Skoda Rally Blog

Today was the first day of recce – if you don’t know, that means driving the stages before the event, at “non-competetive” speeds and making notes of the stage turns and details so you can drive through them a lot faster, accurately and safely than if you were trying to do so without having pre-knowledge of them. Most rallies in the UK have pace notes provided by the organisers, but Rally GB has two days of “recce” where each driver gets to make their own notes. This has to be done in standard-looking cars (although some of the top boys are in essentially rally cars with full cages, etc), and many use hire cars – we saw several standard-looking cars today, and in my case it’s using my standard Felicia, just fitted with a sumpguard and a bit of protection for the brake and fuel pipes underneath, and some forest tyres fitted to it. Most people’s recce cars are worth more than my rally car cost (probably 3-4 times as much), so maybe that puts everything in perspective – if I had an Evo 9, I’d love to run it down the tracks, but I’d be gutted if it got as dented as the Fel did last year…

This year, the stages are mostly the same as last year – only Trawscoed is significantly different from last year (run in reverse) so this means that we needed to “refine” rather than start from scratch, which is a big bonus. Oddly the stages were split between “local” and Crychan, meaning a 40-mile drive for the second recce, but we got to the first stage just before it opened and found the usual queue, and surprisingly a comment of “well, you made it this far” from Mr. Kellitt…. Once we started up, two things became apparent – firstly that it’s a LOT more slippery than last year, and secondly the notes really didn’t need much work – Rheola was first to be done, and was just a case of adding in bits that had changed a little and getting the corners more accurate. After Paul’s constant complaints about the “descriptive” notes, we’ve changed to numbers (1 fastest, 6 slowest), which has meant he had to re-write all the notes, and a few got changed in the process or we’d messed up, but mostly it went OK, and well enough to mean we wouldn’t do the second run – it was quite tight and we’d also thought that being really tired for tomorrow would be a bad idea – reason being that driving the stage and calling every corner out is quite tiring mentally. One dodgy thing happened – we were in a bit of a “queue” of cars (I think the person about 6 in front was doing it for the first time judging by everyone else’s speed and that we were keeping up) and the idiot in car 64 pushed his way past us and everyone else, without so much as a second’s wait. Lovely. Anyway, we went off to Crychan, and it was much the same story there, only needing one run.

Next up was Resolven, which according to the books had changed quite significantly since last year, adding a section beforehand. The two year’s maps said otherwise, and so did our memory, and it was really a case of two distances and one corner, then back on the old notes. Lovely – ahead of schedule by a great deal, and an easy day ahead, hopefully.

Last up – Port Talbot, which was the first stage we recce’d last year, and therefore the first one ever. And it showed – the distances were crazily wrong for most of it, and several sections were just rubbish, frankly, so we needed to take a second run at it and totally replace the first section and modify a few other bits – not ideal for the first stage of the event, but I think the second run was OK, so it should be fine.

By this time, it was about 2:50, so we’d done well – if we’d done every stage twice we’d have missed the second run on Port Talbot and therefore had all sorts of trouble, so it’s all good. Apart from hitting a massive rock which dented the floor and sumpguard mounting and knocked my feet clear off the pedals, it all went OK, and the little Skoda has done OK. Paul’s been using Memory Map to record our progress on the stages, so we can see where we’ve been and also the speed at any point – interestingly it’s nearly been fast enough to finish the event on schedule, and Paul said it’s a pity we can’t use the recce car on the event as “at least it would finish”. Hopefully R477 will prove us doubters both wrong and keep it all together, but there’s always something, isn’t there?

Here’s the recce car, after a hard day’s work…

Last night around 6:30, set out for the house we’d rented in Swansea, and arrived here just after 10pm, having had a few “moments” with people who were cutting corners in the opposite direction on the way, which was interesting, far more so than the 85 miles of M4 that followed. The journey’s end was nearly interesting too with some idiot in a boyed-up celica locking up on the road where I was turning into the driveway. The house is a huge contrast with the B&B we were at last year – it’s a nice 3-bedroomed place on the bay front, and has everything we need, even a conservatory. Hopefully I won’t have too much time to spend there this week, although with the way things have gone so far, who knows?

This morning meant a drive to Cardiff to rally HQ (a 90-mile round trip) to pick up the passes and stickers so we can get into the service park. Got them OK, and spoke to Andrew Kellitt and was given some news which has really devastated me – the land rover challenge people will be running behind us on the road, as they are in a “separate event”. This, frankly, is a disaster. There’s no way we’ll out-run them on any of the stages and because of the way the timing runs, it will mean that we’ll be caught by all of them on each and every stage. This, basically, has wrecked the event as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have any delusions of ability, and we’re just here to have fun, not prove anything or chuck the car off a cliff. And now it’ll mean I’ll constantly be needing to look in my mirrors, which for me is a total distraction – as soon as I see anyone behind it means my concentration is divided, and it’s the worst news I could think of getting this morning. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have an issue with the other guys running, but it seems a totally odd thing to run faster cars behind a slower one with a small gap – the BTRDA 10 minutes would make sense, as when I ran like that I didn’t get caught even by Mr. Burton. And on the long Sunday stages, all of them will catch us. If I had known this, I wouldn’t have entered, in short. This news was only taken slightly away from my mind by the Lintons phoning with the news that they’d ordered a full set of 15″ tyres. And their car is running on 14s. Oh dear.

Tesco’s to buy stuff for lunch and dinner, and then off to set up at the service park, where we’d heard the security weren’t letting ANYONE in, even the Subaru WRC team. Interesting!

The trip to the service park should have been straightforward – take service van and trailer with rally car to trailer park, get car off of trailer, drop trailer off, get rally car, done. However, things weren’t quite that simple. Service is at the new SA1 Swansea park, which is billed as being the hub of business and place to live in Swansea. There’s only one problem with that – it’s not finished. Not even close. In fact this is the second time I’ve actually felt that maybe I’m not so unprepared after all – clearly the place is a building site, but way more than that, it’s bedlam, or at least it was when I turned up. As a result it took quite a long time to finally locate the actual trailer park, by which time Paul had caught up in the recce car, and we then had to move the trailer again as someone had told us one place was OK and clearly it wasn’t. Finally got everything where it should be, and had another disappointment – we were told that the service area would be hard tarmac. Well, it’s not – it’s very much like Felindre was last year, tarmac-based gravel, essentially. Hopefully it will drain quicker than Felindre did as that was a real problem, and it looks like it’ll rain towards the end of the week. Oh good.

The service area is a lot busier this year at this time of the week than last year – there seemed to be a lot more rally cars there and all the manufacturers’ teams were setting up already, which wasn’t the case last year; I guess being in Ireland meant they were already hanging about…. However, it still seems quite empty, especially from our end (i.e. the very back of everything)

A change of tyres was made on the recce car, and I stickered the rally car up, as Paul is clearly allergic to stickering duties and makes a pig’s ear of them every time. So the rally car looks like it should do (or thereabouts after yesterday’s sticker issues, and not having time to fit the green stripes or any of the side stickers I wanted to), and the recce car is ready to go.

As the Lintons still haven’t turned up (they phoned and said they were in Northampton, trying to get their leaky front shocks rebuilt), we can’t set much else up, so it’s just the rally car and service van. This year (especially as we’re on the seafront, so the weather will be a nightmare if it really does kick up), the ez-ups have stayed firmly in the van – no more overnight surprises, please, weather. As you can see here, we really are right by the sea. Let’s hope the weather stays a bit better than last year, ‘cos it would be hideous there with a cold, strong wind.

… you do see us out and about, here’s what the car looks like!

As last year, what should have been a simple “pack up and go” job wasn’t – it has taken most of the day so far to get everything organised (despite what we did yesterday) and into the van. The car is finally clean, and that’s a major step forward, and it all seems OK, just a few finishing touches to apply tomorrow, and the stickers. My mate who used to fit stickers…. hasn’t turned up, so I guess I’ll have to have a stab at it myself – at the moment it doesn’t look right, being all in white and totally unwritten!

Hopefully I should get to the house some time today, although it’s looking more like tomorrow now!

So, today was hideously cold. So cold that I had to put a heater onto the car I was taking the bits off of just to make it bearable to touch them! The plan was to remove the entire hub assembly, complete with driveshaft, and transplant it into the car. Reason for this? Because it worked OK in the banjulmobile, and therefore there was less opportunity to be at home to mr. cockup, who has been paying me weekly visits of late. However, this did mean it was quite heavy and also meant I had to fit the terratrip sensor to the new hub, meaning it took a couple of hours to get all done, including a bit of a scare with the hub not clamping up on the strut properly (just needed hoofing up), and then after a test drive…..

One noise removed (two including noise #1), but a new one instead – turns out after yesterday’s replacement of the spherical bearing there was something not sat right, and I ended up having to remove the lot to fit it properly. That done, I finally got to drive the car with Paul in it as well, and it finally drove without any rattles or anything else that you’d not want on a rally car. Especially one that is supposed to be doing a 3-day event next week!

Paul was busy preparing everything for the move into the service van, sorting and tidying everything, and I got on with the car, fitting the sumpguard and a few small things as well, and then onto fitting the sumpguard for the recce car (which is my daily driver, hence me being so keen to make sure that it doesn’t get minged as I’ll need it on the Monday afterwards), and that meant removing the old mounting, which had been cut after the last mounting bar got bent meaning we couldn’t undo the nut. Fortunately Paul volunteered to do this to save my back (which really doesn’t like lying on a cold concrete floor), but he was beginning to question that half an hour later, but he eventually got it off (with a bit of help from me at the right time), and then it was ‘just’ a case of making up a new bar which will hopefully make the back of the guard sit a bit higher this year – the crowns on the roads were catching it quite badly last year, meaning several raised eyebrows.

Picked up the van, thanks to the legend that is Steve Colville, and tomorrow should be stickering, final bits and pieces (including a new nav lamp, and terratrip sensor and checking a couple of other things), and loading up. Hopefully nothing else will go wrong, as there really isn’t time now, is there?

Something occurred to me yesterday – this has totally consumed my life for the past couple of months. I’ve not been out since mid-September, aside from going to friends houses a total of three times in that period (once to take pics of the rally car, no less, and watch England ‘play’ football). And because of all of this, I’ve kind of forgotten about the fact that next week I’ll be living a dream. Again. Doing for the second time something that I never thought I’d ever get to do at any point, let alone twice. Except this time I’ll be doing it in a car that I’ve built myself. In my drive. For not a lot of money. Anyway, I think that once I get there (maybe tomorrow, although I think I may need to wait until Monday to travel up) it’ll all start to make sense again. Last year it was when I picked up the stickers from the Milennium Stadium. I have no idea when it will be this week, but hopefully it’ll happen sooner rather than later!

Got lots of things done this morning/afternoon, all sorts of little things that need to be done, so there was a lot of ‘list ticking’ taken care of…

And then Pete turned up again – firstly a CV boot had decided to lunch itself, turns out it was a pattern one, and they’re always rubbish, so that needed to be sorted, but took ages. And then to the other side to fir the terratrip sensor…. only to find the source of Noise #2 – front left wheel bearing had loads of play in it – it was fine when MOTd, so must have happened since. As it was 4:30 by this time, a mad dash to the local motor factors (who had one, luckily), and then to Ebblake Tyres to use their press (with some help from Ricky Aitken, legend!), and then back home to fit it, having fitted the metal and terratrip sensor. Put it all back together in the dark (and getting very cold), only to find that….. it’s still bad. Clearly the hub must have a problem, and it doesn’t work as a result. Fantastic. So now I have to get a spare one – probably from the banjulmobile, but it’s more grief and less time to get everything done.

I’m sure I’ll sleep like a baby tonight…..

Clearly I’ve been working today, but after work I cracked on with a few hours’ work – got the sumpguard off, changed the oil, changed the gearbox oil, changed the water (with new antifreeze), plus fitted a new temperature switch for the fan – ?13, but better safe than sorry.

Had a few things to fix, number one was the fact that the heater blower didn’t work at all. Which caused all sorts of issues, and could have meant a total dash removal. Fortunately it was as simple as plugging it back in, under the bonnet! Nice.

The rattle that was present (when the throttle was put on or taken off) turned out to be a bolt that had worked loose in the gearbox mounting, so that was easily fixed.

Next up, some little things, including making sure the service crew were still coming and the van is still available – both are OK, which is good news indeed. Then to make up nav lamp #2, a nifty LED-based one with red that’s always on with the lights, and white that’s switchable. This is half done now, ‘cos I’ve lost the pigging red LEDs!

On the upside, I have managed to get a nice new steering wheel and hub, rather than the standard one, so it’ll look a bit more like a rally car inside and actually steer a lot better, and perhaps most importantly, the logbook has arrived! It actually arrived yesterday, which means the MSA turned it round same day, so a big thanks to them – I had a receipt which I could have used at scrutineering, but I’d much rather have a proper logbook.

Oh, and I woke up at 5am. Which sucks.

Most drivers get to do a rally shakedown on a stage, checking settings and adjustments and tyres, etc.

As with last year, my preparations haven’t quite worked out like that, so my “shakedown” has been driving the car to work a couple of times this week, a 60-mile round trip. And in that time, it’s been mostly OK. A couple of rattles here and there, things that I know to fix, but mostly pleasant and going OK. This is good, ‘cos it means I’ve actually slept two nights running. Here’s to a third….

Oh, there’s been some interest from the local paper’s motoring writer, and he asked for some pictures. Bournemouth has been the wettest place in the country since Sunday (handy, that), so the only place to take any kind of a picture at 10 at night is the underground garage at Paul’s place, and they wanted photos, so I’ve put one up here for everyone who’s been nagging! ‘Real’ photos should follow at the weekend, once the car is (a) finished and (b) stickered up a bit!

No updates for a while, not because I’ve been slacking off (far from it), but because I’ve been too busy. In the time away, all the last things were done to finish the car off – sumpguard fitting, tankguard final fitting, various minor things to help keep the car going, etc.

Today has been a milestone for me. Took the car to be logbooked this morning (which was a far more pleasant experience than I was led to believe), and it passed, everything was in order and I came away with quite a few handy tips and things to improve the car, which is good too. ?28 well spent.

What wasn’t so good was that I’d forgotten to put the bonnet pins back in before driving home, due to some re-opening of the bonnet – basically my fault, ‘cos I normally put them in when I close the bonnet but was told we’d be re-opening it, never did, and forgot. Idiot. Result – one bent pair of hinges and a dented bonnet, and 2 hours to fix it. Not happy at all about that, but there you go – no-one died, and it could have been a lot, lot worse….

Sorted out several minor additions to the car, such as the 5v supply for the GPS unit and the PDA (which will have sat nav, etc, on it), better spotlamp wiring (as it had to be removed to sort the bonnet out), intercom wiring extension, etc.

Tomorrow will see the last bits done, and then a week’s worth of driving just to bed everything in. However, (not wanting to tempt fate), it does feel very good at the moment; the weld-in cage makes the shell so stiff that it feels incredibly taut and precise, much more so than the last car. Hopefully the engine and ‘box will hold up and be reliable; I know that the car won’t be that quick, but it’s quicker than the old car, and should be OK up hills, despite the lack of a C/R gearbox – Chris Bennett has again picked up the box and taken it away, and I’ve heard nothing since – I wouldn’t risk fitting it at this stage, I’d want at least 2 weeks of driving the car with it in before I’d trust it, and as Day 2 of WRGB is 2 weeks away, that’s never going to happen.

Oh, the title is a reference to the song – “Keeping the Dream Alive”. I’m still doing it. Just about.

I’m off out to buy a lottery ticket. My luck must finally be coming good as R477 KRU just passed the MOT. That’s a huge relief for me (although I was certain I’d done everything, I always worry, ‘cos there are so many things to miss, and things like brake performance can always be difficult to test beforehand), ‘cos it means I’m one step closer to a decent night’s sleep.

Oh, and doing WRGB 2007.

Next up – el sumpguard! No peace for the car builder!