Long time lurker, 1 event under the belt :)

Hi,

I've been on this site looking on the forum at events and even attended a few years ago. Been a big fan of motorsport all my life. Marshalled in Mondello for many a Sunday but I've decided to get behind the wheel now for some fun instead of freezing my ass off on the banks!

After watching the video from Micksgarage last year about doing the ALMC Spring Endurance Trial, I dreamt about doing the same the next year. If I'm honest, I did nothing about it and probably never would have only for one night I saw that ALMC were running and introductory night in Luttrellstown Castle.

It's not too far from me so I decided to go. This is when things changed. I realised that it was all achievable/doable then. At the end of the evening, I was 100% sure I was going to do it this year. I had just over 4 weeks to get things together, like club membership, motorsport Ireland licence, entry fee and least of all, a car!

We sourced a car not to far from us. It was cheap and had a valid NCT, double bonus. Over the next couple of weeks, we serviced the car, bought 4 point harnesses and we were good to go. All paperwork was taken care of and we were set for 24/2/18 in Luttrelstown.

There was a great buzz about the place on the day. Everyone we met was excited for the event and only happy to answer any questions we had. The morning seemed to fly by and before we knew it, Frank was counting us down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... We were off with wheel's spinning and not knowing what the hell we were up to. My friend had never navigated before, I had never driven at speed on mud/gravel. I had only driven the car home after purchase and a few other times to test the brakes etc. There were so many unknowns but that didn't stop us from going flat out with smiles from ear to ear.

At the end of each selective, we were both relieved that we had survived and absolutely buzzing to go again to the next one. It was amazing craic.

Everything was going great until we got back to Luttrellstown. The selective was a repeat of earlier and was now really rough. A decision that we had made a week previous would come back to haunt us. No sump guard. A few different people we chatted to said we would get away with no sump guard so we put it on the back burner and said we'd get one for the next event. One of the hits we took pushed the engine and gearbox up with such force that it broke the rear gearbox mount but also ripped a hole in the gearbox. This was unknown to us at the end of the selective because the car was still driving. We started the next selective in Luttrellstown and at the first stop-box we went to pull away and all we heard was mechanical banging with no forward movement!!! ****. We were out.

Because the gearbox and engine were sitting a touch lower than they were supposed to be, I think there was more pressure on the drive shaft which popped out when we went to pull away from the stop-box. It shouldn't be too expensive to fix. Currently sourcing all the bits needed.

At the end of the day, myself and my friend were buzzing about the half of the day we did but devastated that we didn't get to finish. We'll be back for more that's for sure.