Skoda Rally Blog

Last time I attempted Abingdon, it didn’t go well. I’d only had the Ibiza up and running for a few months, and I’d never finished an event in it, a pattern which was continued when it expired about a mile into the event with a shattered inner CV joint.

This time I wanted it to be different. I’ve not done much on tarmac, and that has mostly been because in a fairly low powered car it’s not that much of an adrenaline rush – forestry is much better for that in a slower car. But far more importantly, I wanted to do what I’d originally planned, which was to complete an event with Tammie as my co-driver. Not because I think she’d ever be interested in the sport, but just so we’d have done it together at some point. So I’d cajoled her into it again this year, and it would also mean we’d have a second “trial run” with our trailer tent before we set off on a major trip in the summer to the south of France. Two in one – ideal!

We set off after lunch on the Saturday, and it took a couple of hours to get to Abingdon, and by the time we got there it was HOT. The bad weather we’d originally been promised had been and gone, and now it was a lovely summery day. The site was already really busy as there is a sprint on the Saturday, and we dropped off the trailer tent and Tammie and 3 kids went shopping while Sennen helped out with the rally car. Already unloaded, we went and bought some numbers, stuck them on and then went to noise, which went as well as ever (90dB, 10 under the limit) and scrutineering which I always detest no matter how nice the scrutineers are. This one was nice and friendly, and signed the car and camera off without incident. Time to relax!

Except, of course, it wasn’t because it was time to set up the trailer tent, which has a HUGE awning on it. Everyone was back with food and water, and 90 minutes later we had a place to stay for the night.

We went and got signed on which was straightforward, and later on dinner consisted of some pizzas cooked on the Safari Chef stove we’d bought. Had an interesting chat with some guys running a golf who were interested in the Ibiza as it shares so much with their car, so they had a good look around and went away with a few ideas of what to do with their car – they’re in a similar situation to me, running on a shoestring, so every little helps. The Ibiza is a really well built car with a lot of neat touches, and I know from previous experience how useful it is to see how others have approached a car’s build. Later on we went for a wander around site and caught some nearby fireworks, but everyone was pretty tired and it was time for bed – by 11pm on a Saturday night. Rock and roll!

Sunday dawned perfectly clear and bright, and it was clearly going to be a hot on. I got the van down to the service area and got a nice spot, and then took the car down with Eddie sat in it. He said it was really fast – mostly because it’s bumpy and he couldn’t see out of the windows, I think!
Back to the tent for breakfast, and then it started to kick in. Rally nerves. I’ve not had them for a while, and certainly not this badly. I was getting really anxious, but then I think it was because I didn’t want to suffer the same kind of short trip as last time. The kids were instructed with safe routes around site and then set up watching the complex, and we watched the first few cars through (the field was about 50 minutes’ worth so we had plenty of time), and then got the belts adjusted properly for Tammie and we were pretty much ready to go. Check everything over – all was well – and then suit up, and head off for the start of Stage 1.

There was a bit of a delay, which is always a bit confusing for a first time Navigator, as she had to get out and check with the control that we wouldn’t be penalised…

.,. but eventually we lined up on the stage start.  Tammie was watching the oncoming traffic for the merge – there was none – and then 5…4…3…2…1…GO! We were off! I took it easy off the line as I don’t see that much point in nailing it and breaking something, but we soon got up to speed. Tammie called the corners clearly and precisely, and the first thing was to get the brakes and tyres up to temperature. We headed into the complex, and she called everything OK, and soon we’d got past where we’d broken down last time, which was a start! Off out of the complex and onto the main airfield and the car went pretty well – it’s far easier to make sure you’re in the right gear when you’re on tarmac as you can consistently wring the engine’s neck until the redline; on gravel the revs are far more “up and down” as you lose traction, so the peaky nature of the engine wasn’t the handicap it can be on gravel. With the brakes and tyres up to temperature, they could be worked far harder, and really started to earn their keep. I didn’t trust them 100% yet, buy they certainly slowed us down OK.

It takes time to get the approach and exits to corners right, particularly in a new car (as it were), and also a new surface. When the maps are a little less precise than detailed pace notes it’s even more so, so some of the corners were a bit over-cooked (overspeed on the entry as DC would say), and others could be taken faster. Mental notes made, we headed off into the one section I didn’t remember from before, which took us off the main runways and onto some broken tarmac and concrete sections. On the maps they were just large looks but they were actually much more complex in reality, with some rocky hazards and potholes to try to avoid both to minimise damage and keep the speed up. In reality I’d spend the rest of the day trying out different lines to improve this section, and only come up with the “best” solution just before we reversed directions and therefore the knowledge became useless!

Tammie called the split – this was the one thing that I’d always told her was crucial, and round we went for lap 2. By this time all the other cars were well into the stage (we were 8 from the back), and we took it just like before, but a bit faster now we were in a rhythm. Everything went well, and on the next lap lines were improved a bit and confidence came back. I wasn’t thrashing the car, but it felt good and we went over the finish feeling like the job had been done well. Or more to the point, I did. I had a poorly navigator who was feeling pretty car sick and needed most of the service time to get over it. Not good.

What was also not good was that the catch tank was already full of oil – about half a litre of it – which I needed to drain out, and then top the engine up. This issue only presented itself on saturday morning, and I thought it was just a cumulative thing, not that it was a sign of impending mechanical failure. The car’s previous owner said that they had trashed the tuned head originally fitted to the car as it had breathing difficulties, and it looked as if that was back. There was no real way to fix it, and I just hoped the oil consumption would be consistent and mean we didn’t run out of oil, but either way I’d see how it went. I didn’t want a broken car, and nor did I want a broken girlfriend – either situation would mean a planned retirement for me. Sennen checked all the things I’d asked him to check (tyre pressures, wheel nuts, water and power steering fluid levels), and indeed did so for the rest of the day as well as helping with the drain procedure each time.

Fortunately by the time Stage 2 was due, Tammie had recovered, and we set off again. It went better than before, and we took about 30 seconds off the time of SS1. Tammie was again excellent, calling each corner with precision and authority, and reminded me not to go crazy on the rough section with just the right balance of control and competitiveness. But alas, as soon as we were out of the stage she felt terrible, and needed to lie down. She found this funny as she said she wasn’t scared and felt fine in her head, but felt sick and was shaking a bit by the end of the stage. I said to try to separate reading the notes (head down, so you can’t see the scenery) and looking out of the car (not reading the map at this point), and hoped that would help.

What had also not changed was the car’s drinking habit – the catch tank was full again, and there were signs of it coming out of the air filter.  Once more it drank half a litre. At least it was the same as before.

SS3 was upon us around the time Tammie started to feel OK, but it was a shorter stage layout, missing out on the section going down to the far end of the stage. Despite this, the timings meant we didn’t see anyone throughout it, other than right at the end of the first lap when someone else was splitting to go to the end and we went round again. Being a shorter stage, the car used a bit less oil (although still 350ml or so), and fortunately that combined with either getting used to it or travel sickness tablets meant Tammie felt OK-ish at the end.

SS4 was the “opposite” of SS3, removing the run through the complex and instead having two runs down to the far end of the airfield. This was a fair bit quicker, and off the line I could see Norman in his 205GTI on his second lap, so I thought I’d see if I could catch him. I got close, but never close enough to overtake, but could see his car had decent acceleration and most importantly really hooked it up out of the corners – the Ibiza is a bit lacking in bottom end and it really showed here. On the brakes we were way better, making up loads, but again never enough to be held up much, so I thought better of trying to be a hero/moron and just waited until the second lap to go as fast as I dared. Other than that, things were going well – tyres felt good (particularly amazing as they were old when I bought them in 2012!), and Tammie was good – didn’t miss a thing at any point. At the end of this stage she seemed fine straight away, which was even better.

There was a slightly longer gap between SS4 and 5, so I quickly got a “lunch” of a bowl of Sugar Puffs, once the car had been drained of the oil it had used this time. The consumption didn’t seem to be getting worse, so that was a bonus.

Into SS5, and another new layout. At the start we’d seen a yellow Escort Cosworth which Tammie said looked like it was made of Lego, and so it became known as the Legomobile for the rest of the day. It was putting out a LOT of smoke off the start line, and didn’t seem happy. We went into the stage soon after, and passed a few cars and saw the sick Legomobile towards the end of first lap, when we were catching it hand over fist. He went off (I assume to take a maximum) and we did lap two without too many issues. Once more back into service, repeat the draining procedure, but everything bar one thing was fine. And that thing was fuel. We had used a LOT – nearly the full tank I’d put in as I didn’t want too much messing about – so rather than use the (I think 2 year old) fuel in the Jerry Can, I decided to go to Abingdon to put some fuel in. Fortunately traffic was light, but it was HOT in the car, particularly waiting for the person in front to fill up, who then took a while browsing in the shop before paying. Still, I was back with about 10 minutes to spare before SS6 which was good

SS6 was the penultimate stage layout, and a reverse of the previous layouts saw a bit of a delay and some confusion with car positions as the lanes have to cross over (cars coming out of the stage start out on the right-hand of the road, but needing to be on the left hand for the passage control. Still, after a short delay, in we went… it was going fine until the car lost power. Gauges all looked OK, but I looked in the mirror and there was a huge plume of smoke behind us. I thought the engine had died and said so to Tammie, but it kept going OK and cleared in 100 feet or so, so I carried on, keeping a weather eye on the gauges, all of which seemed OK. This stage had a transition over grass which was a bit slippy but good fun, and the last time round I was catching a Micra right at the end and thought I heard an odd sound. I hoped it was him, not me, but as we split towards the end I knew it wasn’t. One of the marshals said the sump guard had dropped off (which seemed unlikely), but as we went down the road there was a road-speed related whirring noise, so something was clearly not right. The Passage Control people said they could smell burning. Oh dear.

Into service, and the problem was soon revealed. This was stuck in the back of the sumpguard and dragging on the road (and thankfully hadn’t damaged the front tyre):

Once removed, I went for a quick test drive and all was well. We might make it yet. Standard procedure (drain the oil tank), and off we went once more.

SS7 was the last new layout (SS8 is a re-run), and we went into it pretty positive. Tammie was now feeling OK throughout the stages, and while going in reverse led to her only mistake of the day (getting a bit lost at one point), she regained it quickly and did a marvellous job again. We overtook a fair few cars (some being lapped, some legitimate) and it seemed to go well, aside from another “Dick Dastardly Plume of Smoke” that was released at one point, and the oil pressure getting a bit low towards the end. As ever, drain the tank, top the engine up, check everything over, and hope for the best.

We headed into the last stage – SS8 with some hope that we’d actually finish. I wanted to do all the stages and get a proper finish, but didn’t want to kill the car doing so – being able to drive the car afterwards would be very useful, and seeing the cars waiting to be recovered out on stage meant there would be a fairly long delay before getting back, so that was also in my mind. But all these things get forgotten as soon as the lights go green and off we went. The first lap went OK, but I noticed some liquid on the screen at one point, and it wouldn’t wash off easily with the wipers. But the car went pretty much as before, so I kept going, but kept an eye on the oil pressure gauge. Towards the end of the second lap, just heading into the complex and having just overtaken a Micra, the gauge wasn’t reaching the pressure it usually would, and there was clearly a problem. I told Tammie and decided to take it easy for the last couple of miles – I put the hazards on in case anyone caught us, but really took it very easy on the engine, watching the pressure gauge as much as the road. It never got to zero, but it got close a couple of times. When we pulled up at the stop control there was smoke pouring out from under the bonnet, and at the Passage Control I stopped the engine and hovered over the extinguisher button, just in case. Once the damage declaration had been signed, I started up again and parked at the side of the road.

I got out and saw a complete mess – the car had lost a lot of oil, and it was over the bonnet, bumper and wings.

I suspected a failure of an oil pipe, but opening the bonnet showed that what had happened was the oil filler had come off! I guess this was my fault – I put it on last – and it meant the engine bay was a complete mess. The oil was dripping off everything, and thankfully looked mostly to be confined to the sumpguard, and my arm.

I got the trailer, got back to the car (which Sennen said had a couple of visitors saying things like “ooh, that’s a mess!” etc…), and got it loaded up. By now, oil had made its way into the cabin, so it was messy all round, but it was never going to be easy to clean up after that little episode…

Then it was off to pack up the trailer tent, which took about an hour, and we finished putting the cover on just as it started to rain. And it rained with a vengeance – I foolishly thought I’d get it hitched onto the car before putting my coat on, which was a big, wet mistake. Soaked in about a minute!

Still, that was that – Abingdon 2014 was done, and Tammie has finished a rally. The only one she’ll ever need to, but at least when I babble on about it in future, she’ll really know what I mean.

Having spent all of Monday packing away and cleaning up, I can see that the car will need some surgery; I put some oil in to allow me to move it about and it has decent oil pressure (4 bar straight away), but it was usually more like 6, so clearly that and the ‘heavy breathing’ issue means that it needs some work on it. However, I have a list a mile long of things to do, and money is tight at the moment. It’s looking pretty dubious that the car will be back out any time soon – in my mind I think that making the Sunseeker is the earliest possibility, and that would probably have to involve a secondhand bottom end; to build a decent bottom end would involve at least £1000 worth of parts alone, so it would probably be £1500 or so, and I just don’t have the money for that. Time for a lottery win, or a cheaper hobby.

So, I’ve been pretty short of time recently, and as a result I’ve not always posted stuff when it happened, or I’ve totally forgotten things that have happened.

One of them was the night before the MOT, the car sprang a leak.  Or two, in fact.  The fuel system on the Ibiza is (in my opinion overly-) complex, having an FIA-spec ATL fuel cell in the boot, which then feeds an under-floor pump setup.  I’d never really looked into it (after all, it worked OK), but it turns out there are two ‘lift’ pumps (for the two outlets on the ATL cell) and then a high pressure pump and filter.  The HP pump and filter look to be a VAG group item, which has been put in place here instead of the standard in-tank item.  This means that there are about 9 hoses under the floor connecting this and the return all together.  Two decided to leak, and I had to fix them for the MOT – fortunately I had the right hose in the garage, so it was just a late (10pm!) pain in the bum, being soaked in petrol and then rain, in the dark.  Nice.

However, previously I’d replaced the engine-bay hoses as well, as these had perished, so clearly all of them were on the way out.  The last thing I need is a DNF (or indeed a car-consuming fire!) as a result of a failure of one of these, so it was time to change them all.  Off to Thread and Pipe to get some more hose, and then all the hoses and fittings came off, with 6 needing replacement (one is a much better spec all rubber hose and isn’t a problem).  Easy enough, except they can be a right pain to get off, and getting the Goodridge fittings off the old braided hose took some work as there was lots of corrosion in there, as well as loads of mud and grit that needed to be cleaned scrupulously to get it all out.  With that done, all the hoses were cut to match the originals (two more of which were definitely weeping, so who knows how long they would have lasted?), and then replaced.  Easy, but another couple of hours taken up, including testing it – no leaks, and it looks a lot better.

The many pipes!

Maybe it’s just me, but every car I’ve had which has had braided hose on, it’s degraded after a few years.  The Favorit did it, the Felicias both did it, and so has the Ibiza.  Braided looks amazing when it’s on, but the cheaper rubber hose inner stuff just dies after a while, and ‘sweats’ fuel vapour normally – the smell in the Felicia was pretty bad even when brand new; replacing it with rigid hose transformed the feeling in the car on long road sections as you were no longer off your face on unleaded!  Rant over.

Next up, final check of everything before putting the guards back on.  A general check showed nothing stupid had happened, but there was some oil on a couple of lines that was a bit suspicious; cleaning it up and then running the car for a while showed that it was just left over from the previous issue with the old oil cooler, as it now works without any leakage, thankfully.  Time to dig (literally) the sumpguard out from behind the shed, give it a good clean and bolt it up… except the bolts were missing after they were so much effort (read: needed a nut welding to them) to get off.  Another trip to AllFix got that and the bumper bolts replaced with nice button-headed ones, and in place.

Finally, removing Tammie’s name from the windows and wing, and putting Paul’s there instead.  It’s been a LONG time.  On Saturday, we’ll be doing the Sunseeker, the first rally mileage I’ve driven since June 2012, and the first gravel event since February 2012!  To be blunt, I’m hoping for a finish, nothing more – it’s been a LOT of work to get the car back together, and hopefully I’ve addressed all of its issues – the suspension is better, the geometry spot on, the cooling better and power increased too, as well as better traction with the Gripper diff.  Here’s hoping all goes smoothly.

So, there has been some progress, first of which is that the Ibiza has an MOT!  Yes, all was well, the car is all good, and passed the MOT without any issue.  Which it should do, really, as after all, it’s a competition vehicle, but there’s always an element of doubt, particularly when it’s been such a long time.  Watching the front suspension being tested on the hydraulic sliding setup that the garage now have is quite an experience – one wheel is dragged from side to side to show up any play in the bushes, and the car looks like it’s moonwalking.

Anyway, on the way to and from the MOT, something became apparent that hadn’t shown up before, and that was that the car was getting hot.  It seemed OK when travelling at speed (I was taking it easy), but as soon as I slowed down, it got hot, and I had to be careful with heat management (speed and gears) to keep it at a sane temperature.  Clearly something was wrong, but running the car afterwards and leaving it meant it got to about 90 degrees or so and stayed there, although it didn’t cool down when the old trick of leaving the fan going with the engine stopped for a minute and then running it again was done – this usually works as the fans cool the water down that’s in the radiator and then it’s pumped into the engine and temperature drops a lot.

Clearly something was wrong, and a bit of searching on the ‘net showed that there seem to be a lot of people having problems with thermostats on the ABF engine, so it was time to replace that, and also the water pump as a precaution – I had to order the parts before dismantling so I got a pump anyway, and at £24 for the “high quality” one, it wasn’t such a bind.

What was a bind was the way the pump is attached to the engine.  Actually, that’s not true, it’s just four studs.  But the problem is that you have to remove the alternator, power steering pump and housing, and cambelt cover to get at the pump, so it’s a much bigger job.  The mounting for the power steering pump and alternator is one of those things that you know is a “production bodge” – it’s a big, ugly mis-shapen bracket that looks like it was an afterthought once the engine was pressed into service in a different setup than originally envisaged.

Anyway….once I’d finally got it out, replacing the pump was easy enough – just remove the old one’s bolts, clean up the gasket face and bolt into place.

Pumpin’

The old pump, however, wasn’t in particularly bad shape – which was worrying.  All hope was now pinned on the thermostat, which should open up at 85 degrees to let the radiator cool things off.  I boiled the kettle, and put the water in a pan to keep it boiling and dropped the thermostat in – it should have sprung open.

Nothing!  Good news!  So, the new thermostat was put in, and everything put back together, which took about an hour as there was so much to put back in place!  The system was filled with water and bled as much as possible, and then the car run up to temperature, and the reward was a proper cooling system; so much so that when static the electric fan no longer kicks in, as the radiator cools enough at a standstill to keep the temperature below that point.

That’s the last thing I need to fix before Rallye Sunseeker.  There are a couple of other things to do (including wiring in the heated windscreen), but it’s looking good.  This is doubly good as on Saturday I’m navigating for Ray in his Quattro (I’ll see what I can get recorded for this, as his car is epic), so that’s a day that I won’t have to work on it… but all is looking good at the moment, way better than last year, so hopefully it’ll all hold together!

I’m not a fast driver, by any stretch of the imagination, but even I managed to give the Ibiza a fair thrashing on the Sunseeker – about half the stages are fairly slow, 2nd and 3rd gear stuff – and as soon as I did so, the engine was running hot, both oil and water temperatures.  The radiator’s lack of size was covered a fair while ago (it had a 1.4 radiator fitted!), and the large-capacity 2.0 radiator I found after a lot of searching fits well in the front panel, but has an issue – the water inlet and outlet are on the “wrong” side of the radiator for the plumbing the car did have.  This isn’t the end of the world, but needed addressing next.  Fortunately I’m friendly with the staff at the local Motorist’s Discount Centre, and they had a box of radiator hoses that they were happy to lend me so I could measure up.  What was really good was that there were hoses with the right bends and sizes to do the job!  5 hoses (£5!) later, all I needed was some tubing to make up the links between them, and £15 later on eBay I had them on their way to me.  The top one is steel (as it has a take-off for the header tank), and the bottom ones are aluminium, and I’m generally pretty pleased with how it has all gone together:

Cool.

The hoses actually fit better than the originals, in terms of missing bits of the car – I don’t know where the originals came from (it wasn’t a 2.0 16v Ibiza!), but everything looks and fits better now.   Hopefully it will give enough cooling capacity to keep the car cool on the stages; certainly it will have more than it did before!

For a while I’ve been trying to get a pair of driveshafts made up – I sent the pair from the car (the one that broke on Sunseeker 2012, and the other one that was fitted at the time) to DRD Autograss to get them made up, but they eventually went quiet on me, not replying to any contact with them, which is a pain as I spent ages chasing them, and also sent them a pair of shafts and joints to ensure everything was made up accurately…. so, best avoided then; after a year of excuses and so on, just silence.

Moving on… with everything in the car, it was time to put the shafts and front suspension back in, so I grabbed the last pair of spares from the car’s spares package and tried them for size.  The nearside shaft fitted without issue – about 15mm of plunge at full suspension droop, so everything looked great.

The offside was a different story – it wasn’t possible to move the driveshaft in at all , and indeed it was under some pressure with the suspension fully dropped, which is definitely not right – as the suspension is compressed, the driveshaft length decreases, so this would clearly not work, putting (at best) immense strain on the joints and the diff.  So clearly the shaft I had quickly fitted to get the car home after the Sunseeker wasn’t right…. but what was?

A morning spent on the Internet scouring forums found some clues – fortunately a lot of people have fitted VW engines into the “wrong” cars, and as an aid to this people have measured the shaft lengths.  Stripping the shaft down to just the bare shaft showed that it was about 20mm too long!  The problem with ordering another one, though, was that parts manufacturers only give “fitted” lengths, not bare shaft ones, but some measuring up showed that the “right” shaft for the car was the “right” shaft for the car, so I bit the bullet and ordered one complete.  It arrived the next day and…fitted perfectly!  Same plunge as the other side, so the rest of it was just a case of bolting everything into place.  The short shaft was removed and had both inner and outer joint replaced, so it’s all good as new:

Shiny!

Here’s everything all nice and shiny, it’s a pity it won’t stay that way, but hey ho!

The Ibiza had been up on stands for months.  Actually, over a year, if I’m honest.  Life has got in the way for the most part, but in addition the heavy rain at the beginning of the year meant I didn’t do much on the car for several months.  However, over the Summer I finally got everything back together – the gearbox eventually got built, despite several problems:

1)  The diff from Gripper took longer than expected to arrive; it was a month after the original date that they actually had them in stock, although once they were it was delivered in days, set up to my preference!

2) The gearbox rebuild parts were a LOT of grief – I ordered several parts from autogear.co.uk and many of them were wrong; the bearings mostly were OK, but not all of them – the diff bearings were wrong, and the oil seals were the wrong size (more on this later), and they sent a 3rd gear synchro which didn’t fit; it looked about right until you took a close look, and this was a problem exacerbated by VW saying these parts were no longer available.  Fortunately Jim Jones had an 02A box that had suitable parts in it, so I had a decent set of synchros at last.  It didn’t help that Royal Mail lost the synchros I returned so I’m currently £50 down as they’ve not paid out on the insurance claim yet, months later!

3) Cleaning the cases out took a lot longer than the Skoda ones as they have a lot more places for grit and gunk to hide.  While they look great after being blasted, it is a LOT of work.

Actually building the box was pretty easy as the VW manual is very good.  What wasn’t good was my lack of knowledge of VW driveshafts and flanges.  I was unaware that there are two types (push-in and bolt-in) and I had the wrong type (push-in) for the gripper diff, and in addition the cases use different seals and a spacer if you have different flanges.  Getting hold of the right ones for the diff proved hard, so instead I had my current ones modified by Retel EMD – Damian has provided most of my modified parts, and always does a great job, so here’s the article in question:

Flange

The bit to the right needed to be removed (the spring clip and the small splined bit), as well as a hole drilled for the bolt to go through the centre.  Apparently this flange is made of incredibly hard material and it was bloody hard work to get it done…. but there you go!  Once all modified and with the right seals, it bolted up without issue.  Splendid.

Now it was finally all together and ready to bolt to the engine and then drop into place:

In it goes!

Fitting it here was easy enough – particularly with the removable front panel – but getting the mountings in place was fun – the gearbox mounts are quite complex (it looks as if VW made a bunch of odd bits to make the mountings, it’s a bizarre jigsaw) and I didn’t pay much attention to them when I took them apart… over a year before.  An hour’s head-scratching and finding a missing part led to it all being in place at last.  Splendid.

Next, it was time to sort out the issues of cooling that it suffered – the radiator issues have been mentioned before, but there’s the plumbing to address for it, and that’ll be next.

Last time anything of significance was posted on here, it was about the front subframe and suspension – the camber of the left front was wrong, and it was hard to measure what was wrong and where.  However, with more investigation and measurement the truth finally made itself clear – the car itself wasn’t bent, but the front hubs had been modified to counter something (I know not what) and as a result were actually off; fitting one from one side to the other had a different camber on it.  Given this and my wish to fit the Proflex suspension I had to the car led me to trying to combine the two projects (get the angles right and fit Proflex) into one – fit the Proflex and sort it while doing that.  To that end I designed some adapters for the suspension to fit the Proflex to the Ibiza’s hubs.  Long story short, I got them made up, had some plates made, measured and made some final ones with a bit of negative camber dialed in as well; after all, this is a rally car, not a daily driver, and a bit of camber will sharpen up the front and with the power steering it won’t mean I have a handful to drive.  The end result of all this work (and some welding by someone else when I realised my limits on 6mm thick plate) was this:

Front adapter for Proflex

This will go round the pin-type Proflex and bolt the hubs to it.  Once I’d got new hubs, suitably modified and with new bearings fitted, it all bolted up OK, and when fitted (actually much later in the story overall, but you get the idea), it looks like this:

Nice and shiny… for how long?

The car now has about 1.25 degree of negative camber on the front end, and the same figure on both sides – there was over a degree of difference between one side and the other before, so it will hopefully be a bit better behaved!

In addition to this, the rear has had Proflex fitted as well; this was a much more straightforward addition as it just involved unbolting the rears, and drilling out a spacer – that was it, as most VAG-group cars seem to share similar dimensions, and the rears of the Ibiza and Felicia are almost identical.  Only the remote canisters needed a mounting and they are snugly fitted in the rear beam, with enough slack to ensure a re-run of day 2 of Rally GB 2010 doesn’t happen!  I really didn’t like the feel of the Bilstein suspension that was fitted to the Ibiza originally – the rear in particular was very lacking in grip – so I hope that the tunability of the Proflex will give an improvement in this area.  Time will tell…

It’s been a VERY long time since anything has been posted on here, but that doesn’t mean to say I’ve been idle – far from it, in fact.  Lots has happened, and over the next week or so I’ll be posting on what’s been going on.  In short, the car is finally back in one big piece, and by the end of the week I hope to have it on the road, MOT-ed and ready to shakedown; Rallye Sunseeker is on the 19th October, and I want to be taking part in it.

So, the subframe arrived, and it was complete with steering rack, wishbones, anti-roll bar, the lot.  A bargain for £53 delivered…  It took a while to get it all apart, and there are some differences between the golf and Ibiza setup – the subframe and rack are the same, but the wishbones are different as they have a different ARB mounting, and the ARB itself is obviously different – doubly so as the Ibiza has a heavy duty Neuspeed item fitted, not the standard item, so all of that lot can go in the scrap bin, ready for the next “guess how much this will weigh in for” competition on Facebook.

Anyway…. once it was all apart, it was time to measure up.  What I was hoping for was that the new subframe would be wider at the front mountings than the current one, and that I’d be able to make mods to the new one (the old one had been strengthened and seam welded), bolt it on and away I’d go.

It wasn’t to be.  I measured it, and found that they were the same.  Measured again, and again.  No difference, still the same measurement.

Oh dear.  It wasn’t that.  But there was definitely an issue, so something had to be wrong.  Lots of measurements were made of the location points on the shell – now obviously I don’t have a complex jig or 3D measuring gear, but diagonals should be the same, and they were… which was odd. So after a couple of hours I decided to bolt the subframe back in place, refit the wishbones and see what happened.

And it’s all fine.  The only thing I can think of is that an impact made the subframe move relative to the mounting point (there’s some slack in the mountings) and that was the problem.  With them bolted up in place, it’s all as it should be.  Which is nice, aside from my modification of the front hub meaning I need a new one, and not knowing what hub it actually is – it isn’t a Golf one, as I’ve now found out….  the hunt continues!

I’m not sure if I mentioned this….but the Ibiza is bent.

It always has been.  The camber on the front left wheel is positive – that means the top of the wheel is tipping outwards – which has a really bad effect on the car’s handling.  Or rather, it was that way until I modified the hub to allow it to be at the correct camber, but the problem with that is that the wheel is not in the right place.  My rough and ready calculations showed that the wheel was about 5mm “in” from where it should be, and that pointed to two areas – either the upper mounting was out from where it should be, or the lower one was in.  As the engine and gearbox are out of the way, this seemed the ideal time to investigate, as it’s actually possible to measure between strut tops and wishbones without there being a lump of metal in the way, so I made some measurements and found that the diagonals (i.e. top left strut mount to bottom right wishbone, and vice versa) were different.  By about 5mm, and in the “right” direction for the error I’d seen.  The top mounts are massively strong on the Ibiza – they were fabricated from thick steel sheet, welded to the cage accurately (Simon told me that this was a major pain to get right when the car was built) and they looked unlikely to have moved much; inspection didn’t reveal anything untoward.  The lower subframe, however, would be susceptible to loading from the side (such as sliding into a kerb), and was relatively weak as the subframe hasn’t got a direct line between the two mounts (as the engine is there).  There is an OMP brace fitted, and looking at this showed…. that it’s bent, and on the side where I think the car got hit.

It was all pointing toward the front subframe being bent, but it’s difficult to assess – there are no easy points of reference, and its shape and construction mean that it looks sort of bent anyway – it’s quite an organic, flowing shape and is not symmetrical.  I’m sure with an accurate 3D measuring jig it would be possible, but I decided to get it off the car anyway to see what was what, and when I undid the bolt nearest where I think it’s bent… it moved quite a lot, and I couldn’t get the bolt back in, so I think this confirmed it – the rest came off pretty easily; once the steering rack was unbolted, it was only another 5 bolts and off it came….

Is it bent?

It had been strengthened and seam welded, but it was still not possible to see if it was actually bent.  A bit of research showed that as many people have said, the subframe is the same as a Mk3 Golf (GTI/VR6), and this has a massive upside – they are cheap and availability is good – I managed to get one for £50, delivered, including steering rack, anti-roll bar and wishbones, which should be arriving today.  I can then measure the differences between the two (which I hope are present!) and if that all checks out, then get welding!