On Track SS Winch Challenge - Victoria (Australia)
Posted by webmaster | Uncategorized | Posted on September 29th, 2009
The On-Track SS, held at Bindaree, in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.
A 2 car teams event, only in it’s second year, designed to half multiple winch’s, and plenty of driving time, whilst still utilising all the short course hardcore tracks.
The course is navigated using a road book, with tulips and track notes to get you between the points, where necessary there where arrows and bunting to guide you through. The event has just two stages, daylight and dark, it kicked of at 1.30 in the afternoon, the DNF time was you had to make the finish line before dark. Within 2 minutes teams hit there first obstacle, winching through a bog hole, then straight into a hill climb with further winching, a great warm up for the navi’s. Just as the navi’s jumped back in the teams hit another water hole, the first car typically getting stuck and the second driving along the edge, but then in to the next hill climb, where winch was required yet again.
The most popular winching technique was to have a Gigglepin winch on the led vehicle and the second vehicle hook onto the back of the first, with free-spool engaged. As soon as the led team winched past the nasty bits, the second car engaged free-spool and winch up off the back of the first car. Allot of the time both cars where winching simultaneously, the second car was flying with the combined winch speed launching them up the hill climb.
After this hill climb there was 10 min’s of tight driving between trees, through two creek crossing that where drivable, into a series of off camber articulation testing wombat holes, that some teams winched through, a short speed section along a formed road before dropping back down to the creek to a mongrel long winch hill, named Paul’s Hill, as he was the last one to roll on it,
6
times…
With both cars hooked together it was a very fast winch up the 50m hill, the good thing about being the second car from the navi’s point of view is he only had to run as far as the car in front to hook on.
Once clear of the winch hill there where more tight tracks between trees before dropping down a slippery off camber down hill and into a creek crossing where everyone winched out. Unfortunately, Johnny in the blue Jeep hooked onto a 2 foot diameter dead tree and the Gigglepin winched it over onto his roof, bending his roll bar, braking his roof lights, and transmission coolers, breaking his windscreen, and generally bending allot of stuff.
Once he got the tree off his roof he keep going into a series of creek crossings, back out into a clearing then into a rocky creek where some winched, before looping back around through the creek again, (winching) and up Al’s Hill (winching). Once clear of Al’s hill the nav’s got a few minutes rest as we wound our way between gum trees and wombat holes, until we eventually ended up back at the creek, winching through two bogs, about 100m apart, once clear of the second bog, we had a short hill climb to winch up, only about 30m, but full of huge rocks and near vertical. We then drove through the next section of big wombat holes that had wheels lifting and tyre rubbing until turning left onto a red clay, and back out with the winch again. Once again we twin winch, with the Gigglepin up front and hauled the second car up like a sling shot.
After this hill the navi’s got a well earned rest, as the next 5km’s was tight, lock to lock steering through trees, jumping large tree roots across the track, slippery down hills, where you had to turn right just before the bog at the bottom of the hill, if you could…
Then onto Wally’s hill, a nasty rock strewn 45 degree face, with vertical ledges, but thankfully only 30m long. Once clear we were back into tight driving, a did open up a bit so you could use the power, but the track was full of jump ups, ruts, water and mud for the next 5kms.
Just as you where getting to the last few pages of notes we went down a steep slop near the river and turned sharply up another rock strewn face, with 1 meter high ledges, staggered across the face, making picking a good line nearly impossible, again with the winch, full cable length to get clear of the rock ledges. Our second car got hung up on a rock with the diff pumpkin, (we where running 37’s) and his Warn High mount only had a single 6hp motor on which nearly stalled, so we hooked up the led car to a tree a bit further up the hill and winched both cars up to get him over the rocks, unbelievable how hard these winch’s pull…
From here on it was a fast drive on clear tracks with one more hill climb,
(drivable) and sideways through the finish line. Awesome stage, 2 hrs a 1 minute for the fastest team, over 4 hours for the slowest, and only four teams made it.
the night stage was similar, but it rained and became harder, only three teams finished the night stage, the longest team taking in excess of 4hrs to get to the finish line.
　
　
The party then continued until 5.30am the following morning…