Skoda Rally Blog

When I was 11, I fell out of the tree in my back garden. Below me was a neighbour’s garden, and in it was a six-foot steel spike (about an inch in diameter) which was stuck in the ground, and had a sharp point in it – the kind of thing you’d use to break up hard ground with. It was stuck about 18″ into the ground. When I hit the ground I was aware of two things. Firstly, I was upside-down, and secondly, I couldn’t move. I shouted for my Mum’s help, and she rushed down the garden (fortunately she wasn’t out!). She said what she saw made her feel as sick as she’d ever felt. The reason I couldn’t move was that I’d become stuck on the pole. It had gone down the inside of my t-shirt (at the neck), gone all the way down my back (removing the skin on most of my vertebrae), and between my bum cheeks, and then out the front of my jeans by the fly. It took some lifting me off of it, but she did it, and then went and kicked the old guy’s ass for having that in his garden.

When I don’t win the lottery or anything like that, I always think I used up my allocation of luck that day – an inch the other way and I’d have been at best a cripple, and worst, dead. So I don’t think I’m very lucky.

Yesterday was a momentous day. Got everything together, car running, driveable and ready to go. Even managed to get a session doing the mapping in the afternoon at local Subaru specialists and rolling road types Triton Motorsport. Got the car down there OK (albeit running terribly, as you would expect given the change of engine, inlet and injectors), and after some playing about with the software, started mapping. I am a naturally nervous kind of guy, and I was worried that something would go wrong, but it all seemed to be going OK – Andy had found the original mapping settings were utterly crazy, explaining two things – firstly that my opinion of the person I got the DTA setup from was 100% correct and secondly why the car wouldn’t restart on WRGB and was generally not a happy bunny. Once he’d put some sane base settings into the map, the car ran a LOT sweeter. A few runs were done to map the mixture vs RPM, and then adjust accordingly. We’d only seen about 45bhp, but the ignition timing (and hence power) weren’t set yet. It was looking up, and I started to relax, operating the remote starter (the DTA ECU doesn’t like being turned on and off while connected to the laptop) and also the giant fan for cooling which was unbelievably powerful.

And then Andy looked up worried, and killed the engine. There was no oil pressure, and we’d only been to about 6400rpm. A look at the dipstick showed some particles in the oil. Game over. I was devastated. We got the car off the rollers and although it had some pressure (above 1500rpm), it was clearly not driveable; at the moment there was no knocking noises so nothing too serious had happened, but obviously it would mean a rebuild at best. Andy is a legend as he agreed to tow me home (I couldn’t get hold of anyone at the time), and got me home, and said if I get it sorted out we can do the mapping later in the week, which is a relief as I’d explained about the Rally GB entry closing on Friday and not wanting to put an entry in without a hope of having a car.

First up was pulling the sump off which didn’t take long and revealed a MASS of tiny particles – something had let go in a fairly major way, so this engine was (for the time being) scrap. So, there was a choice – either re-fit the engine the car had in it (which didn’t run that well unless it was on the throttle bodies, clearly not an option for WRGB), or fit another engine I’ve had for a long time which was originally in my Favorit (fortunately they are the same engine, so it’s an easy fit and totally legal). It always went well, and I don’t really know why I removed it aside from it being a bit peaky – there was no leeway with gear selection as the powerband was little more than a gearchange wide, and at the time I wasn’t good enough on gravel to get all that right.

However, it’d been mothballed for 3 years – dry stored and oiled in the appropriate places, but still left in a shed. The clutch looked worse for wear, but fortunately I’d just bought a new one on eBay. It wasn’t due to arrive until Wednesday though, which is not good. The other issue is the front pulley, and fortunately the one I had on the original engine was the right type and size to replace the Fav one, so it was all systems go.

I worked until about 10pm to remove everything from the engine ready to come out tomorrow morning – the engine crane is in the back of the shed and not an option to get out in the dark, plus I was done in.

The plan this weekend was to get the car running on the new setup, and run the engine in a bit with some gentle driving. To that end I had a few things to do which would probably take a fair while, but would mean that everything was done to a “final” standard rather than chucked together and then needing doing again. First up were wiring modifications – moving the inlet air temperature sensor (to somewhere useful rather than just hanging about the engine bay) meant the original cable was too short. What I didn’t want to do was butcher the original loom and end up with a mess (although I could do it to a high standard). Instead I preferred plug-in extensions, but getting hold of a ‘plug’ wasn’t immediate – they’re not an off-the shelf item, and wiring looms don’t have them hanging about. So I cut the plug off of a spare injector and soldered the extension to that, but that (despite being very strong) wouldn’t be too reliable, so I strengthened it with araldite, making for a strong and corrosion-proof job. Once taped up it looked good.

Next was all the little things I had to finish off – exhaust clips, gearbox oil, linkage back on, etc.

The other issue I’d had since putting the new management on the car was probably one that many may see as minor, but it was annoying – the temperature gauge didn’t work. That might sound a bit petty, but it’s the only bit of instrumentation that’s given for the engine in the Felicia, and an important one. The reason was that there is a dual-purpose sender in the engine on a standard Felicia – one sensor for the engine, one for the temperature gauge. This is for two reasons – firstly they need a different resistance and secondly it makes good sense to separate the two signals. This had been replaced with a single one for the DTA setup, and meant no gauge. However, I connected everything up, and then connected the laptop and saw… that the current temperature sender was COMPLETELY wrong – it was saying 2 degrees, a full 15 too low. I’d measured the resistance of it before (comparing it to the Felicia sender) and thought the Felicia one was wrong. Turns out the DTA one was the issue, which meant… with some re-cabling I could use the original sensor AND get the temperature gauge back. A similar job was done to the other extension, but in this case there were more cables (four in total), and it meant adding an earth connector as well as a link to the original loom connector. An hour in total to do it all, but it was all done really neatly, and meant that the whole loom was totally done, and to a final standard. But by this time it was mid afternoon.

Got the LM-1 connected, and made up a ‘starter’ switch – the DTA doesn’t like being turned off (you can mess the memory up), so a remote starter removes the need for this – and fired it up. Once it had warmed up a bit, the controls worked OK, and finally I think it can be tuned. However it’s SO far out it’ll need some on-road work just to get it driveable, and to that end I fixed everything in place ready to drive it (cable-tying everything in place so none of the extra cables would be an issue, and then did the final checks to everything, and put the wheels on.

Started it up, and pushed the clutch down….

BANG.

A stream of expletives left my mouth, and the clutch pedal didn’t leave the floor.

Dammit, the clutch!

So, back on the stands, and an hour later I was looking at a scene of confusion – the release bearing had gone INSIDE the clutch. And over the next hour a horrible story of error evolved. The flywheel I’d put on was what I thought was an MPi flywheel. But it turns out it wasn’t. It had been machined especially for a racing clutch, but I’d mistaken this as I’d put (without knowing) a fabia pressure plate on (which fitted just fine as it wasn’t as deep), and this hadn’t been something I’d noticed until it was too late. Way too late.

So, replace the flywheel, then. They’re all balanced off the engine, so there shouldn’t be a problem. BUT I’d had the crank dowelled, and that WAS a problem – a new flywheel would need the exact same size hole in the same place. But with some clever work (and a pillar drill that I’d never assembled!), I managed it – well enough for it to fit on nice and tight as it should do. And that was the end of play on Saturday.

Sunday – chucking it down is the only way to describe it. I’m working outside, so there was no chance of anything getting done on the car itself, but I did spend the afternoon sorting out other things – the intercoms needed fixing, and in addition I’ve NEVER liked the way the OMP ones connect – they use a DIN plug which needs to be rotated to the right orientation before it’ll plug in. So I’ve rewired the whole headset and replaced the DIN plug with a jack socket… which I’ve fixed to the side of the helmet (with the already-provided threaded hole, so no safety issues).

Another area which is annoying is camera control – having to get out of the car to turn the camera on and off is a pain (and often not possible if we’re tight on time), so I bought a LANC controller for this, but it doesn’t work when recording from the external camera. The camera’s original remote DOES do this, but gives no visual feedback of it playing or not. Thankfully the two together do, so a remote extender has been bought to allow this to happen properly.

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be OK, so I should get it all back in one piece. Here’s hoping…

If you don’t know, I’m self-employed, and this year my regular work means I have Friday afternoons free. Which is really handy as it means I can buy stuff that is needed and sort other things out. Although I have to say my Mum is being (as ever) a legend – if I give her a list of things from local suppliers, she’ll get them while I’m at work, which saves days if not weeks.

So, since the last entry, I’ve made up a gear change light which will go on the dashboard, with 3 10mm LEDs, and a switch which will change between “day” and “night” brightnesses. Flash. But aside from that I’ve had the pipes for the oil cooler replaced with crimped on connections which look far better to me, and definitely won’t be coming off (something I was worried about), and also fitted the exhaust properly (all the mountings are now well secured with C-clips and locking nuts on the system). The gearchange linkage has been improved, with the new ‘hybrid’ linkage all TIG-ed up and looking spanky (the paint is drying as I type this). The legends that are Thread and Pipe have made me a nut for the air temperature sensor so I have now fitted it in the cool air box, and a few other little things.

Most importantly I’ve made some progress on the diff. I’ve been contacted by someone on the britishrally forum who seems incredibly knowledgeable about them (and has a lot of experience) and have been making progress with the diff – today I’ve measured the torque needed to turn it over, which is…. sod all! So clearly there is some work needed there, but at least I’ve got a definite measurement and now hopefully I’ll be able to get this sorted as the car was SO much better with it that I don’t want to have to go back to a standard diff.

So, tomorrow should see some improvements made to the car’s mapping – I’ll be rigging up the LM-1 and laptop and see what adjustments I can make with the “dyno box” that I have made up for the ECU. We’ll see…. so far everything has been going reasonably well – every time I go out to the car, progress is made. I have next week off, so hopefully this won’t be a repeat of last year’s week, which was hell on earth.

… sorry, had to make a ‘diff’ pun.

In short, I’ve made a nice new gear linkage today (old ones have a good rear joint, but a bad front one, new ones vice versa) by sticking two together. End result? A really good gearchange, and reliable too, hopefully (the new type ones come apart sometimes, as mine did previously).

I also stripped the gearbox that was in the car so I could have a look at the LSD which hasn’t worked right since Chris “*&$*%**%” Bennett took it to fit to the C/R box and took it upon himself to dismantle it for no reason. So I thought I would too. It wasn’t too hard to do, and this is what I found:

So, now I need to find out what’s wrong, which may take some time, as I have NO IDEA who made this, and so until I do I can’t see how I can get spares or work out what should be what. Hopefully the helpful chaps over at the British Rally forum will be able to point me in the right direction…

…. to finally get the engine all in, and fire it up. However, yesterday’s slow progress meant that I had a lot to do, first of which was to fix up the exhaust downpipes, which didn’t take too long, and I took the opportunity to strengthen them as well. They’ll get replaced after Rally GB, but right now I don’t have a weekend to spare getting all the bits together and making a replacement up. So they will have to do. The big upside of the new system I made is that it fits very well, and is really easy to get on and off – there is no messing about, just three mountings, all of which are positively located, and two clamps. Nice.

Next, the inlet manifold. This was one of several MPi (standard, to be Group A legal) manifolds that I have, and I’d matched it to the head for (hopefully) improved performance. The MPi inlet is clearly not going to work as well as a full-on “works” setup, but I don’t have one, so that’s that. I’ve optimised what I can, and it looks to be as good as it can be. Fitting the injectors was next, but two things needed to be done – firstly they are longer than the standard short MPi ones, and secondly I’m using an adjustable fuel pressure regulator that’s located on the bulkhead rather than the standard one (which I’ve seen alter in performance when I had a long and tedious testing session trying to find out why N158UBD ran so badly). However, I wanted to make the mod reversible and also reliable, so I opened up the stock regulator and removed the cap and diahragm meaning it’ll always be open, but won’t leak or have other issues. If I need to go back to the stock one, it’s just one bolt and pop one in. Splendid. Let’s hope it’s not needed.

Next up, assembling the rest of the manifold – throttle body (easy) throttle cable (easy really, but physically awkward, especially when there’s a rollcage in the way, and I fit the wrong type first!), various pipes and hoses, and then finally the engine management. This is the DTA E48 setup, and was running the car before. The only modification I need to make is to extend the Air Temperature sensor as it now needs to be over in the cold air box (before it was…er… just hanging out with the ECU….). The rest of it just plugged in, once it was taped up and tidy.

Driveshafts are essential in a car. And even more so if you don’t want to have a nightmare – if you turn a standard FWD car gearbox over without them in, the gears inside the diff can drop out of position, and in the case of the Skoda box break the casing. So despite us going nowhere I thought fitting them would be a good idea, so I did that, and found that the wishbone outer joint boots were split (an MOT failure) so I replaced them – handily I had lots of such spares from back in the day, they were about 30p each…

Then it was time to put some oil in, and then double-check everything. I even triple-checked everything as any kind of error now will mean (at best) a complete nightmare, but possibly a non-start. All seemed to be OK, so I turned on, and disconnected the throttle body so the ECU wouldn’t put any fuel in, as I wanted to get oil pressure before anything else. I turned the engine over.. and over some more… and over. Still nothing. So I checked that there was oil coming out of the pipe going to the cooler, and there was. Just a matter of time then? Another go put the oil light out, so I reconnected and anticipated several flat batteries before anything happened.

And it just fired up. Straight away. Rich as hell, but firing on all 4. I blatted the throttle a few times and let it die, and just checked everything over again. All seemed well so I fired it up and kept it going for a few minutes, and again checked everything. All well, so I did it once more. Excellent.

Now I did a proper check, and found that the push-on oil pipe fittings seemed to be weeping oil. Rather than have a hernia about this (it’s no problem really, as long as I sort it out before running the car properly), I called time on the day’s proceedings as I still feel rotten, and this was where I wanted to be by the end of the day. I took a picture and then spent the rest of the afternoon going through the myriad boxes of spares I have (which are spread between the garage and the large shed in the garden), and tidied up the garage which almost looks presentable. Almost. So here’s what it looks like now (the engine, not the garage, no-one’s seeing that mess!)

Due to some personal disaster (my band has split up) I now have Tuesday nights free. So looking on the bright side, I can spend that time working on the car and hopefully get everything done. This week I may make some progress on the LSD, and possibly have some gearbox developments (no, really!)

…. than none at all.

This weekend’s challenge is to get the car fired up with the new engine in it. Not to get it mapped, but just to fire it up and check that everything holds liquid, etc. However, I’ve been ILL all week – same kind of thing as I had the other weekend, being totally off my food, feeling sick all the time and stomach cramps. Lovely. Anyway, I’ve battled on…

There were several jobs to get done today – first of which was to fit the new (NEW!!!!) radiator. First time I’ve ever bought a brand new radiator for anything, as it happens. Typically it wasn’t straightforward as the mounting bolts are captive in the front panel and one had gone missing so a new one had to be made up, and involved removing the front panel to do it up… So that took a LOT longer than it should have done. The crank sensor bracket needed to be fitted then, and this involved much messing about with the alternator mountings, so again it’s 100% but it took a lot longer than it should have done.

Next up was fitting something that should help with reliability – an oil cooler. The Favorit had one fitted and while it leaked from the take-off plate, it definitely helped with reliability when thrashing the poor little thing – the original engine I had in R477 KRU suffered from low oil pressure when I’d been thrashing it (such as after Crychan on WRGB 07), so this was essential. While the engine was already fitted with take-offs for the cooler (and indeed these are a standard Skoda option, so the tappings are there already), the standard cooler would be in a rather vulnerable position – it would be placed vertically next to the radiator and extend right down to the crossmember and be very close to the alternator; a small pushing back could see that bang into the alternator and that would be end-of-engine! So, despite it being less efficient as it’s partly behind the radiator I decided to mount it horizontally and higher up. Some sturdy mountings into the front panel saw it in place, but then there was the small matter of making the pipes up. The connections into the engine were in two parts (an adapter then a right-angle), while the oil cooler connections were just right-angled. The hose was “push-on”, but that involved a vice and my entire bodyweight to get them anywhere near, but they went on in the end, and look very, very nice. Hopefully they’re perform very very nice! While lying under the car looking up at them I began to feel that it’s all starting to look quite “works” – obviously it’s not, but it’s way more complex than anything I’ve had before and looks really good. Pity it’ll all be covered in mud in seconds.

And then the next big job of the day – making up the cool air box for the engine bay. I’d already made this out of cardboard, but apparently that won’t cut it, so 3mm aluminium was the order of the day. While cutting out the basic shape and bending it was fairly straightforward, making up all the brackets and mountings took ages, and then there was the much more difficult task of cutting the elliptical hole for the tube where the air filter will go. While I’d worked out (with cardboard) where it needed to go, I wanted to get it the right shape quickly as most of the day was already gone. Fortunately I found an ellipse shape on the internet, printed it out and then resized it horizontally and then vertically to suit, and within 4 printings I was ready to do it for real, and cut it out from the sheet….

… and it was spot on first time! I was pleased. But then there was the issues of fixing the tube to the plate. And I remembered that I’d got some argon in my big bottle, and had the MIG parts to have a go. So although my aluminium welding is poor in comparison to steel and stainless because I don’t have a TIG and so on… I thought I’d give it a go. And it came out… OK. Ish. I’m sure anyone who can actually weld aluminium would laugh their asses off at what I’ve done, and I’m not pleased about it, BUT it is definitely functional. And it’s something I can replace in the future if I ever get an AC TIG welder (unlikely given the money!), so please, no grief about it from anyone unless you’re offering to make up a new plate and tube and weld it in place!

And that was about it for my 10 hours effort today. Seems like I’ve done NOTHING but tomorrow I should only need to weld up the downpipes, and then bolt a bunch of stuff in place – the only ‘modifying’ that’s needed is for me to re-space the injector rail, which is really just making up a couple of spacers. Or at least that’s how it is in my mind!

OK, yesterday I made good progress.

And today was largely the same, although as ever some issues have prevented things going 100% to plan, but that’s life, isn’t it?

Got the flywheel and clutch on the engine (having discovered finally the difference between the old and new-style clutch covers), and then for the first time ever put a gearbox on with the engine out of the car. Which was soooo easy, I’d almost take the engine out in future to change gearbox. OK, not really, but it was a piece of cake. And then get the engine/box into the car, which was easy too – and the ‘strengthened’ mounting rubbers are quite a bit stiffer now the polyurethane has gone off – much less movement than before.

And suddenly I was confronted with a very neat-looking engine bay. Which I forgot to take a photo of! But take my word for it, it looks great.

What’s not so great is that the exhaust downpipes are really cracked, so I need to fix them before refitting, or replace them – quotes are imminent, although delivery is clearly an issue. This means that I can’t fit a few other things, but I did get lots of “little” things fitted, and work out where the oil cooler is going to go (handy having another MPi Felicia in the drive to size things up on a fully built up unit as well), as well as how I’m going to make the cool air box for the new air filter (replacing the original airbox setup). The inlet manifold is properly matched to the head, and also a lip where the throttle body sits is also removed, which should help out a bit. The manifold is cleaned up and ready for the larger injectors to be fitted, and lots of other bits. I’ve made a massive list of fasteners and bits to be bought tomorrow, and have also ordered the bits I need for next weekend – the task then is to get the car running. Not drivable (as that’s probably too much), but running on the DTA management and so on. This is just about doable, I think, and then the weekend after some setting up to allow running the engine in is on the cards.

There were a lot of minor things done as well today, such as rebuilding the driveshafts, fixing various little things which took up a lot of time, but should make everything reliable.

Anyway, that’s the plan. I have a full week of work (days and evenings) so no time until Friday afternoon. Here goes…

So, last Sunday I was supposed to finish building the engine, to keep to my notional “timetable” to get the car done in good time and allow a decent amount of road-based mileage testing before WRGB.

However, I ate something dodgy on Saturday night (no, really, I wasn’t out on the lash, I stayed in) and spent half the night up, and was sick all day Sunday. G-reat, the Jones luck strikes again with another rally car build. Fortunately I was back on track by Tuesday and got the rest of the build done for the most part…

This weekend’s task is to get the car back up to scratch, check out what needs to be fixed/repaired/replaced and get the old engine out and the new engine in, with a standard gearbox for running in and dyno purposes while the LSD gets rebuilt. And at the end of play on Saturday, the following has happened:

Firstly the old engine and box are out, and split. I’ve found out that the box was leaking inside the bellhousing so we were lucky not to lose the clutch as it was quite oily! Could have been a lot worse.

The engine bay is much, MUCH cleaner than it was – it was disgusting, and frankly an embarrassment. I know it’ll get filthy dirty within 200 yards of being on the first stage the car sees this year, but that’s not the point. At the ceremonial start I intend to present a spangly-looking Felicia, inside and out.

Last year we had a couple of nose-dive jumps, which led to the front crossmember being damaged quite badly. This has now been repaired, strengthened, re-welded and painted. As this is where the sumpguard mounts at the front this is quite important, I think, as no doubt there will be more similar damage taken this year (although less so if we do the notes properly!), and the strengthening that I did do probably saved the front end from destruction as it was!

The new engine is built up and ready to install once the flywheel and clutch have been fitted, which is a quick job, and the rest of the car got a good clean off as well, as it’ll have to be MOT-ed before WRGB as well, but this should just be a formality, after all.

The engine mounting is a Skoda Motorsport one (with no voids in the rubber), but the gearbox and rear mounting have never been very sturdy, so I’ve beefed them up with some Sikaflex polyurethane. I previously tried doing this with silicone sealer which wasn’t very strong. If the difficulty of getting it out of the tube bears any relation to the hardness when set, then it’ll be brilliant – it took both hands on the caulking gun lever to get anything out at all.

Tomorrow’s task (to keep on track) is to put the engine in. However, this should only take a couple of hours at worst, so I can hopefully get a lot more done, re-build the driveshafts and get some work done on the engine management wiring – I’m hoping to be able to add a shift light, make the temperature gauge work (depending on the resistance of the standard sensor) and various other things, plus I have to make up a cool air box for the air filter.

Providing I don’t get ill again!

… So there have (typically) been many delays. But I’ve drawn up a schedule and I’m sticking to it, and this weekend’s task is to get the new engine built up. After all the delays with parts and machining, etc., actually putting the thing together is a reasonably fun task. First up, fitting the crank to the crankcase – only 6 bolts and fitting the bearings, but getting it all checked took an hour or so (checking all the clearances means it needs to be fitted more than once), and the end result was a crank that turns beautifully.

Next up, fitting the pistons to the conrods, which means fitting some very annoying wire circlips, a couple of which were a real pain to get in, but eventually they were done, and then the rings onto the pistons. The rings are standard Skoda items which is very handy, and they fitted without trouble. Having done many engines before, I had a piston ring compressor already, so getting the pistons into the bores is easy – plenty of oil makes it slide in without trouble – and then it’s just a case of fitting the shell bearings (which have been checked for clearances) and torquing up the big end caps. Four of these takes a while though, but the end result was a bottom end that turns as freely as you can expect for a freshly-built engine.

Next, some measurement and calculation – firstly checking that there was good clearance between the pistons and the cylinder head – the standard head is flat and the Group A one has machining to accomodate the domed pistons – which wasn’t a problem, but means fitting a head gasket, putting plasticene on the pistons and then fitting the head, and turning the engine over. Clearance between pistons and head was fine, so no problem there, thankfully.

Now, some measurement – for completeness’ sake, measuring the compression ratio, which involves measuring the volume of the piston crown and the combustion chamber, which takes a sheet of perspex, some water and a burette.

The end result of today’s work?

Now, the pistons are a source of some issues – I have been told by a reputable tuner that they are complete junk, and I should go for forged pistons (which would cost around ?800 or so). Aside from anything else, I don’t have the money to do that at the moment, but the manufacturer says they’re good to 8500rpm (and I’ll only be using 7200), and I’ve heard other reports that they’re OK, so I hope they’ll be fine, but I guess I’ll only know when they’re in the car and running. We’ll see…

Preparation has been slow this year. Most of the car is OK – there’s some work needed on the sumpguard and front crossmember and general tidying up, but certainly nothing like the hell that was the case last year. But I’m determined to do it in a car I’ve completely built myself, and that means new engine and hopefully C/R gearbox.

Gearbox: Despite a lengthy phone call and many promises, no progress.

Engine: 3 weeks (and a bit) waiting for the crank and flywheel to come back from being balanced. I finally picked it up yesterday, but unfortunately can’t do any work on the engine this weekend, but next week it should start coming together – a dummy build for clearances and so on will be done, and then hopefully I can look at installing it and getting it properly set up; it possibly won’t be as quick as the current engine, but it should run well, and have a good, wide powerband. The plan is to have this done by the end of October as I’m off for a week then and can devote that time to the car.

Regulations for Rally GB came out today, so entries are open. It’s become real once more!