MSCC 'Car Prep' Introductory Trial

16th October 1999

Daylesford/Trentham area

Late in 1999, I was trying to think of something a bit different to give Deb for her birthday. She'd grown very fond of rallying as a sport, so I thought let's find out what it's like on the other side of the spectator bunting.

I surfed around on the web a bit, looking at what was around in the way of events and how to get involved. As it happened Monash Sporting Car Club was running their Intro Trial (perfect for a couple of beginners) on the correct weekend, however it was only a fortnight away.

I bought an '84 Daihatsu Charade from work after quickly working out a deal (as an apprentice motor mechanic spare cash is definitely not easy to come by), strapped a couple of safety triangles and extinguishers in, and went rallying!!............. Well that was the idea anyway. With a little over a week I had to get the car reregistered and "rally ready". A new clutch, pair of driving lights, new L/H/R tail light, and a cam oil seal later the car was ready.

We then had a bit of bother getting through pre event scrutineering during the week. After some fairly major front suspension work and a few electrical modifications we ended up finishing work on the car at 1 am on the morning of the trial, getting it re-scrutineered on the way to the event and arriving in an absolute daze.

The event started later than scheduled, as the organisers had to wait for sufficient darkness so that the first few competitors didn't get the unfair advantage of starting in half light. This simply added to the suspense (and the nerves). We spent some time before the event chatting to some of the other "rally virgins" and soon found out they were as nervous as us. As it happened three of us got slightly lost together on the first transport stage.

Two corners into the first competitive we spotted one of our "new friends" wedged between two trees having gone straight on. Suddenly the nerves disappeared, I got more adventurous and no sooner than I started to feel comfortable...... I nudged a bank after overcooking it on a corner.

I settled myself down and reassured Deb that we were OK. Our aim from the outset was simply to finish the event (One of the main reasons for this was that we had no service crew, so if we bent the car we were walking home!!?! ). I settled back, slowed down a little, and concentrated on driving smoothly. As I did so the speed started to build. Each time we got a little out of control I'd ease off a bit and build back up to it. We both got a bit nervous when Deb started reading out cautions from the notes like, "Road goes left onto bridge with no sides." But we got through OK.

We were running the Daihatsu in the 'road car' class, and therefore we were running on standard road radials and we didn't have a trip meter. We had to gauge our distances from the car's standard odometer which was thoroughly inaccurate due to wheel-spin, and besides that, I never had much time to look at it as I was concentrating on the road ahead.

The third competitive was to be our undoing. A bit over a km into the stage Deb called a caution, "Double caution, deep hole across road then ROUGH up hill". Being car thirty six meant that thirty odd rally cars had gone through the hole before us, and combined with some water left over from a light sprinkle of rain earlier in the week, the hole was now a bog pit. The approach was a down hill easy left. As we descended all I could see in the lights was a glistening pool of mud, so thinking quickly I aimed slightly off to the left of the road at what looked like a fairly dry, firm, green patch of ground. It wasn't! It was in fact a shrub on the side of an embankment and we sort of fell off.

We spent an hour sitting on the edge of a muddy creek bed and getting showered with more mud as the cars still behind us went plowing through the 'double caution' hole above. Eventually the Sweep car came along and pulled us out (another 10 mins). I had assumed at this point we were out of the event, but the driver of the sweep, kindly looked over our documents and pointed out that we still had a few minutes late time left, so we should at least get a couple more stages under our belt. As we were leaving he mentioned that if we drove the wheels off the little thing we might even get to the end.

We did just that. We arrived at final control with a slightly damaged car, a very tired crew, and we missed the BBQ too, but we had the time of our life!!

I drove home that night and crawled into bed. I woke up fourteen hours later and to my amazement there was an entry form and supp regs for the next Intro trial sitting on the table. I asked Deb where they came from and she replied with a coy smile that she had got them off one of the control officials on stage 5 or 6.

A week or so later we were thrilled to learn that the Monash Sporting Car Club event director, knowing of our trials and tribulations in the event, had awarded us with the Director's (encouragement) award. - thus we scored the first pair of trophies for our own little "Glory Shelf".