I've owned my 1987 Subaru RX rally car for about two months, but this week is the first time I'll be competing in an actual stage rally event with it...

...if I pass technical inspection, that is.

The plan is to run the grueling New England Forest Rally—commonly known as NEFR—up in Maine this Friday and Saturday with the RX. The reconnaissance (a.k.a. "recce") period to learn the stages is on Thursday, so I'll be traveling from New York to the rally site with the RX in tow on Wednesday. That means, as of the time of this writing, I have about 24 hours to make sure everything on the car is ship-shape, so I can actually take part in the event. Subtract the hours that I'm supposed to work and sleep from those 24, and it doesn't leave much time at all. [Having read this, we're assigning him extra work, as well. —Ed.]

Now, if you're familiar with the car I hope to field—presumably because you read my first post about it—you'd know that my Subaru is pretty much ready to go...or at least, it should be. It's a complete race car with a full cage, race seats, toggle switches, and all. But just because it looks like it can take on a rally stage doesn't mean it actually can. In fact, to my eyes—and thus, presumably to the eyes of the American Rally Association's (ARA) tech inspector at NEFR—it still needs a bit of fine-tuning before it's a safe, rally-legal chariot for myself and my co-driver.

What could possibly be missing?

Well, a couple of things. The RX is an old car. My car—or at least the roll cage—was originally installed according to the rules and specs of the now-defunct SCCA ClubRally series, according to the RX's logbook. It's apparently been updated since then, but that still means there's a lot of wiggle room as to whether it meets the ARA's rules...because most of the safety equipment and other gear required was installed before the current rules existed. Or, more to the point: It's up to the tech inspector to choose how forcefully he or she wants to enforce modern restrictions when it comes to my car.

A talk with a skeptical friend briefly gave me a scare regarding the rally-legality of the roll cage, but after nervously contacting the event's tech inspector and sending him a handful of pictures of the in-car scaffolding, my fears have been—at least temporarily—put to bed.