Category: life

where everything else happens

The Going To The Sun Rally, 2006

I’ve always wanted a vintage car rally to happen in the northwest. In 2004 I heard about the inaugural run of the Going To The Sun Rally in Montana, and I signed up that day. Finally here was a rally that wouldn’t involve jet lag or towing. I could drive to it. Add to that Montana, one of the last true open road places in America. Sign me up.

I was all ready to go, but unfortunately the car wasn’t. The 65E’s engine was knocking, due to improperly installed wrist pin bushings by the car’s original restorer and I spent the summer of 2005 getting the engine sorted out and having a less-than-satisfactory discussion with the car’s original restorer, who it turned out had completely botched the restoration! By late September the Jaguar was back together again and running well through its break-in period, but we had missed the GTTSR 2005. As a “Miss Congeniality” prize, I was able to attend the 2005 Colorado Grand as a co-driver in my parent’s 300sl. I had a GREAT time, but I missed the inaugural run of the GTTSR. Thankfully I was able to provide a few-month’s warning to the GTTSR’s organizers, and they were able to find somebody to fill our vacancy.

I vowed that the second year would not pass me by, and signed up early for the 2006 GTTSR. I filled in all the paperwork and sat anxiously by the computer awaiting my acceptance in the rally. It arrived in early March… we were in!

By now, the car was all broken in and running well. So I planned on driving it to and from the rally as a nice book-end to the event. Arlington, WA to Red Lodge, MT is a hard single day, or two easy days worth of driving. My father, who signed on as co-driver informed me that he would assist in driving the car out, and I called a professional acquaintance, Brian Medley, who I knew as a serious gear-head (whenever we met in the context of our jobs the conversation worked its way to cars) so I know he’d be interested. Sure enough, he agreed.

The plans were set, the time crept slowly through the summer. The week before the rally I brought the car up to Canada to my trusty engine builder Geoff Pickard of English Classic Cars for one last look-see, and the car came out of it transformed! Running better than ever, we packed it up and headed east. As I have been doing since 1998, I have brought along a camera and updated my website every night along the way with words and pictures. This allows my “regular readers” to follow along in near real-time as the event occurs, and then allows for a historical record of the event after it is done.

I’ve created this page as a “table of contents” so to speak, a launching pad for navigation of the rally pages. Before you navigate, it is best to have your browser window set as wide as possible… some of the pictures are large. You can follow these links to read along chronologically with the whole rally story of the 2006 GTTSR. Clicking a picture or link will open an new window for that page. You can leave this window open behind and return to it to read the next day. I hope you enjoy reading it and seeing the pictures as much as I enjoyed creating them:

Day One: Driving from Arlington to Missoula

Day Two: Driving from Missoula to Big Sky

Day Three: Driving from Big Sky to Red Lodge via Yellowstone and the Beartooth Highway

Official Rally Day One: Driving from Red Lodge to Big Sky via the Beartooth Highway and Yellowstone (sound familiar?)

Official Rally Day Two: Big Sky to Missoula, via Virginia City and the Big Hole

Official Rally Day Three: Missoula to Whitefish, via Libby, and the “Better Than Sex Highway”

Official Rally Day Four: Whitefish to Helena, via Glacier National Park – The Going To The Sun Road

Official Rally Day Five: Helena to Red Lodge, Rally Done!

Returning Home: Red Lodge to Kalispell, via Bozeman and backroads

Home: Kalispell, to Arlington via US 2

If you prefer “blog style” backwards chronology, just use this link.

Feel free to login and provide comment on any section, photograph, etc. If I’ve misspelled somebody’s name or car, let me know.

Enjoy!

–chuck

Back Home

Arrived home fine the other day. I’ll update the blog from the rally as soon as I can find the time.

I put the car up on my lift the day after I arrived home. The purpose of which was to change the oil and oil filter, a well deserved treat for the 65E which had just torn up almost three thousand miles of road. I also wanted to have a look around and see how the car was doing, mechanically. The only things we noted during the rally were:

1. a minor vibration in the front end (the car is in need of an alignment.)
2. Some odd issues in the brakes
<  >a . We had lost some brake fluid in the front reservoir (a really odd thing!)
<  >b. It was pulling a bit to the right when braking (just barely.)

So when the car was up and draining oil, I had a look around. First I noted a small drop of brake fluid below the right front tire and looking up, sure enough found that one of the brake lines had failed. Thankfully not in a catastrophic manner, but failed nonetheless.

Here is a photo:

Note that the line, which is a stainless steel braided middle, teflon core, and some sort of tubing on the outside sheath, has swollen with brake fluid to roughly 2X its original size. Obviously the teflon core has failed in some way. Of course this is a part from “Classic Jaguar“, the very same restoration shop that bodged my cars restoration, and provided the other craptacular parts in my car that have failed.

Sigh. I feel like I am doomed to spening my life correcting all the errors Dan Mooney has perpetrated upon this car.

Car Photo of the Day

I won’t be watching any anniversary TV specials. To be honest I do not really want to re-live any of that day five years ago. Today I’ll be driving the 65E from Kalispell to Arlington, a distance of ~600 miles. My only notation of the event will be this photo. It was taken in 2003, in Vergennes, Vermont. It was on a Jaguar XJS if I recall corectly. Somehow it wasn’t in its assigned parking spot in 2001 I guess.

I’ll post an update after I arrive home.

Day Two: Missoula – Bozeman – Big Sky

Today was a short driving day. We left Missoula bright and early, heading east on America’s Autobahn, I-90. It may be a potholed “turnpike” in places out east, and it even is a pair of floating bridges that are a commuter’s nadir at its western end, but here in Montana it is an illustration of how well truly open roads function. Other than large trucks and RVs on steep grades, I never saw anything going LESS than 85 MPH today. Nobody was having accidents, nobody was recklessly endangering anyone else… we were all just driving. Everyone was reasonable and prudent when in proximity to other vehicles, but once alone, we all went as fast as we were comfortable going. For me that was 90-100 MPH. It is amazing how much ground you can cover at that speed.

Anyway, we left Missoula and passed a group of old Ford Model As heading east on I-90. I waved at them all. I soon left Mom & Dad in their truck behind, cruising in the E-type as its makers designed it to move. Then as I approached Drummond I realized that I was running low on gas, so I eased off to the posted speed limit (75 MPH) and watched the world pass me for a while. Eventually my parents caught up just as I was exiting to get gas. A fellow western WA native stopped to talk to me about the car as I filled up. I told him about the fires and smoke in Washington, and he filled me in that it was just as bad east towards Butte.

Once refilled I felt confident enough to run the car at speed again. Just some observations: At 4000 RPM the XK engine gets pretty loud. At that revs, with my US spec rear end ratio it is indeed being “driven in anger”, and holding it there for miles at a time the roar is a bit – well “roary”. As much as I enjoyed “making the ton” I found that easing off a mere 300 RPM (which dropped my speed to 90ish) was easier on the ears. That said, I did put my iPod in one ear (the left, which gets the lion’s share of wind buffeting) and let it roar for quite a while at 4000 RPM. 😉


Above: The author, grinning like the Cheshire Cat at Ludicrous Speed.

Butte required slowing to posted speed limits. It is a bit crowded in Montana terms, plus they have the road torn up and re-routed for construction. As I left Butte my eyes were stinging due to the amazing amounts of smoke. I-90 climbs up and over a big pass just east of Butte and the road was relatively crowded with big trucks and lumbering RVs. It wasn’t until I was down the far side that I returned to the flat valley bottom, was able to go fast again, and cleared from the really bad smoke.


Above: Looking back towards the continental divide and the thick smoke. In fact, you really can’t see any mountains, just the smoke!

In what seemed like a very short amount of time, I arrived in Belgrade, and stopped for a driver pit stop, plus top off my gas and oil. Mom & Dad arrived a bit later and informed me that we were going back onto I-90 for a run into Bozeman for lunch. We met some folks that will also be on the rally and ate at a car-themed place called ‘The Garage.” I had a great burger. Afterwards we headed south on US 191 towards Big Sky.


Above: Another roadside attraction south of Gallatin Gateway, MT.

I spent a good part of my childhood in this region. The Gallatin Canyon, Big Sky, Bozeman, etc. It is one of the places I have always considered “home”… though other than visits for weddings and funerals of family friends, I haven’t visited much in the past 20 years. My best friend was killed in a car accident here when I was 18 and after that, I left… finished college, and rarely came back. The memories are good, but being here, for a long time for me… was painful. So I stayed away.

It was odd to be here today. We drove up the Gallatin Canyon, and to the house of my dead best friend’s mother. (an odd way to refer to her here I know, but the most expedient and clear) When I was a kid, she was like my second mom. It was wonderful to see her. Great to see this landscape again too. The place has changed a LOT in the past quarter century… no longer a quiet little place in the middle of nowhere, but now a bustling, very expensive resort with condos and expensive homes everywhere that used to be sagebrush and lodgepole pine forest. It isn’t the place of a few hundred people I recall from the 70s anymore. My friend’s mom though lives above it all on a hillside in a wonderful home. Truly serene and relaxing. We spent the afternoon catching up (showing pictures of my kids, etc) and enjoyed a great dinner and wine, followed by drinks on the deck under the hazy, smoky moon and stars.

Tomorrow we leave my mom, here with my “second mom” for the week, while dad & I head off to Red Lodge for the rally. Ironically we’ll be back here at Big Sky the first night of the rally, but at a fancy hotel. Should be interesting to see my “hometown” as a tourist.

Purrrring once again…


apoligies for the crappy cell-cam image… I left my good camera at home by mistake!)

I took yesterday off work, with the specific purpose of finishing the prep work for the Going To The Sun Rally (and the nearly 1800 mile round trip there and back.)

At the crack of dawn I drove the 65E, in overcast skies and light mist, up to Chilliwack BC, to visit Geoff Pickard at English Classic Cars. Geoff rebuilt my engine last summer and it had developed a rattle in the head since then. He had also fixed one of my rear hubs in the spring and we wanted to have a look at the opposite one to make sure it had not suffered the same fate as its twin.

The drive was uneventful, and I arrived promtly at 8:45 AM. We went to work on a list of things as the engined cooled. Geoff went into the hubs and I started on my list of things to do.

If you recall, my driver’s side rear hub did not get properly looked at in the post-flood resto by Classic Jaguar and had seen the bronze bushings disintegrate under the lubrication of a fine paste of bayou mud and rainwater. The passenger side hub was just the same, though with less damage. Geoff replaced the chewed up bronze bushings with stock needle bearings and his witches brew of lubricating slippery goo.

I replaced a tie rod gaiter on the passenger-side front wheel. In my winter lubrication routine in March I found a torn gaiter there (a “TeamCJ” mechanic had bent the safety wire back on itself when they snipped it off, eventually causing the wire to puncture the boot), replaced it with a temporary one, and finally had a proper one from SNG to replace it. So Geoff was futzing with the rear hub, I was futzing up front. He finished a full hub rebuild in the time it took me to replace a tie rod gaiter (Geoff is as fast as an F1 pit crew, I’m the world’s slowest mechanic!) so he checked the opposite front wheel and found a significant amount of free play in the ball joint of the top wishbone. He had that apart in no time and found the ball joint was improperly shimmed. We had that sorted out by the time I had my wheel back on.

I then got a bunch of lightbulbs replaced, and my right turn signal working again. As I was sitting on the floor Geoff nearly had an aneurysm when he saw the screws I had pulled out of the signal lamp cover of the car. At first I didn’t know what he was going on about, but he pointed to the three completely different sized, shaped, and colored screws I just had removed from the car and shouted “Those are NOT proper!” (Have I ever mentioned that Geoff is a bit picky about Jaguars?) He rushed off to a parts bin, brought back a box of screws and pulled one out: “This is a proper screw. Find two more and then toss *those three* (he sneered that point) over there on the bench.” I dutifully followed his direction, not wanting to insult him. 😉

A few more minor tasks complete, we took a break for lunch. After lunch the engine had cooled sufficiently to have a look at the head. Not wanting to be in Geoff’s way, I went about the task of changing the oil in the differential. It is the only part of my car that consistently leaks. No matter where I park, it never fails to leave a SINGLE drop of oil. It never leaves two, but I figured one drop here, and one drop there eventually leads to not enough left behind. I crawled under the car and opened it up, to be pleasantly surprised to find a NOT empty diff. 😉 While I was under the car, making unhappy noises (anyone who has ever re-filled an E-type diff knows what I mean by “unhappy noises”), Geoff was above the engine, making happy noises.

Based on the noise the engine was making we both suspected a tappet or tappet shim being loose. As it turns out the tappets were fine, and it fact all still within .0001″ of where they were originally set last summer. The noise was found to be a loose top timing chain on the exhaust side of the bottom chain drive. An easy fix! That was all sorted out by the time I had the diff refilled. While down there I also fixed a broken exhaust hanger. We then flushed and refilled the radiator since my belt-throwing adventure earlier this summer had boiled off quite a bit of coolant and I was unsure of my mixture. Better safe than sorry.

All buttoned up, we took it for a test drive. I insisted Geoff drive since I already know the car but wanted him to get a sense for it. The engine sounded *wonderful!* I haven’t had much time in the passenger seat of the 65E the past few years, but it was fun to be there with Geoff driving. He damn near broke my spine a few times, punching the loud button and snapping my head back!

On the way back he went to honk the horn (at a driver backing an SUV out of a blind parking space) and found it inoperative. So we fixed that when we arrived back at the shop. Troubleshooting from the horns back to the steering column, where we finally found the fault in the contact between the button and the inside metal of the steering wheel hub… literally the last place we could have looked! I climbed back behind the wheel and pointed the car south towards home around 3pm.

The fine US customs people at Sumas decided to inspect every fricking nook at cranny of the car! =\ I have never had a problem with the Jag at the border, but I must have fallen on the random “search this car” number this time. They looked in the boot, under the boot, though my toolbox, the interior of the car, etc. What a PITA!

In Sedro-Woolley, an oddly named town in Skagit county, I nearly had an accident when a person in a complete beater pulled out in front of me making a left turn out of a grocery store onto SR 20/9, where I was driving along at 45 MPH or so. I came within inches of hitting them, the brakes locked and me skidding in a cloud of smoke. The experience shook me up pretty bad and I had to pull off into a gas station and try to calm myself down.

I was hoping for an uneventful rest of my ride, but it was not to be… as I approached Arlington the skies opened up and I found myself in a downpour! I had nowhere to pull over and raise the top, but the tonneau cover was on, at least covering the passenger side. I just kept on driving. Unfortunately as I arrived in town, the traffic thickened up to where the speed-effect of the OTS shape no longer kept me out of the rain. 🙁 I called home and asked my son to have the barn door open for me when I arrived so I could at least get under cover swiftly.

After my arrival, I did a quick oil and filter change, along with replacing my temporary fuel pump with the native-pressure Facet pump recommended by my friends on the jag-lovers.org. I pulled the problematic pressure regulator off the car for good. I started packing the boot with spares and whatnot for the trip. I’m almost ready to go!

GOES Satellite image

So, it isn’t a car picture I know… but I like it.

This is an image captured via the GOES widget yesterday morning. I love several things about this image… The coastal fog, and how it describes the valleys along Gray’s Harbor and the Columbia River so well. There is also morning fog through the Snohomish River valley. Most impressive though is the massive bulk of Mt. Rainier, rising up and dominating its corner of Pierce county, the rising sun illuminating the glaciated eastern slopes, and casting a dark shadow to the west.

If you look closely you can make out the forms of other mountains; Olympus, Baker, Shuksan, Glacier Peak, Mt. Adams, and even Hood and Jefferson in Oregon, but none stand out like Rainier.

I spent yesterday travelling from our house to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island (and back) to attend a wedding of a friend and colleague at digital.forest. Dave & Tanya Anderson married each other on a the day that dawned in the image above… in perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We drove out to Anacortes, and boarded the 11 am ferry to Friday Harbor, where we enjoyed a lunch, had a brief stop at the “English Encampment (from the “Pig War” that established the final boundary between the US & Canada. We’ve been to the American Camp before, but had never yet visited the English one.) Then on to the wedding ceremony and reception in the garden of the Hotel de Haro at Roche Harbor. It was a truly wonderful day. We returned via the 10PM ferry which stops at every ferry-serviced island in the San Juans, which allowed us a nice car-deck nap of two hours, interrupted only by the occasional docking and an idiot in an Audi who set his frigging car alarm when he wandered off to the passenger deck. (Thankfully the WSF tracks these idiots down and delivers public embarrassment.)