RallySport Magazine September 2016

RETROSPECTIVE
bounce up and down – I think he was
Irish!
Well, all these bouncing shenanigans
used to go on every time a boggy
lane or a slippery creek crossing was
encountered, and in those days that
was fairly regularly. It wasn’t always the
end of the world when you got bogged;
in fact, it was often good fun being able
to get out of the car for some exercise
after having your head down over the
maps for hours, even days, on end.
Trouble was, once you’d done the
bouncing bit and the car was
actually moving forward again,
you’d step off the jump bar into the
boggy wheel ruts that the car had just
dug or, even worse, you’d get sprayed
with thick, black (or red, or grey, or
yellow – delete whichever doesn’t apply)
mud as the driver gunned the motor for
more traction.
It wasn’t unknown for drivers to really
plant the foot and hightail it to dry,
solid ground where traction wasn’t a
problem, before stopping to wait for
the navigator to rejoin him.
Fair enough, you might say, but in
the middle of winter the nearest high
ground might be a mile away, and
by the time you got to the waiting
car after walking through thick mud,
running water and slippery grass for
what seemed like hours, you’d look like
something out of Creature from the
Black Lagoon.
“Get in, get in,” he’d roar and so you’d
climb aboard. Then, just as you were
about to shut the door and belt up,
you’d realise that under that thick layer
of mud covering your feet, your left
shoe was missing, obviously left behind
60 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2016
“The problems arose
when Murphy’s Law
intervened and you
became stuck in an
area that resembeled
the Treeless Desert on
the Nullabor.”
in that sticky black morass stretching
out behind you. What to do? Waste
more time going back to look for it (and
risk losing the right shoe as well), or
continue on with a limp like a man with
an artificial leg? Ah, those were the fun
days!
Competitors in early trials like
the infamous BP Rally and other
navigational nightmares got so used
to getting bogged that it got to the
stage where crews used to take half a
ton of de-bogging gear with them in
each event. Not only was the jump bar
compulsory equipment, there were
other aids that were often carried as
well.
Forget wet weather compounds
and special tyre cuts, the serious
competitor always carried two spare
wheels in the boot, already kitted out
with a set of chains in case the going
got really tough. At the first sight of
mud or potentially impassable creek
crossings, it was out with the jack, off
with the Dunlop SP44s or the Goodyear
Ultragrips, and on with the chains.
Boy, did chains work in the mud!
Great for getting you out of sticky
Being bogged is bad
enough, but when the tow
car gets bogged too, you
really have problems!
situations and yep, you guessed it,
the navigator was the one who had
to remove them when dry ground
appeared on the horizon! Sections
timed to the second? Forget it! Just
getting to the next control the same day
was an achievement!
However, if all that failed and you
were stuck fast like a bug on the
windscreen, the last resort was always
the Tirfor. What’s that, you say? What’s
a Tirfor? A Tirfor, dear friends, was a
particular brand of winch that every
serious trials competitor carried in
the boot of the car. It never saw the
light of day until all other methods of
extraction had been exhausted, but it
was invaluable if you were hopelessly
bogged.
Like most other forms of winch, you
attached one end of the cable to the
car and the other end to a tree, which
was all well and good if you were stuck
in a suitably-treed laneway or paddock.
The problems arose when Murphy’s
Law intervened and you became stuck
in an area that resembled the famous
Treeless Desert on the Nullarbor. No
trees, no winching point.
Of course if there was a convenient
fence post handy, you could always
winch off that. Problem was, if the fence
post was old and rotten, you could end
up with a corner post, a strainer post, a
couple of hundred droppers and four
kilometres of barbed wire on the end of
your Tirfor.
The other problem was that if you
found a tree to winch from, everything
would be going along smoothly for
a while. Then, just as you got a nice
backward-forward rhythm going on