Rallyday 2010

by Darren on Sep.18, 2010, under Build

Today was Rallyday, a rally-themed car show, which is annually held at Castle Combe circuit, near Bath. Last year’s trip did not go well, leading to a blown head gasket, a dodgy drive home and a generally displeased owner. So, when I set out at 6:30am this morning to get there, I was somewhat nervous; the car going wrong anywhere would be bad, but particularly on an important day, with a chance to get the car seen by lots of people, plus to meet up with a few rallying friends without the pressure of competing which often makes having a laugh difficult.

The car started up OK, and I got going to find that the heater motor wouldn’t switch on, so opened the windows and froze for a while – the engine warmed up pretty quickly and became fairly drivable then as well. The mapping changes I’d made on Friday left the engine running crisply in the typical cruising speeds (about 4000 rpm in top equates to 60mph or so), and everything felt good – no unusual noises, dodgy readings or anything. It even ticked over when I got to the inevitable queue at the track access road!

Got parked up and said hello to everyone from BDCC, and then went to get signed up for the track session – the briefing was much the same as ever (although from a guy who was nicer than usual), and then I was ready for noise test. I ended up in the queue behind Matt Pyle’s legacy (which I navigated in on RBMR last year), and it was incredibly noisy – I didn’t think it would pass, although as Matt didn’t have his form filled out they wouldn’t noise test him. I didn’t either, but they let me fill mine in (thanks guys) with their pen, and I passed (96dB). Matt’s later test would be 110dB. Which is 10dB over the limit, so he ended up having an extension silencer added, as did many cars.

It was time for the first session, and the weather was beautiful. Got the car started and to the track, and I was first in the queue. And went to pull onto the track, and…. nothing. The rev limit light flashed quite a few times, which is usually a sign of the crank sensor problem and the ECU resetting. Misery – the car would barely pull 20mph, and I limped round the track and exited having not even made a full lap. Back to the place to park up and got the laptop on it, and saw over 1000 sync errors (each one will make the car backfire or stop running), and had a look – the sensor seemed to be too far away, so I adjusted it and third time lucky, it fired and ran sweetly – and now, no more errors. Hopefully the second session would go better, so I went to queue and met up with Peter Trott from Top Oils, who are sponsoring us on Rally GB this year, and had a good chat about everything. And then Sean Moriarty appeared, from Motorsports News, so we spent a bit of time chatting about this year, and the changes that have been made and plans to do Rally GB, etc. And the more I talked about it, the better I felt about it! Up until that point, it had seemed just like something I was saying, but now it seemed to be real. Sean was really friendly as ever, and enthusiastic about what we’re doing, so hopefully he’ll run something in MN and we’ll bag some publicity for Top Oils as a result.

It was time to go out on track, and this time…. it went well! Got out there and was taking it easy, but with the gravel tyres on the car it was sliding all over the place anyway, so it was good fun, even if it was slow. Each lap I gave the car more revs and more throttle, and it seemed OK, although it was running pretty rich, so I didn’t give it too much. Obviously all the other cars were going much more quickly, so I spent a lot of time moving left to let them pass, but it was good, and time to come in too quickly.

There was then a long time to the next time out on track (about 5 hours), so after speaking to Peter for a bit and getting a couple of Bardahl T-Shirts for Paul and me to wear, I went for a wander, and saw the usual cars there, as well as the S2000 Fabia:

The next Skoda? Right.

Which looks amazing, it really does. And later I’d see that it goes pretty well too. There was also the S2000 Proton:

Proton S2000.... nice!

Which you could get into all the nooks and crannies, and see what an amazingly built car it is – even the bonnet stay was a work of art (and very clever too). Nice to see a car like that on display that you could get really close to. The interior was a masterpiece of minimalism, there’s next-to-nothing inside it, and just a touch panel for all the car’s controls, and a large LCD for the navigator. Really impressive, even this part of it.

Wandered about some more, and saw an RS200, which is my favourite car ever. The back was open showing the engine, and spent some time talking to the owner, a really nice guy who wanted to use the car as intended rather than it be a show piece with every part polished. I asked if I could look inside, and he opened it up and said I could get in! Brilliant, I’d get to sit in my dream car. For some reason I didn’t ask anyone to take a pic of me, but I did take a pic of my hand inside it:

I was IN AN RS200!

Brilliant!

So, a dream achieved, I wandered back to the car, and then Tammie arrived with the kids, so we wandered around some more and had lunch, and so on. The feature stage was on at this point, and got to see various cars on there hooning around, and I still wonder why they don’t put the chicanes there for the “normal” people to go round – it’d be much more rally-like than the open track. Oh well.

Soon enough, it was time for Tammie to get signed up as a passenger and then me take her round. We got onto the track and headed for Quarry, which is a fairly fast entry for a corner, and I heard a squeal from her and could see her pressing hard on the navigator’s footrest, probably for an imaginary brake pedal. Each lap I did I went a bit quicker, and took the corners a bit closer to the bollards, and afterwards was told that I’d scared her to death! Still, she was smiling, your honour…. It’s just a pity that there weren’t any more takers for rides in the car, but there you go. That, really was it – I was happy the car was still all in one large and running piece, and that as much coverage as possible had been had for us and for Top Oils, so it was time to drive home, which was thankfully uneventful aside from the left front coming loose about half way home, so i’ll need to look at what’s happened there as they were torqued up! Thanks to James from BDCC for stopping to check if I was OK as he drove past. Here are some more pictures from the day: