Motokhana

28 May 2000

Never having seen a Motokhana I didn't know what to expect today - other than the compulsory "spray that dirt"approach of some of the more spirited Subaru 4WD Club of Qld members. Well I learnt a thing or three...

The motokhana was held at Arnold & Pat's place near Maclean. They have 12 acres of land in a long narrow strip. The morning started off with people turning up late - I was first and 25 minutes late - on a dry and cool Sunday morning in the last weekend of autumn 2000. Just as I arrived Camo pulled in behind me. Rick, who was staying there, told us that Arnold was already down the back finishing setting things up, so we went down. Most of the people arrived fairly soon afterwards - other than a couple who called up at 9:30 to say they had just woken up after sleeping through their alarm and still had a long drive to get here (no names mentioned).

The day was starting to get Interesting now that we had a lot of people willing to test their skills with their cars. Several events were organised and a scoring sheet drawn up. Stop watches were used to time us and 10 seconds added to the time for every witch's hat we bumped. The Challenger won that one outright - more on that later.

The first event was a slalom with the witch's hats quite close together and the loop down the far end going through a dip. That dip turned out to be a great provider of fun, leaps, CV joint worries and rough landings! It was a dried up dam about 6 m in diameter with a 1 m steep exit and a U turn just after that. If you were to go through the dam in 2nd, in a lifted car, your bumper would hit the exit wall because of the angle! Everyone had at least one wheel in the air when leaving it in the slalom. Rick really fanged it through and had all 4 wheels way up there for a nice long jump. He had 2 - 3 feet of air under his front tyres and one foot under the back before his front decided to turn down and try its hand at ploughing!  The car made a very jarring crunch when it landed and he continued on virtually undamaged. The ground had another story to tell. His car took out a half square metre of grass and up to 10cm of soil from under it too!  The only problem he reported throughout the day was that his throttle was staying open, which it did randomly. Strange problem and probably nothing to do with his driving either. The big cars didn't have the turning circle to get through the witches hats readily and so there was a bit of backing and turning. Even the Subarus did that a bit, mostly as a result of too much power or inexperience. Matt's CV started playing up - it disengaged itself when his wheels were at their extreme travel, made horrible grinding sounds and then popped back in to place. He didn't miss an event, but by the end of the day was able to do awesome rear-wheel-drive only donuts! Wild and bloody unique for a front wheel drive car! Last I saw him he was driving home while both ears were on his future repairs.

The next event was doing the slalom in reverse. We did the first leg forwards and from then on in reverse other than the final return leg which was also forwards. This was fun and because the witch's hats were quite close to each other we had to pick them up again frequently. It was amazing watching the different approaches to this one. Some people gunned it and were constantly stopping, going forwards, turning and continuing. While others just puttered through rarely taking their foot of the clutch because they were often going too slow to do it. Parts of this course were best done in a slow and steady approach as visibility was very poor at times. That's why some of the hats are a bit flatter now... I seem to recall a Challenger giving it a bit much right foot and swerving madly to avoid hats while actually creaming most of them. It was hilarious and the whole crowd cheered him on.

Next came the hardest one - The blind-folded forward Slalom. This was where the driver was blind‑folded by a thick towel and the passenger gave ALL navigation instructions verbally. To make it possible every second witches hat was removed from the straight stretch. That didn't stop us from rolling in laughter. No way! Witches hats fell left and right, passengers squealed instead of giving instructions, drivers who didn't know where the steering wheels were pointing headed the wrong way and instructions shouted from bystanders were acted on by drivers without the navigator's input. Luckily it was all in good fun and no-one  gave over-board instructions...

Would have been fun though. The interesting thing with this one was that it was common for the navigators to keep telling the drivers to speed up. When I was going through I had no feeling of how fast I was going and was actually stopped by the slope a few times without realising it. The winners for this one were both cool-headed and good communicators. The times for this event varied by not as much as you might expect. Only around 2 minutes between 1st and last. My car stalled at the start and at the finish I was told Cameron did it. Don't know how he did it, I didn't see him anywhere near the car - couldn't see anyone actually.

The Ball Park was next on the agenda. It's impossible to describe other than to say It was: forwards, turn, gun it, stop in car park 1, long reverse and 90 deg turn in to car park 2, dog leg forward to car park 3, VERY SHARP 90 deg reverse turn back into car park 1 (which very few made in one try), long straight and 90 deg turn in to the finishing car park where you had to stop as close as possible to a short witches hat (only as high as the bottom of your bumper). It was great because everyone got very close to the stopping hat 0 - 40cm (ave 8-20) and it was only nudged once. Of course some of the hats were creamed and one hat got reversed over twice in 5 seconds. The driver reversed over it, went forward, didn't correct enough and went over it again - just to be sure I suppose !

The Can Slalom was simple clean fun. We had a row of 5 witches hats with empty drink cans resting on poles poking out of them. The idea was for the passenger to reach out and grab one as you skidded to a stop next to it, you then reversed back madly to your starting point where your passenger threw the can into a milk crate. If they missed you had to wait for them to get out of the car, pick it up and throw It in and get back in the car before continuing to the next can. You were penalised 10 seconds for not getting all of your car in the drop off bay also. One of the milk crates has not much of a future now - a few cars ran partly over it...

The Hand Slalom came next. We were told to get our spare tyres from our cars fast and pile them together. The last person would get a ten point (10  second) penalty. Three of us sat that bit out. Then we had to all line up at the starting gate with a tyre and, all at the same time, roll them through a mini-slalom and back. That was complete chaos as people were tripped, run over and their tyres pushed away from them. I  should know, I got a nice tread pattern up my legs after I stumbled and had to madly get up and get my tyre back on track before it went too far off course. All in all there was heaps of laughter in this event, even by those people who were being run over - I suppose we can now be called road kill. The Beverly Hillbillies might even have us over for dinner.

That left us with all events done and just a bit of playing In our hosts back paddock and creek. I knew this could be fun because Rick had already been towed out of the boggy sand patch. By Club standards it was medium with a short medium-hard bit, the sand. We went through the creek, up a steep rutted track, wove in and out among the trees for a while, over a log, down gullies, up VERY steep banks with sharp blind turns on the peak (one car rested on Its belly temporarily on one of those - not enough speed), came down into the sandy creek and had to make a 80 deg turn in the sand next to a big rock and back up the entry track. I hit the rock and was rolled to the left 60cm straight towards a vertical embankment. When I moved back Rick rolled the rock out of the way and then the sand let my car crawl ever-so­slowly forwards until I got out. Nice fun track but without a navigator or blazing posts you are bound for trouble or tow rope. Total length about 400 m. Half 2WD and half serious 4WD.

We all headed back to the starting point and then sang Happy Birthday to Arnold - twice - the second time because one of his dogs was hurried down to sing along...

Rating: Excellent!  Can't wait for the next one!

Thank you very much for a great day!

Peter Brown SC445