The dirty thirtieth
The third round of this season’s CZ CTC was hosted by the Wellington Jeep Club at Orongorongo Station south of Wainuiomata on Saturday November 11 2017.
By my count this was the thirtieth round of the Central Zone Club Truck Challenge ( CTC) held since it all began in 2011. Mark Watchorn is still aboard controlling the series and rules have had very few changes since the start, a good indication that they were basically right. For Round 3 we headed to Orongorongo Station, south of Wainuiomata a venue which Wellington Jeep Club has used before. The week before Jeep Club members Bruce, Don, Tony, Tom, Jess, Glen, Dave and Andrew, and Cruiser Club members Marty and Hayden all helped to peg out the hazards. We had a couple of novices join us on this day and they picked up the basics straight away but the coaching the other competitors gave them was cool so here’s another lesson about Club Trucking.
Keeping traction the key
The key is keeping traction while you navigate the hazard. There are separate classes to equalize the level of modifications between vehicles but changes to the engine or power output aren’t considered, only traction aids be they LSD, lockers or nothing. I think that tells you what is considered more important, keeping traction over outright power and that means you can compete in a fairly standard machine. The hazards are a route through natural terrain, that can include water up to 1.0 metre deep, marked by pairs of pegs forming a gate that you must pass through without touching the peg at all, let alone knocking it over. A perfect score of zero is obtained by completing the hazard in one motion; with no stopping or backing up. You can pass outside of the straight line between the consecutive gates with up to three of your four wheels, however, which can give you options of your line through the hazard.
Hub centre
You are defined as passing through the scoring pegs when your hub of your front wheel passes the line described by the left and right peg of the same score, so you don’t need to get the whole vehicle through, especially the last set that you make. It can be a matter of lunging your vehicle through when you feel that your vehicle is losing forward motion and momentum. So like we said last month you just need to know your vehicle; what clearance you have underneath, how the suspension reacts to terrain and how the engine and transmission deliver your power and torque? It’s still a piece of cake. At Orongorongo we had Phil and Nellie turn up in the classic Bedford bus/ Suzuki/ boat combination only to suffer an early DNF when it was suspected that a CV joint broke. Mark Smith, meanwhile, repaired his Jeep after it’s Round 2 failure by the simple expedient of throwing money at it but then he won the day and takes a lead in the overall series standings. Who can put a price on that?
Tyre options
Local competitors showed an interesting tyre choice when they chose not to use their most aggressive tyres but just mud terrains, saying that in the rocky terrain there was good traction without an aggressive tyre digging down in the gravel. Some of the morning arrivals then reconsidered whether they changed their tyres while Bill and Matt Laing saved themselves a bit of work by staying on their road tyres. It wasn’t as risky as it looked because in the bog sections everybody pretty much got the same score regardless of tyre design. Speed sections are just fun, akin to a bit of rally driving, you go as fast as you can over lumps and bumps and flying into the air is a bonus. This time the speed section was in the river bed, with ( standing) start and finish in a “garage” and you had to finish precisely in a marked area. Overshoot and you had to reverse while the clock was still running. The section included a couple of water splashes that were spectacular, and some nice flat corners that let you slide the wagon, probably not the fastest way but everybody loves winding on opposite lock. We also used the rock pile near the airstrip again and it’s fair to say it’s not my favourite, last time it cost me my sump and extractors. Again the sliding unstable rocks caused vehicle damage catching Bruce’s driveshaft as he tried to extract his Jeep from the rock pile. Thanks to Craig and Mo who did the scoring during the day and Robyn who sorted out the meal on Saturday. Entry info on www.czctc.org.nz or NZFWDA forum “Events” page.