Dakar 2010 Foz

Watched the highlights on telly last night. Great stuff
 
Too bad the Fozs only lasted till Stage 3!
 
^ that would be fantastic!
 
in all seriousness, how much work do u think you'd need to do to a suby to get it good for the dakar?

i dont rekon heps if you were willing to go easy/slowley.

i think you'd start with the turbo motor for the extra power over dunes

other than that just the usual like a lift bigger tyres and cut out the guards and a bit of body work, for clearance of tyres and bullbar, some better struts (stronger and stiffer) a light bar for night time. pluss all the safety gear. what else do u rekon?
 
i have a mate with a 2 cylinder subaru motor we can make a motorbike outa, or 4wheeler.
do suby make any trucks?
maybe one day we could host a mini dakar in aussie
 
benwarn said:
i dont rekon heps if you were willing to go easy/slowley.
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Problem is that you have to get to the final checkpoint of each stage by a certain time and if you're too slow - you're out!

Does anyone know what knocked the Foresters out? Strange that they both retired on Stage 3 - unless one was simply the spares mule for the other.
 
Preparing a car for this would be incredible. I guess unless you have been involved with race prepping a car for a rally, it is difficult to comprehend. When we were doing selected rounds of the ARC and APRC, we were only doing 2 day events. And tough as these stages are on a car, rally raids like Dakar are something else again, and they go for 2 weeks.

When I say you leave nothing to chance, it does not not convey the level of preparation that is needed. The logisitics alone are a big enough challenge- what with food accommodation, transport, and so on. Training your crew is another aspect that takes time because your budget is low and expenses very high.

Then you look at all the spares you will need. I don't know Dakar rules but we had spare driveshafts, lights, and so on. Think of hubs, strut tops, panels, glass, gearbox, clutch, starter, battery, hoses, tyres, rims, discs, pads- where do you stop? I had a huge box of spare nuts and bolts for the whole car

Then you have to meticulously engineer the car, trying to look out for weak links and make them stronger. I've seen people race prepare a car, only to have brake failure because they did not engineer the attachments of the brake hose and they rubbed against a tyre until it wore through. No brakes. You will need to re-enforce the strut towers, stitch weld the whole front end and much of the rear end around the towers

Then you have the final build, being careful to leave nothing out. You then go over it again, before a thorough bumper to bumper spanner check.

You then have to organise your crew as to who does what, making sure obvious things like re-fuelling are not forgotten. There are a million other things that need doing, and we have not touched sponsorship and keeping the sponsors happy. It took 18 months to build our WRX and it was slow but it was reasonably well prepared. And then you can be taken out by someone dislodging a rock, or hitting a kangaroo on the transport stage first thing in the morning.

Rallying is a very tough sport. What these blokes do is awe inspiring. It requires massive amounts of work and even more passion. What you see on TV does not get within the same galaxy as to how tough it really is and the amount of preparation needed.
 
Check out the thread on the Ausubaru forums where a one of our faithful Subaru fanatics (Brumbyrunner) has built up a car for the Finke desert race (our version of the Dakar in many respects).

His car did get a mention in a few little ways in the magazines but there is much more for him to do to bring it to the reliable and strong state it needs to be in to win. Awe inspiring thread with LOTS of pictures showing the work done... as Rally implied. Basically, it's a Brumby running WRX STI mechanicals, rear mounted radiator, big turbo, stitch welded body, 31" mud tyres, pretty awful but interesting gold paint job.... very impressive job and VERY thorough yet still more strength to build into it. He's already got a decent list of sponsors helping him too.

If you haven't registered you won't be able to read it but it's so worthwhile.

https://www.ausubaru.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=70
 
^ you can view without registering

And - BTW - I just noticed your tag ! :lol:
 
Subaru @ Dakar?

Thanks to who ever that was with the fid about Subaru at 2010 Dakar
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. I am such a fanatic and am pleased to now have a car in my stable that has participated in the greatest race on earth.

Along with the Subaru I have 1 BMW motorcycle, 2 KTMs, and had 1 Ducati all that have won the Dakar.

Any ideas as to what we can do to get a Subaru up in the standings or on the podium?

Over on Advrider.com we have a group called the RiffRaff who with contributing financial support are a part of team Rally PanAm, Jonah Street. Who finished 7th this year. Contributors get the satisfaction of participating in the Dakar from our computers and the team gets a financial boost from us. We also get some fantastic KLIM wear as a contributor.

It is a win/win situation.

So a question - is any one here know or is associated with a Subaru Dakar effort that we could team up with, I mean contribute $ to to help them elevate their effort?

I guess another more pressing ? is their any interest here to do such a thing?


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First we would need to know what went wrong? I know they retired in stage 3 - wouldn't have been strut probelms by any chance?
 
Back to torsion bars I say! :monkeydance:

VWs were never as good once they went to struts, either! :discomonkey:

You don't ever hear of torsion bars breaking. :poke:
 
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