If you want to go Car Rallying read on.

Remember; "Playstation is not an extreme sport"  :-)

Ben Ruggles Motorsport (BRM) Silverstone Safari - Rally Canberra.

Stayed tuned for this event report.  The event runs on the weekend of the 26th of July 2008.

After Rally of Canberra (ROC), there has been a bit of work to do to the mighty Datsun, both of the strut insert caps came loose and rattled all over the place.  Also, the spherical bearing in the strut tops managed to destroy themselves along with a crack in the exhaust.

Other than that, we are good to go and just hoping the weather hangs in there.

It has been  run and won.  See report below.

Firstly thanks to LCCC Tamsey and team for a fantastic event. To all the officials, road closure folk and the recovery guys, huge thankyou for braving the cold and giving your time. 

There were also a lot of people that generally gave words of encouragement, cheered from the sidelines or just came over for a chat.  So here is the problem with the forum and it’s a good problem.  A lot of people seem to know more about our car and engine problems and seats etc than you would usually expect from someone whom you have just met for the first time. It was great except you spend the whole time wondering if you have previously met the person before and just don’t remember. 

So I have figured it out.  The new rally introduction should go like this.

“G’day Damien saw you on the forum, I’m Tom but my forum name is Full-O-Bull.”

Problem solved. 

But I digress. 

Preparation was going beautifully for us (finally piecing the car back together after ROC tried to rattle it to death) until the night before I spot a split in the chassis and a crack in the engine mount bracket in the most “impossible to weld spot”.  Anyway, all sorted and we head down to the ACT a day early for a bit of a relax.

 Stage 1.  Larger diameter tyres, therefore adjusted coil over suspension, equals greater travel, equals wheel pushed up into guard about 3km in to stage.  Guard finally gets pulverised up enough that it only squeals on the big bumps.

 Stage 2.  A bit of Kung Fu panel beating that guard is clear.  Got my act together and actually managed an OK time for us. 

 Stage 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 etc   I know it’s not cool to say it, but I love Canberra roads.  They are fun, tight, twisty, rough, smooth and slippy, it really does have it all.

 Not sure why, but we were super slow (more than normal) on the last four stages which were night stages for us.  Lights didn’t seem to be set up right but I am sure it was more about my lack of night experience.

 It’s probably not coming through in the report but we had a ball, lots of laughs, a spin, and an understeer to within a millimetre of going off a 5m drop.  Kristy calmly spits out “you probably don’t won’t to go off there”, beautifully understated.

 The four service breaks just added to it and made it more social (mainly because we had very little to fix).

 Great rally with a great vibe.  Thanks again.

 Ps. To Jayke Skeffington, that was a impressive bit of driving through the speccy point one. I think I got it on video and will upload it when I get a chance

Pps.  How cool is it that we got to be a spectator before we even started