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Automotive and Motorsports.
Trunk Monkey #8 – Alien Abduction – Suburban Auto Group
Trunkmonkey Racing gears up for Maine Forest Rally 2006
Trunkmonkey Racing has been hard at work preparing the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza for Maine Forest Rally 2006, Round 5 of the Rally America National Championship. The team will again be competing at the Regional level in Production GT and has made many improvements to the car and service vehicles to make life easier for the Driver, Co-driver, and Service Crew.
Sean Sosik-Hamor and Andrew Hobgood will again team up to traverse the Special Stages while Sabrina Vollers has stepped up to the plate as Crew Chief to coordinate team logistics and Service Crew movements. Chris Brenton, Brian Knapp, James Mackey, and Kelly Sosik-Hamor will join Sabrina as Service Crew to help keep the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza running smoothly over the two days of racing.
We’d like to thank our sponsors for the 2006 season:
Finer Touch Auto Body (603-668-4713)
Trunkmonkey Racing at Wicked Big Meet 2006
Trunkmonkey Racing will be attending Wicked Big Meet 2006 on Saturday, May 20th to represent the team and Pepper Computer’s Pepper Pad. Our Webcam will be up and running all day assuming we have EVDO coverage!
Trunkmonkey Racing Camera 1
We are also organizing the First Annual Wicked Big Meet Fun Rally Presented by Trunkmonkey Racing on Sunday, May 21st! Come on out and join the fun! Pre-registration is closed but you can register at Wicked Big Meet on Saturday or the morning of the Rally on Sunday.
Trunkmonkey Racing finishes Maine Forest Rally 2006, takes regional podium in class
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, HAVERHILL, MA (07/26/2006) — New England-based motorsports team Trunkmonkey Racing successfully completed Maine Forest Rally 2006 which hosts River Valley Rally and Bethel Rally of the Rally America Eastern Regional Championship. Competing in Production GT class, driver Sean Sosik-Hamor and co-driver Andrew Hobgood piloted the 762 PGT Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza to take 3rd in class at River Valley Rally and 2nd in class at Bethel Rally over the two days of competition and 78 miles of Special Stages.
Trunkmonkey Racing has been extremely active in the New England motorsports community for the past five years both competing in and organizing Rallycross, Ice Racing, Road Rally, and New England Subaru Impreza Club gatherings as well as marshaling and crewing at various ProRally and ClubRally events. The team’s second running of Maine Forest Rally, this year marked the anniversary of the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza’s 2005 debut and showed the car’s and service crew’s ability to stand up to punishment under pressure.
Said Sean Sosik-Hamor, “This year has proven that Trunkmonkey Racing is about teamwork and the support of friends and family, especially my wife Kelly who has supported me since the start of my racing career six years ago. Like all other events, Maine Forest Rally was a learning experience, and I feel confident that we will be even better prepared in the future to handle unexpected situations as they arise on course and in service.”
Remarked Andrew Hobgood, “This year’s event was a lot faster and smoother than last year, while a reliable car and well-tuned service crew really let us push the limits with MFR’s notoriously sparse route book. A clean finish and some fast stage times were the main goals for the event, and we definitely achieved them.”
Team crew chief Sabrina Vollers also added, “We were better equipped and more organized than last year which really paid off in efficiency and overall confidence of the team. Everyone was so dedicated and took their responsibilities very seriously, but it didn’t stop us from having fun with makeshift tarp tents during the passing rain and toting our obligatory inflatable monkey to spectate Mexico from the top of an RV.”
As always, the Trunkmonkey Racing service crew was the backbone of the team with Kelly Sosik-Hamor in charge of team amenities and Sabrina Vollers acting as crew chief while Brian Knapp and James Mackey took care of repairs and maintenance at service. Team member Brian Batty, Manchester Subaru technician Mike Rowe, SubaruProParts.com, and Town Fair Tire were also instrumental in preparing the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza during the weeks leading up to Maine Forest Rally.
Many thanks also go out to Pepper Computer for providing the team with an EVDO to Wi-Fi Access Point for wireless Internet access in the backwoods of Maine. In addition, a pre-production Pepper Pad 3 Handheld Computer was supplied by Pepper to store PDF versions of Rally America rulebooks and bulletins as well as all required Subaru Impreza factory service manuals, addenda, and reference documentation.
Trunkmonkey Racing would like to thank their 2006 sponsors and partners:
Finer Touch Auto Body: 118 Maple St., Manchester, NH (603-668-4713)
SubaruProParts.com: http://www.subaruproparts.com/
RallyDecals.com: http://www.rallydecals.com/
RallyHo Motorsports: http://www.rallyhomotorsports.com/
Wicked Big Meet: http://www.wickedbigmeet.com/
North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club: http://www.nasioc.com/
Pepper Computer: http://www.pepper.com/
Town Fair Tire: http://www.townfairtire.com/
For more information about Trunkmonkey Racing, please visit:
http://www.trunkmonkeyracing.com/
For more information about Maine Forest Rally, please visit:
http://www.maineforestrally.com/
For information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact:
Sean Sosik-Hamor
p: 978-457-3575
Photos Copyright (c) 2006 Pete Kuncis
Team O’Neil Rally School
Team O’Neil Rally School has released a new promotional video giving a quick overview of their outstanding facility and rally school programs. If you haven’t yet checked them out I highly recommend you do so — I’ve attended multiple Team O’Neil rally and safety programs over the past few years and it’s drastically improved both my performance driving skills and overall driving ability!
I can recall of two or three incidents at Maine Forest Rally 2005 that, without Team O’Neil’s excellent training, I literally would have found myself off in the weeds.
P0325 Knock Sensor Circuit Malfunction
After quite a few months of ignoring a P0136 O2 Sensor Circuit Malfunction I finally replaced the front and rear O2 sensors on the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza. Three miles into the post-installation test drive the car immediately threw a P0325 Knock Sensor Circuit Malfunction. Go figure. I was being punished for something.
A new knock sensor and liberal cleaning of the block didn’t solve the problem. Eight miles into the post-installation test drive the car threw a P0325 again. Cleared the code, went for another test drive, threw a code. This went on for a few days of adjusting torque (17.4 ft-lbs), clearing the code, and taking test drives. I finally ended up giving up and asking for help which gave me some more info but didn’t help solve the problem.
I acquired a second new knock sensor and, this time, the ECU threw a code immediately after starting the car. No test drive. Just threw a code every time. In disgust I decided to give up on the knock sensor and I replaced the PCV valve which was on my todo list anyway. Just for shits and grins I cleared the code and went out for a test drive. No code. WTF?
So it appears that for some odd reason replacing the PCV valve may have solved the knock sensor issue. Perhaps my grungy old PCV valve with over a hundred thousand miles on it was causing some sort of flutter or harmonic that the knock sensor was picking up? Who knows; all I know is I successfully got the car inspected the next day.
Trunkmonkey Racing heads to Engraving Awards and Gifts Rallycross
Trunkmonkey Racing will be competing at Engraving Awards and Gifts Rallycross in Stafford Springs, CT on Saturday, January 28. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza! Hopefully we’ll have better luck with our axles than last time.
NEDiv Rallycross News
By: Chris Brenton
Hey all,
Thanks to all who turned out for the annual meeting and congrats to all the trophy winners. Seems like everyone had a blast.
Kathy Beliveau was presented with a thank you gift of a two night stay at the Wayside Inn which is nestled between Bretton Woods and Cannon mountain. Beyond the local skiing, she’ll be treated to a whirlpool bath, champagne, flowers and complimentary meals. Rumor is she is even considering letting Scott come along. 😉
Kathy Moody won the Chairman’s award for all her support of the RallyX program. I think we all agree that this award is *very* well deserved. Thank you Kathy for working so hard to make sure the rest of us can have fun.
Joe Moody was again recognized as the worker of the year for 2005. I think we need to try and make 2006 the year that Joe reaps the rewards of all his hard work by coming out and spanking the dirt with the rest of us. Rumor is some guy who was downing way too much Tequila offered Joe a co-drive in an STi at the Stafford event.
Over the weekend the subject of Tim Chevalier winning at Nationals was a repeated topic of conversation. Many commented that Tim was the guy to beat, right up till a bunch of us watched his son Ryan hand him his butt multiple times playing Richard Burns rally. While Ryan is only nine, its now obvious where Dad has been getting all of his RallyX driving pointers. Be afraid when this kid gets a license and starts turning out for events. 😉
Don’t forget that Stafford is in less than two weeks! WAHOOO! If you have not pre-registered yet, get it in now.
The RallyX committee met over the weekend to hammer out the rules for 2006. I’ll let Scott announce what was decided, but I want to drive home a couple of points before the banter starts:
- The rules are now mandatory nationwide. We do not have the same level
of flexibility that we did in the past. - Creating supplementary changes to the rules is an arduous process and
not to be taken lightly.
So what we have is not that different from what Scott posted to the list earlier, but its the best we can do. Please review the rules when posted and be ready to class your car at Stafford. If anyone needs help, please feel free to drop me an e-mail.
Rumor is SpeedTV will not longer be carrying WRC. This is based on comments from Speed employees as well as the fact that Monte Carlo is next weekend and it does not show up in Speed’s TV listings. For those who will go through nasty withdrawals (like myself), you can subscribe
to a live feed.
If you have A/V outputs on your computer, you can even continue to watch it on a TV the same as you always have. The difference is you’ll get a lot more vid and commentary with less commercials.
HTH,
Chris
New trailing link hardware
After the past year of fighting with alignments and rounding off some bolts after replacing a snapped axle we finally took care of replacing and antiseizeing all the trailing link bolts. Brian opened up one of the garage bays at Exeter Subaru this morning, got the Trunkmonkey Pink Impreza up on the lift, and helped out with the repairs. It also gave us a chance to inspect the car for post-Maine Forest Rally damage, untwist the steering boots, and repaint some crusty underbody bits.