2007 BABE Rally

Misfit Toys Racing Trip Report

Day: 0
Mood: Cautiously Optimistic
Vehicle Status: Ready as it gets
Start Point: Mullica Hill, NJ
End Point: Staten Island, NY
End of day Points Standing: 50 way tie
Daily Challenge: Just get to the starting line.

Narrative: Day 0, the anticipation has built to the boiling point and I am just ready to hit the road. Of course I have to wait for the work day to end. Jim W from the 2 More Misfits team will ride along with me since he is local. Jeff (also 2 More Misfits) will be bringing Chris to hotel since they are up north.
We got on the road about 6ish and took off down the highway. This was the first time that Rusty The Dungbeetle (RDB) had gone more than around the block successfully. She was slow and running a bit rough but overall doing well. The trip was uneventful until right outside Staten Island when the speedometer cable broke and our idle had gotten worse to the point of stalling in traffic (a really great situation to be in while in NYC)

Upon successful arrival at the hotel we checked in and then went to the parking lot to assist with vinyl graphic installations for other teams. No internet connection so I called Kelley to post a message on the SJVWC.net board to see if anyone had a spare speedo cable since we would pass back through south jersey in the morning. Beyond this the nightly drinking kicked in and the rest is a happy blur.

Day: 1
Mood: Giddy as a schoolgirl
Vehicle Status: No speedometer, wont idle
Start Point: Staten Island, NY
End Point: Harrisonburg Va
End of day Points Standing: 2nd
Daily Challenge: Part A: Hit local Kmart for as many items as you can buy for a single dollar. Part B: Match the photo – you have a sheet of photos of items along the road. The photos are intentionally obscured and photo shopped so you must find the scene along your drive and get the matching shot.

Narrative: Played around with the carb adjustments for awhile with no success. Got a call from Jack Kessel from the South Jersey VW Club and he took the speedometer cable from his own car for me (thanks Jack!). We arranged for him to leave it at my house as we didn’t have a firm ETA and we were stopping there to try a different carburetor. Knowing that our hosts like a rousing start and some good old fashioned enthusiasm we lined up near the start to wait for the horn so we could be first out. We tried for a burnout with embarrassingly poor results.
Off first and down the road to the Kmart. Of course in a 73 beetle with a poorly adjusted carb in Staten Island traffic we managed to get to the kmart about 10th. This was not a particularly good challenge for us, Chris managed to get 4 items but we had to have a register receipt for 10:00am and all the ralliers had clogged the registers (Kmart hates us). In our haste to get the receipt we had to leave one item behind because the cashier was having troubles with it so we only ended up with 3 and a 10:02 timestamp, which later proved to be ok because the start was delayed.
Back at the car we stopped to look at the photos in question. Chris used to live in North Jersey, I live in South Jersey and travel to Maryland a lot so this one turned out to be easy, and we recognized almost everything on the sheets. Only 2 ended up getting us one was a keep right except to pass sign, plenty of those on the road but none with just the right background. The second was a pair of signs which had been blacked out so you were just looking for the shape. On the other pictures similar to this you could hold the page up to the light and make out the exit number, easy peasy as they would say. But on this particular one nothing was readable. It was also odd that the exit number tabs were to the right of the sign, not the left as is the standard. We searched a long time for that configuration to no avail. At one point we toyed with the idea it might be the signs shot from the back since that would explain the reversed tabs but that would be an evil devious trick so we disregarded that idea. NEVER put it past the marshals to play an evil devious trick, turns out we were right. 14 out of 16 for this challenge. Best score of the day, but the Queen and Country team scored higher at Kmart which put us behind on day 1.
We did stop back at home base on the way and grab the spare speedo cable, the GPS shows speed so we decided to install it later that night. I took the carb off the Manx buggy and tried it on the bug with limited results, turns out the mounting stud was stripped so it wouldn’t tighten enough to prevent vacuum leaks (maybe that’s why the Manx isn’t running right) Tried a rather crusty carb from a spare motor but that was even worse. Finally I tried the carb on the 73 Super parts car. Fired up and ran beautifully, back in business. It meant a drop to a 30 PICT instead of the 34 but it was worth it for the reliability. Back on the road. We were becoming annoyed at the fact that our crappy little beetle actually still had heat, but it wouldn’t turn off. The weather was cool so we opened the windows and vowed to make it a repair that night. We made it to the hotel in Harrisonburg VA without incident but sitting in traffic around the DC area we sure did appreciate a car that idled. Popped in the speedo cable at the hotel, set up RDB’s disco ball and lights and set up the kitty litter stereo and let the party commence. Seemed to forget about the heat issue. It was discovered that the front bumper slot in a 73 Bug is perfectly suitable for opening beer tops thus making RDB the center of the party and providing her with her first taste of beer which see seemed to enjoy greatly. Beyond this the nightly drinking kicked in and the rest is a happy blur, it is believed water balloons were deployed with atrociously poor accuracy due to impairment of the launch team.

Day: 2
Mood: All Shook Up
Vehicle Status: Speedo fixed, heat stuck on
Start Point: Harrisonburg Va
End Point: Asheville, NC
End of day Points Standing: 2nd
Daily Challenge: It’s Elvis Day! Dress like the King and get unsuspecting random strangers to pose with you for points. Max 10 photos, bonus points for groups of 10 or more.

Narrative: Caravanned with 2 More Misfits today. Safety in numbers and all that stuff. Plus each of us was a different Elvis. We had Fat Elvis, Speedway Elvis, Blue Hawaii Elvis, King Creole Elvis and Gay Matador Elvis. We have since realized after looking at everyone’s costumes you can be any Elvis you want with a wig and glasses. Jeff and Jim W had the idea that we should have just done Village People elvises.
Now getting people to group up and pose with the Elvises is not exactly as easy as you might expect, lets face it, most of us looked more like weird pervert Elvis than anything else and our lovely cars weren’t helping. No we needed a plan. So Jeff, being a college activities director started seeking out colleges. Chris made a call to the home office for his company to find a local branch who would work with us, I generally did my best to stop looking like the worlds scariest elvis, with less than stellar results. Without going into all the stops here are the highlights.

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum – we actually didn’t plan on this as a photo op. We just thought since it was there we would take a look around. Well the curator of the place was great and loved all the Elvi so he rounded up a group of tourists and employees and got our photo in front of the 1919 Pierce Arrow presidential limo. After that photo he had the alarms turned off and the ropes taken down and actually let us all get in the limo for another shot. Seems we paved the way for other teams as there were a few more photos to come out of there later.
Virginia Tech – It was a solemn moment to see the memorials to the students after the shooting but at the same time something we are all glad we got to share and express our support over. The students were great and this was by far our biggest group with 25.
Cracker Barrel, TN – After having good success at lunch with our wait staff we decided to hit a Cracker Barrel for dinner in TN. Well wouldn’t you know the first employee we found is an Elvis impersonator himself and he used to be from NJ. He set us up with the manager who got the whole staff together for a photo and a few customers joined right in. After the pics we ate dinner and were pleasantly surprised at the end of the night when they said the meal was on them for providing them with such fun. Sweet, free food. It’s good to be the King in Tennessee.
Outback – The hour was late and we just needed one more. Time to play the restaurant card one more time. Not wanting to be mooches we went to the bar and got some drinks (coke only for the drivers) The staff was great and a bunch of the patrons wanted pics too. We did a lot of non scored photos there just because people wanted them. Even one lady who came up and asked us to pose with her grandkids (probably about 4 years old) We generally avoided kids all day because well….its creepy, we get that.

Not 10 miles after we got back on the road we got pulled over by Tennessee’s finest. Taillight out. Thank god I just had a coke. Now on a normal night in TN in a normal car, I don’t think they would have wasted the time to stop us for a taillight. But with Elvis driving a clapped out VW Bug with rally stickers all over it, yeah, you are gonna meet officer friendly. He was pretty good about it actually, asked about the rally, asked if we had any drugs (funny how he asked that after we told him about the rally) Said he would run my license and if it came up clean we could go. It did and we were on our way again.

We did a lot of driving to make sure we went 10 for 10 and it paid off, but it was a long day and we pulled into the hotel just before the cutoff for the 11:00 scoring. Not even enough time to unpack the helium for a proper rendition of our Viva BABE Rally song for the judges, but they seemed ok with the regular version.

The scores on this day not only put us on the verge of overtaking 1st but made us realize that 2 More Misfits were coming up fast and with the right effort we could have both our teams in the hunt this year.

After scoring and check in we joined the parking lot bash for the night but did not get too heavily involved, it was a long day and we knew what lay ahead with the mountian gap runs in the morning. It was too late to do anything about that danged heat again. So it was early (relative term) to bed for us with most of our memories and sensibilities in tact.

Day: 3
Mood: Preparing for the worst
Vehicle Status: Heat stuck on
Start Point: Asheville, NC
End Point: Gadsen, AL
End of day Points Standing: 1st
Daily Challenge: (Semi) easy one today as the drive is most of the challenge. Get one photograph, find the oldest car you can on the rally route. Dang shame about that "on the rally route" part, we were all set to call up the TN AACA and hunt down a car.

Narrative: So the trip today takes a very specific route. Most days we are all free to find our own way to the endpoint but this time they gave us directions. And since the challenge specified our picture must be taken on the route we had to stick to it. The first major departure from the highway was to get us to SSR 23 which the event organizers likened to a nice warm up for Deals Gap in the rally handbook. It was later confirmed that they never drove the route themselves, but it looked good on the map. Well it was good….where there was pavement. Unfortunately those spots were few and far between. On one hand it was a tremendous amount of fun, on another we were all pretty sure we were lost. At the end of the run we congregated at an abandoned gas station to see who survived and who didn’t. The place had a big sign over it that said Jim’s Junk so we couldn’t miss the photo op.
Back down the road when we suddenly started to realize things weren’t well. The car was dragging…more specifically we later learned, the front left brake was dragging. On final autopsy it seems for one reason or another the wheel cylinder started to stick, which caused the shoes to drag, which caused heat, which made the fluid expand and the shoes drag more in an ever worsening cycle. All this heat was also cooking whatever crud we had collected which made the cylinder stick in the first place pretty good so by the time we tore it apart it was pretty well knackered. Our first thought (prior to the autopsy) was a collapsed brake hose so I started dialing on the A.I.R.S. list to find a local for help Finally we contacted Denver Barry who couldn’t have been more helpful or nice. Denver made calls to his local contact and found a parts supplier not too far from us but unfortunately we would have to complete our trek through Right Hand Gap and Deals Gap to get there. No way to do that on bad brakes. Denver offered to get us the parts and bring them to us, but he was in Knoxville which meant he would have to go past us and double back, about 2 or more hours total. We got the information for the parts place and then decided to see what we could do. I pulled the system apart while my partners in crime killed off an evil looking back of cheetos to protect me from them while I was working. I blew out the brake line, well ok in my sun baked and frustrated state I sucked instead of blew (keep the jokes to yourself) and ended up with the lovely taste of brake fluid in my mouth for the rest of the day. To cut a painfully long story short we eventually diagnosed the wheel cylinder issue and I was able to do a field repair….bodge job….on it. Now here we sit with now smoked brake pads, a suspect repair on a wheel cylinder and one very badly cooked wheel bearing. We can choose to go the easy and smart way around the gap but chance missing an old car photo op on the re-route, or we can do the unthinkable and drive the gap on a completely scary repair. Of course we did what any sensible BABE rallier would do and pressed on through the gap.
Huge kudos to Chris for some very skilled driving to get us through without incident and in better shape than last year. Combining cycles of braking, engine braking, and coasting he was able to keep the engine and brakes cool and we never experienced any fade or overheating.
Upon arrival at Deals gap we spotted a 29 Model A in the parking lot…this was good. We were far behind everyone else so maybe noone else saw it. Our hopes were dashed when the owner just looked at us and said, Oh, more of you. Seems most of the rally had seen him. We took the photo anyway, better to tie than fall behind.
Now here is where some making lemonade out of lemons happened. After we got through Deals gap we would normally turn left for the shortest route back to the highway. But to get to the VW parts place we had to go straight, and in doing so stumbled right on a 1913 Model T not more than a block from the gap and visible from the road (if you are really looking) One other team found it too but the rules said if you couldn’t concretely identify the year then you got the last year that car was made. We were able to find the 1913 ID plate (thank you dad for raising me as a car addict).
Down the road a bit we get to Foothills Import Parts, home of Juanita the VW lady (Foothills Import Parts, 5028 Milsaps Drive, Greenack, TN (865)856-2196 Tell her jim the crazy rally guy sent you). As soon as we pulled up the rest of the guys knew it was going to be another late day (in my defense we were already very behind schedule) Her yard was filled with various old VWs, parts and just all kinds of goodies. Inside her basement was stocked with shelves of aftermarket and NOS VW parts, many of which I haven’t seen for a long time. It was a really great experience to meet her, she was very fun and good natured. She didn’t even give us too much ribbing about the fact that our car was in worse shape than any of her parts cars. We got ourselves 2 wheel cylinders, brake shoes and an inner and outer wheel bearing and limped off to the hotel to make our repairs in the morning. We figured if our rigging held up through Right Hand and Deals we were ok to get to the hotel where we arrived just before 11:30. We ran pretty tight on fuel but with the 16 gallon extended range tank we knew we had a bit more than the usual reserve so we pushed on and made it fine….this information does become relevant later.

The obligatory scoring phase accomplished and we hit the parking lot party. Sadly we missed the push off with the gremlin and caprice. We did enjoy the company of the rest of the rally though and even had some fun with pin striping and a little crayola art was performed on the gremlin (I was busy striping the tardis so I don’t know who did it) ;)
Beyond this the nightly drinking kicked in and the rest is a happy blur, I do know we retired entirely too late for a team which was to get up in the morning and do a brake job and wheel bearing replacement.

Day: 4
Mood: Tired, tired and tired
Vehicle Status: Heat stuck on, bodged brakes, cooked wheel bearing.
Start Point: Gadsen, AL
End Point: New Orleans, LA
End of day Points Standing: 1st – 2007 BABE Rally Champions
Daily Challenge: The license plate game. We’ve all played it, we suggested last year that this would be a good one and this year they did it. Pretty easy, get one of each state license plate, Canadian provinces acceptable.

Narrative: Today started with the brake job. It went fairly simple no major issues it seemed. Jim W commented when I put the axle nut back on that I had it upside down because the pinch bolt used to face the other way. I didn’t see that it mattered. Had to play with bleeding and adjustment for a bit to get the pedal feel right. Got together for the group photo and then got to the start. We immediately ducked into the gas station since we knew we ran a bit deep in the reserves last night and filled up. 13.5 gallons to be exact (this again becomes relevant later) While I was filling up Chris ran around and got all the competitors license plates and then we cruised the 3 hotels in the area to check for out of town guests. We ended up with 26 plates before getting breakfast, off to a rousing start. Once on the road we looked for opportunities and spotted an ideal one when we saw the Birmingham International Airport up ahead. We pulled into the parking garage ($1.00 for an hour, sweet) and I realized that familiar dragging feeling was back. Chris went off in search of license plates while I attended to my obviously poor work from the morning. Airport security was circling but they seemed temporarily appeased when I told them we just ducked in so I could work in the shade and it would be a quick repair then we would leave. Well it looks like I adjusted the brakes a bit too tight and of course the whole heat/expansion cycle kicked in. Then I grabbed the wheel and realized the bearing was VERY loose. Yeah, that backward nut I put on, it really does matter which way it goes. Lesson learned. I finished adjusting the brakes while Chris added another 11 to our tally, very cool. Of course for the next hour I was making the teams pull over so I could check the bearing, it made me totally paranoid. This little excursion put us somewhat behind and we realized that at our max speeds we only had a small cushion of extra time to make New Orleans for the final points turn in so it was time to hammer down and pray for no further repairs. Now remember that 13.5 gallons of gas we had...remember that 16 gallon tank. Ok our math said we still had about 2.5 gallons in reserve when we hit the hotel last night so noting that spot on our gauge when we hit it again we figured we were good for another 40-60 miles today. Right about the time we hit that spot 2 More Misfits asked if we should stop for gas (they had noted that we ususally did fill ups around the time they hit 1/4 tank) We figgured we could stretch it one more exit, it was only 6 miles ahead. WRONG...almost as soon as we replied to them and passed the close exit she died out. $#@*$& 2MM headed off to the next exit to get a gas can and some fuel while we watched our precious time diminish. They came back with a gallon can and off we went again. Well just for the math folks out there we got to the next exit and topped up with 12.4 gallons....16 gallon tank my azz. This also means we coasted into last nights hotel on fumes. Oh, well, lesson learned and back on the road. Throughout the day we continued to find one or two more plates eventually getting up to 43 by the time we crossed the bridge into New Orleans, we had said all along we felt pretty good with anything above 40 but 45 was our real feel good point and we weren’t there yet. Suddenly a small truck comes whizzing past and the license plate is Oregon, we don’t have that yet. He was going pretty fast and darting from lane to lane. Chris, who was driving looked over and me and I told him to nail it, if we killed her now we could push her to the hotel. Again in an amazing display of driving Chris gradually weaved us through traffic sometimes actually getting her to break 80, after about a 3 mile chase which seemed much longer I was able to snap a blurry but readable shot. We shoot to the nearest exit to turn around (as we had passed our exit just to get the shot) and sure enough that danged truck exits too and ends up stopped in front of us at a light. We got a nice clear shot just to be sure. Time to turn in points was drawing close, 44 would have to do it, we headed for the hotel. We made decent time on arrival and we were in the heart of the tourist zone so with about 20 minutes to spare Chris set off in search of any plates in the local garages and on the streets while I got us checked in. He ended up finding 3 more to bring our tally to 47; the second place team had 45. Without the last minute effort we might not have been victorious at the end of the day. It pretty much sums up our experience in trying to win this. There could be no good enough, no missed opportunities. You had to be going all the time. Last year we all thought the winning teams were just sticks in the mud because we never saw them but we now realize they were working hard all the time to get where they did. BABE Rally is tremendous fun, even when you put in the effort like we did this year, but sometimes it’s a choice between hitting the party or scoring those last few points and that’s when you determine how bad you want it. Next year you will find us at the parties ;)