Rally Maya Mexico
 

Last Sunday finished the Rally Maya, a 1,250 km regularity rally comprising Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo states in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
There were 122 cars from 1904 to 1980, cannot be younger than 40 years.
My son in law as copilot and me as pilot participated with my 1962 PV544 and for newbies we got a decent 9th place out of 58 cars in our category and 34th overall.
The car performed flawlessly, even with the prevalent 40 degrees C temperature.
The organization of the rally was outstanding, great hotels, great receptions in beautiful venues and fantastic socializing with the participants.
One outstanding fact: The husband and wife teams were very successful and, at least visually, without major disputes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wuyfe8cuah...0Maya.m4v?dl=0

Excellent! Congratulations on an uneventful completion. Cliffhanger ending! Kept me hanging on to the very end to find out whether the 544 was going to drop off the transporter.

Appeared to be suitable libations on hand. Need that with 40C and no air conditioning. Temperatures here were only 34C and I bailed on my 142 with black leather interior for the relative comfort on an NSX, also with a black leather interior; but, an AC system that can cool your Pinot Grigio when required.

142Guy, enjoyed your comment, and yes, we had a great time, and loading and unloading on to the transporter is trickier than it seems!

Another nice video.

DId you change the springs before the trip or were you sitting on extra cushions?

Well done, a good result !

I did change the springs and made all the difference!
I also changed the engine, just before de rally installed a 1967 B18B; tested the car up to 150 kph and it runs smoothly and no vibration whatsoever. Big difference between 8000 feet and sea level

The rather crude rule of thumb is that you lose an average of about 3% of your rated horsepower per 1000 ft increase in altitude above sea level. On top of that, most carburetor equipped engines start to run with rich fuel mixtures as the altitudes increases which further compromises performance. The loss in horsepower and over fueling may actually be a good thing because your cooling system also suffers reduced capacity because of the lower mass air flow through the radiator at higher altitudes.

When you did the engine switch, perhaps you should have switched to a B230 FT or something similar. A turbocharger mixed with some EFI would have helped with the altitude problem. However, I suspect that would have violated the '1980' rule.

ok ni

Thank you 142Guy, as a private pilot I am quite familiar with how the altitude affects non turbo engines, and the mixture change requirements at different altitudes, the advantage with the aircraft is that you can control the mixture from inside the cab. It’s quite tricky (at least for me) to adjust the mixture on the SUs at altitude. Recently bought a color tune spark plug that helps a lot.