#########LATEST UPDATE FROM DENIAN##########
Just spoke to Hobzee who's standing by a fire awaiting their run on the Arabian Nights SS and this is a run down of todays news
- PGS boys not seen at Denian all day but reason unknown.
- Hoon running standard harmonic balancer and is taking it easy as he reckons it will come loose again.
- Huddy & Nick Mannell re-joined the group.
- Last nights SS consisted of 20 waypoints with a 70 min DNF. About 5 teams found all 20, 2-3 teams found 19 and then the rest of the field dropped away from there. Lots of dust on the SS with half the field on the SS at once. Anthony Kilner had a minor engine bay fire but no damage done. Believe this to be caused by a stripped captive nut for securing a rocker cover and hence rocker cover leaking.
- GunBarrel SS today had Greg Scanlon finishing 1st even though he was on 5 cyl. due to an injector issue. Bruce Borchardt claimed 2nd.
Hoon and Jeff Redman raced against each other with Redman returning quickest but both missed the same gate and recieved DNF's
- Sand Wall SS consisted of climbing the wall and then a 5 km/5 waypoint run with a 20 min DNF. Also navvies had to climb the wall this year. Only 5 teams finished inside the DNF
with the other teams having a variety of problems including winch/power issues, buried vehicles, anchors not holding, struggling with Lat/Long HDDD MM.MMM format
No team drove the wall but Al Mac drove the furthest falling one Jeep length short of driving the wall. That's where the stage ended for Al as his winch was in the back of the Jeep in pieces
When practising in the morning the winch wouldn't stop winching in and self-destructed
In the process of pulling battery leads to stop winch a terminal post was also removed
They spent sometime grinding/welding this arvo so hopefully they have a usable winch again but will only be 12V.
- Not sure if it was during the nav section of the Sand Wall SS but Huddy ran over a substantial log at full throttle and buckled both front beadlock rims. He finished the last 2km of the SS with both front tyres hanging off the rims but the tyres suffered no damage
He's running the General Tyre and there's a selling point if one's needed
- Only 4 teams haven't recieved a DNF so far and it really looks like this year, more than ever, will come down to a balance of driving to win and driving to conserve the vehicle. Those that haven't recieved a DNF and in the presumed current running order are -
1st - Coops/Hummer (Team to be beat and looking strong)
2nd - Greg Scanlon (Running on 5 cyl. which may help conserve driveline)
3rd - Lawrie/Hobzee (Not pushing it to the limits until later in the week)
4th - Max/Cosmo (Just cruising along but will hopefully avoid parking the Jeep on a rock this year)
Hobzee is going to ring after Arabian Nights with what he knows providing it's not too late
Don't have any other placings/details at this stage and as always my apologies for any inaccurate details but Hobzee had poor reception and please don't shoot the messenger
Cheers, The Fish
........... but he had no idea about Nick's state after damage Sat nite. They about to leave 4 Denian....reception not good as u know!
Celia
but reading the updates as they come through is the next best thing.
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