Piranha Pursuit

Report by Nathan

We had an absolute ball but just a bit annoyed that we couldn't finish the event.  Didn't think that we did too bad considering that we had to pull the pin just after the hill at waypoint three on the second half.

SS1 - we drove with no problems, SS2 had a go but needed to winch as we had completely chewed up the inside wall of one of our tyres & had a hole the size of a tennis ball in it. It was still on the rim (just!!).  So after winching over the first rock ledge we just put all into it with lockers in & drove the rest of the stage on 3 tyres while bouncing off the buggered rim & tyre. Finished at the top then replaced it & continued on.

That was until when we got to the caution on stage 2.   Jono had a few problems with this hill and broke a CV - Justin, Schafer, Smithy etc helped him change it in no time but Schafer must have been getting hungry because he decided to chew on one of the huge moths (they have crunchy heads apparently!).

After Jono got through - we decided to give it a go but ground was so soft we just sunk the back end in & broke a CV in the same place. We took the hub out, left the lockers in but still not enough guts to get up the hill so we winched pretty much most of the way. In the mean time we had all the other teams starting to catch up to us - sorry everyone for slowing you down! When we got to the top of the hill we had issues getting the hub off to change the CV which included breaking Allen keys so we decided to call it a night.   Got back to camp - had a chat then hit the road to drive home.

Apart from a broken CV, mangled tyre & rim, dented rear quarter - not much else went wrong. That’s life.

All in all not bad for the owner of the car sitting next to me in the passenger seat as winchy & being able to drive someone else’s car like it was mine. Hopefully the winchy had as much fun as I did.

Thanks again  Rudi & Hobzee for a great event & thanks to the marshals for their time.

Cheers, Nathan, Greg & Kerrie - Team 4A

Report by Peter

The navigation was a lot easier than the Pajero challenge so was fairly good, although still missed bits.

SS1 I was going great until my driving got a bit sloppy at the top and I missed the gear changing into 3rd after the rocky bit.

SS2 had to winch the start then I was doing great until I did a CV whilst stuck real bad on a rock with both front wheels in the air with the gearbox on a rock and a tyre came down at noise and when bang. Mangled the brass spacer, smashed the cup into 3 pieces and twisted the axle which snapped it.

SS3 I was 3rd car onto the track and it was massively chewed out from the first two cars, and then I chewed it out some more, think I had 4-5 winches and drove it in 20 mins, Matt Delbrocco and I were the only cars to drive it before they closed the stage, and we got no points for completing it!

SS4 I got stuck on some big rocks and wrecked the winch, pulled it apart and I snapped the brake shaft, mangled the plate, and stripped the teeth of one of the gears. The motor seems alright but a mate is checking it out and freshening it up a bit for me.

In all, got a fair amount of damage and screwed up every stage, oh well these things happen.