About a month ago, I had the great opportunity to volunteer at the 2010 Rally Tennessee in Perry County, Tennessee, about 200 miiles from my home in White House. I drove down on the Friday of the weekend and spent all day driving around Perry County (I put 175 miles on my car that day AFTER I arrived in Lobelville) reminding residents of the rally to happen over the weekend and taping off the rally stages. Near the end of the day, right in the middle of a torrential downpour, my Saab started overheating. It had overheated a few weeks before due to a blown fuse for the cooling fans, but luckily I had seen it in time. I pulled off the interstate, waited for a while and noticed that even though the car was SUPER hot, the fans weren’t kicking on. I, uh, “engineered” a short term solution by busting open the relay case and using a small piece of plastic to force the switch closed to make sure the fans ran all the time. I stopped and got some coolant, filled the reservoir up and all was fine again. I also replaced the relay, as I didn’t really like the idea of my fans running constantly, as they’d both kill my mileage and keep the car from getting warm enough.
So, on this Friday, the car overheated again, due to the failed relay again (obviously, something was wrong in the wiring), but I stopped and put my trusty “engineered” relay back in, the fans kicked on, and I drove to get some coolant. I filled up the reservoir again, and made it to Parc Expose (the car show part of the rally) with no problems, but I did notice that the car had started to squeak at low revs. I thought it was a belt being stupid. I drove to a motel that night, stayed in the cheapest room I could find (at the Scottish Inn) and got up the next morning, driving to Rally HQ. As I parked my car at Rally HQ, I noticed that it had started to ping really bad, but I parked it and hoped it wasn’t catastrophic. I helped direct all the cars in the Rally into Parc Expose (the morning version) and then went back to my car to drive to the stage I was assigned to work at.
The pinging turned into knocking and the knocking came with a severe loss of power. I pulled into a car wash where I tried to see if there was any coolant in the oil (indicating a blown head gasket), but the oil looked fine. Thin, but fine. I then pulled back on to the main road, and the car decided it wasn’t going anywhere, clunking, banging, screeching and finally dead. I coasted to a stop off the road under a bank of trees. The car wouldn’t even turn over any more, the engine had seized. Mind you, this car had 190K+ miles on it, with what appeared to be a factory turbo, and had not exactly been treated well by either it’s previous owner, or it’s current owner. I was stuck, 225 miles from home, surrounded by nothingness in the middle of nowhere. I called my wife to come rescue me, and she got on the road.
About 30 minutes after I called her, a nice gentleman in a very nice Infiniti M45 pulled up and asked if I was helping with the rally. I replied that I was, but my car was completely dead and I had no way to get to my stage. He offered to drive me to my stage, which I accepted, and we went to the Owl Hollow stage of the rally, where I helped with time control. It turns out, the gentleman who drove me to the stage was none other than the founder of Rally Tennessee, John Shirley, and he was more appreciative of my desire to help, than it seemed I was of his chauffeuring me to my stage.
After the first set of cars rolled through, which was a total blast to behold, Zoni showed up to rescue me. Luckily, thanks to her brother being with the kids, she was able to stay with me the whole day, and we worked both the start and the flying finish of that stage (which was run 3 times). We enjoyed quality time together, enjoyed the outdoors and enjoyed the overall experience greatly.
Unfortunately, that’s the end of my Saab story (see what I did there?) because my Saab is dead. As much as I enjoyed that car for the year I had it, I’ve realized that I’m more of a Volvo guy, so I bought a Subaru. Being surrounded by Rally nuts for an entire weekend, and hearing that strange blatting of a boxer engine was enough to hook me. More to come on the Subaru…