Feb 16th, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CTS Turbo Boosts The Demon Rally Team To Group 5

The Demon Rally Team is proud to announce their partnership with CTS Turbo as the team moves to the unlimited two wheel drive rally class in North America.

The Demon Rally Team has been very successful in Group 2 competition, taking several regional group 2 wins and top stage times; they are most proud of their stage record on the famous Brooklyn Tavern Stage at the Doo Wop Rally, as well as a National Group 2 win at the final round of the inaugural Max Attack Two Wheel Drive Rally Series in 2008. Making the step up to Group 5 brings about several exciting new challenges for the team as well as the opportunity to compete with even faster opponents in 2010.

After completing their new Group 2 VW Golf GTI, the Demon Rally Team won at the Wild West Rally in group two competition, finishing 4th overall on day two despite encountering several mechanical difficulties. Upon arriving home after the event, the team was amped about their success, but still wanted the ability to compete at the National Level. Both Rally America’s National Championship and NASA’s United States Rally Championship now recognize two wheel drive vehicles as one class; competing in a regionally limited class like group 2 was holding the Demon Rally Team back. When considering their options, the Demon Rally Team contacted their friends at CTS Turbo. CTS Turbo chose to join the Demon Rally Team as they moved up into the Group 5 Class.

The addition of CTS Turbo as a partner allows the team to compete in Group 5 competition by using their newest line of turbochargers from RP Turbo. RP Turbo was founded on the principle of providing OEM performance and quality without the inflated OEM price tag. Adhering to this simple principle has helped them to design and re-design components for turbocharging that are often more simplified, but function better, and are more reliable.

RP Turbos are some of the best turbocharging components in the industry and are made to their own exacting specifications. Demon Rally Team driver Tom Burress exclaimed, “I am amped about adding CTS Turbo to the team. We are nearly doubling the amount of horsepower the car produced with our new RP Turbo; as a driver, if that doesn’t pump you up I don’t know what would!”

The team is yet again rebuilding their VW Golf from top to bottom to accommodate their new RP Turbocharger supplied by CTS Turbo. Look for the Demon Rally Team to debut the Group 5 Evolution of their VW Golf at the Oregon Trail Rally in Portland, OR May 14-16, 2010.


Special thanks to all of the Demon Rally Team’s partners, including Fine Tuning, who continues to support the team for the 5th Year in a row as their title partner. The team’s impressive racing graphics are supplied and installed by Meister Gauge Faces, their programmable engine management is supplied by Spitfire EFI, and performance tuning is done by Ralley Tuned. Product Apparel takes care of the Demon Rally Team’s clothing needs.

CTS Turbo

http://www.ctsturbo.com

sales@ctsturbo.com

For more information contact:
DiRT Media
info@demonrally.com

© 2010 DemonRally.com

Nonetheless, the team forged on, and Pomeroy was our target again. The Wild West Rally shared a lot with the Olympus Rally of 2008 and the team felt like it would be a suitable entry point for us to make our return to rallying in the Pacific Northwest. After completing the car we had a chance to put the car through its paces locally on a test course, no real concerning dramas popped up at the time, but unknowingly we were about to be very surprised.

We arrived at Pomeroy the day before the event, looking forward to setting up a single local service point and participating in the press stage that was arranged for us. We all concluded one last shake down wouldn’t be a terrible thing, considering we were racing a new car. We hit the shakedown stage and back into the service area, only to discover we had lost about a quart of oil on the short 1-mile long stage. We had experienced small losses of oil in the past, its something to be expected when you push a vehicle very hard for a long time, but a quart of oil in one mile was not acceptable, at that rate we would loose all of the oil in the engine before the end of some of the stages.

We made some small changes to our breather setup, but nothing seemed to fix the problem, the idea of withdrawing from the event crossed the teams mind on several occasions before we realized, that this was rally, this was a new car, and we were going to have some challenges before us to make the car work.

We started the first day of the event, not knowing if our over night repairs of the car really would make a difference in the oil consumption. At the end of the first stage it was right back to service, when we arrived it was more of the same, about a quart of oil was missing…We struggled to find a problem and the only thing that we could come up with was that the engine was having difficulty breathing with our new setup, so a coordinated effort by Matt Manspeaker, John Lane, Jason, Charlie, and Brendan attempted to solve our dramas.

When we finished the second stage w had a chance to check on the oil consumption, fortunately, the breather drama had calmed down. We lost much less oil, my confidence in the car was starting to grow, and I felt like we could attempt to get into a good rhythm very soon.

During the second stage about a quarter of the way through the stage, Cody Crane, one of the top 2wd drivers in the PNW and who I considered our biggest threat for the weekend in 2wd, was off the roadway. My pace continued to improve as we approached the end of the stage, when I went to shift into second gear, the linkage wouldn’t move….we ended up finishing the stage in third gear, losing a pile of time in the last two miles of the stage. We got to the end of the stage and started working on the car, as we did it overheated because the fan wasn’t running on the car. We figured out a way to make the linkage work, kind of, and headed out to stage 3.

The linkage was dropping through the floor of the car and finding gears was difficult, in fact, Don had to grab a gear for me once on stage while I was following the road in front of me…My confidence was down due to my numerous concerns of oil consumption shit linkage concerns and overheating.

We came back into service hoping that we could get all of our dramas sorted out before we had to come back out and run three more stages in a row. Sure enough, the Demon Rally Service Team was able to quell the issues with the car

For the second three stages in a row we ran 30 seconds faster per stage in comparison with the first running of the stages, while we were still encountering issues with the shift linkage, we ended up slowly building a rhythm and became a bit more comfortable by the end of the first day.

On day two we started out strong and started off with the same pace we ended with on day two I was really starting to get comfortable with the car and hearing notes from Don too. Unfortunately half way through the second stage the front motor mount broke on the car, I knew immediately what had happened, but I didn’t slow until closer to the end of the stage. Upon finishing the stage we transited slowly to the start of the next stage. I opened the hood and saw the broken bolt on the motor mount, unfortunately I also looked down and saw the fan for the radiator was completely destroyed. It was apparent to me that we would have to withdraw, however we only had one stage to finish before service, and I figured that we could transit the stage, sure enough, we transited the stage, and we did it faster than a third of the field. Unfortunately we lost about 40 seconds on the stage to our closest 2wd competitor, Cody Crane.

When I arrived at service the crew got to work and repaired all of the damage that we accrued, replacing the front motor mount, as well as replacing the radiator fan. After leaving service we finally got into a good rhythym, setting top 2 overall stage times and taking top stage times for all two wheel drive competitors.

Overall this event was a huge statement for the Demon Rally Team and for grass roots rallying. Despite all of our teething issues, we were able to successful compete with a brand new race car and put it in the top of the field consistently through the event. The Demon Rally Team finished 6th overall on day one and 4th overall on day two; we took 1st place in Group 2 on both days as well as top two wheel drive finishers for the event overall.

Big thanks goes to all of our partners, without them none of our successes would be possible. Fine Tuning, Meister Autowerks, Ralley Tuned, Spitfire EFI, JVAB imports, Product Apparel, 034 EFI, and Techtonics Tuning.

We are looking forward to big changes for next season and the Doo Wop Rally in Aberdeen, WA March 6-7, 2010.

Thanks for checking in. As always, we’ll see you there, sideways!

We’ll also be bringing some shirts and decals to Wild West, if you’d like to save on shipping costs.

Look for more items on the merchandise page, like spare rally parts, in the future.

The Spitfire EFI crew came down from Bellingham and Brendan from Ralley Tuned traveled up with the team for testing. Both Spitfire EFI as well as Ralley Tuned have been integral partners in developing a phenomenal engine management package specifically designed and programmed with the Demon Rally Team’s racing needs in mind.

Testing thus far has been incredibly successful. Our first shakedown of the car revealed only a few minor issues. Our main goal in the first session was to check our fresh JVAB rally suspension as well as our tuned spring package. With help from Josh Wimpey we were able to get some very helpful input on spring selection, since they had been running a similar JVAB designed suspension on their own very quick Golf. We were able to run the car at very high rates of speed over some very treacherous terrain without incident, and with incredible predictability. The suspension testing went as planned if not better than planned, we don’t anticipate a spring or dampening adjustment in the near future with our current JVAB setup. In comparison to the rabbit we have an amazing amount of travel and feeling with the Golf, hopefully that will translate into some very fast stage times at our next event in Pomeroy, Washington September 25th-26th at the Wild West Rally.

Our second testing session was successful as well. We returned to our shakedown location for another run through the Skagit County woodland, this time we chose to run the car at night to check how the car ran with a full load on the alternator with our light pod installed. While the car had no problem managing the electrical load the extra lighting taxed it with, I started to notice a few areas in the car’s tuning that needed some attention. A clunk in the strut top started to grab my attention along with the tuning issues and we chose to call it a night after only a few runs at night through the woods.

Overall it was an incredibly successful shakedown. We discovered a few minor issues that would’ve been annoying at an event but certainly wouldn’t have caused a DNF. We are well on our way to debut the car at the Wild West Rally.

Look for images and video of the car from this weekend’s testing session to be posted soon.

Thanks for checking in. As always, we’ll see you there, sideways!

Thanks to Brendan from RalleyTuned and the guys from SpitfireEFI for all their hard work on the myriad small technicalities that kept the car from running!!

Everyone is super excited and we’ll be testing out the new car at Wild West, barring any further difficulty.

See you on the stages!!

In the past few days we have made significant progress to getting things back together. The engine is ready for it’s fluids, the brakes have fluid in them, the custom rule-required protection on the fuel cell is installed, the suspension is ready to be adjusted, the hubs and bearings on all the corners have been refurbished and installed, the co-drivers seat and foot rest are installed, the transmission is in and hooked up to the axles, etc. etc. etc.

The to-do list is still long, so we’re putting in extra hours over the next couple of days to get everything sorted. Wiring should be finished on Wednesday and the car should start (fingers crossed) that day. There are a lot of incidental finishing tasks that must be done before we can head out on the long No Alibi trip. But we are doing our best to get some long distance testing in before we start tuning and tweaking.

Stay tuned to see if we make it!

I started installing Stack Dash sensors on the oil filter flange, but I guess I got too excited and ruined a $50 temperature sesnor along with the filter flange…luckily I had a spare filter flange….down goes another $50 along with an hour or so of my time without making any progress.

Brendan brought over his label maker and I was able to start labeling the plethora of switches, its nice to see everything start to come together…doing a little finish work goes along way towards motivation.

It looks like we’ll be able to drill and tap the factory aluminum coolant pipe on the driver’s side of the head for the Stack Dash water temp sensor, hopefully we can get that done next weekend when the tap comes in.

Don put the car back up on stands and I started with the exhaust. The Techtonics race header is awesome, just a little tight under the shifter for our application. Cascade Autosport changed the original exhaust configuration to a passenger side exit with a Magnaflow muffler out back and the cat up front. Well I stole that cat for my daily driver and I wanted to change out mufflers and the cat for something a bit more race specific anyways.

I snagged a Dynomax Bullet Race muffler. It’s compact design allows for an install just past the header, with a bit of shielding it will be tight and protected from the debris kicked up. I snagged a metal core catalytic converter and we will end up running that at the back of the exhaust system, using the cat as a tail pipe. After mocking almost everything up (I need to snag just a couple more feet of 2.25″ pipe), it’ll be a great fit, tucked up right against the body shell. We’ll add protection to the bottom of the exhaust system. I used some small scraps of 1/2″ particle board to keep good clearances. The exhaust is so tight in the back of the car that I had to bore a hole in the rear valance on the passenger side for the exhaust to come straight out. The straight through design with very few bends should give us a nice performance gain when its all said and done…hopefully the car will be quiet enough to pass Tech.

The center carbon switch panel mounts got fabbed up, I used nutserts as it should be a low stress environment and trying to reach a nut in that location would be a huge PITA. I also was able to mount the Relay Panel inside the center console, I need to add a rear support bracket, but it looks great, a couple more center console mounts, some trimming and addition of carbon panels and it will look great.

As usual one step forward usually means a few more things to add to the TO DO list, and a couple hundred more dollars to spend, but we are making progress despite being 3 months past our original completion date. Our new date of completion will be July 9-11th at the Idaho Rally

Check out the rest of the build gallery

Wiring is coming along nicely. The rear of the car (lights, fuel pump, interior light) is completely wired. The interior lighting and instrumentation is mostly wired. All that remains is the engine management and some final testing and tweaking. Brendon from RalleyTuned is doing a fantastic job!

We also installed our shiny new JVAB custom coilovers and, quite simply, they are amazing. We probably spent a good hour just staring at them and imagining the forces necessary to damage them at all. These things are well-engineered tanks. They also extend the travel of our suspension by inches, requiring some “customization” of the top of mounting point for the A-arm. A couple install/remove/re-install cycles, a little heat and a lot of hammering got the offending piece of metal to behave and allowed the axle to roam free from full compression to full droop.

On top of doing a ton of wiring and installing the suspension, we also installed the intake, fuel pressure regulator, sealed up a leak in the rear lexan, put on the mirrors, and started the install for the crank trigger ignition.

Here are a couple pictures. More in the build gallery!

THE American two-wheel drive Rally Series updates and refines its already impressive format. The Demon Rally Team will be competing at Rally Idaho, the Max-Attack series Western event, with hopes to qualify to compete against the nation’s best Two-wheel drive racers in Michigan on August 28-29.