Skoda Rally Blog

I hadn’t expected to be able to build the rear suspension up today, because one of the spacers wasn’t present, but amazingly I looked through a bucket of bits that came with all the parts I bought, and found the missing spacer and nuts, so I’ve put the rear shocks together with their lovely red springs.  This means that I may get them onto the car tomorrow (rears at least), and then I’ll need to decide what to do with the fronts…

Rear proflex, looking lovely.

The Felicia has proven itself to be a tough and (mostly) reliable car, but there have been two main issues with the Felicia since I built it.  A lack of power, and the suspension.  The power is something I’m hoping to deal with in the near future, but the less obvious one is the suspension.  It’s fitted with Bilstein front and rear suspension, and this was always a big improvement on the HP stuff the old car (and indeed the Favorit) was running on, but the problem was on long stages; after about 10 miles or so, even at the pace we’re going, the suspension gets too hot and starts to fade, leading to a bouncy ride and a LOT of noise; when finishing stages in 2007’s Rally GB the road sections following would be really odd, with a bouncing action and squeaking which was so severe that the first time I was convinced something had broken.  It hadn’t.

However, suspension is not cheap; the bilstein setup cost me £600 and was cheap for what it was, and the next step up to some quality, rebuildable suspension is not a small one – prices can be up to maybe £6000 if you went really crazy.  Clearly this isn’t an option for me, but something needed to be done.  Regular readers may remember that a long time ago (in 2007) when I was building R477 KRU I bought a whole load of bits from someone who will remain nameless; every part I bought was pretty much knackered.  And in amongst all these parts were some very tired-looking suspension, made by Proflex, widely considered to be about the best suspension you can get (and certainly the best you can get for the Felicia!).  New, this would be about £4000.  But they were really badly abused; they had clearly been run without servicing or indeed even oil, and were partly in bits.  I had initially thought they were scrap, but having spoken to Proflex UK, they said I should send them in and they would do me an estimate, so I did this, and £1300 later I have four completely rebuilt units.  This is clearly not a small amount of money, but that actually was the cheapest option for new, worthwhile suspension; I’d have been looking at more than this for lower-quality stuff, and now that it’s all rebuilt (with nearly every part replaced), it should be fairly cheap to keep up to spec as the service costs are reasonable.

I have had these back for several months, but not been in a position to fit them, but finally I am, so it was time to get everything ready to go onto the car.  For the fronts that meant fitting the springs and putting some oil in the lower legs for lubrication (something the last owner clearly didn’t do!), and adjusting the spring platforms.

Lovely front Proflex suspension.

So, that was straightforward.  The rears needed a bit more work, however – and the biggest job was the springs – they (like everything else) were rusty, so I decided to spend some time to make them look a bit better.  A bit of work with a wire wheel on the grinder, and then finishing off in the blasting cabinet left them ready for paint, and then it was time for a few coats of hammerite (which I’m hoping will be flexible enough to stay on them, but I’m not going to be too surprised if they just end up naked straight away).  Here they are, with the final effort on the left, and the before on the right.

Springs after and before being tidied up.

However, I can’t fit the rears to the car as there are a couple of parts missing (courtesy of the last owner) – fortunately they are very simple spacers, so I can get them made up during the week for about £10 or so, and then next weekend the car should be sat on proflex front and rear.  Tomorrow I will fit the fronts, but first I’ll have to work out what I’m going to do with the remote canisters – I’ve seen them inside engine bays (and it makes sense to me to keep them out of the way of mud and gravel, plus it will mean they can be adjusted easily), but it will mean cutting holes in the inner wings to do this, I think…

This weekend was the first time sitting in with Tony Hawkins in his 1400 205, as he’s entered the 205 Challenge 1400 championship.  Tony’s done a few SV events, but nothing involving gravel, and as the Audi Quattro is currently being rebuilt after a fairly major off at Brean the 205 was the ideal car.  The 205 cup has 5 rounds for the 1400s, although the first one has already gone, leaving 3 gravel and 1 tarmac event for the rest of the year.  This event was the Plains rally, which is a well-supported event which takes in some classic mid/north Wales stages, and is based in Welshpool.  Accomodation is always at a premium for this event, so Tony had bought a camper (not only for rallying, but handily in time for this event), and we agreed to meet up at the Trailer park, which was a few miles from scrutineering.

Camper and 205.

As it was a Friday, driving the 225 miles to there from Bournemouth was a long trek, taking 4.5 hours, and I arrived at 6:30, about 10 minutes after Tony, and saw the camper for the first time,a big 1970s American number, and Tony just starting to unload the 205.  It soon became apparent that the camper had a couple of teething troubles, so we thought it best to get the 205 through scrutineering first and worry about getting the camper to the Woodyard  later on (where scrutineering was, alongside camping and the last stage of Saturday too).
The drive to scrutineering was only about 5 miles, and the car was nice and smooth, with no rattles or other issues that some cars have, and scrutineering was the usual fare – always the most nerve-racking part of the event for me (even though it’s not my car!), and I had an interesting moment when I was told that my helmet would not be eligible for Rally GB as everyone needs the new helmet standard; when I told the scrutineer that it was only Priority 1 & 2 drivers that the rule applied to he said that was the first he’d heard of it, so I hoped that what I read was correct, and I’d not wasted £400 on a helmet that I can’t use…

205, all scrutineered nicely.

That aside all went swimmingly, so we popped down to Rally HQ in the centre of town to sign on, and then we were ready to go.  Well, ready to go to the trailer park to see if we could resurrect the ailing camper.  We left my car there, and I drove the 205, all of about 400 yards before the camper (which had seemed to be going quite slowly) disappeared from view.  I went back and found that it had just died, but swapping over to petrol did two things – firstly it got it running again (it has an LPG conversion) and secondly that it was VERY juicy, as it had used a full tank of LPG (about 30 gallons) with Tony driving from Camberley!
We got to the campsite after an “interesting” drive in the 205 – the screen was really greasy and a bit of light rain left me unable to see at some points, something that needed fixing before the stages for sure – and got set up quickly enough, and the camper is an interesting beast – VERY 70s inside, with rather rustic wooden fittings, and some interesting “mood lighting” as well, with a sort of geometric stained glass vibe there and in the toilet window.  All seemed good though, aside from the charging issue for the main batteries, and when set up a good meal was had, while we planned for tomorrow.
Saturday started out really bright, although a bit chilly, and we packed everything into the car for the day ahead, and spoke to a few people about, and managed to blag some screen cleaner from Jon Payton in the Micra behind us (thanks Jon), which did the trick.  Tony found the calm before we set off a bit odd – usually the Audi has been in need of things sorting out before every event (and indeed every stage), so having a car which was ready to go was unusual.  Very nice though, and hopefully that’s how it would stay all day.

Ready to go?

We triple-checked we had all we needed (me in particular as forgetting your time card, road book or pacenotes would be a BIG problem), and then set off to the start, which was in the centre of Welshpool, and a nicely done affair by the town hall, with (I assume) the mayor of the town waving us off eventually, and we were off.  I’d forgotten, of course, that this was all new to Tony – he’s only done Single Venue events before, so having a road section and the ‘adventure’ of getting to the stages was new.  In the light of us having no service crew, and Tony getting used to gravel and having notes read to him, we’d elected to take it fairly easy, and filled the car up so there should be nothing to worry about for the rest of the day, and then off through the beautiful Welsh countryside to stage 1, Gartheiniog 1; this would be the only stage that would be repeated during the day – it would also be stage 5, hopefully!
The road section was good, with the last couple of miles on forest road and the escorts in front of us taking advantage to get warmed up, and Tony did the same, and then we queued up ready for the start.  Tony doesn’t normally get nervous, but said he was this time, and I guess the start queue being on a road with a drop on the outside probably didn’t help that feeling.  We eventually got to the start line, and then we were away.  The first section had a few big drops to the side, and fresh air bends (where missing would mean a drop which you wouldn’t get the car back from in a hurry), so this combined with everything else meant Tony took it very steadily, and rightly so when about a mile in we saw a car off at one of said fresh air bends, with only the tailgate visible.  Going like this obviously had a real impact on our time, and we got caught by the car behind (Jon Payton) about half way through, which wasn’t great as Tony then sped up a bit <i>too</i> much, so I told him to forget about them and just carry on getting up to speed in his own way; it was clear that the new surface as well as being read notes was taking a bit of time to get used to, but towards the end of the stage we started to speed up a bit, and there were no disasters;  Yes, we’d been very slow, but we’d got to the end, and Tony seemed happy about it.  We moved off to get to SS2 and saw the other 205 with Ant Northover, pulled over replacing a flat tyre.  The road section to SS2 was reasonably short, but had a passage control where I realised the finish marshal had written the wrong time on the card; fortunately I’d made a note of the right time, and pointed this out to the PC marshal; it was obvious there was an error as the finish time was another 20 minutes into the future giving us a stage time of about 45 minutes; I know we were slow, but we weren’t THAT slow!  Soon enough we were at Dyfi and ready to go again.  This stage went a bit better, although still being very cautious; there were a few places which were a bit rough, and the changes in surface were something Tony was getting used to, as well as learning how to get the 205 round hairpins – it seemed that a bit of handbrake to get the back end out was the best solution for the tighter hairpins, although getting it just right was something that would need practice for the rest of the day.  We were slowest on this stage, but this time by a smaller amount; still not going as quickly as possible, but getting the car a bit quicker and looser, and Tony seemed to be getting into it more, needing the calls repeated a bit less often.  Then it was off to SS3, Pantperthog.

Ready for Stage 3.

Again this was an improvement – the corners seemed to be making more sense to Tony and there was a bit less caution being taken on some of the bends with drops.  About a mile from the end we had to stop as there was a car rolled, and Jon had stopped to get them back on their wheels (they were on the course, pretty much), although by the time we’d stopped they were back on their wheels, but we went slowly to the next radio point, which was the finish line, losing a lot of time in the process (even by our standards!) – we were later awarded a nominal time for this, as obviously safety is the main concern.  Just after the flying finish we saw Ant had buried his 205 in the shrubbery, but got it out easily enough with some spectator help, apparently, and the rolled car pulled up soon after.
And as easy as that, it was off to service, which was at a place called Dylife, in what was basically a quarry pit by the main road.  There had been a diversion as a lorry was blocking the rally route, and we were told about this, but not told we would get an extra 5 minutes to do the new route; we got there on time easily (had a couple of minutes spare), and booked in on time (or so I thought!).  “Service” consisted of checking the car over (there were no problems, other than a bit of stone stuck between a rear tyre and the rim)

Work to do - remove a stone.

–  and then having some food!

Nice relaxed service.

Very relaxing, although my back problem was really starting to come back at this point; it was fine on the stages but on the relatively long road section to service it was really painful, and getting out of the car for a stretch and the lie down was a real relief.  After half an hour of slacking off, it was time to head off for Hafren, which is a stage I’d done before in 2008, although obviously there are many different layouts possible in there.  The entry road was very familiar, and once we’d booked in, there was a long queue for the stage start as there had been a stoppage, so we took the time to have a chat with Ant and Dave Northover in the 205 in front of us, who hopefully we’ll be seeing more of this year on the other events.
After about a 25 minute delay, we got into SS4, Hafren, and this was a chance to drive on a ‘classic’ stage, and it went pretty well, all things considered.  Obviously we’re still not up to speed and Tony was taking it carefully, but we were probably about 30 seconds down on where we’d have expected to be over the course of this stage, and we lost a fair bit of that in a couple of dodgy hairpins, so again it wasn’t a disaster by any stretch of the imagination.  Tony was getting a bit more confident in what the car would do, and taking better lines into corners and planning ahead; he was starting to want the information from the notes a bit sooner which is always a good sign, and it was good fun for the 10 minutes it lasted.
After Hafren came the re-run of Gartheiniog, and it was quite a change – when we got there and queued for the start, Tony’s demeanour was completely different, he was feeling good and confident about what was coming, and it went a lot better – again, not as fast as we could have gone by any stretch of the imagination, although there were a couple of moments where we needed to slow down, but it went smoothly and we trimmed 2 minutes off of the time of the first time through, and didn’t get caught in there either (although the MG pulled up to the stop control fairly quickly after we had done).  Improvement was the name of the game, and I think this was it; another run through would have seen it a lot quicker, but that’s for the next event!

Stage 5 in action

SS6 was just off the end of SS5, and apparently quite a few people had got it wrong as there was a junction in the road book which wasn’t really clear (although as the arrival control was under 0.1 miles away, it’d soon become apparent), but a nice chap waiting there for someone told us to go left, so we did, and we were in; the nice chap on the start control moved us up a minute as we were ready to take the stage already, and away we went.  Again this went well, although at only 3 miles it was over all too soon, even in the 205 at this speed!  There was a long road section to a holding control now, and on the way we started to smell gearbox oil very strongly.  We stopped to check it, and I needed to get out anyway as again I was in real pain by this point, but the car seemed fine with no sign of a leak, and with the car seeming OK and me in slightly less pain, we carried on to the holding control, where a load of other cars were already waiting (the road timings were nice and generous), and we had a text from Tony’s mate telling us off for booking in early at TC1, which was service in.  I was sure I’d got us in at the right time, but after chatting to some others (some of whom had the same problem) it became clear that the marshal who told us of the route change had forgotten to tell us there was extra time.  Tony wasn’t happy about it, and although I knew it wouldn’t make any difference to the results, I agreed and queried it with a marshal who promised to phone it through.
Then there was a short run to stage 7, which is the Woodyard.  This is where we’d camped and scrutineered, and there are fields on hills with tracks on them, and a small repeated lap so it was possible we’d see other traffic.  Fortunately that wasn’t the case as the 205 really struggled to get going on a couple of the steep hills (although it was quick down them!), and it was pretty dusty too.  Some good stuff (such as the hairpin) was slightly cancelled out by the roughness when Tony was worried I’d be a cripple by the end of the stage, or that the car would die, but we got to the end OK, and that was the competitive part of it over – we just needed to get into town to cross the finish line at the Town Hall again, which happened easily enough; I put in a written query over the service time penalty (reasoning that if I’d been told then we would obviously not have booked in at the original time we were given, and that we weren’t alone in this), and later we were pleased to find out that the penalty had been removed.  Tony wasn’t so pleased to find out that we’d still finished dead last, but overall we were about 7 minutes off of Ant’s time in the 205, which isn’t the disaster it initially sounds like – we’d lost a couple of minutes or more in the first stage, and with Tony up to speed in the next event things will be a lot closer.
Now something very odd happened; we’d finished an event before lots of other cars!  We took the opportunity to go back to the camp site and then watch the rest of the field come through.  Some of the over-1400cc cars struggled to get up the hill in the woodyard like we had, and a few made a real meal of it, but then the 4WD class came though, and the first of which was Steve Perez in his Focus WRC.  And it was incredible – watching just how quickly the car accelerated compared with the mere mortalmobiles which had been through before, just how hard he could brake, and how much grip it seemed to have.  He was gone in an instant.  The following cars were still quick, but not as impressive.  Tony was really looking forward to seeing Andy Burton in the Peugeot Cosworth, and when he didn’t appear next, he said he must have had a problem, but I reminded him that sometimes Andy will take time on a road section and use his penalty-free lateness to best effect, to give him better stage conditions or reduce the chance of catching someone on stage, and it was what transpired; he was a few cars down the road, but even before we saw it, we knew it was the beast; it has such an amazing sound that it couldn’t be anything else.  Everyone on the hillside stopped and watched it fly round the track, hypnotised by the sound and the sight of this near-mythical beast.  And as soon as he was gone, most people had seen what they wanted to see.  We stood in a place where we knew it would drive past, and I took a few pics as it did so.

The mighty beast. Oh, the sound!!!

The other cars we watched were good, but that was the best by miles, and went on to win by 25 seconds, no mean feat against Mr. Perez in his ex-works Focus WRC!
Now there was a practical element to take care of; the camper.  It wouldn’t start.  So we needed some jump leads, and took the opportunity to go pick up the trailer and my car allowing for a quick getaway in the morning.  Let’s just say it took 90 minutes of charging off my car to do the trick…,

Power needed.

and also that my Focus doesn’t have the grip needed to move a heavy plant/car trailer in a wet field, whereas the big old heavy V8-powered camper does without a problem.  The air suspension proved invaluable in getting it hitched onto the trailer, and once everything was set up and packed up, we had a good BBQ outside, and a nice relaxing evening after a fairly long day.

BBQ time.

The next event in the 205 is the Swansea Bay Rally in mid July, which will give Tony a chance to do what’s needed to the 205 (which is, let’s face it, not a lot!!!), and me a chance to sort out my back problems, with any luck.  Swansea should be much more like it.

The last post was not a good one to make – aside from having to miss the Sunseeker, things were looking bad all over because of my disc problem.  However, since then things have got a LOT better.  I won’t go on about it too much, but having started learning the Alexander Technique has made a huge difference to me – it’s still early days, but I’ve been fit enough recently to work normally and even get a few things done on some cars.  Hopefully another month or so should see me back to getting R477 KRU ready to use, with a few new things in the pipeline as well, and a permanent fix to the issue that has dogged me for years.  I’m now looking forward to making the car go quicker and finding a way to compete in Rally GB 2010, which will definitely be the last WRC event that the Felicia can ever do.  And more than likely that I can ever do, lottery winnings aside.

All suggestions are gratefully received!

Today was a mapping session booked at Triton Motorsport, having dealt with Andy before I knew we’d get a good job done.  Unfortunately my prolapsed disc has come back with a vengeance, leaving me unable to stand up without the aid of morphine (this entry is being brought to you courtesy of a dose of said substance), so obviously there’s no way I could do that, let alone the other things the car needs.

Which leaves me finally realising that there is no way I’ll be ready for the Sunseeker, even if the car was.  For obvious reasons I’m gutted about this, the last year or so has just been one disaster after another, and given that it’s been 5 months since all this started, it looks almost impossible that I’ll be able to do Rally GB 2010, aside from any other considerations (such as no longer having a job).  I’d like to say a massive thanks to the organisers of the Sunseeker as they have been extremely understanding about the situation, and were very supportive of my efforts to try to compete in my favourite event.  Hopefully next year….

Every car needs an MOT.  Even a rally car.  Even if you are only using it on “single venue” events which are off the road, it’s usually a requirement for the car to have an MOT, and of course the kind of rallies that I do involve forests and driving inbetween them, which means driving on the roads, and a fully road-legal car.  And therefore an MOT.

Every year I plan to get the MOT done in the Summer, so I’ll have lots of time to work on the car, and nice(ish) weather to do it in. And almost invariably, this fails completely.  Fortunately last Friday wasn’t too bad, and the car seemed mostly OK – I’d checked all the things that I thought could be a problem, and hoped all would be well.

And thankfully it was – the mapping worked well for the emissions test leading to a nice clean exhaust and a test pass, and the car was good in every other respect; having a rare opportunity to inspect the underside while stood up showed that for the most part the car was looking OK for one that had done a bit of forest work; there are a good few dents in the floor but nothing terrible, and no nasty surprises.  The drive to and from the MOT station gave a chance to take in some different road conditions (given that it was a Friday rush hour), so those logged miles will help the map out, and this time it showed a much wider range of engine speed and load was being used.  Still more to do, but getting there; the car was getting far more driveable now, and the last piece of paperwork for the car was complete.

However, there is still a major part of the rally equipment in need of a fix, and that’s the sumpguard.  On the Skoda the engine and box sit quite low compared to many other cars, and as a result the sumpguard is more complex than many (some are just a flat sheet) and also gets a right bashing as a result!  The sumpguard on R477KRU was already secondhand when it was built (having come from “the idiot”), but after 1.6 Rally GBs and a Sunseeker, it was looking very sorry for itself, having cracks in the strengthening bars, and the runners beneath having cracked off:

Cracked sumpguard strengthening brace

...and another crack...

and looking shaky from below as well

As you can imagine, this was better than no sumpguard at all, but not as good as it should be.  So after spending an hour cleaning it off (given that it was covered in gearbox oil and sand, which came out from every crack), I took it to the fabrication place up the road, where a rather unhappy-looking chap quoted me £50 to weld it up, having done the usual sucking in of air through-the-teeth about how crap the sumpguard was, etc., etc.

Amazingly, today (the next day!), he phoned to say it was all done.  And I went to collect it, to find this:

From beneath, nice and strong

And more welding, should be a bit stronger

And even more welding

OK, it’s no oil painting, but it’s a LOT stronger than it was before, so hopefully that will be up to making it through Wareham Forest, amongst other places….

So, last time out things were looking up, but it was time for a change of coilpack and plug leads.  Which should be straightforward, just go and buy one.  Simple enough.  Except, of course, you guessed it; not as simple as that.  Finding the coil pack was easy.  Not down to any great skill on my part, more to it having a part number.  A nice surprise was that buying it from my local car shop – Motorists’ Discount Centres – where I get all my “everyday” car bits was actually cheaper than anywhere I found on the Internet (although I’d rather get bits from them anyway) at £55 – less than the £80 or so I’d  been quoted elsewhere.

So, that was half the battle.  The other half wasn’t so easy.  Back in the day, you’d just go into any car shop and pick up the leads you needed; they had different lengths on the shelf.  Nowadays, that’s not the case; everything comes in sets.  And I didn’t know what would fit.  Thankfully another larger local store, SMC, was worth a trip; £9.31 later, I had the leads I needed.

Put them all together, and then on the car….

All shiny and new. Not for long.

Far too shiny!  However, the car fired up much more easily than before, so hopefully this will have the misfire sorted out; it was present with the old engine at rallyday as well, so I’m hoping that will be it…  I won’t have a chance to drive the car until Thursday, so I guess I’ll know then.

At the end of this week is one of the things I hate about cars.  It’s MOT time.  And obviously amongst the many other things that are tested, the car’s emissions are scrutinised.  Which means that it needs to run properly and use the right amount of fuel to give a nice clean exhaust.  Or something like that.  Anyway, while the car fired up last weekend, there is a lot more to it than that; the right amount of fuel is needed for the car to not only pass an MOT but also to make decent power, to protect the engine’s internals (too little fuel and it will run too hot, possibly melting a piston; too much and the oil will be washed off the bores leading to engine wear), and to make the car driveable.

So, with that in mind, all the mapping gear was connected up; there’s a sensor which is in the exhaust which measures the air/fuel ratio, and in addition there is another box which measures the engine speed and the throttle opening.  It also measures G force forwards and backwards and side-to-side, but that’s just an amusement for me rather than anything I make use of.  All of this data gets recorded as I drive the car, and then can be downloaded to the laptop to set the map up – this needs to be done several times due to the changing conditions and that things don’t react quite as you’d think; the more you learn about how engines work the more you realise they are really, really complicated things and there is a great deal happening all at once.

But that’s by the by; I didn’t get to do any driving yesterday as I’d made myself ready to do it and… the recce car battery was flat!  So that meant a few hours on charge as pushing it out of the way is definitely not an option at the moment.  But once all was well this morning, I fired up the Felicia and took to the road.  Well, I say that, it was more a case of car spluttering into life against its wishes, and then me having to cajole it into even moving a foot.  Looking at the meter, the mixture was massively lean, so there was next to no power.  I reversed out of the drive (with one of my neighbours giving me that look) and then got the car going forwards, and started recording.

And then for some reason I lost my mind.

I live on a road which is alongside a dual carriageway.  And for some unknown reason instead of sticking on my road, I went onto the dual carriageway, and as soon as I did, the car died.

Completely.  I was 20 yards onto the road, and no way back.  After what seemed like an eternity,  I got it to fire up but it didn’t want to move, and despite me having put my hazard warning lights on, people clearly weren’t paying much attention; getting rear ended wasn’t on the menu but was looking likely, but I managed to get enough fuel in to at least move the car; this involved pushing the accelerator repeatedly (which injects more fuel momentarily) which at least did enough to get the car moving, and then round the roundabout at the bottom and the same going up the road; here was where the close ratio box really paid off as I could at least do a semi-sane speed and as it was a Sunday morning the traffic wasn’t bad, so I got round the roundabout at the top and back home without too many problems.

So, stop the recording, and then time to re-do the map.  Which I’d thought was straightforward, but when I went to do it I realised that I’d completely forgotten all the tricks I was using to make the process quick.  Rather than entering the values into the logging software, doing the calculations and then manually re-entering the new values, I had come up with a system which used a spreadsheet to keep the values in, and using Notepad++ to edit the output from the logging software to be changed into the DTA Map format.

Thing is I had no idea what I’d been doing, and I’d not made any notes.  So I spent nearly an hour reinventing the wheel before being able to do what I’d been doing simply, and then saw that the engine was taking in a LOT more air than the last one; this is a GOOD thing as it’s more efficient and should mean more power in the future.  But the idea now was to make it driveable – after all, it had been almost unable to move itself.  And the log made why quite clear:

Early Map, lean as anything with mad throttle movements.

The pink line is the mixture, and ideally it would be around the middle of the graph (top to bottom).  The black line is the rpm of the engine, and the other line shows me repeatedly hammering the throttle as it was the only way to get enough fuel into the engine at all.  Not good! Even the first mapping change altered the way the car behaved completely – it was much. much better already.  This meant that firstly I could venture out on to the main road without risking death, and secondly that I could then use a wider range of throttle openings and engine speeds.  After another short drive, more changes, and then a longer drive, this time about 15 minutes, with the car behaving much better, aside from an occasional misfire.

Back onto the PC, more changes made (this time over most of the used rev range and throttle openings, as I’d been careful to use as many combinations as I could do), and a more drivable car again; another longer trip was much better, except again there was a low-speed misfire.  This was not down to mixture as I could provoke it at will and looking at the meter (and indeed looking at the log afterwards) showed that the mixture was spot on, so I suspect that either the coil pack or the spark plug leads are on the way out; above 2500rpm the car was running cleanly and smoothly, and feeling really good.

By way of comparison to the log shown above, here’s one of the later ones, and you can see that the mixture is much closer to where it should be (around the middle, but that’s dependent on speed and throttle to a degree), and no longer is the throttle being pressed maniacally.

Later map, things looking far nearer being right.

So, it’s time for a new coilpack and plug leads; this is one of the original parts that I got from “the idiot”, and as all the other parts from “the idiot” have been sub-standard, it’s something I’d rather eradicate before looking any further.  And once I’d removed the coil pack, I saw that it was dated 2001, so it’s probably time for a replacement; I doubt he fitted it new!

Time to check other things for the MOT, so I checked the lights and so on, all was well, and then cleaned the poor thing inside, and tested the new Peltor intercom with the extension leads for the first time.  OK, it was wallet-meltingly expensive, but it really is fantastic; I could hear everything said with perfect clarity.

And that’s how it stands.  The MOT is on Friday afternoon, but I have a busy week until then, so I may get a chance to drive the car with the new coilpack before Friday afternoon, hopefully that will clear the problem along with some nice new plug leads, and maybe even a set of plugs – the boat is well and truly pushed out.

As an aside, when I was driving the car on the last mapping run, I drove past Canford Arena, which is the service area of the Sunseeker.  And said to myself that it just might happen.  I’ve made great strides forward with my back this weekend, having had a couple of terrible days this week, so hopefully they were a glitch rather than a trend.  Here’s hoping.

Today it was cold again, so I didn’t get started until the afternoon, but there were only a few little things to do (which is a good sign), as the next step will be getting some of the mapping done to get the MOT out of the way.  Mostly it was a case of little bits and pieces, like fitting the fuel line mountings properly, making up a new blanking plate for where they leave the car and go to the fuel tank and also fitting the Peltor intercom cabling properly.  I had wanted to use velcro to fix the intercom in place, but it wouldn’t stick to the base of the Peltor as it has a foam rubber strip on the bottom and I didn’t want to rip that of, so I had to drill two holes in the dash to mount it.  I’m not sure why, but I don’t like drilling holes, even though it’s a rally car and hopefully I’ll never remove the intercom.  On the plus side, it’s properly secure and in a place where both of us will be able to adjust the controls while seated.  Fire extinguisher back in (and miraculously the external pull works perfectly), tidy up, etc.  So, next I need to get the old beast insured, and then next weekend I can get it ready for the MOT, planned for the end of the week after next.  Then it should just be a case of a mapping session, getting the sumpguard welded up, and fitting something which will be a nice upgrade for the car…but that’s for another post.

… there’s hope.  So for any hope, it was time to see if the new engine would run.  Most of the work had been done last weekend, but there were still a few things left before I could even turn it over, and to get started it was time to take the cover off the car.  As you may know, I don’t have a garage big enough to work on the car, so it’s out in the drive.  And it was cold last night.  Cold enough that even though I’d left it til nearly midday, getting the cover off the car wasn’t easy as it was iced onto it!  Not a good start, and getting anything done then involved picking up tools which were of course bloody cold as well.  Unpleasant, but necessary.

I connected everything up, making up the new fuel hoses as needed, and double-checking everything.  Then it was time for the radiator, which meant changing the water pipe (there are two types on the Felicia, and this was, predictably, the wrong one).  The other one I had had a weird bracket on it which made it impossible to fit onto the car, so it was time to cut that off.  I did it with the hacksaw to make sure I didn’t cut anything important, but I then wanted to tidy it up, easiest done with the angle grinder.  Which didn’t seem too happy and was turning rather slowly.  I touched the grinding wheel onto the part, and suddenly the grinder REALLY wasn’t happy.  There was smoke, and I ended up having flames coming out of it – I’m no expert, but I think this means the grinder is broken.  I walked out of the garage holding the now-dead grinder by the cable, looking like Dr. Venkman with the full trap in Ghostbusters.

The rest of fitting everything went smoothly enough, it’s just plugging bits in.  Putting oil into the engine reminded me how cold it was – it was pouring like treacle.  And then, the big moment.  Would it even get oil pressure, let alone run?  I disconnected the ECU so I could just turn the engine over to get oil pressure, and it did so fairly quickly.  Result.  Now I plugged the ECU back in, and turning over saw no activity at all anywhere, and this was quickly traced to the crank sensor needing adjusting.  Once that was done, it made encouraging noises, and fairly quickly, it fired up!  Result #2.  I checked everything over for obvious bad signs (leaking oil or water, etc), and all was well.  So I fired it up again, and kept it running to warm it up a bit.  The wideband O2 meter was showing that the mixture was a bit rich, but you’d expect that during warm-up, and indeed the idle mixture ended up being really lean (I can’t remember what it was set at before, it was that long ago), and it sounded a bit lumpy as a result.  But with a bit of adjustment it was ticking over, so I let it warm up and then was very good and cautious and changed the oil.  This engine had been left standing for a while so I wanted to make sure any dust/crap/junk/insects that were inside would get washed out, and that it had nice new oil for its new life.  Easily done, along with a bunch of other little things that were needed, and I decided to do a compression test which showed all cylinders at good pressure and nice and even, and then finally it was time to see if I can get in the car.

This might sound silly, but getting in or out of a car is something that’s generally painful for me at the moment, and doing so with an X door bar in the way, even more so.  Amazingly it was easy enough to get in, and I went to fire it up and nothing!  Reason being I’d disconnected the starter to use a remote for the compression test, which meant I had to get out of the car sooner than I’d though, another thing I wasn’t looking forward to, but it was OK.  Second time, it was easy, and a chance to spin the wheels up in each gear to check the gears were all OK, and the box was happy.  And it was.  Five speeds plus reverse.  Brakes seemed OK and the engine pulled against the brakes OK as well.  Overall, a good day’s effort.  I’ve written a list of things to do tomorrow, but until the car is insured I can’t do anything about either getting an MOT or getting it mapped, so I’ll have to take it a step at a time.   And decide what’s happening about the Sunseeker, which is four weeks today.