A Harrisonburg, Virginia journalist (?) put together this excellent video about the rally. It does a good job explaining the craziness to… uh… normal people. [Edit: I mis-attributed this to a BABE Rally participant earlier.]

Day 4’s challenge was easy enough: take a photo of your team in front of the number 1 gas pump at BP/Amoco stations. Maximum six stations. That was largely just an excuse to get out of the car every 50-100 miles and stretch, breaking up an otherwise all-interstate drive in the Southern heat.

All teams coverged on New Orleans, and the results were announced. The popular vote for the worst pile of rubbish was given to Tossers with Tetanus, who drove the genuinely awful Triumph Spitfire (Spitty!) made of rust and tarp, which leaked differential fluid badly, was all rusty inside the cylinders, had been a cat’s home for years… you get the idea. They also got the spirit-of-the-event award from last year’s winners, Misfit Toys Racing.

The rallymaster’s choice (of rubbish-ness) went to Two Guys Do One BABE (hey, I don’t make up these team names), who drove a 1950’s Plymouth with a 15 mpg V8 under the hood.

In terms of challenge points, Misfit Toys fell to 2nd place this year, while Team Born from Jets took the top spot. The take home the sculpture/trophy made of old brake rotor, spark plugs, transmission gears, and the like.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that Economy Superstar and the Crapiolet did in fact make it to New Orleans on time and sort of trouble-free. It seems the gear shift linkage is still screwed up, so the Day 3 repair didn’t hold for long. Their plan for the trip home to Wisconsin is to force it into 5th gear and only stop when they absolutely, positively need gas. Good luck, guys!

Short version: The nice-looking (but still junky!) VW Cabriolet got into a crash while under control of a friend of its young owner. This happened approximately 50 feet from the finish of Day 3. A dozen or two BABE Rally participants pulled together to straighten the body so the water pump and alternator could be made to work again. The owner drove it away on the morning of Day 4, far less despondent than he’d been the night before.

Here’s hoping the “Crapiolet” is still trucking along behind us today, and the it makes it to the finish in the French Quarter.

Curvy. Day 3’s challenge was, simply, “Don’t Be an Idiot” while driving the curviest series of roads on the rally route. They included the as-yet-apparently-unknown Tennessee State Route 32 and the growing-ever-yet-more-famous “Dragon,” rightly known as US-129 at the Tennessee-North Carolina border. (I still call it Deal’s Gap, which some maps attribute to the first intersection of US-129 in North Carolina.)

We experienced our first two technical faults on the latter road. First, the car was stalling at stops, and the ignition cut out as we began the ascent to the state line. A bit of mental searching led to the answer–an electrical fault at the battery. The right battery hold-down stud had broken before I got the car, and so the battery was loose in its tray. Sloshing around in there had loosened the connectors. We stopped at the state line pull-out to make repairs. My co-pilot, Simon, suggested wedging something in there to prevent the battery from moving. I suggested paper towels, but he seemed to think non-flammable things would be safer. Bah. I spotted a pair of Bud Light cans someone had tossed in the ditch, stomped them to about a half-inch thickness, wedged them in place, and off we went to enjoy the now-slightly-cleaner road.

The second problem was simpler–the oil level light was flicking on every now and then during turns. Looks like the Laser burns about one quart per 1,000 miles. No problem!

http://flickr.com/photos/34377776@N00/

Right now it’s Day 3 and we’re about 2 minutes late for the start. I haven’t heard the air horn blasting yet, though — I think everyone is running pretty late today.

Superman day was today. Photos will be posted later of the man Supermen (and Superwomen). The challenge turned out to involve lots of lower-speed driving on fabulously twisty Virginia and West Virginia roads. Even in a $250 beater, it was good fun. We bailed out on the last 1/3 of the challenge, though, along with the team in the truly awful Plymouth Horizon, with whom we travelled for most of the day. Time is getting short, we need dinner, and there are cold beers to be shared in the nightly parking lot party. We should hit the hotel around 8:15pm EDT.

Day 1 photos are up on Flickr. The challenge was the same as last year: a photo scavenger hunt where the clues are heavily edited/redacted photos, different for each team. Find the same scene on the NYC-Harrisonburg route, then capture them with your own camera. We got 8 of 15 — not terrible, but not especially competetive, either. We did throw $15 into taking a trip along Skyline Drive at the nd of the route.

You can check out the photos from Day 0 on Flickr. I promise we’ll get one of the Laser soon. We finally get the decals finished out last night, so it’s wearing full and appropriate rally decorations now. Wheels up in 75 minutes!

History lesson time. I bought the Laser from a traveling youth pastor in Nashville who advertised it on Craigslist for $300. He moves from city to city at least once a year, apparently putting a fair number of miles on his daily drivers. Not sure if he bought it new or not, but at 201,595 miles, the manual transmission went kaput.

He removed the transmission, bought another at a junkyard, installed it, and… it didn’t work. He then diagnosed the “new” one’s problem, gave it some parts from his old transmission, and reinstalled. No luck. At that point I think he removed it, put it in the trunk, and gave up. It was still in the trunk when I bought it.

Besides being slightly misassembled (as were the brakes, I found later), it turns out the transmission also had a few small, but important, broken parts that killed 5th gear and reverse. I lucked into a good 5-speed during a trip to Pull-a-Part one day, and that solved the problem.

Beyond the transmission swap, I had to replace the battery and the front brakes (rotors and pad). Naturally I insisted on only the cheapest parts AutoZone could be pressed into selling me. Oh, and I gave it an oil change and new wiper blades.

So far it’s run 739 miles, which is about 300 miles farther than last year’s beater’s alternator made it. Fingers remain crossed.

We just got gas in Virginia. 202189 miles on the odometer, and the last tank gave us 32.7 mpg. My co-pilot, Simon, remarked on the irony that with all the recent focus on ‘green’ and CO2 emissions, it’s far more difficult to find a new car with this kind of fuel economy than it is to find an old beater breaking the 30 mpg mark. I find myself agreeing.

See the recent Flickr photo of the GPS screen to see where we are. Current ETA at the hotel in Staten Island is 4:42pm CDT.