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Day One: Tuesday October 25 Lawrence and Neven had an extremely early start this morning, as they had to get out to Pukekohe for the 06:45 briefing and get on the road at 07:00. The first couple of stages went very smoothly, and we pulled up half-way through SS3 to spectate. After watching the first of the Targa cars through, we left to re-fuel at Otorohanga. We made a bit of a wrong turn here, and ended up rather late for SS5, along with Jeff Bell's 911. Along the way we picked up Aja Rock's Honda, and went hell-for-leather towards the start of SS5. We only just made it there in time (I'm sure we went faster getting there than we did on the stage itself). Apparently quite a few missed making it to the stage at all, including the sweeper car! We made SS6 and SS7 with less panic, and had a nice whitebait stop in Mokau before heading on to New Plymouth.
Meanwhile Mark and Sarah were
back at Qualitat, getting Porridge's new carbs
tuned. After much experimenting we also determined
that the distributor had to be replaced, along with
various other bits that had been fire damaged. Once
that was done, having undertaken many test "laps"
around the streets, Porridge was deemed fit and
well, ready to return to the event. Hence we left
Auckland mid-afternoon, with a 5 hour drive ahead
of us to meet the Targa group in New Plymouth over
night. Porridge had other ideas...
just over an hour into our journey we stopped on
the side of the road after hearing a rattle stop
suddenly. The rattle turned out to be the left rear
upper damper mount, which stopped rattling when the
nut dropped off and the damper dropped down.
Luckily we heard something odd, so we stopped
quickly and went looking up the road for the bits
that fell off. The search was successful, but
Porridge had bigger issues, as when starting it up
from hot it once again burst into flame in the left
hand carb. This time we were quicker controlling
the situation, so the damage was restricted to a
slightly melted filter and well smoked trumpets.
After everything cooled down we were able to start
it up successfully; nonetheless it was clear that
Porridge's race was run, so it was back on a
trailer once again for another tow home.
This was a crucial juncture for the team; after a brief discussion we decided that the support crew should continue to New Plymouth in the van, while Sarah and Mark returned to Auckland with the stricken Porsche, courtesy of a kind collection from Katy's Jeep and trailer. By 00:30 Porridge was tucked up in Auckland, and the crew had arrived in New Plymouth to catch up all the news from Lawrence and Neven.
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