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THE SCOTTSDALE RALLY TEAM
Being Fiat tragics, the team opted to sell their beloved Celica and purchase a Fiat 124 Special T which they raced in the NZ Targa in October/November 2011. Below is their story followed by a rendition of their escapades in last year’s Targa Rally.
The team consists of: - Ross Macdonald - Driver, Alan Cameron - Co-Driver Alfonso Zambuto and Stuart Cameron - Service Crew
And we do this because……………?
Scottsdale Tours Team Fiat – Targa 2011
I suppose with a team infested with Fiat relics it was always going to happen.
Following our somewhat challenging foray into Targa 2010 in the GT4 Celica resulting in our winning the trophy for the finisher to overcome the most adversity to cross the line, the opportunity arose to purchase perhaps the only Fiat 124 Special T rally car in NZ. Buckling under the extreme pressure from the team, the little Fiat was duly added to the stable. Often mistaken for a Fiat 125 these cars are a little smaller and lighter and are based on the 124 coupe chassis with quite sophisticated suspension and with the 2 litre twin cam under the bonnet are a delightful little thing to drive.
After a few ‘skids’ in club events we headed to Rotorua for the 2 day Targa. Unfortunately at the start of stage 2 my natural exuberance got the better of me and in an attempt to ‘wheelie’ off the line I managed to break both axles. That put us out for most of the day and with various niggly mechanical gremlins driving us nuts we did manage to get to the finish. In between times we had managed some fairly respectable times.
Roll on to Targa 2011. We arrived at the start the best prepared we have ever been. The car had had a good doing over by the Fiat Relic mechanical team and we even had some spare parts on board. Stage 1 at Kumeu just happened to go past our chief mechanics gate and as we had had reason to travel that route the odd time or two it was a nice familiar place to start. We roared off the line in Stage 2 and went to change out of first to find the throttle jammed wide open which created a little excitement as the tacho was on about its third time round before I managed to slow the thing down. We finished the stage okay but the motor would not idle and had all the symptoms of bent valves. The fateful decision was made to push on but we only got 5kms up the road on the next touring stage and the motor made very expensive noises and died. After a quick phone call to Barry Bateman at the Italian Auto Centre we had an offer of the use of his workshop in Otahuhu and more importantly access to his enormous treasure trove of elderly Fiat parts. We towed the car back to Auckland arriving around midday and my wizard mechanical team quickly removed the head and revealed a big hole in No. 2 piston and a very mangled combustion chamber where a valve had been bouncing around. A search through Barry’s assortment of goodies supplied us with a 130TC short block that one of the team had a head that fitted and further searching supplied cams that we thought would do the job. I was delegated my usual jobs of tea making and pacing up and down while Alf, Allan, Stuart and Barry assembled this pile of bits into something that looked like a motor. Just after midnight we fired it up and after some final adjustment we left at around 1.00am for Whangarei.
We had about 3 hours sleep before heading off to the start of day 2. The little car went like a rocket and we had a great day and an even better day the next day through some fabulous King Country stages. We even managed a couple of first in class wins and in a long stage into Te Anga we were able to hurl the poor little car through 7th in the Classic field. Last stage of the day was from Waipapa Dam to Mangakino, a piece of road I drive quite often so we were chugging along quite busily until I lifted my foot off to go into a tight left to find to my disappointment that the throttles were once again jammed wide open. I woke Allan to let him know that we were about to hit a bank at around 130 clicks and in we went. After counting our important bits and finding nothing broken Allan bailed out with his beloved warning triangle leaving me to sniff the petrol fumes and extricate myself. After the rest of the field had been through I hitched a ride to Whakamaru and found a tow-truck and we headed back and managed to pull the car out without any further damage. Miraculously the damage was way less than expected although it had had a good punch in the nose and the bum but the wheels were pointing roughly in the right direction. Back to Whakamaru the team pushed and pulled the poor little thing until the motor would run and the steering would sort of turn. After a call to another good Samaritan, Jim Purcell at Purcell Panelworks in Waihi to see if he would be able to make the car a bit more useable we headed to Waihi for the night.
The next morning saw the car on the chassis machine with four panel-beaters yanking and beating the car back into some sort of shape, installing a spare windscreen we happened to have and then it was off to the workshop to sort out the sticking throttles. This time we were able to find the source of the problem, a tiny piece of broken return spring. Then just to finally prove that the whole team was absolutely, totally and completely barking mad, we departed at around 3pm for a gentle little 6 hour drive to Palmerston North. We were back on the start line first thing next morning. Some good stages through Manawatu although it took a little while to restore the nerves and we lined up at the start of second to last stage starting to feel that we might actually drive the old girl over the finish line. But wait, there’s more…
The stage instructions did warn us that the blind brows did not necessarily go straight ahead and with the road wet in places fortunately we were proceeding a bit more gently than usual as we crested a blind brow 3km in and started to turn right where the road appeared to go, to quickly discover that that was a farmers tarmac driveway and the road actually went left. By that time my only choice was to go down the middle of the two along the road frontage between what was left of the fence after a very disappointed couple in a nice new Audi from the Targa Tour had demolished it, and a large drain. No damage this time but we were there to stay until we could get a tow out. Meanwhile Allan had buggered off up the road with his well used little warning triangle thingy again and while I am surveying the situation, over the hill appears another member of the Fiat relics club in his Fiat 125T. He decides to take the same route as us but fortunately he continues with his right turn and goes through the hole in the fence and does his best to T-bone the poor folk’s Audi. He fails that challenge, completes a couple of very impressive spins in the paddock, drives back out through the hole in the fence and disappears up the bloody road. Nice one Mark or Farmer Flukey as he is now known. Two cars later and we are pushing a Capri back on the road who also wanted to share our parking place. Pretty much every car mis-read that corner, could have been a very untidy pile up of cars if we hadn’t stood on the side of the road like turkeys waving them frantically in the other direction. Real scary stuff. Eventually we persuaded the farmer to pull us out with his 4 wheel drive and we puttered off through the rest of the stage.
An uneventful last stage and it was over the finish line in Havelock North. At Prize Giving the next morning we set a new Targa record for receiving the ‘Jeff Parry Memorial Plate for the finisher who overcame the most adversity’ for the second year in a row. We had earned it! Huge thanks to my wonderful lunatic crew who at least never get bored. Allan reckons I have got stage fright as we have never completed stages 3,4,5,or 6 in a Targa rally yet. We will have another go in March.
Ross Macdonald
WHAT’S THAT NOISE?
(The story of our adventures on the Targa Rally in November 2010)
Thirty seven kilometers into Stage 3 and the little Japper is flying until……
Driver to Co-Driver: “What’s that noise?”
Co-Driver to Driver: “Don’t know, sounds like the exhaust is falling off.”
Two point one nano-seconds later a sheet of flame from the bonnet scoop and some very loud nasty engine noises announces our imminent sudden halt. Allan bales out (as usual) and disappears up the road with the triangle leaving me surprisingly standing beside the car with a fire extinguisher in my hand. I had told many people that I was concerned that I couldn’t get out of the car with my helmet on and here I was very much out of the car complete with helmet that I hadn’t even unplugged. Amazing what you can do with flames coming out of the bonnet.
With the fire out, it was time to happily reflect on the 17 giga-billion we had spent and all the effort to complete just 2 stages even if we had passed a Commodore (twice, but I will get back to that ) in the first stage. Alf and Stuart turned up in the support van and we decided to tow back to Otorohanga (mostly because Allan wanted his lunch) and discuss the next move.
Following sustenance I gently suggested to the boys that perhaps we could throw another motor in. “Maybe possible if we can find one” was the response. Very common these Toyota motors so shouldn’t be a problem, we thought. No such luck, it had to be an ST165 Celica motor, we were told, and we had a better chance of having rocking horse eggs for breakfast than finding one of those. A few phone calls later and we were talking to Greg at Anglesea Court Motors in Hamilton who had a motor. Would he sell it to us? “No, but I will lend it to you.” Wow!!!! What a legend! Next problem, a workshop to work in. Fortunately we were in one of my old stamping grounds and a call to another of our old Fiat tragic mates, Maurice Thompson in Te Awamutu, gave us another legend and a work shop to do the deed in.
That’s the weird part of this whole silly nonsense, the whole four of the team are Fiat tragics from way back and what the hell we are doing with this Toyota thing we haven’t yet figured out, I think someone mentioned the word ‘reliability’, or was that perhaps just ‘liability’?
We got the car into Maurice Thompson Motors at around 3.00pm and then began the most ridiculously difficult mechanical battle I have ever been involved in (and I’ve done a few) as my beloved team prised the stuffed motor out and fitted our borrowed motor. I was just so lucky to have such a great team of mechanics with ‘Professor’ Thompson pitching in as well, or we would never have got the job done. I was put in charge of coffee and pacing up and down like an expectant father. To cut a long and painful story short, by 10.30pm on day two we had the bloody thing ready to go. Allan was just beside himself as he had missed not one but two Marbles Buffet dinners at Devon Hotel. We headed off to New Plymouth, arriving around 1.30am in a seriously battered state. At least the motor seemed strong. It all seemed like a dream as we lined up at the start next morning - but we were there! The day was spent on an interesting bunch of stages around Taranaki and there were a few showers about making things quite tricky as some stages were a bit greasy and others okay. We were in no great rush as we were absolutely buggered and just happy to finish the day in one piece. The main question of the day was just how many lots of road works are in the ‘Naki and do they ever sweep the bloody stones off the roads. Our last stage was 4 laps (or was that 3 Allan?) around Manfield where I had never been before. Where in the hell does the track go? No markers, no banks, no bloody nuthin to indicate where to turn, just a great big paddock. Arrived at one corner thinking it was a sweeper but found a hairpin instead, resulting in a very smokey straight ahead about 2 miles out into the middle. If I never see another Godzilla in my mirrors again I will be very pleased.
By day 4 we had had some sleep and got our brains back and were really flying again with some quite respectable stage times. We had heard of the infamous “Cop Corner’ but being a couple of sensible Grandads that wouldn’t pose any problem for us! We duly came charging down towards it, way too quickly, to find my proposed demon late braking point (nothing to do with the large crowd lined up along the bank watching), actually had a bit of a yump and braking is a little challenging when there is a gap between the road and the tyres. The outcome was missing the apex by only about 20 metres and following the track of the poor Policeman into the swamp. Fortunately we pulled up with our rear wheels just on the tarmac and could back up and continue. Two major pluses – we didn’t stall and I didn’t crunch the gears.
Later in the day the car started to develop a mind of its own and wanted to turn left handers without telling me first, which was a little challenging. It took 2 stages before we found a ball joint was trying its best to become disconnected. It felt much better after we tightened it up.
Last day and we had made it to Wellington. Just a few short squirts and it would be all over. What could go wrong!!! The 2 stages I was really looking forward to were the Evans Bay waterfront and the Paekakariki Hill and we were doing both of them twice. We roared off the line on the first stage around Evans Bay and arrived full noise in 3rd at what seemed to be a fairly innocuous corner only about 2kms in and discovered to my great disappointment that we were suddenly travelling at a similar velocity backwards down the road and Allan and I had time to discuss what we were buying our grandchildren for Christmas as we slid a very impressive distance down the road and just as we though it was all over and we were okay, the bonnet rose in the air and we went backwards very gently down a 30 foot bank onto the beach. Allan once again buggered off with his little triangle, all right for him, his door was on the down the side, I had to climb out with the door up where the roof used to be. Miraculously virtually no damage occurred and after I had pulled the large divot out of the exhaust and got rid of the shells up the pipe and with a little help from the friendly tow truck driver, we were back on the road and off to the next stage. Took a while to get the shells out of the brake calipers but!
A fabulous blat over the Paekak (8th in Classic Section) and it was off to the Moonshine. Fortunately, once again, the first straight was short and the first corner not too bad as once again people were watching when braking a little late brought on another bout of disappointment. NO BRAKES! So it was just a gentle little Nana drive through the rest of that stage where we came across one of our colleagues who had knocked down a power pole. They were standing around looking a little bit disappointed too. The brake issue was simple, just a hose blown off the booster. Who said we were running standard boost.
The rest of the day was pleasantly uneventful and of course included another squirt over the Paekak. We were presented with a pair of waterwings at the finish for our exploits around Evans Bay and at the prize-giving we also got the Jeff Parry Memorial Trophy for the ‘finisher who overcame the most adversity’. A great tribute to Alf Zambuto the Super Mechanic, Stuart Cameron the Goffer come Super Assistant, and the rest of the team.
What can I say! In my 45 years of Motorsport I have scorned tarmac competition, much preferring to be kicking stones, but man am I now hooked on the black stuff. With a car with a bit of boogie we just had a blast and I am still flying high 4 weeks later. When we were going well we ran around 3rd in class, top ten in Classic and low 30’s overall which was much better than we expected. Not bad for couple of old blokes. Great to be back on the road with my old mate Allan Cameron. Unflappable as usual and he only lost his glasses nine times.
Oh and about that Commodore in the first stage… Caught him after about 5kms and he pulled left to let me through as Allan was calling a right at a Y. As I am swinging right he disappears left and all I can see is yellow tape across the road. Through the tape at Warp 11, nice donut in front of the Rotongaro Hall, back on the track, caught and successfully passed confused and terrified crew in said Commodore 2kms further on! He got right out of the road to let us through this time. Oh!, did you mean the other right, Allan?
Bring on the next one!
Ross Macdonald