubaru.net
mohud-scca.org
srtforums.com
evo-ny.com
toyotanation.com
evolutionm.net
vwvortex.com
mr2oc.com
vtec.net
honda-acura.net
superhonda.com
hondacivicforum.com
neons.org
nemini.org
mini2.com
mustangevolution.com
forums.stangnet.com
mustangforums.com
audiforums.com
audilife.com
bimmerfest.com
bimmerforums.com
bimmer.roadfly.com/bmw/forums
dsmtalk.com
dsmtuners.com
audiworld.com
mazda626.net
mazda3forums.com
clubprotege.com
nissanclub.com
b15sentra.net
forums.nicoclub.com
my350z.com
nissanforums.com
solsticeforum.com
nnjr-pca.com
jeepforum.com

[twizzle]

how much gravel are we talking here? dirt? my dad might take the bimmer, i wouldnt mind a nice cruise.

[TurboMike]

I dunno, its not my rally I didnt write it. I'm running in this one. Typically if the BMW isnt lowered it will be fine. Theres an M3 that runs in every event and that guy drives like a psycho dirt, gravel, anything.

[TurboMike]

Rally is this Sat, anyone coming?

[CHRIS]

sorry man, i really want to take my jetta to one of these but i'm not down to do this at night for the first time.

[TurboMike]

Theres a club in Berlington NJ I think that does day rallys and once a year they put on a novice rally. I keep meaning to try it since its a different format from the ones I'm used to. One of these days I'm gona rally with them and I'll post info here.

Also theres a PineBarrens rally in southJersey I keep saying I'm gona try one of these days.

[CHRIS]

haha, sounds just like me. i'll try it if you do

[TurboMike]

Rally was GREAT.

My personal stories:
Week before the rally at an autox my shifter cable tube snapped and the cable was popping out instead of pushing the tranny nob when I pulled back. Was fixed with zipties. Also I finally installed/made a clockspring on my aftermarket steering wheel so the horn button would work.

30 min into the rally we make a wrong turn, get lost for about 2 miles. Figure out what we did wrong, but now I start driving fast. Going down a residential street about 40mph I see a cop driving down a side street ahead of me. Supidly I downshift to 2nd and hit the brakes. Cruise by him at 25mph but with exhaust moaning. Pulls me over. 10 min later I have a ticket for "rear plate cover" but now we're totally screwed in time. 2 blocks away from the cop I start driving like a madman. Wouldnt you know it we were only a few miles from a checkpoint and got massive points (points are bad) for being late.

I've driving down this insanely snaking gravel road going 20mph because it has more hills than a rollercoaster and you just cant see whats over the next burm. Suddenly my horn honks, then stops. Honks, then stops. I flick a switch to turn off my airhorns but the normal horn is still honks. Everytime I turn the wheel to the left my horn button shorts. So much for the clockspring I made. Go down this road for a minute honking at 9pm past a few houses probably wondering #1 why some idiot was driving fast down their dirt road #2 what he keeps honking at every 5 seconds. Get to a stop sign pull over and get out and reach into the steering column with 2 fingers and rip out the horn wire.

3/4 through the rally I shift quick into second and no gear. There goes my shifter cables. So I only have 1st 3rd and 5th gear. No 2nd or 4th or reverse (cable will pull but not push). Drive like that for 5 min then I realise 2nd works again. Spent the rest of the rally yelling "YES!" everytime I went into 2nd gear, which was about 347 times. My navigator wasnt as happy and finally told me to shut up and watch for rally signs.

Rally is almost over, we're almost done with the instructions and we calculate we're about 60 seconds early so we start doing 25mph in case the finaly checkpoint is around the next corner. Suddenly we're supposed to make a "second right" but we're at a T, there is no second right. We backtrack one instruction and do it again, same thing. We backtrack two instuctions (3+ miles away) and do it again and find our (stupid) mistake. So we've been driving in circles for 9 miles and the rally is almost over. So now I'm hauling ass. Going way too fast on a dirt road. Next instruction is "left at stop sign after XXX". We pass XXX so now I know I can go fast not looking for anything until that stop sign. Going like a bat out of hell I see the stop sign and actually lock up a little on the gravel road. Turn left and there are 4 copcars sitting in the middle of the road. I see THREE cops at the same time stand up or get up from what they're doing and shine flashlights at my car all simultaniously like syncronized piggies. Uh-oh. My first thought was there was a checkpoint there and the cops were fucking with them and then here I come like an idiot blasting down the road and locking up my brakes at the stop sign. Not good. So I roll by them on the left shoulder at 15mph not stopping and I see a Jeep between the cop cars, 3 teenagers sitting in the grass next to the cop cars looking very unhappy, and a 4th teenager getting handcuffed against the side of one of the cop cars. But everyone at the scene is frozen stopped what they're doing and just staring at us going by. Was very surreal. Spent then next 20 seconds just staring at my rearview waiting for one of the cop cars to come up and pull me over, but none did.

BIG FUN!

[BigT]

Damn, mike. What an adventure

[CHRIS]

pretty wild, glad it worked out for you

how did you finish?

[TurboMike]

Dunno yet, it takes about 2 weeks for them to go through all the answer sheets and figure out how many rally signs you missed or if you have any in the wrong order, then they gotta do the math for checkpoint to checkpoint and tally it all up. Even tho we were about 10 min late to the last checkpoint I peeked at their sheet and only 4 or 5 cars came within 10 min, but theres no way to know how they did at the other checkpoints so its all up in the air.

I think we had 37 out of 39 hidden rally signs, so our signs were good. A friend of mine did it just to drive as fast as possible, and he was still 20 min late cause he kept missing turns from going too fast and getting lost, at the end he had 4 rally signs. D'oh! Points wise each sign is about 60 to 90 seconds of points.