Line Mountian Rausch Race

We FINALLY finished a race! And did it in good fashion too, 5th place! Nick is an absolute animal behind the wheel and did all the driving, NOTHING BROKE! Tired, story to come.....Nick?

Nick Fisher here with Team 696 with Bill Gilbert. We finally finished a race, and damn it felt good!! We finished 5th with a time of 2:00:18.

Bill put me behind the wheel for this one because he figured if there was anything left to break I’d find it. Rather work out the rest of the bugs now before next season. Our RC series began with a lot of over heating issues, swapped to the LT1 and solved that, then broke a knuckle last race. We needed a finish at this Line Mt race!

We started on Friday and needed to do some adjustments to the control arms to try and get the alignment back in check and then ran around the property a bit to make sure there weren’t any loose ends. Everything felt great until we hit the road going from the office down to the race property. The rig would just dive and sway all over the place completely out of control. We also had a driveline vibration. After adjusting the control arms a bit we decided to just call it good and hope for the best. The swaybar wasn’t broken or anything and we suspected the issue to be with our right rear FOA coilover.

Race day was here and everything was good to go. Right after we pulled off the line we realized we were in 2:1, but figured we’d grab high range at the check point. After running it for a bit, we felt good keeping it in 2:1 with the added acceleration and engine braking. Looking back on it I still think it was a good decision. High range would have landed us into the trees somewhere with the suspension issues we were having and there were really only 2 straights where we ran out of gearing.

Some highlights… I owe a little 2wd buggy line mountain guy a HUGE apology!
Lap 1:
Got to the jump and remembered being warned about the large amount of water on the other end of it. Slowed up to my version of slow (I keep learning that isn’t ever slow enough, son of a ditch was the first lesson) and splashed into the puddle. The rig cut out immediately and my heart sank, fucking optispark! Our question was answered about that bitch getting wet. We spent the rest of the race being cautious of water, and it was very very wet out there.

Lap 2:
At the beginning of the course there was the little black muddy ass hill climb with a puddle at the start. I slowed to a crawl for the water and as soon as I got any load on the rig it cut out. I gave it a few shots, drifted back and held the rpms up a bit then finally got it running enough to make it. This haunted us on and off the rest of the lap. Thank god a lot of the standing water started to clear later on.

We came up on a 2wd buggy at the RC Race pits hill. He didn’t want to give us the pass earlier on so we got next to him where it opened up and passed him. We were both going flat out and then I locked them up and cut right for THE WRONG TURN! I went to turn into the RC start/finish line and we collided hard. We tried to find him after the race to apologize because from his seat it probably looked like I passed him and intentionally tried to take him out.
Not sure if it was lap 2 or 3 but we had a blast of a pass cutting one of the corners before you went down the hill into the woods.

We pitted after Lap 3 for fuel and to see if the PSC needed fluid (bigger fuel cell would have bumped us up a position alone). At one point I kept saying to Bill check behind us I swear I hear a f’ing oooga horn behind us. Nope, I realized it was the damn pump screaming. My wrists feel like I’ve been karate chopping cinder blocks after fighting that bastard binding up the last 3 laps.

It also lead to another collision with a line mt guy. They were scattered all over the course in the worst places. I was going flat out, slowed for one on the side, got a bit farther, and there is a guy in a Cherokee with his damn door open. He swung it shut and I veered left but the bind in the steering didn’t allow me to completely clear him and we smacked hard. We were worried it was going to cost us a tire but all was well.

The last lap was a surreal feeling. As Bill described, it’s like waiting for that last lottery number to hit the jackpot. We started smelling gear oil BIG TIME and my gut dropped. Not sure if it was us or a rig in front of us but the demons were finally beaten and we finished! I started second guessing what lap we were on as we were nearing the finish. I’m asking Bill, wait we’re done after this, right?! We went out with a bang with a pass up the hill to the finish.

The line mt guys put together a great race. The course was well marked and it was a blast just to tear ass full speed through the woods, a dream come true! We learned A LOT racing this season and can’t wait till next year. It was awesome to see such a large scale race held at Rausch, congrats and thank you to all who made it possible.

Our new good luck charm! Bill and Elva had this made for me/us!! I kept saying to bill that we needed to pack a flask in our tool bag so when the time comes to throw in the towel we at least have some booze to hammer down. I must say the Jager tasted much better as a celebratory drink!

go pro cam got the whole race this time. most of lap 2 n 3 have mud on the lens but i did clean it off for 4 n 5 I think. I'm breaking it down to individual laps and standard definition to get the file size down to 500 MB each.

Sweeeeeeeet!!

that is awesome!!!!!

nice teamwork

The guy we made contact with contacted us through our website contact form. Glad to hear from him.

"Hi i was driving the buggy that made contact with you. I never heard you behind me or I would have let you by. You got by me, but what you could'nt see was i was pulling back up beside you to pass you back when you turned into me. At first I thought you tried it, but then I figured you thought thats where we were supposed to go. As did I. Bottom line I thought it was allsome because we both got to keep going. and it was hard racing. I had a great time racing with you guys. I hope that we can race there again ! Next time I plan on finishing on 4 wheels instead of 3 !"

Vids are UP! commercial is like 15 seconds, annoying but unlimited file storage.
http://www.veoh.com/myprofile/videos

Search rockn93yj to find them...just starting to watch, can't wait!!

Lap 1
Lap 2
Lap 3
Lap 4
Lap 5

I did the math and figured the actual lap times taking out the stalled engine at 2 water holes and the line at the checkpoints.
LAP Checkpoint Lap time
1 11:02 21:34 Stall in water after jump 33 seconds
2 11:36 21:51 Stall in shithole before woods 1 min 38 seconds
3 11:45 21:32 Pit time 7:55 after lap 3
4 11:24 21:09
5 11:23 21:20

16ish mark on the 1st lap is where I flooded it. Video is sweet, felt like I was back in the saddle again.

6 min mark on lap 4 is where I clipped the cherokee.

How did you guys do on fuel? one fill up or two?

makitupthehardway wrote:

How did you guys do on fuel? one fill up or two?

I have a 16 gallon tank and figured 2.75 mpg. Didn't account for the foam taking up space and probably reducing the capacity to about 12ish gallons.
We averaged 3 mpg, 3 laps of 9.3 miles and pitted taking 9 gallons of fuel. Then finished the last 2 laps.
total distance of the race was 46.5 miles which used about 15.5 gallons of fuel.
I'm gonna upgrade to a 22 gallon tank, takes little to no modifications, just longer allthread.

Rockn93YJ wrote:

I did the math and figured the actual lap times taking out the stalled engine at 2 water holes and the line at the checkpoints.
LAP Checkpoint Lap time
1 11:02 21:34 Stall in water after jump 33 seconds
2 11:36 21:51 Stall in shithole before woods 1 min 38 seconds
3 11:45 21:32 Pit time 7:55 after lap 3
4 11:24 21:09
5 11:23 21:20

That's badass!!!

The ending of the 5th lap video is classic with the 2 revs and the laugh hahahha. 1:46:46 if I can use a calculator right?

Oh man...I guess I was going A LOT faster than I thought when I "slowed down" for that jump into the water. There is a pic of the front wheels off the ground, the splash, then the cloud of smoke.


Pics here...

http://schmickphotography.homestead.com/

Use code 9jezq94 then go to events page.

Over 200 pictures to look through.

page 36 has the ones i was talking about

Congrats on the big finish, some great driving and racing. We had a blast, can't wait till next year.

i can't seem to get to the pics to see them......i used the code, but it did not work for me

J9ezq94

From Erik Miller
"Whatever you guys are up to, its working. We tailed you for a while on Saturday. Keep it up, the rig is getting much faster!"