Skoda Rally Blog

So, the idea was simple. Get a new fuel pump for the Felicia, and fit it, and then make the car go like a treat. Firstly, removing the pump from the tank wasn’t easy – it’s held in by what is like a big screw-on cap with a hole in the middle. It’s about 6″ in diameter, and really hard to turn, and that involved quite a bit of effort to move, even more so because the braided steel hoses for the fuel feed and return are in the way and have loose bits of stainless meaning I had lots of little puncture wounds. Lovely. Then removing the pump itself was quite interesting as there’s next to no clearance and it’s not immediately apparent how it comes out. Got there in the end, and as a bonus found out and fixed the problem with the fuel gauge sender. New pump fitted to the housing, and then back in the car, once I’d removed the 3 tonnes of grit and so on from the tank.

Fired it up and….. no difference whatsoever. Well, better than when it died on the Somerset, obviously, but still gutless. However, I have found out that the car has on-board diagnostics, which I have a cable for. I connected the laptop up, and found out about a few problems I already knew had happened at some point (memory of an elephant, this thing), but once cleared, there was “nothing wrong”! NOTHING WRONG? I guess there’s not a fault code that reads “Gutless piece of poo”. However, I had been over-estimating its abilities – there are a number of sensors it can’t notice are missing (unplugging the Lambda probe or the knock sensor wasn’t noticed), and unlike newer systems unplugging the injectors was something that the ECU didn’t notice at all. So I guess it can’t find everything out for me, and I’ll have more to do. It’s quite possible that the old engine I pulled from the car wasn’t that bad after all.

But there could be some good news. Maybe. I had a spare coil pack which I put on the car, and that made it run… even worse! It was really, totally gutless after that. So, it’s possible that the ‘good’ coil pack is also shot, to a lesser degree. So that’s my next port of call – I’ll order a new pack and see what difference this makes. At this point I’m really at the point where without another car to swap bits from I’m not sure what to do. G-reat.

So, last year’s Somerset was Paul’s first event as a navigator, but we broke a driveshaft. So this year we wanted to finish the event as it features some really good stages, and also two runs up the tarmac of Porlock toll road. But, as I said in my last entry, the new engine wasn’t running at all well.

Scrutineering, etc, was on the Friday, so I set off around lunchtime, and has a real problem about half way there – one of the tyres on the trailer blew out, and I didn’t have a spare. I had to crawl along for half a mile to find somewhere to put the car and trailer, and in that time a pretty big queue had developed behind me. Whoops! There was, however, a bonus – a few cars back was an AA van, and the driver stopped. I’m in the AA, so it was very, very handy that he stopped, and we took the wheel off and went off to a local tyre place, who fitted a tyre for just ?10. Nice. What wasn’t so nice was that TomTom decided I should take the most convoluted B-road route to Minehead, and the windyness and people coming the other way led to chronic brake fade that was worryingly bad at the end.

So, got to Minehead, and thankfully went through scrutineering OK, and got everything set up in service. I always find that once scrutineering is done, I can actually concentrate on the event – before that, there’s always the spectre of something being wrong meaning problems and possibly not starting the event, although this hasn’t ever actually happened!

Saturday dawned a little cold and slightly murky, but certainly nowhere near as bad as last year, just a bit of mist. We set off for Stage one, and there was a real problem – the car was really slow – getting up the hill to the first stage start was a bit of a trial, but we’d just have to live with it and hope it got better as the day went on. Stage one was fairly good – the hills were a problem, and the car wouldn’t really pull past 3rd gear, but at long last I finally felt like I could drive on gravel – I did the autocross on Weston Super-Mare beach a couple of weeks ago, and used that as practice for getting the car sideways and dealing with it without panic. Now that skill was becoming handy – most corners had me with the car finally out of line, and not worrying at all about it. However, we weren’t going well as the engine wasn’t pulling at all well. I thrashed it on the road section (keeping to the speed limit, just keeping in 2nd gear), to try to clear it out, but to no avail. Stage 2 was good fun again, apart from the hills (which every stage seemed to have more ups than downs, but I guess that’s ‘cos they were over in the blink of an eye versus the slow-motion of going uphill at what was now 25mph). Stage 3 was good too, a little slippy in places, but good fun, as was Stage 4, despite being caught by the car behind – once he’d passed us, we kept up OK in the corners, so really it was the car that was the problem, not me, for once! Before stage 5 there was a small delay, so I told the car behind us that we would be slow, and I’d move over as soon as I could. Again, this stage had some big hills in it, but the downhill sections were great. There were a couple of moments, one of which was downhill, and where you’d usually put the wheels in the right direction and hit the power to pull the car straight, there being no power made for an interesting couple of swerves, but I held it. Paul actually went a bit quiet for the first time ever!

Although it was slow, I thought it’d just be a case of “deal with it”, but it wasn’t to be. Shortly after that, the engine died completely. It looks as if the fuel pump has failed, as it would turn over OK and fire but then die, and I couldn’t hear the pump running. So that was that. Twice we’ve entered the Somerset, and twice we’ve not finished.

Anyone who knows me will know I could find the negative in just about any situation. However, this time it wasn’t the case – after the initial round of loud swear words (I only did 2 this time, a vast improvement) and feeling bad for 15 minutes, I realised that apart from that, it’d been a success – I can now control the car OK on gravel, and seeing some of the people coming past after us showed us that we are doing pretty well, really. Not stellar, but competent. We had the pleasure of the company of Shaun Gardener and Ben Innes as their Evo 5 broke both front shafts on the corner where we’d gone out, so we had a little parking lot there, and it made the time pass a fair bit more quickly, and they also did me the favour of giving me a lift back to service so I could pick up the trailer and come to get the Skoda. A big thanks to them and their service crew – they were gobsmacked that we don’t have a service crew!

There was a final insult added to injury – when the Doctor came past he offered to tow us out, and as soon as he tried to pull us out…. the towing eye broke on the Felicia. So that’s another thing on the list of things to do, although the front crossmember has always been shabby, so I think I’ll change the whole thing.

Anyway, there’s lots to do – I think the new engine was duff anyway, as it never seemed happy, and a new fuel pump will be ordered tomorrow. In addition, there’s a growing list of little things to do. This is probably my last forest event before Wales Rally GB which is a big disappointment, but with the current entry costs, I can’t see being able to afford to do WRGB and another event, unless I get some serious sponsorship for WRGB, which is something I will be working on as I think that doing a WRC event in a car which is 11 years old and basically standard (in ‘proper, old-school’ Group N terms) is worth some coverage, and it could prove to be extremely cheap advertising for someone’s company.

So, the last outing in the Skoda left it feeling pretty sorry for itself. The engine had had more than enough, and there were (as ever) more things that I wanted to fix or improve on the car. So, simple enough, take the engine out, put a new one in, job done….

… except, of course, it never works out like that. The clutch I ordered to replace the one that was in there turned out to be wrong, so I had to put the old one back in (for the time being), and that all went smoothly. Until I went to put the driveshafts in, and the diff gears had fallen inside the casing, so I had to remove the gearbox, and fix the diff. Another day wasted.

Finally, I got the car running (having forgotten that the in-car camera is constantly powered means the battery goes flat), and took it for a drive. And found it to be a little….. gutless. Not good news. I won’t bore you with the entire details, but let’s just say I’ve checked everything, and I know it’s running as well as it can (perfect air/fuel mixture, clean air filter, new plugs, etc), and it’s still a bit lacking in power. Which is thoroughly disappointing, as I know that finally I’m getting to the point where I want more power! Typical. But it’ll have to do. It should be good on fuel, at least…..

There were other things to do. One of them is to do with Wales Rally GB. To do that, Paul needs to get his licence, and he’s a big chap, so I needed to make the seat movable – forward for me, and back for him. Now, this might sound like a trivial thing, but to do this properly, so it’s a nice job and I’m happy with it, meant almost a day’s work. But had the bonus of meaning I removed all the carpet from the front of the car – much more like a rally car now, and far easier to keep clean. There are a bunch of other things that I’ve done, but I won’t bore you with the details of the starter solenoid, terratrip probe, helmet net and various other little things.

In short, the car is slow. This is me making excuses for my future non-performance against countless faster N1 cars!

A really pleasant surprise today was that the weather was good – a little chilly (but it’s February after all), but dry and bright, and not too windy. We got everything together (including all the service stuff in the boot of Kev’s car as he was running as chase car), and went to service. The front runners were already off, but we had over an hour to wait. A few things to do to the car (change tyres, move the video camera so it didn’t just see the bonnet an 10 feet of road), and check over. All looked good, so we put some fuel in, and off we went.

First up was SS3, Bere Heath, over towards Wareham forest. We sat in the queue for a while, and just before the car in front of us was pulling up to the line, I thought I saw some steam, but was relieved to see it was their exhaust vapour. Except it wasn’t. The car was overheating in a big way. The temperature gauge was only on normal, but the fan hadn’t kicked in, and it was seriously hot under there. I couldn’t believe it. Not even starting the first stage looked the only outcome. I quickly bodged the fan switch wires together, and the fan came on. Only time would tell if the engine had been cooked by this, but there was nothing to do other than take it easy for the first few hundred yards and hope it went OK.

Soon all this was forgotten as it was as rutty as I remember – on any of the corners, I was barely driving the car, it just followed the ruts. I didn’t experiment to test if you could actually let go of the wheel and the car follow the ruts, but it felt that way for sure. It was more a case of ‘grit your teeth and go for it’ than actually driving the car with any skill. The next stage, Wareham North was much the same, but twice as long. Then we had Gore Heath, somewhere I know reasonably well. The first half of the stage was as rutty as the others, but later on it was a bit better, and we could actually control where it was going, and not skid along on the sumpguard. And we also had the pleasure of seeing the gorgeous Jemma Pink at the Time Card collection at the end of the stage, which was a nice bonus for finishing it!

We got back to service to see that our times were slower than the other Skoda. Not massively so, but we were now 14 seconds behind them, and that wasn’t good enough. Paul then slipped neatly into his new role as navigator and chief motivator. The next stages were what I consider to be “proper” – i.e. the roads are strong enough to take what the cars in front have dished out, and as a result we could actually drive the car and get it sliding about going into the corners, etc. Paul was often telling me not to back off and to push, and this stage felt good. At the start of the stage we were told that a certain corner was “very very slippy”, and the course car had gone off at that point! So when we saw it, I took it a bit easy, but it didn’t seem that slippy to me or the others who I spoke to. I think they may just have over-cooked it! However, we later found out that we were still trailing the other Skoda, but by less this time. The next tstage was Ebblake, and that was good too. There was a delay at the start of stage 8, Mount Ararat, which at 10.6 miles is the second longest on the rally. And instead of checking the car over, I just stood about and had a chat. When the queue started to move, I realised the right rear was completely flat, and there was a very hurried couple of minutes for us to get the wheel changed, but we did it inside the allowed time. However, we started the stage with the intercom disconnected, and in the hurry to get it done, it came apart, and Paul had to hold it for the stage while reading the notes. This probably lost us about 15 seconds at the start, which was a pity as we were 6 seconds slower than the Becketts on this one too. But getting closer, ‘cos that’s not a lot over 10 miles.

Next up was Somerley, which is always good as the stage is varied (including a tarmac section by the house), and with good forest tracks for the most part. It was going pretty well, with Paul making sure I didn’t back off too soon, and we got some good air in a couple of places. Coming past the house there’s a 90 right, and I was going for it, and forgot that i was on forest tyres, so there was a rather big lock-up. Paul later said I was “showboating”, but I just had brain fade. The next section was fast and straight, and we got good speed up there, but there seemed to be a missing corner in the notes, and that slowed us down, and the end section was a real mess – always is here – but we took 15 seconds out of the Becketts on this stage, so that meant we were now only 10 behind them.

Back to service, just to check the car over (a marked contrast to the frenzied servicing that all the crews at the pointy end do), and then off for SS10, Gore Heath 2. Here it was much the same as before, but we went better in the latter part of the stage, but were 5 seconds slower than the first time – the ruts were unbelievable, and there were a couple of times I thought we’d not get out. On the latter part, although I took the corners better, I felt the engine wasn’t giving full power – it just seemed to be a bit gutless, although Paul was sure it was the mud slowing us down. Still, we took another 11 seconds out of the Becketts here, and were actually in front of them! Finally, I wasn’t last in the Sunseeker after some forest stages. OK, it was only 1.3 seconds, but that’s still ahead. And again, the joys of the same time card collection woman as on SS5. I got out because the car was making a horrible noise (turned out the terratrip probe had lunched itself in the wheel at some point), but alas was too busy to make conversation. Damn!

Next was Wareham, this time a reverse of the first Wareham stage, but with an extra loop added. The smoother parts of the stage went pretty well, but the cut-up sections were, well, cut up badly, and again it was ‘follow the ruts’. Took another 13 seconds out of the Becketts to move 14 seconds in front of them. This was going well!

And now it was Stapehill which was a reverse run, largely, of SS6. This went well too, getting good speed through the corners, and this year not backing off at all on the long straight up to the finish. This sounds a bit girly, but when you’re going 80-85 on gravel and going between two very sturdy gateposts, not backing off seems alien. But it actually steadies the car, and that’s a good thing. Again, made another 10 seconds on the other Skoda crew, so the lead was now 25 seconds.

Back to service once more, and put the light pod back on, as we’d need it towards the end. Unfortunately, it seemed that this morning’s overheating antics were coming home to roost. The car just seemed to be losing power – the long straights of somerley (mostly uphill this way round) meant the car just wouldn’t pull cleanly and often where I’d expect to be flat in third wouldn’t work at all, and I’d maybe be at 50% revs (no rev counter, so that’s as accurate as the figures get, alas). This was bad, and I sensed that a non-finish was on the cards. We lost 15 seconds of our lead here – we didn’t know it at the time, but I was certain of that, and we had the longest stage to go yet, Plumley Wood (basically a reversal of Mount Ararat).

The car was getting very slow now – third gear was not an option if there was any kind of incline, which meant for the most part our top speed was around 40. I couldn’t believe it – a simple 50p item was looking like it would cost us not only the coveted “not bloody last again” trophy (self made, of course), but even a finish. At several times the car just seemed to not want to go at all, and although I think my driving was getting better as the day went on, I’m not good enough to be able to lose that sort of time. We got passed by a 205GTi towards the end of the stage (he was around 3 minutes faster than us on the stage!), but by then I was just hoping the car wouldn’t die. It kept going, thankfully, but I knew we’d have lost a lot of time as there are two very long straights on this stage (again, uphill), and even just there we must have lost a lot. Turned out it was around a minute. Bye bye to any hope of a lead. Turned out we were now 47 seconds down on them.

Finally, there was Ebblake again, in reverse. This isn’t a bad stage, but there is a series of horrible, loamy corners which just grab the car when you don’t expect it, but by now it was just a case of second gear only – third was out of the question completely. Still, took a few corners well, and I was staggered that we actually got to the finish. Lost another 23 seconds here, and were now 1:10 down. But we still needed to get to the finish, in Bournemouth, so I drove as carefully and engine-preservingly as possible, and we actually made it back to the town hall, although pulling up the ramp into the car park the engine sounded really bad to me. But it did make it. We finished. We finished last, but we did finish. And if the engine hadn’t cried “enough”, then I’m certain we wouldn’t have been last. Paul seemed to have a good time, and going over the finish ramp was a good feeling, ‘cos I was certain an hour before that it’d be a cold wait in the forest before a long tow home.

A massive thanks has to go to Kevin Jackson for being our chase car this year. He was to compete with Steve Colville, but Steve couldn’t get a car in time for the event, so Kev spent the day supporting us by meeting us at the end of most stages, and checking that all was well. Fortunately there wasn’t a lot for him to do, but it’s massively appreciated.

Next year, I’m not going to be last.

Yesterday it was snowing all day. Today has been a lot better, so much so that I decided to go for the dry option, some Yoko 048Rs. Fitted them, and went off to the service area about 45 minutes before we were due to start. Get everything set, get our times, etc. Paul sheepishly said “Is that tyre supposed to look like that?” Unreal – a puncture! Luckily I’d put a spare in the car, so we at least had something to fit to it. Didn’t help calm my nerves though!

So, off we went to Stage 1. And got there with about 10 minutes to spare, so I got out of the car, and was interviewed by Innes and Alison Marlow for the globecast broadcast, and was really really nervous. I think it showed! But had a bit of fun anyway, and then spoke to a few people from the Britishrally.com forum. But to be honest I was so nervous about it all I just couldn’t make any sense or anything, so I just put my helmet on and got in the car.

Stage one went OK, I suppose. There’s a bit of a surprise as there was a tight 90 Right 90 left before going under the flyover, and the chicanes, which were quite tight. But it went OK, and I had the great pleasure of seeing Ciara Conlan from britishrally.com forum at the end of the stage – never unpleasant!

Back round for stage 2. This time we were wedged between an Impreza and a Hyundai Accent WRC. I was worried we’d get caught, but by the time we got to the long runs on the seafront, we hadn’t been, and couldn’t really see his lights, so we were OK – focus to the front now. Made a reasonable improvement (8 seconds), and – get this – actually beat the Accent’s time by 2 seconds!. Not often I’ll do that!

Back to service, timing was a bit tight, but we got there OK, only to find that we and the Beckett Brothers in the other Skoda (and our only real rivals on the rally) were both given 1 minute penalties – eventually we found out this was an inputting error and had been removed.

I just found out something amusing. I think I might have put down Paul’s hobbies as being “exaggerating”. The commentator apparently mentioned this a number of times when we came through, as well as saying “that’s the slowest car I’ve ever seen”. Well, the results say different – at the moment we’re in front of three cars. Only two of them have had ‘mares, and we’re only 0.8 seconds behind the Becketts.

Tomorrow will see if I’ve made any improvement in driving skill since last year!

Well, I just about got the car finished – there were a couple of things to do this morning (one of which was ‘cut your thumb open with a holesaw’ – not on the list, but I did it anyway), and got to the service area around 9. There were already quite a few cars and crew there, and the first thing we noticed was….. It was bitterly cold! Hideously so – just putting the tarp out was a challenge, and then we had to run down to get the stickers for the car. There were quite a few of them, and the door stickers are over a foot square. Needless to say, Paul didn’t make light work of this, and I had to take over as “big sticker boy”. But we got ’em on, and got noise tested (a HUGE 82dB!), and then off to Littledown for scrutineering – always the most nervous part of any rally for me, and even more so as at the Sunseeker, it’s inside a leisure centre, so everything is on show, and it seems really official.

Needn’t have worried, everything was in order, and after about 10 minutes we were pushed back outside so we could get on with our documentation, which was also in perfect order.

However, on the way back to my house, I noticed a knocking sound, which was getting louder, so would some attention. Turned out that the front brake caliper bolts don’t have enough thread on them, and it was a little loose, and also the left-side driveshaft had a bit of play in the inner joint. It would probably be OK, but I thought I’d change it anyway. Once this was done, it then turned out that the terratrip would only work when turning right. Half an hour later, I was still scratching my head – no problems with the wire when not fixed to the car, but when on, it was doing the same. However, it was too late to worry about that. We’re first car off, so we should be leaving service around 6:31, and on stage around 7:01 and 7:25. Let’s hope my nightmare of a week ago doesn’t come true!

At the start of the week, things looked bleak. I’m physically a shed (dodgy back), and there were LOTS of things to do to the car. Change the gearbox, remove and check the front suspension (there were some rattles towards the end of the Tempest), move the nav seat back (Paul is a big chap, and he really wasn’t comfortable in the car at all), fit the new harnesses, and a whole load of little things that just mounted up enough to fill a sheet of A4, even in 10pt writing. Oh dear.

But somehow, now, most of it’s done!

I changed the gearbox with the assistance of my dear mother, back to one that’s actually Group N legal, instead of the diesel (diesel!) gearbox that was in the car when I got it. It now does 40 in second, instead of the 50 that it did before. So much more responsive, it really is. I have no idea whatsoever what the previous owner was thinking of when fitting this to a rally car. Maybe it was fuel economy, or maybe all the stages he did were downhill. Anyway, that’s the big thing done.

Suspension was all removed, checked and refitted. The noise was actually from the sumpguard touching on the catalytic converter (which looks to have seen better days, despite only being one bloody event old!), but it’s always good to check wishbones for cracks, etc. There were none, and the bushes and joints looked in good condition, so it all just got a clean and then was refitted with new bolts and copper grease. It’s actually nice to work on a rally car most of the time, because it’s rare you come across a seized fastener, as most things will have been off recently.

Then, the seat. Now, as I’ve said, Paul is a big chap. He’s 6’4″, and, er, shall we say built for comfort? He’s not fat, but he’s not a rake either. Way back when he started out I had to buy a new seat to fit him, a GT-width (read “pies”) Cobra Imola 2. A really nice seat, but a tight fit in a little Skoda. But in this car, the seat rails were way too far forward, and he was very cramped, and quite high up. This has now all changed. The seat is 5″ further back, and 3″ lower, courtesy of new mountings. This being the real world, and seat mountings being important (i.e. they have to be strong enough to withstand a big off without letting go) coupled with the uneven nature of the Skoda’s floor meant that it took about 6 hours to make the mounts up. The seat is as far back as it can realistically go, and being so low to the floor it made doing the bolts up a bit of a chore, but it’s really neat now, and very easy to get into/out of. For the navigator, being a bit low isn’t a problem, and it should help the car’s centre of gravity. Although I doubt I’ll ever be good enough to realise the benefits of such a modification, I can still wow the crowds with it. If there are any crowds.

So, some more finishing off with little jobs not worth mentioning, and finally fitting the white mudflap material I bought all round the car has left it looking more like a rally car.

Another day’s work should see everything finished off. Now I just have to hope that the nightmare I had last night (of breaking down on Bournemouth seafront) doesn’t come true. It was bad enough to wake me up at 5am, so I’d better make sure the real thing doesn’t happen!

Apart from the technical issues, it’s really exciting to know that it’s all going to start happening in a few days – I can’t describe how excited I am about the whole thing. I know it’s only “another rally”, but there’s something special about doing it, and driving through my home town!

The usual #1 in my rallying calendar (how blase do I sound?) is looming. I’ve just come back (early) from Switzerland, having – once again – done my back in. It was ropey when I went, and then it got worse while I was there, although ironically not while I was boarding, but at other times. Anyway, I’m currently flat out, with a super-sore back. Hopefully this will calm down in the next week, as I have quite a few things to do to the car –

Change the engine and box
Buy and fit new harnesses (FIA homologated ones became compulsory at the beginning of the year, and the current ones are out of date)
Replace the bushes in the front wishbones – this is one area that the car seems vulnerable to, and as we’re running in Wareham forest twice, I think they will get one hell of a pounding. Plus I think everything needs a check up front, as this will be where the hits are mostly taken.
Fix the fuel gauge
Get a rev counter
Get an intercom
Fit a new fire extinguisher (4.0 litre, FIA homologated, for WRGB)

So, there’s a fair bit to do yet. Our only realistic competition is the Beckett brothers in their Favorit – all the other cars are way quicker, the only other N1 ones being a Proton and an MG ZR which will be a lot quicker, both driver and car-wise…..

Unlike ‘normal’ driving licences, an MSA competition licence needs to be renewed each year. This seems to be a good way for the MSA to generate income (it costs me ?60 for my licence, and I’m not sure what I get for that apart from their magazine which contains very little rally-related information – after all, entry fees contain money that goes to the MSA anyway, but that’s another subject), and while I was at it I thought I’d check how much International licences were going to cost Paul and me for when we do the Wales Rally GB. The form has a whole load of options, but I found mine, Stage Rally International, at the ‘bargain’ price of ?140. (although compare this to the International ‘Entrant’ licence – for a team – at ?3k!). But I couldn’t find “International Navigator”. So I did a bit of Googling.

You know those times when something’s gone wrong in your life, and you look back at the time before the incident and think of those times as being happy, innocent, carefree days? Well, this was like that. I felt like I’d been kicked in the guts. Turns out that the FIA makes no distinction between a navigator and a driver when you’re at International level. In other words, for Paul to do Wales Rally GB, he’d need an International Stage Rally Driver’s licence. If you don’t know what that entails, then I’ll outline it for you:

OK, here’s the big reason I wanted a homologated car. I want to enter Wales Rally GB 2006. This probably is the stuff of a madman’s dreams, but there you go. It’s not cheap, but then entering a round of the World Rally Championship was never going to be, was it? One thing’s for sure – we’ll be spending less than just about anyone else who’s entering. But there’s more – Steve Colville is also up for entering it, and that means we can share a service crew. If we can get someone else from BDCC who is mad enough to enter, we could even enter the “club team challenge”, although I’d think we’ll be down the list on that front, but it’s a laugh, right?

Anyway, all that means that I need to get the car up to ‘International’ spec. Nothing to do with the performance of it, but it means bigger fire extinguishers (no bad thing), plastic film on the windows (so glass doesn’t go everywhere if they break, again not a bad idea), and a new seat for me, and of course the FIA-approved harnesses that I’d have to buy anyway for next year. Not mega expense, but I’ll still have to get saving. Hopefully the car should be in roughly that spec by the Sunseeker anyway. But this also means that I need to finish the Sunseeker, as I need that finish so I can get my International licence. Still, if that bloke from the Lucozade competiton can do it, surely I can too?