Skoda Rally Blog

This week sees Rally GB, the final round of the WRC, and of course an event we dearly wanted to take part in, but it wasn’t to be.  However, now I’ve got over the disappointment of that and had time to reflect (and indeed study the rules more carefully!), I’m still thinking there is a long-term plan.  If anyone is reading this this year hoping we’d be entering Rally GB and hoping for another blog, then I’m sorry to disappoint you, but given that we had so many hits this year, I think there may be some who will read the blog this week as clearly for the 51 weeks between each Rally GB far fewer people read the blog!

So, right now is where I am starting the drive to enter Rally GB 2010; this may seem like a very long time away, but at least it’ll mean we should be prepared!

And where do you fit in?

If you’re a keen reader, then please bookmark us, and come back regularly.  Obviously we don’t have something to report all the time (this is a part-time effort by someone with a full-time job, and although it’s my hobby and I love it, I often have other things going on, and can’t afford to enter a rally every other week, much as I’d love to).

If, like me, you’re disappointed that this week we won’t be taking part in Rally GB, you can help! If you’ve read the blogs in previous years, or enjoyed seeing us on the stages, then please consider making a donation to the team for next year.  There is no fixed amount, if you read the blog you can donate whatever you think is appropriate, from £1 (which will pay for us to do around 1/20th of a mile on Rally GB) right up to, well, whatever you want!  The only thing we can say is that all money received will ONLY be used for Rally GB, and if we don’t enter in 2010, you’ll get your money back.

Secondly, if you have a business and would like to sponsor us, then you can do so; our entry is somewhat unusual (for obvious reasons), so generates a disproportionately large amount of publicity and public attention; sponsoring will achieve exposure to around 200,000 spectators over the course of the event.  See the “sponsorship” page for details of the different areas that are available on the car, and their cost.   If you are a private individual and want your message to get to rally fans, you can, of course, do that too!

Finally, car progress:

The car is actually ready to do an event, right now, aside from needing to be mapped (as the engine has a new head on it) – however, for several years I have had some rather tired Proflex suspension which I got as a part of a large “job lot” of Skoda parts (including a brand new bodyshell).  And this has been sent off to Proflex UK for an estimate for rebuilding; the rears look to only need a minor refurb, but the fronts are far sorrier, so they may well break the bank.  Time (and a letter from Proflex) will tell.

So, those of you who have been reading regularly will know that this year we were actually more prepared than any other time to do Rally GB.  But a number of things have happened recently which have been less than ideal, and as a result, we don’t have enough support financially to be able to do Rally GB – entries close tomorrow, and let’s just say we’re a long way off our target to have a chance of being able to enter the event, so it looks like that’s that.

All those who have paid into the sponsorship scheme will, of course, get their money back in full, as promised previously.  Aside from the bitter disappointment of not being able to do the event this year, this also leaves me in a position where I’m unsure of what I’ll be doing in the future, if anything at all; I’ve really enjoyed spending a week doing rallying at the highest level once a year, and for various reasons I don’t want to return to doing smaller, local events as my sole rallying.  I’ll have to take a long, hard look at what lies in the future, if anything at all.

Thanks for your support over the years, it’s been much appreciated, as has that of those who sponsored us in prospect of doing Rally GB.  We know who you are, and we’re grateful.

First up is that today this site and our exploits have finally made their way into the Bournemouth Echo – with a full-page write-up and some video on the Echo Website of SS3 of the Sunseeker (you can see the full video here), so if anyone who’s reading this is doing so as a result of reading the Echo, a big “Hello”, and please have a good look around.

Echo Article, Sep 26 2009

Secondly, I’ve made a huge amount of progress since Thursday.  Having asked around and done some research, it looks as if there was a problem with the head which led to the head gasket failure, including oil getting into the cylinders and leading to detonation (the fuel mixture spontaneously combusting before it should do).  This has led to me putting my “spare” head onto the car, which I handily had bought a set of brand new valves for, so an hour was spent grinding them in and getting the head built up.

'Spare' head, built and ready.

Next, putting the head onto the engine, although it couldn’t be easily fully tightened until the engine was in the car (much easier to do as the engine isn’t falling about on the garage floor that way).

The other problem was the gearbox.  Regular readers will know this is my least favourite part of the car, but as I’ve had to do it so many times recently, I’m actually getting reasonably good at it – splitting the cases is getting much quicker, and taking it apart showed that I’d made a mistake building it before – there is a gear which presses into place on the shaft which was loose, and it had moved, leading to an extra 1mm of clearance, explaining the huge amount of noise and also the oil loss as the shaft could move around.  Handily I’ve taken apart so many Skoda gearboxes that I had exactly the right shims to get this all sorted; I replaced the two bearings anyway (as I don’t fancy taking it apart in a hurry, and it’s ‘only’ another £20), and once it was all shimmed up correctly, it span like a dream.

However, like many things when you were a kid, putting it back together is much more difficult than taking it apart; this is partly because getting the gears in place is a bit of a juggling act; the gears have to be in the right gear, as does the casing, and even then it’s a bit of a knack.  Once they are in place, there’s reverse gear to go into place, and then the shaft that activates it, along with 5th gear.  Although I didn’t forget how it went back together, pictures were taken as I took it apart anyway, just in case…

Pointing to the bit that needed moving...

When all of that is in place, you can finally put the casing back on, and this used to be the most difficult bit, but now I have a knack of doing it, plus it’s much easier if you ask someone (OK, my Mum!) to hold a pair of cirlip pliers in place to allow the bearing to slide into place.  Once that’s there, it’s just time to put all the bolts back in place, and then finally 5th gear, which goes on the outside, and one more little casing.

What used to be a horror of a job was complete by 12:30.  And the sun was still out, without a cloud in the sky.

Next up, getting the engine and gearbox back together, which is much easier to do when it’s out of the car, and took about 2 minutes; the knack with this is to get someone to wiggle the crank of the engine while you push the gearbox into place, which allows the shaft to engage.  Easy.

And then, putting it back in the car.  Again, I’ve done this quite a few times recently, and it all went really smoothly; before lunch it was bolted in place.  Then there’s just a case of putting all the other things back in place – exhaust, inlet manifold, gear lever, driveshafts (one of which needed a new boot, taking another 15 minutes or so) – even these have become easy with the ‘greasing the circlip’ trick.  Water pipes all needed to go in place, and then time to do the head bolts up – they need to be done by an angle (90 degrees), and then the same again; crucial given the problems with the last head gasket, so this was done with great care.  Then adjusting the valve clearances (a tedious job involving a screwdriver, spanner and feeler gauges), and connecting everything up – fortunately I made the engine loom very neat, so it nearly falls into place.

While this didn’t take long to type (and admittedly I did take a break to watch the rather tedious F1 qualifying), it took a few hours to do, and by 5pm, it was all done – oil and water all filled up, and everything connected.

The moment of truth – would it work?

YES!  As soon as it had oil pressure I connected the coils up, and it fired instantly.  Sounded a bit lumpy, but then it’d just been fired up, and soon sounded fine, and didn’t smoke at all (unlike the other head).  No leaks, no mess, no fuss.  Checked the gearbox, and had all 5 gears plus reverse, and it sounded a lot quieter than before, so hopefully I’ve got that spot on this time.

This was a lot more progres than I expected – I was planning on only getting the two problems fixed and having the engine and box bolted in place, with nothing connected.  As it is, everything is done, and ready to go.  Obviously the mapping will need re-doing as the head is different, but that’s no problem really.

However, today is just 4 days before the closing of entries for Rally GB, and at present we will not be entering.  Obviously I’m more than a little disappointed by this, and typically it looks like we are more prepared than ever before, but given the problems we’ve had getting any kind of coverage for what we’re doing, combined with the current economic situation, I guess it’s not surprising.  The sad thing is that I’ve had a lot of interest from publicity-generating sources behind the scenes, and I really do think we’d get a lot of coverage this year if we were entering, but at present it’s a vanishingly small chance of that happening – we’d need another 170 people to sign up to make it financially viable to enter the rally and provide everything as promised for each sponsor – and this will still leave me footing a £2500 bill to do the event!   If you’re thinking about signing up and just haven’t done so, please do so – you have nothing to lose as if we don’t enter, you will get a full refund.  If you have already signed up, then thanks for your support, it’s hugely appreciated.

not with Eddie Mair, but Post Mortem, with me.

After Rallyday’s little issues, it was time to fix the car.  There were two things – firstly I was fairly sure the input shaft on the gearbox needed re-shimming (for whatever reason), and secondly… the rough running.  Last night I did a compression test and found that No.1 cylinder was only 6 bar, while the others were up around 13!  This explained the 3½ cylinder feel to the engine, but obviously didn’t make for comforting knowledge.  Still, it had to come out anyway to get the gearbox out, so I may as well get the head off, right?

I’m clearly in good practice at this at the moment, and in addition every nut and bolt is fresh, so it only took 2 hours to get the engine and gearbox out, split them, find out that the input shaft on the gearbox is indeed in need of being shimmed properly, AND get the head off the engine.  Not bad, really, on my own, but then it’s not the first time I’ve done this, is it?

So, the engine….. I had two ideas – either the shimming of the liners (the tubes the pistons run in) was wrong, or the head gasket had failed for another reason.  Once I got it off, I saw something I’ve not seen before – what looked like a burnt, crumpled gasket.  At the moment I have no idea why this has happened, particularly because it’s only happened on one side of the cylinder; I’m not sure if this is down to a mechanical fault (i.e. the combustion chamber shape), manufacturing (head gasket), assembly (i.e. me messing it up) or fuelling/ignition.  The upside is that the cylinder protrusions seem fine, and despite what I will only refer to as the “RallyDay water incident” the head is NOT warped, which is a massive relief.

Odd pattern on head from gasket

Crumply, burnt-looking gasket.

So, I’m currently with a car with no engine or box in it, both those in bits in the garage, and at present still needing more sponsorship to make Rally GB a reality.  Come what may, I’ll get the car running.  The rest is now out of my hands; hopefully this weekend should see some coverage in the Bournemouth Echo, but as to whether that makes the difference, only time will tell.  Oh, and money.

Some more photos from rallyday, this time from Chris Horner at www.mccrash.co.uk

Rallyday 2009 by mccrash.co.uk

Rallyday 2009 by mccrash.co.uk

Had a couple of pictures sent through by Chris Fairweather – if you want to see more of his work, go to www.clf-photography.co.uk

RallyDay 2009

RallyDay 2009

Today I took the opportunity to sit in with Tony Hawkins in his Audi Quattro.  A fair while ago I sat in with Ray Read in his Quattro at Longcross, and sadly that led to a DNF after the turbo killed itself.  Tony had a chequered history with his quattro (first event was a DNF when the engine blew up, and second was a finish), this being his third event he was hoping just to get some more time in the car and get used to it a bit more.  I’d not met him before today (this is becoming a pattern!), but spoken to him on the phone a few times, and arranged to get to Longcross around 7:30, having heard that the normal service area was currently a movie set.  And this was true – there was a mock coliseum set up in the middle of it; I don’t know what film it was for, but it looked impressive.

Film Set at Longcross

However this led to a problem – the service area was at the top of the hill, meaning that the big hills would not be used in the stage layout, and also I thought this may lead to less than ideal stage layouts overall.

Often if you’ve not met someone before it’s hard to find them in a service area.  This wasn’t the case with Tony.  He’d told me the day before he was intending on bringing “a lorry” to the service area.  And he wasn’t wrong – it was a full-on artic and trailer, so quite easy to find.

Tony's Quattro. With an Artic as Service Barge.

Said “Hi” and then found out he’d forgotten the keys, so we had to wait until they turned up, and then got the car out and all sorted, and headed off for scrutineering; his least favourite part of rallying as well as mine.   Mostly it went OK, aside from an issue with the seat belt mountings not being right (both top belts were on one mounting), and eventually we found an original mount for the other belt, which was much better than the eyebolt bar that was at the back of the car and didn’t seem too safe to me.

Quattro from the front.

... and from the side. With my name on it.

Next to us Ray had been having problems with his car, and had ended up having to disconnect the air flow meter to get it to run properly, and was going to see how it went, and take a view on it after stage 1 – he was 3 places ahead of us, seeded at number 9.

Soon enough it was time to go, and as soon as we got going, I had a revelation.  You know when you’ve finally got round to doing something you’d been putting off for a long time and then thought you should have done it ages ago as it’s so much better?  That’s what happened to me the first time I used the intercom with my nice new Peltor Helmet.  The difference is staggering, nothing less.  The helmet stops the outside noise getting to you by a significant amount, and the quality of the intercom is incomparable with the OMP one I’ve been using – no background noise, and much better quality; you can just talk normally and it’s perfectly loud enough, despite the car being quite noisy inside.

Got to the stage start, booked in and got ready, having discussed how to call the corners; each driver is different and everyone has their own system; with the stages on maps we can at least see what we will be encountering and discuss everything beforehand, and this was good.  We got off the line quickly (the car is not slow), and down to the first “bus stop chicane”, and got down to the chicane to see an unwelcome sight – Ray’s Quattro at a 45-degree angle, having hit a post on the way into the chicane.  Ray and Stu were out of the car and OK, and we took it slowly as we went through, but it’s never good to see a mate out, especially that early.  Going round the rest of the stage saw us get used to each other, and Tony to the car.  One big problem was the synchro on second gear is on the way out, and hurried gear changes don’t work at all well.  And of course second gets used a LOT, so it would need to be looked after or another DNF would loom…  The stage went reasonably well, there were a few moments as Tony was getting used to the brakes, and also a great moment going round a hairpin with the car sliding first on the brakes, then the handbrake and then the power – he got it right first time here, and it felt great, even though I don’t think it was the quickest way to do it! On the last lap the intercooler pipe popped off, leading to no boost pressure and not a lot of power, but we finished the stage without any other problems.

Into service, there was quite a delay for some crews coming back – I think that Ray’s incident led to no more cars starting after us, so we had to wait for all of them to clear the stage before we started again, having re-attached the intercooler pipe and checked the rest of the car over, everything else looking OK.

Intercooler pipe while being fixed.

Stage 2 was a re-run of the previous stage, and this time Tony was a little more confident, particularly on the snake – there are two blind crests there which it’s counter-intuitive to go fast over, even if you are being told to keep going, until you’ve seen that it’s OK there.  We cut over 30 seconds off the stage time this time, and it felt much more like it particularly in the corners on the snake where the car was starting to a) work hard and b) understeer like a Quattro.  The hairpin wasn’t as neatly done this time, and there was one time when the gearbox wouldn’t play ball, so keeping it in second was the order of the day for this from now on.

Back into service, everything seemed fine with the car, and there was a quick turnaround for Stage 3, despite it featuring a reasonably large change leading to taking the snake the other way round.  This went well again, and Tony was seeming far more confident in getting the car round the corners, although again it was getting to the point where there was a fair bit of understeer – not only in the snake, but also going into some of the chicanes – there were a couple of moments where it only just started to grip in time, but it must have looked good from the outside.  Stage 4 was a second run through exactly the same stage, and again we shaved a fair bit of time off the SS3 time by being neater and more committed in the newer sections.

Now it was time.. for lunch!  After Rallyday’s trials yesterday I was pretty tired, so I took the opportunity to take a nap for 20 minutes, and I noted in my rear view mirror that Tony was having his ear bent by someone as I dropped off.  I woke up 22 minutes later, and guess what?  Same guy, still talking!  Sometimes it’s good to be a navigator!

Stage 5 saw the direction round the outside track reversed, and new start and finish points, so all the chicanes would be different and need different lines throughout, as well as a very short merge before the first chicane, which made it difficult to get dead right, but it went OK, and round we went.  By now the tyres seemed to me to be past their best, and there were quite a few moments where the car understeered for a long time, and eventually gripped again, meaning that each chicane would take us nearer the edge of the road.  We were still quick, as the lap setup of the stage meant you sometimes ran with someone faster than you for a while – we were running with number 7 (a new-shape Impreza) and round the outside we were keeping up for the most part.  We dived off into the snake while he went round the outside, and we were about 5 seconds behind him when we re-merged.  On the next lap something similar happened with a Mk.2 Escort, and this time, he emerged from the snake at much the same time as us, showing just how much time we were losing in corners.  The stage went well, though, and with no major issues other than the lack of grip.

Back into service, it was time to change tyres.  Unfortunately Tony only had 2 decent spares, so we put them on the front, and went off out for Stage 6.

This one may be worn out.

This one soon will be.

Immediately there was a huge difference – on the first chicane the back of the car drifted (as the front gripped) and hit the boards – the car was quite imbalanced now but would at least get the front where you wanted.  Care was needed into the next couple of chicanes to get the braking right and not lose the back, and other than that it went well – once Tony had adapted to it the car went where it should do (for the most part), and we did some rather show-boaty work in a couple of places due to the lack of rear grip.  Not fast, but good fun, for sure.

Back into service, and a check over the car revealed very little needed, so we went back out again after fuelling the car up, and it was time for Stage 7, the last change of layout of the day.  As we went into the chicane there was a lack of brakes; I’m not sure if it was just that the tyres were cold, but what is for sure is that we hit the chicane, and quite hard.  The car seemed OK and to have 4 wheels though, so we got on with it, and I soon noticed that the front right wing (which had taken the chicane impact) was lifting up at speed – I was hoping it wouldn’t break off, as it was well above bonnet level when we got up to top speed (around 110 on the speedo, more, I’m told, in reality), but it seemed to be just bending as it went.  There were a few moments on this stage, one as we came to the chicane where Ray had ended the rally (but in reverse), and some others going into other chicanes, mostly.  The snake was feeling good by now, with the extra grip working well, and Tony confident enough to get the car airborne over the bigger hill.  The end of the stage was a new section, a square left into a square right and then a long straight.  The left went well, but the right… involved a bit of handbrake, and we span.  Which would have been totally innocuous, if it wasn’t for the very deep U-shaped gutter just to the side of the track, separating the road we were using with a differen tarmac surface.  As we went into slow motion, I expected a bang.

And it came – a really hard, heavy BANG and it sounded like a chassis-bender; it was a really, really hard impact, as it was going sideways through the suspension where there is obviously no springing.  Tony gave it some beans and round it came and… into the opposite gutter, but a lot slower.  We got pointing in the right direction and to the finish.  We checked the car still went straight (it seemed OK), and got back to service.

Looking at the car, it was in a sorry state.  The front wing was finished, with a massive split right above the wheel, and the front corner all broken up,  as well as a number of other splits and cracks.  This picture doesn’t do the damage justice – bear this in mind when you buy a car on eBay from pictures only!

Broken Wing, having tried to fly on the way round.

And the back left wheel had clearly sacrificed itself to save the rest of the car as the rim itself was split really badly.  Not good as these are genuine Quattro Sport wheels, and quite rare.

Audi Quattro Sport wheel. Now junked.

Tyre was still up though, but needed to be changed, and alas only for one of the ruined fronts from earlier.  The other side showed signs of damage, but we decided it would be better to keep a slightly damaged wheel with a serviceable tyre than a perfect rim with a knackered one.  The wing was repaired with nuts and bolts and gaffa tape, and away we went for Stage 8.  While not wanting to take it easy, a finish and another signature was on the table.

The stage start went well, and off we went, through the first three chicanes, everything was fine.  We went round a right-hander into a left hander for the right-entry chicane, and the back of the car stepped out.  Right out – it was quickly beyond the “save it” point, and into the “hope this doesn’t hurt too much” point.  We hit the chicane (which was made of tyres, a cone and several pallets) sideways at around 50, I’d guess (we were doing over 100 when the brakes went on), and then span sideways off the track.  I’ve got used to this sort of thing, and for the most part it’s no problem at all, and having seen all the super-calm navigators on the TV, I decided to play my part, and once we’d come to a halt (backwards, facing about 45 degrees up the track), I checked Tony was OK, we re-started and I said just to gently get the car back on the track.  But it wasn’t to be – we were buried in some very deep, soft gravel and quite a way into the bushes – the car was already on its floor, and it was game over.  Marshals were giving the universal “it’s over” signal (like having your neck cut), so we got out, and then got out the way – some people weren’t taking much care despite four waving marshals and a stranded audi, so all 6 of us thought it would be better to be elsewhere, and went there.  Once the stage was finished, the recovery crew came round and pulled us out (and it took a surprising amount of effort, mostly because we took half a tonne of fern and nettles with us), and then we drove back to service to find Tony’s family a bit worried as obviously we’d been long overdue and neither of us had a phone.  Pictures of the stricken Audi are here, big thanks for the Marshals who sent them – Maggie, Mike & Meg Dixon & Pete Thorogood!

Someone see a chicane?

A slightly buried Audi....

So, another Audi at Longcross, another non-finish.  But a damn good day – hopefully Tony will get the car sorted out and back to its snarling glory soon enough for Smeatharpe in October – there wasn’t much damage other than cosmetic stuff, really, and maybe I’ll get a chance to break my Longcross Audi curse at some point.  But not today.

Today was one of the biggest rally shows in the country, Rallyday, which is at Castle Combe race circuit.  I’ve been before (in 2005, I think), and it’s a rally-based car show; there are lots of rally cars there, and owners of the rally cars who book time can get a number of runs on the track and also on a short rally stage as well; a chance to see a lot of rare and classic rally cars as well as some road versions of rally cars too.  I’d booked the clubman package which gave four runs round the track, two runs on the stage as well as parking in the main show area.  But it also meant getting there fairly early, so a 6:20 start was called for.  The trip up would give a chance to do more map logging as well, and went fairly smoothly for the most part.

Until the gear lever fell off!  Was stopped at some traffic lights, and I went to put the car in gear, and the lever dropped about 6 inches.  Oh dear.  I got it into first, pulled over and watched the passing traffic run over the bits that had just fallen off – a bracket and a bolt.  Got them back, and got the car to somewhere safe down a side road and then put it back on with some pliers and a bit of deft cable-tie work to cover where the other bolt should be.  Worked well, and got to the circuit only 10 minutes later than I wanted to, but suffered the usual traffic queues there where there are people trying to get in the wrong car parks, etc., but this year the entry to the paddock was much better organised and we went almost straight in, and found where I should be with the Bournemouth Car Club people, including Ray and his Audi.

As soon as I parked… I moved as I wanted to get noise tested, and handily that went smoothly, and parked up again.  Then it was time for the drivers’ briefing, which was… a little wearing.  It went on WAY too long for what needed to be said (keep left, don’t overtake on braking or in a corner, don’t straddle the pit exit line, and what the flags mean), but thankfully got hurried up by one of the women there who knew we’d be late for the session.  Got back to the car, got in and went round to the queue for the course entry.  You have to have covered arms and legs for this, so I had to put on my coat.  And also something that I treated myself to (partly money from my Birthday presents) – a new Peltor G78 Pro Rally helmet.  This is quality – it’s so quiet compared with the old helmet, there’s really no comparison.  You’d never get away without an intercom with one of these on, it’s that good.

Waiting to go on track.

A couple of minutes’ wait and we were on the track.  Now, I’m still running the engine in, and in addition it’s got very short gearing – it’s geared for about 95 in top at 7000rpm, which makes for a very frenetic drive on long straights of tarmac – you’re in top very quickly, and then just revving along, although I’d set a rev limit of 5500rpm, so that was about 70 or so.  Obviously everyone else was quicker, but interestingly not in the corners, aside from Ray and Dean in his GTM Honda.  I’d put forest tyres on as I didn’t want to kill the only tarmac tyres I have (and they’re needed for the full 3 miles of the Sunseeker stages 1 & 2 each year), so I had a very un-grippy car.  The bonus of this is that it made the corners good fun – as if you were going 20-30 mph quicker.  And I was having a good time; keeping an eye on the gauges as we went, it all seemed fine, and 5 laps went quickly – back to the paddock to park up.

Like Babylon 5, really.

Had a chat with the guys from Bournemouth Car Club who were there, and soon enough it was time for the next session; someone asked if they could sit in with me, and once I’d told him it would be very s-l-o-w he was still keen, so he went to sort out his helmet and I picked him up in the queue where I saw Chris Morford from Rallye Sunseeker – he looks after their website amongst other things, and it’s always nice to meet someone you’ve had contact with, but never met; it’s also sometimes weird as you have no idea what they’ll look or sound like.  I also finally got to meet Jon Price from the britishrally forum and Cymraeg Scoobie club, who have been kind enough to sponsor me, and arranged to meet up later.  Chris wanted an interview, so I gave one, although I talked utter drivel.  The reason for this was because the car had started to run a bit lumpy, and I feared that the head gasket was a bit dodgy; the car had suddenly got hot and then cooled down, as I’d found out that the fan wasn’t cutting in.  Not good, but went out for the session anyway; it went much as the first; I’m not sure my passenger was getting the ride of his life (quite the opposite) but he seemed pleased enough to have blagged his way onto the racetrack, even when Ray, Dean and Mike Stewart came past at light-speed.  However, on one of the corners I actually had to brake as a Subaru was going so much slower than I was (worrying), and Geoff Bennett’s escort looked to have expired (later found out to be a short as the starter had come loose, and the battery wasn’t happy!).

Back to the paddock, the car wasn’t ticking over like it did before.  This wasn’t a good sign, although it wasn’t running that badly.  The water level was fine, and everything else checked out so I just left it and went for a wonder.  Saw lots of cars, some old, some new, some classics, some up-to-date stuff, and in another field a whole load of show cars – all sorts of Fords, Subarus and Evos, amongst others – many of them with very clean engines and polished bits here and there.  Not my bag, but the crowds were massive, so clearly I’m in the minority here.

The weather was really good; probably too good as it was getting a bit too hot.  The next track session wasn’t booked until 4:30, and I didn’t fancy waiting that long; although I’d had a lot of people come and speak about the blog and the car and so on, only had a few people sign up, although it was good to meet Mark after such a long time, and Jon and the Cymraeg Scoobie crew came over, stickered the car on the boot and took a few pics – it’s always really nice to have such support from clearly nice people, so that pretty much made my afternoon!

I decided that I’d do one run of the Sparco Rally Stage, which was just a little stage set up for one car at a time (finish where the start was, with a few interesting corners on it), and also decided to put the “helmet cam” from the snowboarding on the roof to get a different view.  This went well.  But the car didn’t – by the end of the stage it was overheating.  I was not happy; got back as soon as possible (no thanks to someone in a Subaru blocking the road and having a chat for a minute), to find a very hot car, and… no water in the tank.  Oh dear.

A quick check found that the hose that comes off the water pump at the back of the engine had…er… come off – not sure whether this was due to pressure building up, or operator error.  I got it back on (not easy as it’s really inaccessible), and then re-filled the engine with water.  Left it for a few minutes to settle, and then started it.  It seemed to be running on about 3 1/2 cylinders – it’s definitely missing, but not completely.  So I thought it was time to make my excuses and leave.  Got as much water as I could in my Tesco’s bottle, and headed off.

The car ran as well as I could expect; in fact aside from it feeling a bit rough and not wanting to tick over, you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with it; got home without any problems, and despite having the advance timed out of the top end, it’s willing to pull up hills and overtake without problems.  But it’s definitely in need of some attention, probably a new head gasket if not a complete sort out of the liners (which would mean sump off and pistons out) – but I won’t know until I do some testing, and tomorrow I’m navigating at Longcross in an Audi, so that means nothing will be found out until then.

Given that Rally GB entries close in a week and a half, this is…. not good.   Not unachievable (there is another option in the form of a spare, running engine that I can re-cam and re-head), but not ideal.

… if not for the ladies, then for RallyDay.  I’m off there on Saturday, and thought it’d be a good opportunity for a bit of shameless self-promotion.  So I ordered some stickers, and handily this afternoon got the afternoon off, and paid!  It must be a sign, so on went new mudflaps (the old ones were rather tatty), and the stickers.  So the car now looks like this:

Stickered Up!

And from behind, this is what you see:

From Behind

Just a few things to do before RallyDay, and then Sunday I’m navigating in a Quattro at Longcross!  Nice!

Alas I am back to work this week, so the work on the car can only happen in the evenings.  However, the upside is that (at present) the main work needed is to sort out the mapping, which doesn’t involve being under the car or anywhere else, it involves driving it and running it in.

The last drive resulted in a fair bit of data which with some more led to a few changes to the map table.  I put these into the ECU and then went for a 40 minute drive, taking care not to rev the engine too much and also not to apply too much throttle early on until the engine was thoroughly warmed up, and even then not using too much, just a few brief moments here and there.

Altogether, it went well – the engine feels OK, and although it’s not been over 4500 rpm for any length of time, it seems to go OK.  I can’t risk giving it too many revs or too much load for another few hundred miles, but I’ve gathered a fair bit of data and it shows that the mapping isn’t a million miles out for the areas that I have been using.  When I get back, I disconnect the LM-1, connect it to my old laptop (as it has a serial port, no new ones do), and then get this sort of thing out of it:

logging graph from a drive

This shows the RPM, throttle opening and air/fuel ratio, which are the three things needed to get the fuelling right on the engine.  Now, working out what is what from just a graph would be…. painful.  But thankfully the software can do analysis of all the points of data, and then present it in an easy-to-understand chart; some areas show more variation than others, and that’s to be expected as they are quite ‘wide’ rpm ranges (400rpm), so there is some averaging needed, but it’s way better than guesswork.  You get a table like this:

As you can see, I’ve been on full throttle, albeit briefly (there is another view that shows how many samples were taken – I was only on full throttle (and indeed anything above about 75%) for a few seconds.  These figures are mostly reasonable, but will need some fine tuning.  Once it’s run in I can use more revs and more throttle to get most of the rest of the map sorted; not all of it needs to be at the “maximum power” ratio; when you’re cruising on light throttle you can run a leaner mixture, saving quite a lot of fuel (especially as we will be spending a fair bit of time on motorways and A-roads).

All of this is good news, but it’ll still need some fine-tuning, which is now a fairly easy process as it really involves putting the current log and current map the logging software, turning a handle, and then a new map setting pops out – and again it’s a case of some deft Excel and Notepad++ work to get that back into the ECU without any chance of errors on my part!

On a slightly different note, my tickets arrived for Rallyday today, which is a week on Saturday – having the car ready for that is important as it’s the only “public appearance” I’ll be making before the closing date for Rally GB, so I want to try to get as many people as possible signed up on the day – I’m going to get the car stickered up and see what other promotional ideas I can come up with…