Skoda Rally Blog

…. is, er, turned.

What might not seem like a lot of progress was in fact a good day’s work. Firstly, fitting the tubes to the rear strut towers. Or more precisely, cutting them – this took about an hour to cut the two sections, and then they needed to be welded on. Because of the diameter of the tubes, they fitted well and also meant they could be seamed to the upper parts on the inside as well. Next up was fitting the lower rear braces which was fairly straightforward – just a simple cut at the bottom and then the same at the top, just opening them out to fit the large tube at the rear, and then welding them. Next up was the top rear braces, and these were more challenging, ‘cos the top tubes are slightly on a curve and the lower bits meet the rear brace bars at an angle, meaning that it took about an hour’s grinding to get a perfect fit on each side.

Or, in short, I’ve only fitted 6 pieces of metal to the car today. Which might not seem like much.

But….. there are only 4 pieces left to fit. And I’ve already made up the pattern for the most difficult cuts. I think the cage might be finished by Saturday afternoon….

… and shrinks.

The only way I got the car ready for WRGB last year was by being a list-writer. Without sounding like an old git, having a list of things to do does two things – firstly, it means you have clearly-set tasks so you have an idea of what you should get done in a day and secondly you can actually plan for those tasks, meaning you don’t go to the shops 5 times.

So I’ve started list writing, and today’s tasks included removing the fuel tank, removing all the old fuel lines and brake lines, cutting the dash to fit round the rollcage, getting the seatbelt mounts fitted, boot hooks and some wiring work.

Apart from the wiring work, all done! First up was removing the tank, which involved pumping all the fuel out of it. Wish I’d done it when I got the car – there was nearly 10 gallons in there! It’s all orange and stale now, so no good apart for cleaning. Once that was done, the tank dropped out fairly quickly, and then all the pipes off, courtesy of the bolt cropper which handily seals the pipes as it goes, making the job a lot less messy.

Fitting the boot hooks was in the “make yourself feel better by making it look like a rally car” category. Half an hour well spent though, and this time I’ve put them the right way up, and also put plastic on the boot so it won’t wear through the paint quickly and make it rusty!

Cutting the dashboard wasn’t easy – the Felicia dash is actually an old-style Favorit dash (very square and angular) which has a new bit screwed to the top. As the cage is quite complex I decided to pull the curvy bit off and get the lower bit fitted first, and then hopefully make the top bit fit nicely with a curve round the cage tube. And about an hour later this had been done – the dash had to have a LOT of plastic taken out of it to fit round the cage tubes (the vents won’t be working again, alas), but no major mistakes were made. Which was nice.

Then, removing the remander of the soundproofing from the floor – this is nasty bitumen stuff, so the old petrol came in handy but it still took ages and was very messy.

Once the petrol had been allowed to dry, all the seatbelt mounts were welded in, again a much better solution than the last car’s jobs.

Again, this doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but there was an hour wasted getting bits in the morning, and another in the afternoon because Custom Cages won’t be able to supply the tube for the rear mounts “until at least the middle of next week”, and this information was only forthcoming when I phoned to check on the whereabouts of the missing parts. I’m still amazed that while the quality of the kit is beyond doubt, the service I’ve had has been crap. OK, I’m just some bloke who’s bought one of their cheapest kits, but if I treated my customers like this, I wouldn’t expect to be working. Fortunately an hour on the phone located some of the tube that I need for the mount, so I can actually make some progress over the bank holiday weekend, otherwise it would have been a complete stall. Now I just need to sort out getting the interior and the engine bay sprayed during next week, and WRGB might, just might happen. Maybe.

So after 5 phone calls (!) I finally got to speak to someone at Custom Cages who told me that the rear mounts I’d seen in the pic are legal, and that the tube should have been in the kit! So I’ve been delayed for days because of this. Great. I measured up and let them know what was needed, but this was on Friday and still nothing has arrived. Another phone call or five will be needed tomorrow, clearly. G-reat.

However, unfazed I have carried on. The rest of the cage is now fitted and fully welded – door bars and all. And I’ve even made seat mounts for both seats now that I can place them properly – it wasn’t possible to do this before as the rear V-bar clearly limits the rearward and downward movement of the Nav’s seat, but now it’s in place, it was fairly easy to do, although a few problems (including what appeared to be a national shortage of 0.6 MIG wire) meant that it’s basically taken the whole day to do all of this.

However, it now looks like a rally car, which is the first time this has happened. The seat mounts are particularly strong, being made from 50x25mm box, way stronger than anything I’ve had before, and it really shows, plus the welding is much better than any others I’ve done.

There have been other developments too – I’ve been shopping again, and bought all the metal I need for the footwells, for the tank guard, and the sump guard frame, plus fuel hose and ordered the other bits I need for much of the rest of the rebuild. A quick rack is on its way (hen’s teeth, dear boy, hen’s teeth), and I’m waiting for a quote for my self-designed sump guard which will remove the problems of the older one and be stronger too. There just seems to be so much to do and so little getting done each day!

So far, it’s been going OK. Everything has been mocked up using cheap, thin tube before anything’s been cut, and that’s been good.

But the rear of the cage is the next bit to do, and the pictures I’ve been working to have a problem – the rear stay mountings aren’t FIA-compliant because they don’t offer a 60cm2 area of attachment to the bodyshell. To do this, the rear bar that goes between the two struts at the back needs to be lower than in the pictures. And therefore the tubes they’ve sent me (which have zero margin for error) are too short.

I’m waiting for a phone call back from Custom Cages at the mo, but needless to say I’m a bit crestfallen. I don’t think this will ever get done, let alone in time to enter WRGB.

Well, I guess I got lucky today – apart from one shower the weather has been OK all day, so I thought I’d get on with what I can on the cage. First up are the door “X” bars, which I’d made patterns for out of the 44mm exhaust tubing I’d bought to rough things out. So I cut all 4, and trimmed them to fit, but the car’s position means only the drivers’ side is properly accessible, so I just welded those in fully, again the lack of a windscreen made it much easier.

Next up, making some extras for the cage. Many cars have the cage braced to the shell – this is a good idea for the longevity of the shell, and also makes everything stronger in an accident, so I decided to make up some plates to go between the A-pillars and the cage. To make them look good they had to have holes put in them, and those holes need to be swaged (dented), making a much neater job, but meaning I needed to make up a tool to do a good job on them. However this meant they took a couple of hours to do, but they were well worth it once welded in – it looks like a much nicer job, apart from anything else!

Next up, there’s a V-shaped tube which goes behind the seats, and braces the tunnel, giving side-impact strength as well as strengthening the floor in an important place. However, here was the first “oh dear” moment of the whole fitting – now that the main hoop is not only welded in place, but braced by the door bars (which themselves are firmly welded to the B-pillars), it’s immovable. And I really should have put this part in before welding the rest of the cage in! Still, some (well, an hour’s) good trimming and planning followed by a bit of lateral thinking and some brawn has left the bar in the right place, with neatly trimmed ends. It’ll have to come out again to prep the areas for welding (one thing that is for sure with TIG is that correct preparation is vital – if the metal isn’t properly clean both mechanically and chemically, the weld is never 100%), but it’s in there, which at least means I can sleep tonight. So, at the end of day 3 (sort of), the cage looks like this:

Apparently it’s going to chuck it down tomorrow, so there will be no progress, other than me going to buy the steel needed for the rear stay plates as Custom Cages omitted to include enough to make front and rear plates! On top of that, I’m going to order a bunch of stuff, including the new extinguisher system…

So, I had the go-ahead from Custom Cages to start welding, so I thought I’d better crack on with it. Spent 2 full, long days this week doing the cage. At the beginning of the week, the main tubes were cut to size and profiled, but the mounting plates weren’t placed or anything like that. Really this was only 4 tubes, and they were gaffa taped in place. This wouldn’t pass scrutineering, BTW.

So, out came the tubes, cut them all down for the new plates which have to go under them, which was remarkably straightforward.

This was done on all 4, and then the cage re-assambled on them, and welded together where possible. By this time, I’d realised the screen needed to come out, which I managed to do without breaking it, for a change.

Then the cage assembly needed to be dropped down to allow it to be welded fully – one of the biggest problems with weld-in cages is that people don’t bother to weld the tubes all the way round, which is, frankly, mental. You don’t want to ever use a rollcage, but when you do need it, it needs to be 100%! To drop the cage down you have two options – either drill holes in the sills, or ratchet-strap the front and rear legs to reduce the width and drop the whole lot down by 3″ or so. This was duly done, and then the whole lot fully welded, and then the roof diagonal fitted.

That lot above took a full day to do. Seriously. It might look like an hour’s work, but I was making sure everything was 100%, and just tailoring the roof diagonal tube took about 90 minutes of grind, check, grind, check….

Next day it was time to put the cage on the mounting plates, so the plates had to be welded in place, which went very well – it’s amazing how nicely things can go if you prepare everything properly!

Once they were all welded in, the cage was raised up, and then the ratchet straps released….. which revealed a problem. I had been immensely careful trimming the tubes so everything would fit precisely. I was a little worried that one of the rear legs was about 5mm out of line. Custom cages say in their instructions that “it may be extremely difficult” to get the cage back on the feet. And they weren’t wrong! The legs had all moved due to heat distortion – not a huge amount, but being as strong as it was, I had to make up a tool to expand the legs – made from a piece of tube with a large thread in the middle that could expand the legs precisely. This took an hour or so to make, but there you go. I could then start welding the cage to the car, starting with the front right leg, then front left, and then lining up the rear legs and welding them. To give some idea of how far out it was, here’s the rear right leg before the tube was positioned and welded.

The leg should be in the middle of the plate – the “expander” came in handy again, and everything is millimetre perfect. Splendid.

Next up, the door bars. These are an X-shape, made of one long tube running from upper rear to lower front, and then a “broken” tube which does the other part of the X. Again, careful calculation of the angles is one thing, but with tubes like this, they have to be right first time – there’s no “spare” length to play with, so care is order of the day. To get both correct took a couple of hours, but once welded in, they made the cage structure even stronger, and it’s only about half done. The welding is something I am quite proud of:

I’ve cut the shorter parts of the door bars, but today I’ve felt like death warmed up and been unable to do anything. Which is immensely frustrating as I’m working all weekend and the weather is going to be great. I just hope that I feel OK on Monday, and the weather is OK. The cage needs to be complete by the end of next week, or I’m in trouble.

Had a phone call this morning – Custom Cages have tested my test piece, and it passed! So I can get on and weld the cage in now! Hurrah!

Today has been a bit slow because of a couple of issues that cropped up, and also because of the weather – in the afternoon it chucked it down like you wouldn’t believe. Unless you lived in England, when you would believe. Again, I’ve been lucky as many are underwater, and where I am it’s never going to happen, so that’s a bonus.

But the front end is coming on, albeit slowly, and more importantly, my TIG is coming along nicely. I’m not welding any of the main tubes in in the car until they’re all trimmed perfectly, and also when I’ve sent the test piece off – I won’t weld anything on the main cage until I get the go-ahead that my welding is up to spec by Custom Cages, although the tests I’ve done on some CDS tube I bought are looking good.

Anyway, here’s the front triangulation on the one side. Migged and looking very nice, if I do say so myself!

In addition the Group A engine I’ve bought has turned up, but sadly 2 of the 4 pistons are U/S, which will mean a sizeable replacement cost – I knew one would be, but on close examination another one is too. However, the head looks good, as does the cam, so not at all bad. But the car will be getting a standard engine first up, just to get it all in one piece and running and get the chassis shook down on the road. There is much work to do!

…. but finally, there’s been some progress.

The weather has been hideous, and I have to work outside. Today has been the first time when I’ve had all the tools I need, time and decent weather.

Progress has been slow – to make sure that everything will fit perfectly means tiny changes need to be made and then re-checked, and because the cage kit isn’t exactly, er, exact, I’ve had a lot of work to do. However, I’ve managed to get the front triangulation in on the driver’s side, and also trim the A-pillar tube (which runs back to the main hoop) and the main hoop itself – this alone was 10mm too long, and only once I’d gulped and then cut this off did it all start to fit in place properly. Because of the way the cage needs to be welded and fitted, the front triangulation needs to be done completely before the rest of the cage can be trimmed and then welded up. Once that’s done (the main hoop needs to be dropped to allow welding the A-pillar tube fully), the main cage structure can then be returned to its proper position and welded to the front triangulation, and all the other parts put in – door bars, tunnel brace, and then finally the end is done with the rear braces, etc, being fitted.

Which is a long way off, but I’m hoping that tomorrow the weather will hold off long enough for me to get the passenger side triangulation at least fitted even if the tube trimming can’t be finished off (this alone has taken a couple of hours – they had to be altered ‘cos the front part of the tube doesn’t sit totally vertical, so I had got it perfect…. and then had to do it all again!).

Based on my overall progress, the car will be finished in mid 2011. However, if I can keep today’s rate up, it might just be finished by the end of August. The cage, that is, not the car!

… the notcher has arrived. And I have bought a holesaw to fit it (a relief as I wasn’t sure I could get one to fit the thread, just a standard Starrett one though, bonus), and ordered some thin-wall tubing to mock the joints up on (to get the angles right before doing them on the real deal).

So next week (Monday) should see some progress, providing the weather holds off. The rest of England has been flooded, so I guess I should be happy that nothing like that has happened here.

There’s another bit of news, although far off. I’ve been accepted on the Plymouth-Dakar rally. This is a “banger rally” – you are supposed to get a car for £100 or less, and spend £15 preparing it. As it has to be LHD, this is unlikely at best. The idea is to drive the 3700 miles to Banjul (in the Gambia, a bit past Dakar), and then give the car away to be auctioned, with the proceeds going to local charities. In addition I’m planning on a bit of fund raising. If I can manage ?100 for 10km, I’m hoping I can make a couple of grand for the 6000km I have to do in a little car. Which will almost definitely be another Felicia, seems fitting.