I am not long back from the Finke, and I would like to thank you for the support you posted on this forum.
I am from Orange NSW, and there was another competitor at Finke from here as well. Andrew Caro/Tim Smith ran a Ford Courier, I would like to congratulate them on a great and very mature effort. They won their class, well done boys.
Well, I have only run a few off road events including the Condo 750, Colo, and I have seen the Crookwell track. None of these events gave me any clue as to what to expect at the Finke.
The majority of the road are "whooshes", they can vary from a couple of feet deep to over a metre. The drivers that have run the course before, said it was not as bad this year, however, as I was a virgin to the red country, they were an eye opener. It was not so much the whooshes themselves, but the fact that they never stopped, apart for a smooth blat in the middle for about 15 km.
I had heard many stories about the track and set out with the goal of hopefully getting to the finish. I knew that the Super 1650 class I was in, on previous result, would be doing well if they finished mid field.
We ran the prologue and I was surprised to be 3rd in class. It had rained the night before and was still raining when we went for our run around the track. The course was very slippery and I was glad that I had installed a windscreen.
Because the buggy was so dirty, we spent a couple of hours washing it down. I now wish we had not, because as I booted the accelerator at the start line it coughed and spluttered, we were running on three cylinders. After stopping, we could not find the problem, so I continued on. We did the 1st leg to Finke running on three cylinders. What a shit, but we got there in 3.5 hours. We check the car at Finke (now having Allen keys to take of the Valley Cover and found that the spark plug tube of number four cylinder was full of water. I must admit, I was surprised as I thought that after 230 km it would have evaporated away!
More of a surprise was the fact that we were 2nd in class and only a few minutes away from the class leader.
Leg two, the run home - I must say at this point of time I had "the red mist in my eyes". For the 1st half of the course the buggy was firing, we had passed about a dozen other competitors, I was enjoying using third and top gear instead of first and second, which was the case on the 1st leg.
Than it all went sour on the fast section in the middle of the run we had a puncture. We changed the tyre quickly then set off, about 2 km down the road the second tyre busted. We tried to drive on for about 10 km at about 10km per hour, on the flat (rear). Then we thought it might be easier if we put the rear flat on the front for more control. When changing the rear, I found that the bolt holding the coil over shock and spring had come undone causing the two punctures. I removed the shock and we continued using the bump stop as a spring. We had about 100km to go to get to Alice and that elusive finishing line.
We were hoping that we could find a broken down buggy, so we could borrow a wheel. Although we found a few along the route, the owners were either not with there car or they were not willing to part with one of their wheels.
The flat tyre flapped and flopped around for the next 50 odd km, until it eventually came of all together, this was great because I could now steer the car.
We had no idea of how much time we had lost apart from checking with the officials on course. The officials radioed into HQ saying for us to keep going, they would pull us off the course if we ran out of time.
Because the spectators had UHF, they and the ABC radio station that was commentating on the event had heard of our plight. The spectators would rush to the edge of the track cheering and waving us on. The support and enthusiasm they were showing was unreal. My co-driver Darren Elliott and I were absolutely stoked. At about the 40 Km mark we said "stuff-it instead of just poking along - lets just go for it". So driving on a flat and no rear spring on one side I pushed the throttle of that little buggy as hard as I could, the people cheered even louder (I guess a lot of people have never seen a buggy running on three wheels at warp speed!)
We reached the finish line and I have never been so glad - we went down and back and that was my goal, what an experience.
as i said in the finke thread well done. and after reading your thread sound like you really worked for you result. i will have to catch up with you some time i was checking out your buggy over a midstate mufflers while it was getting worked on it's a nice machine.
Sincere congratulations :) I think many people have many stories, thats the best part of off-road, and especially Finke! I know people still have great memories of the 'Kempsey 1000', but in present day...nothing beats the challenge of the Finke!!! The atmosphere of Finke is hard to replicate, and to finish is an accomplishment...again congratulations.
Hi, I made a mistake in my story, I said "Andrew Caro/Tim Smith ran a Ford Courier, the majority of this statement is correct. However the co-drivers name is Tim Sharp, not Smith. Sorry Tim.
