Europe's hardest rally in a 944
Discussion
So, where to begin…
For those that are not familiar with historic rallying LeJog is considered to be Europe's hardest rally. It starts in Land's End and works out a bit like this:
Saturday 8am - 9pm Land's End to Cardiff (13 hours driving)
Saturday 10pm - 4.30am Cardiff to Llangollen (6.5 hours driving)
3 hours break
Sunday 8am - 8pm Llangollen to Carlisle (12 hours driving)
12 hrs break
Monday 8am - Tuesday 11am Carlisle to John o Groats (27 hours driving)
The route worked out at about 1650 miles and every single one of those miles is on teeny tiny country lanes basically going flat out.
Scrutineering queue:
Interspersed with these sections are the special tests. These range from navigational exercises around cones to flat out forest stages. This year we did a lot of both, the highlights were the Porlock Hill and Rest & Be Thankful hillclimbs.
Special test 01:
Rest & Be Thankful hillclimb:
Our class was G2 and this included some interesting cars (11 in class in total), these amongst others:
1981 Mercedes Benz SLC500 AMG
1978 Porsche 911 SC
1978 Mercedes Benz 280S
1982 Mercedes Benz 280TE
1983 BMW E28 525i
The 944 was a formidable little weapon, easily joint fastest with the 911 and we were having a tit for tat battle on the tests, them faster in some, us on others.
Fording 01:
Fording 02:
The pace is relentless, there is no let up at all apart from the planned rest stops. Imagine driving flat out on country lanes for days. It is easily as hard mentally as physically. Several times I started halucinating and needed a bit of a slap from my navigator. My hands blistered badly even through the gloves and towards the end the blisters were bursting and filling my gloves with blood. Then I took them off and covered the steering wheel and gear shifter in blood which then went everywhere. You really needed to dig deep to just finish, let alone place well.
Test 02:
We had a number of 'incidents' along the way. We were pulled by the police twice but sent on our way both times luckily. Not so luckily I completely failed to see a Gatso speed camera in Carlisle and passed it pretty hard. I'm expecting that'll be a court appearance rather than a fine as I've no idea how quickly I was going but I know it was full throttle in 2nd in a 30mph zone. That'll learn me.
Starting regularity section behind other cars in our class:
The car also suffered a few ravages. The most worrying was dropping down into Teesdale with one hell of a mechanical banging every time I turned the wheel. I suspected a failed ball joint, snapped wishbone or a failed damper - it turned out to be EVERY SINGLE WHEELNUT was loose, all of them turnable by hand. That put the willies up me a bit as I'd personally torqued them all up just 2 days earlier to the right torque setting. Perhaps the wrench was out of calibration, who knows. Either way I did the unthinkable and we knocked them on hard with a windy gun to full FT. After that all was well.
Dawn breaking over the Orkneys:
Other problems we had in order:
1 ) Heater failed
2 ) Frond aux lights fused after a ford crossing
3 ) misc bits lost - bumper over riders etc.
4 ) The underneath of the rear spare wheel well was badly flattened after landing a jump with the nose in the air
5 ) front dampers shot
6 ) front spring cracked
7 ) floorpan cracked around seat mountings
8 ) Radiator smashed off housings on a forest stage, zip tied and gaffered back on with 1000 miles to go. It stayed put!
I'm relatively happy with the list and was expecting it to be much worse. This rally is a car killer. Of 71 starters only 48 made it to the finish. Our sister crew had to make 3 car changes just to get to the end after they shat the gearbox on the first car and wrote off the second one on Stanhope ford crossing by hitting a submerged iron pillar.
We did finish and finished relatively well. The rally ended with us 4th in class out of 11th and 19th overall out of 71. We were hoping for a top 10 finish (and were running 1st in class and 5th overall after the first 24 hours) but it wasn't to be when we had an off into a field in South Wales late one night which took us 45 minutes to get out of. After that it was game over for a competitive finish and we focused on being as quick as we could on the special stages and getting the car to the end.
I can't praise the 944 enough. Everything we threw at it it just shrugged off and battled on. We must have jumped it 30 to 40 times over the course of the rally, some of them properly frightening 70mph lifts - it just ate them up. It used not a drop of coolant and a pint of oil overall, bless its little cotton socks.
Lastly as some of you know I was running with the charity Mission Motorsport (http://www.missionmotorsport.org) - the lads were simply stunning with huge reserves of bottle and always a happy face when you needed a lift. The REME service crew was awesome too, they often got busy forgoing any sleep at rest stops to make sure the 944 was running well and all was safe. They also liked to pop the odd extra decal on the car when I wasn't looking…
Now comes the rebuild. It desperately needs another inch of lift and there are a few little tweaks needed before the next rally.
That's about it folks.
Ben
For those that are not familiar with historic rallying LeJog is considered to be Europe's hardest rally. It starts in Land's End and works out a bit like this:
Saturday 8am - 9pm Land's End to Cardiff (13 hours driving)
Saturday 10pm - 4.30am Cardiff to Llangollen (6.5 hours driving)
3 hours break
Sunday 8am - 8pm Llangollen to Carlisle (12 hours driving)
12 hrs break
Monday 8am - Tuesday 11am Carlisle to John o Groats (27 hours driving)
The route worked out at about 1650 miles and every single one of those miles is on teeny tiny country lanes basically going flat out.
Scrutineering queue:
Interspersed with these sections are the special tests. These range from navigational exercises around cones to flat out forest stages. This year we did a lot of both, the highlights were the Porlock Hill and Rest & Be Thankful hillclimbs.
Special test 01:
Rest & Be Thankful hillclimb:
Our class was G2 and this included some interesting cars (11 in class in total), these amongst others:
1981 Mercedes Benz SLC500 AMG
1978 Porsche 911 SC
1978 Mercedes Benz 280S
1982 Mercedes Benz 280TE
1983 BMW E28 525i
The 944 was a formidable little weapon, easily joint fastest with the 911 and we were having a tit for tat battle on the tests, them faster in some, us on others.
Fording 01:
Fording 02:
The pace is relentless, there is no let up at all apart from the planned rest stops. Imagine driving flat out on country lanes for days. It is easily as hard mentally as physically. Several times I started halucinating and needed a bit of a slap from my navigator. My hands blistered badly even through the gloves and towards the end the blisters were bursting and filling my gloves with blood. Then I took them off and covered the steering wheel and gear shifter in blood which then went everywhere. You really needed to dig deep to just finish, let alone place well.
Test 02:
We had a number of 'incidents' along the way. We were pulled by the police twice but sent on our way both times luckily. Not so luckily I completely failed to see a Gatso speed camera in Carlisle and passed it pretty hard. I'm expecting that'll be a court appearance rather than a fine as I've no idea how quickly I was going but I know it was full throttle in 2nd in a 30mph zone. That'll learn me.
Starting regularity section behind other cars in our class:
The car also suffered a few ravages. The most worrying was dropping down into Teesdale with one hell of a mechanical banging every time I turned the wheel. I suspected a failed ball joint, snapped wishbone or a failed damper - it turned out to be EVERY SINGLE WHEELNUT was loose, all of them turnable by hand. That put the willies up me a bit as I'd personally torqued them all up just 2 days earlier to the right torque setting. Perhaps the wrench was out of calibration, who knows. Either way I did the unthinkable and we knocked them on hard with a windy gun to full FT. After that all was well.
Dawn breaking over the Orkneys:
Other problems we had in order:
1 ) Heater failed
2 ) Frond aux lights fused after a ford crossing
3 ) misc bits lost - bumper over riders etc.
4 ) The underneath of the rear spare wheel well was badly flattened after landing a jump with the nose in the air
5 ) front dampers shot
6 ) front spring cracked
7 ) floorpan cracked around seat mountings
8 ) Radiator smashed off housings on a forest stage, zip tied and gaffered back on with 1000 miles to go. It stayed put!
I'm relatively happy with the list and was expecting it to be much worse. This rally is a car killer. Of 71 starters only 48 made it to the finish. Our sister crew had to make 3 car changes just to get to the end after they shat the gearbox on the first car and wrote off the second one on Stanhope ford crossing by hitting a submerged iron pillar.
We did finish and finished relatively well. The rally ended with us 4th in class out of 11th and 19th overall out of 71. We were hoping for a top 10 finish (and were running 1st in class and 5th overall after the first 24 hours) but it wasn't to be when we had an off into a field in South Wales late one night which took us 45 minutes to get out of. After that it was game over for a competitive finish and we focused on being as quick as we could on the special stages and getting the car to the end.
I can't praise the 944 enough. Everything we threw at it it just shrugged off and battled on. We must have jumped it 30 to 40 times over the course of the rally, some of them properly frightening 70mph lifts - it just ate them up. It used not a drop of coolant and a pint of oil overall, bless its little cotton socks.
Lastly as some of you know I was running with the charity Mission Motorsport (http://www.missionmotorsport.org) - the lads were simply stunning with huge reserves of bottle and always a happy face when you needed a lift. The REME service crew was awesome too, they often got busy forgoing any sleep at rest stops to make sure the 944 was running well and all was safe. They also liked to pop the odd extra decal on the car when I wasn't looking…
Now comes the rebuild. It desperately needs another inch of lift and there are a few little tweaks needed before the next rally.
That's about it folks.
Ben
Edited by benjj on Friday 13th December 15:21
heebeegeetee said:
Great event and well done, even though you were in a 'modern'. 
I presume you mean that Le Jog is Europe's hardest road rally though?
Thanks, I was rather pissed off with the result at the end but now I'm starting to realise just how close we came on several occasions to not finishing.I presume you mean that Le Jog is Europe's hardest road rally though?
As for the 'hardest' thing - I don't know really. It is certainly the hardest in terms of endurance, much more so than the likes of the pure gravel RAC for example. The distances covered are simply staggering and the timings are very tight. Every few hours John (my nav) would say something like, "we've got 35 miles to the start of the next section and need to be there in 31 minutes." That was on roads barely wider than the car.
I have been trying to buy a beautiful 944 being left to rot at a nearby mill for months now and had all but given up, this thread (and the readers car thread) have given me new determination!
The owner of the mill has literally dozens of cars lying around - won't sell any of them. Gutted
The owner of the mill has literally dozens of cars lying around - won't sell any of them. Gutted
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