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Croatia Trophy 2016


Daan

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Well done, glad you had a good event, how much damage has your series sustained?

Wings are a little reshaped and a bit of the bumper is missing having seen one of the photos.

Well done for completing it Daan! You must be proper chuffed :)

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Very, very Well Done !!!!

Looking at the videos etc. it was indeed a very wet event.

You did very, very well and can be very proud.

Looking forward to hear more.

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Ok, so here we go:

the event starts of with arrival in camp, scrutineering and stickering of the car.

After a flag off in the village of topusko you go and do the prologue. Basically, a group of four cars sprints off for them to arrive 200 m further to take a short lap round a hard course. It showed a big spread in performance and ability in offroading. We set off and arrived in 3rd to take the course, behind two fast cars but in front of the dutch 110. This was good, because we were expecting to loose time if we were behind the 110 because of its size. ! winch was enough for us, which put us in 15th position. A few cars, as usual broke, and 1 rolled before the event had even started properly.

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day 2 started with a bang, as we put the car on its side about 3 km in. I tried to straddle a rut, than the rut turned very deep and the bank very high, so we were on our side. Peter and paul (in the 110) put us back on our wheels and 10 minutes later we were going again. The navigation was a bit thrown, because we lost our distances when we switched of the main switch. We got back into it, but it was late untill we reached the end of 50km stage. The organisation did not want us to do the last bit in the river in the dark, so we called it a day. We still got a classified time for our efforts.

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day 3 was a similar effort, the distance traveled seems a lot for us, most people in trophy are running portals, and only need to winch half as much.

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Then we had the trophy day; there was a tough course to get there, with a roll of a dutch car, which we had to get around. the trophy involves a team of four cars which have to do 2 courses. One heavy roll of the czech tomcat was spectacular, but a bit unneccessary. We had been teamed up with fritz becker in a g-wagen, and paul bass from challenger offroad, and the israel team. we didn't put a foot wrong I think and had a decent time. in the evening there was the night stage; we were a bit out of our depth with navigating in the dark, and a bit short of lights, so we called it a day early on.

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day 4 was the circuit race: 3 laps of a 4 km course. The lack of portals was definately costing us and we timed last.

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(brake pads after day 3; they were new at the start!)

Day 5 was itneresting to say the least; about 20 km in we slid down a hill and crashed with our rh wheel onto a tree stump. this gave a massive dent in a wheel, but more worryingly, we broke the panhard rod of the chassis. we limped back into camp and trailered the car to topusko for the garage to have a go at fixing. They were magicians with a welder and a portapower to remove the dent in the wheel. They wanted £30 for it, which probably gets you a lightbulb in the uk! I did think our race was over , but we were still on. I had thought that it was mainly a case of finishing every stage, however, most teams were unable to start every stage, and that was were we collected points.

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Day 6 was again a very tough stage, and at km 25, we got lost. We were not alone, there were 6 other cars who were unable to find there way. Later it seemed a new road was being created since the roadbook was made and that is what thrown us. Lack of experience with the roadbook?

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The last day was 40 km to the foto finish. We had a great day, and made a good time. It occurred to me that we could have done very well in the adventure class, as we overtook 5 of those. as it was, we were classified 17th car out of 32 in the trophy class. In all, it rained almost the whole week, which made this one of the toughest croatia trophys in history. A remarkable experience, and many lessons learnt. It was great to be out there with the big guns.

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Thanks to mark for codriving, and steve and ken as back up crew and the transport of the car.

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Daan

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I don't think portals are a good idea for my 88" landy, it would give a 4" lift, which would make it a bit unstable. Portals is more for a special build, 100" buggy in my opinion.

With regards to class rules, there aren't any. There is a vague rule about adventure class being road legal, from a major manufacturer. But there was an Estonian team which fielded 3 buggys in adventure, all with portals, big wheels and big v8's. Unsurprisingly, they took 1, 2 and 3 in adventure. This gave a lot of grumbling from the competitiors, as they were clearly not in the right category. I think a distinction should be made between portals and no portals to decide what class you run, but at the moment, there is not such thing.

Daan

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From the rules on the event site, it's not clear what the rules are. I'm not sure if they ever pay them any notice.


Every 4×4 vehicle that is road legal in its country of origin (has a registration plate and a valid international insurance certificate) is allowed to enter the race.
Prototypes are not eligible

Not sure how many of the cars that are actually road legal within EU.

Only thing I can see as a clear difference between Adventure and Trophy-class is the demand for a rear winch in trophy-class.

We planed to participate in the Adventure class. Someone said that I needed to replace my GoodWinch TDS9.5 winches before entering, at least the one in the front.

I planed to replace my old 200tdi, which has made approx. 500.000 km and also replace the stock 24 splines halfshafts with heavy duty ones.

I've now done the engine swap, now I've got a 300tdi with half the mileage, but still run stock halfshafts (and the rest),

Not sure what Tires are needed, plan to get a new set of Insa Turbo Special Track 285/75R16 or something like that, but are a bit unsure.

For Pomerania Trophy, we've used a set of old Wrangler 35 inches tyres, they work fine in the terrain, but not so fine in the mud.

Hope to be able to enter CT next year...

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I'd say, less than 35" is not going to be enough. We have 35" simex, running on 8 PSI throughout the event. The grip was ok, the height not. Many people ran the trepadors, but really that is not the right tyre for Croatia when wet, in my opinion.

we have used the pto winch a lot over there. winches and current supply were the main reason for failure, so that has to be top notch.

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Back home...

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Many dents added, and those abs wings dont dent, but they break! A shame we lost the bumper end, as it is a lot of work to make that again. Also, on the last day we noticed a lot of muddy water in the cam belt chest; we ran without the plug on the last 20 k to make sure the cambelt was not submerged all the time. Paul bass said that his 300 tdi was doing exactly the same. I also had the problem before in Russia, so that needs sorting somehow.


Daan
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Poor girl ,well I guess it was doing what it was built for ,don't know why I wanted to see pictures of the damage ,must be the stockcar racer in me ! Well done on finishing the event ,a feat in itself ,always fancied doing Ladoga ,hmmmmm..............

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Great result Daan and write up too , thanks . Do you have a breather in the cambelt housing ?

cheers

Steveb

yes, and using the gwyn lewis connectors that grip on the OD of the breather pipe, rather than the ID which solves the clogging problem. I am pretty sure it is the crank seal that gives up the goast after about 5 days of gritty solution. This runs dry, without lubrication so it is not any easy task to solve.

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Poor girl ,well I guess it was doing what it was built for ,don't know why I wanted to see pictures of the damage ,must be the stockcar racer in me ! Well done on finishing the event ,a feat in itself ,always fancied doing Ladoga ,hmmmmm..............

Well, Ladoga is perfectly possible if you have a reliable car, we did it in 2009 (not that reliable, but we finished in 6th position in TR2).

Daan

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Sat in my yard is a half finished ,Bull nosed ,Bobtailed ,Traybacked Disco 200 that was intended to eventually compete at Ladoga but the owner lost interest and I got sick of doing the work myself ,keep meaning to dig out some piccies .Mind you the 36" Simex he bought look good on my 110 !

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Sat in my yard is a half finished ,Bull nosed ,Bobtailed ,Traybacked Disco 200 that was intended to eventually compete at Ladoga but the owner lost interest and I got sick of doing the work myself ,keep meaning to dig out some piccies .Mind you the 36" Simex he bought look good on my 110 !

problem with a trayback is that this changes the silhouette of the car, which puts you in TR3, were all the protos play. That will make your life hell!

Daan

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