We got it back a few weeks before Rally Tennessee and Kieran and I spent a weekend getting it back in the car. When the transmission was all buttoned up we found that it would seriously bind up and lock when in reverse. Unusable, very, very unusable. So, I returned the whole car for further diagnostics, transmission was pulled, rebuilt—again—and put back in the car.


All seems well when we collected the car but after testing several days later (and 3 days before we need to head out for the Rally Tennessee) revealed some further problems. It got stuck in a high gear at a traffic light that once we finally managed to clear we discovered the transmission was starting to make a disappointing whining noise. I had to make a last minute decision: do we risk running the transmission as is and hope it doesn’t grenade itself at the rally or go for a swap? Rally Tennessee is 150 miles of tarmac stages over two days. Our good friend Marcel is visiting (he and I are preparing for STPR – as he’ll be my codriver there) and he advises a swap. I don’t have a spare but manage to find a junkyard stock transmission with 74,000 miles on it at a local salvage yard (Wagner’s - thanks Jeremy!). On Monday, Kieran tows the car with the replacement transmission up to Marcel’s shop in Staunton, VA where he and Marcel do the swap that evening  and Tuesday night. Kieran is back at 6AM on Wednesday with a functioning car.


He grabs some sleep while I do final prep on the car and load up for the tow to Tennessee. We leave early Thursday and there were no issues getting to Hurricane Mills. Our crew this year was Adam Marris (who crewed for us at Sandblast) and Carl Russ. They both live in Atlanta and are car-pooling to the event. We hooked up with them very late Thursday, Kieran and I unload the car/trailer, got registered, and ate.


Early Friday, Kieran and I are out doing recce, checking the provided notes for accuracy and safety while amending them for our driving style and performance. It was an all day affair since there are more stages this year than ever before. Meanwhile the crew was doing final preparations on the car and getting it through scrutineering. We met up with them later in the day to take several runs through the practice stage. Car seemed fine, the stock transmission is running great although I had to get used to a different clutch bite point (much higher than before - don’t know why). I’ve also added risers to my shift tower so that it is higher and closer to the steering wheel. Theory is that the less time it takes to get from the wheel to the shifter the better. Thanks to Matt Mathias for building and donating them to us.


There was a Parc Exposé in Linden and the cars went into Parc Fermé overnight. A fellow competitor, Andrew Frick, pointed out to me that the passenger side motor mount is on upside down! Causing the engine to pitch down about an inch on that side. It explains a number of anomalies. Don’t know if it was me or transmission guy - could have been either of us. So our crew managed to get it sorted before the start of the rally on Saturday.


The Saturday stages include the awesome Tree Farm stage, which was like a roller-coaster—fun stage that we ran again on Sunday. We completed the day with little drama and nearly matched with Andrew Frick – he was doing very well. The Wimpey’s are, of course, spanking us both. At the end of the day we were holding 3rd place in class just 25 seconds back from Andrew. Kieran was pushing me very hard.


The cars again go into Parc Fermé over night and we’re ready to go on Sunday. Josh Wimpey is astonishingly fast ultimately taking 1st place in our class and 2nd place overall! Andrew and I take turns taking 2nd place on each of the day’s stages.  It was fun competing with him but in the end I could only claw back a few seconds resulting in him snatching 2nd place in class with us settling for third. Some of the stages were cancelled due to volunteer shortages and other issues.

The ceremonial finish took place inside a local biker bar that featured a burn out track going through the bar. Here we were doing a small jump into the bar for our fun run.


We had a great time overall. Many thanks to our crew, Adam and Carl and to the many volunteers that helped make the event happen - especially Anders and Amy who did an amazing job under very challenging conditions.