Skoda Rally Blog

OK, so after the last debacle, I was left with three options:

• Fit a standard bottom end, but with a different camshaft in it (I have a standard Felicia engine in the shed)
• Fit a previous rally engine (One used on Rally GB 2007), which went really well, but was a bit low on oil pressure when hot – a simple thing to fit at a later date, and an engine which was known to have had a fair bit of work done to it, plus a good cam already fitted; fit the Motor Excel head to this
• Get a new bottom end built (or build one)

Option 3 wasn’t really an option at the moment – simply put, I don’t have the money.  So it was between the first and second ones; I elected for the second one as the engine was known to be good (the one thing we didn’t lack on Rally GB 2007 was power, and the fault that put us out was the throttle body), and it was actually a toss of a coin between fitting this engine and the one which has just died.  However, before doing so it would need to be checked for piston protrusion, just like the last one.  And once it had been grabbed out of the shed, cleaned off and then had the head removed, it measured up pretty well – 0.5mm against the spec 0.8, but I was happy that was close enough, particularly given circumstances.  However, it was missing the flywheel.  Now I know that on many engines the crank and flywheel are balanced as a pair, but the last Skoda crank I took for balancing needed nothing done to it at all, the flywheel ended up being balanced on its own.  And given this, and the fact that I just don’t have time to spend a week waiting for it to be balanced, having taken the engine apart, I took the flywheel from engine #1 (which had been lightened and balanced) and fitted that.  Next up, time to fit the head, which involved lots of careful cleaning, fitting of a new gasket, and setting the valve clearances.  Doing this meant putting the front pulley on properly (it was just placed on since it had been removed for use on another engine), and when I did this up…. the engine stopped turning.  Most puzzling, so I just carried on setting the valve clearances by turning the engine using the flywheel.  However, this still meant that I had a problem – the front pulley getting done up stopped the engine turning.  I checked inside the front cover and couldn’t see anything, so the only conclusion I could come to is that the thrust bearing (which controls the side-to-side movement of the crank) had moved – on the Felicia engine it’s a large ring which has a tab on it to stop it spinning, and if the crank moves to the back of the engine, this could rotate and get stuck.  So the sump had to come off (and gave me a chance to give it a good clean inside), and lo and behold, I was right – the bearing had indeed spun, but was easily put back into place, and then fitting the front pulley held everything in the right place.  Sump back on, another hour taken up.  Fitted the water pump, checked everything over, and then got the gearbox on, with the help of my Mum – again it was dead easy doing it on the stand.  What wasn’t easy, though was refitting the engine – I’d spent a fair while bent over sorting out the bearing problem, and managed to sprain something in my lower back.  Not really badly, not like last year, but bad enough to give me real pain.  Soldiered on and got the engine and box bolted into place (again, another thing that goes far more smoothly with a sling holding the engine in the correct balance), and then took a break for an hour to hopefully recover a bit (not much, alas).  Then the typical work of refitting the inlet manifold, starter, thermostat housing, alternator, driveshafts and hubs, etc.  Then… it rained!  So that was that for Saturday, and a good thing too as I was pretty much done in!

Sunday afternoon it was time to finish off the things that were needed to see if it would run well, and thankfully I had Tammie (my girlfriend) on hand to help out!  She’d been visiting this weekend, but had kindly gone shopping while I was fitting everything, and was happy to give me a hand for an hour to finish everything off, so she did various jobs including filling gearbox oil, engine oil and water, while I did the other things that were needed.  And then time to get it running.  As ever, firstly built oil pressure with the injectors and coilpack disconnected, and then reconnected them to fire it up.  Two things happened – it fired, but ran only on two cylinders, and revved a LOT.  Not a good start.

I did a compression test, and found all four cylinders good and consistent, so hopefully not a mechanical issue for the misfire, and put a new set of platinum plugs in.  And found the reason for the high revving – the servo hose was off, letting far too much air in.  With it refitted, I fired it up, and it sounded good!  After a bit of blipping the throttle to warm it up, it seemed happy enough, so I got Tammie to keep it going and felt the breather to see how heavily it was breathing.  It wasn’t at all – seemed really sound, so very little blow-by, a real relief.

So, third time lucky?  Let’s hope so.  The bearings will need changing at some point, but that’s £40 and an hour’s work, easily done as I’ve done it before, both big ends and mains can be replaced in situ.  But for the time being, that should do the trick, and won’t make any difference to the engine’s mapping situation, so I can start driving it during the week to get it set up properly for RallyDay 2010, and spend the week getting better myself as well.  Rides in the Skoda will be available on eBay!