Skoda Rally Blog

So, here comes rally #2. Because of the time constraints (I really want to get Paul’s licence as soon as possible), this weekend is the next rally. At Caerwent. Yes, the Army base in South Wales, famed for the difficulty as a car breaker, mostly because of the high kerbs and very tight nature of the venue.

Which wouldn’t be so bad, but there is another issue. I’m working the night before, and won’t be back until midnight, and then have to leave here around 5am in time to get scrutineered. And we can’t use the trailer, ‘cos it’s dodgy and would also take another hour to get there. Tears, anyone?

… so I thought the drive would go smoothly – go to Abingdon on the Saturday and get scrutineered, come back and then drive up on the Sunday. So, we set off in plenty of time, and it’s all going well then suddenly, it’s not! There was a massive whistle/whining sound that appeared, and obviously I thought it was trouble straight away. I slowed down and then changed into fourth, and it went, so it looked like a problem with 5th only. Changing back to 5th showed that the problem was getting worse very quickly – the speed/load that it would happen at got lower each time, so I decided to stick it in fourth, take it easy and get scrutineered.

Got to Abingdon and watched the first half of England vs Paraguay in the World Cup, but gave up on the second half because I’d rather get the car scrutineered, which went OK. Once Paul had finished, got everything done and then went home to change the box. An hour and a half later all was well again, apart from having waterproofed the drive with EP80. So, on to tomorrow, then, with some luck!

So, I’m sat in the living room on a sunny Friday evening. And this weekend is the first ‘real’ step for me towards competing in Wales Rally GB this year. Paul has taken (and passed) his BARS test, and has his licence now. Sunday is his first drive in a rally – we are taking part in the Abingdon Car-nival rally, which is a single-venue all tarmac event, with about 90 miles of stages. I’ve been driving the car this week, and it’s running well – probably as well as it ever has been, and I’m hoping that the car will behave itself all weekend – firstly because I’ve still not fixed the trailer so we’re going to drive to the event (and hopefully back as well), and secondly because time is a little tight now, in terms of finishing 6 events in time for Paul to get his licence upgraded. There are just under 6 months left before WRGB – that is an average of 1 event a month, obviously. But we’re hopefully going to be doing Caerwent next weekend (a little difficult, time-wise as I am working until late on the Saturday night, so I’ll be a bit tired), and then on July 2nd there is Essex Charity Stages, which is a long haul, but should be good fun.

But first there’s Abingdon. This isn’t an event I’ve done before, and I’ve not done an SV since the 3 counties in March 2005, so hopefully it’ll all go smoothly!

So, the ?70 coil pack didn’t work. And neither did new plugs, or anything else. So I bought another car to break. 1 owner from new, 120k miles, ?112.99 on eBay! Drove like a rocket, so I knew I’d be able to fix the car. In addition, it would mean that I’ve got most of the spares I’ll need – a decent gearbox, running engine (which I may rebuild), and I managed to strip the car down to a bare shell in all of 5 hours.

Replaced the throttle body, manifold sensor, Crank Sensor, Temperature sensor, Lambda Probe, injectors, basically everything. Nothing made any difference. Bought a gauge to measure the fuel pressure. No dice there – absolutely spot on there too. Gave up, having thrown my toys out of the pram, and all across the garage floor.

So today I grew up, and after a brief chat with Mother Teresa (well, Steve Colville), decided I’d change the exhaust – after all, there wasn’t a lot else to change. Fortunately when I fitted the exhaust I’d used copper grease on the sliding joint to the tailpipe, so it actually came off without any real effort. Put the new pipe on, but didn’t bother with the tailpipe as I didn’t have a spare. It sounded quite nice – not hideously loud, just with a bit of bite to the sound. And off down the road, and instantly knew it was OK, ‘cos for the first time in ages pulling away led to some wheelspin. The ‘usual’ speed tests showed that it was nearly as quick as the car I broke, which isn’t bad considering the taller gearing because of the 80 profile tyres compared to 70s on the scrapper.

Sorted!

Now I just need to get another tailpipe and rip the guts out of it, ‘cos that’s Group N legal. And I know it won’t be too loud either.

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, 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!

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?