DCC FESTIVAL STAGES

[speedy]

Thought you might want a laugh???

This is the from the 2nd Stage Dcc Festival Stages at ingilston. And yes i know its a Nova and sorry the quaility is not the best. But about 5mins in this is what happens when you have just shifted up the gearbox a few gears and then hit the breaks for a hairpin left and the breaks go to the floor when a stone gets lodges in the front calliper!!!

the other one is stage 7 is a good clean run with the jump at the roundabout near the clydesdale bank building.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eeRh6i1mNqo

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ruWTBntgIpE

[ruadh08]

Ahhh... The DCC Festival Stages, Still going strong I see. I won it in both 1980 and 1981, in a Chevette HS, brings back memories. In those days the rally was held all on forest and gravel stages, with the exception of the odd stage at charterhall.

[speedy]

Here are a couple of photos from the event.

[Dominic]

Nice one Speedy

Cars looking good, though the front bumper would benefit from some, er, detailing

[Brian J]

Ahhh... The DCC Festival Stages, Still going strong I see. I won it in both 1980 and 1981, in a Chevette HS , brings back memories. In those days the rally was held all on forest and gravel stages, with the exception of the odd stage at charterhall

A Chevette HS brings back memories too - but not good ones! - I had one as my road car - most unreliable I ever owned

[Shug]

Ahhh... The DCC Festival Stages, Still going strong I see. I won it in both 1980 and 1981, in a Chevette HS , brings back memories. In those days the rally was held all on forest and gravel stages, with the exception of the odd stage at charterhall

A Chevette HS brings back memories too - but not good ones! - I had one as my road car - most unreliable I ever owned

Even though you owned a Noble too?

[Brian J]

Ahhh... The DCC Festival Stages, Still going strong I see. I won it in both 1980 and 1981, in a Chevette HS , brings back memories. In those days the rally was held all on forest and gravel stages, with the exception of the odd stage at charterhall

A Chevette HS brings back memories too - but not good ones! - I had one as my road car - most unreliable I ever owned

Even though you owned a Noble too?

Yep - difficult to believe - Chevette HS was worse - was 500 car production run to homologate it as production car and was totally undeveloped - more AA recoveries, bodywork fouled the tyres, bits fell off, went out of tune every 100 miles...........eventually lucky to write it off

[ruadh08]

I had a chevetts HS road car as well, dont remember it being unreliable, but I had more bad luck with it than any other car I owned.

1) It fell off the transpoter bfore I took delivery, and needed new front spoiler etc
2) One month old and I was in the middle of a multiple pile up on the forth road bridge, front and back damage!!
3) Three days after getting it back from the coachworks, I was filling up with fuel, and the petrol pump fell over on the back of it. smashed tailgate, rear and side windows......
4) Coachworks phoned me at 10am one day to say the car had been repaired
5) Coachworks phoned back at 3pm to say that a low loader had gone up the road and taken the side off my newly repaired car outside their premises!!!!
6) Sold it shortly afterwards, and replaced it with a magnum "droop snoot" sportshatch...

[Andy G]

Thats unbelievable

[speedy]

Dom the car is a rally car!!!

Put it this way if the car did not have a few scrapes on it then i am not trying hard enought!

Here is the report from the event.

Driver Mark Runciman
CoDriver Ben McCosh
Event DCC Festival Stages
Car Vauxhall Nova GTE
No 34
Well this was Ben and my second event as a team and were looking forward to it. The car was even ready a week before the event which is something that does not happen very often.And for the event i even got a good seeding too. (thanks angie). With everything set up and ready and Hambo(David Hamilton) on the spanners we were ready for the off.
Stage 1 was over far to quickly. No problems but just a bit slow off the mark with 4th fastest in class. Forgot just how tight and twisty Ingilston is. Also noticed that the way my car was set up the short straights were just to long for first and to short to run in second, so was losing time with that.
Stage 2 was a repeat of 1 and was going pretty well untill we came out the rosebowl for the 2nd time and heading up towards a hairpin at good rate of knots, when i hit the brakes to slow for it and NOTHING HAPPENED!!!! Hit the pedal again and still nothing!! Now mild panic kicks in realising i need to slow this car down fast as i about to go through the taped off area and if its not slowed down further i will go through more tape and appear on another part of the stage! Not good. So hand brake pulled hard and hoped for the best. Car isthen thrown it a huge slide spining one way then the nextand then coming to rest on the grass having managed to miss everything. The marshalls later told me we missed the steps by about a foot! Decided to try and get the car back to service and drive slowly and try the brakes again and guess what........ we had brakes again. Now confused. What the hell just happend?? Back at service Hambo popped the car up on jacks to check the car and when the drivers side wheel was removed a large stone was found jammed in the front calliper!! Hence no front brakes
Stage 3 was all over the place. Was still a bit wary of the brakes and was still thinking the stage was the same and was trying to turn into corners that were no longer there. OOPS. Must listen more to Ben
Stage 4 this time was a lot better and getting back on the pace of everyone else but with the brake problems we had dropped to much time, so a repeat result at Crail was long gone.
Stage 5 was the start of the morning stages in reverse and now including the jump! Again things were going well till i got to the top section half way through the stage when i came in to hot for a double 90right and slid off onto the tyres and got stuck. While teying to get the car off the tyres i let the revs drop and car stalled. It took over a 1min to get the damn thing started again. With the engine being so hot and not running 100%(still needs fine tuned as there is no carb rolling roads in Scotland) it just would not fire up again cleanly. Get going again and in my hurry to try and get to the finish i was just a wee bit close to a bail near signing on and wiped off Bens wing mirror and smashed it through the side window. Glass now every where.
Stage 6 now with side window taped up went well without any poblems and kept the foot in over the jump. Photo’s looked good too.
Stage 7 went even better and getting a little bit higher on the jump too. Few more marks on the sump guard.
Stage 8 last stage of the day was not the best either as for some unknown reason i started to drive the stage as if it was stage 6!! So made a couple of wrong turns. No idea what the hell i was playing at. Sorry Ben.
At the end of the day we finished 43rd overall and 11th in class not one of my best performaces but with the problems with the brakes and engine not starting mid stage we dropped over 2mins so recovering that at Ingilston was just no on. We got a finish and more points on the board for the championship. The car is now in the garage being looked at for a couple of wee things and then taking a trip to see Willie Greig to try and set the engine up better for the Pendragon.
Thanks to all the set-up crew and marshalls for their work on the day and to the orginising committie for another well run event. Thanks also to Ben and to Hambo on the spanners.