Skoda Rally Blog

This weekend has seen some more progress on getting the car into a rally-ready state.  The principal problem I was left with after last weekend was starting the car – it was really difficult to get it to start, and the ECU kept resetting because of low voltage when running the starter motor, meaning it was at best a hit-and-miss affair to get it started, and sometimes the car just wouldn’t start.  This, of course, would never do, for obvious reasons – I don’t want to spent £4000 on entering Rally GB to be thwarted with a car that doesn’t start on Friday morning.  You might laugh, but this has happened to works teams in the WRC before.

Initially I thought the problem was the battery having seen better days – although it’s not seen a lot of work, it has been left for long periods, but a battery test soon corrected that illusion – it was almost exactly to the spec, which given that it’s nearly 3 years old isn’t bad at all.  However, that meant things would be more complex than I’d hoped.

To cut a long story short, it was simple – the earth lead between the engine and the car body was loose, and re-fixing it and cleaning the battery terminals up led to a car which fired up on the button as it should do.  This was a good thing, so I celebrated by running around like a madman for a few minutes – I’d been dreading spending the weekend faultfinding earthing problems, not something I’m keen on at the best of times.  I’d also discovered an excellent tool in the shape of a wire brush for cleaning battery terminals and leads, a bargain at £1.65.

The wiring loom for the engine needed the plug that goes into the ECU re-waterproofed; I’d removed this when trying to find the cause of the poor starting ages ago, and replacing it was a tricky job involving cutting some 40mm-diameter self-adhesive heatshrink to suit, and then carefully shrinking and glueing it in place.  Looks good and waterproof now though.

Wiring gremlins then took over; the mapping that I’ve been doing relies on Innovate Motorsports’ LMA-3 box which plugs into the logging meter that I have, and provides information about the engine speed and throttle position (it also records G-forces as well, but these are just for fun).  And there was no throttle readout; it turned out that a stray wire had shorted the supply and blown the fuse, although it was still working as it’s powered from the meter as well.  Another hour expired by the time this was located and fixed properly.  Then the RPM readout wouldn’t work, and it took a couple of hours to track this down to the lead between the LMA-3 and the meter being slightly dodgy – once all the terminals were spotless it worked properly, but that put paid to Saturday.

Next up, the oil leak.  The back of the engine was covered in oil, as was one side of the gearbox.  To find the leak, firstly it all needed to be cleaned off, which to do properly takes a while, but once that was done I went for a run up the road and… the back of the engine was covered in oil again. Close examination showed the engine block to be different to the other one, meaning that a different dipstick was needed.  Doing that stopped it completely; there is now just a question mark over whether or not the gearchange shaft seal a) leaks and b) can be replaced in situ.  I have a new one, but obviously if I knacker the old one up and am unable to get it out then I’ll have made things much worse, so I’ll have to keep an eye on it this week.

It was now getting late on Sunday, and time to drive the car again.  It now starts up really easily, just needing some blipping of the throttle until it warms up, and it drives pretty well, although there are still a fair few flat spots in the map to work out.  On the upside, the misfire at 5500rpm has finally been eradicated with the new mounting for the crank sensor, so that’s a huge relief.  Another relief is that the engine is quite happy pulling to 7000rpm (the redline), and makes good power from about 3000rpm upwards.  The map is still off – it’s pretty rich in places, so I’ve logged what’s needed and will be doing so over the coming week to improve it as I go, so hopefully by the end of the week it will be ready for a final mapping session on a proper rolling road to get it set 100%.

Other than that, just some cosmetic work is needed – various things inside the car, and painting the roll cage door bars to clean up all the chips it has acquired, and then the bumpers need a coat of paint.  It looks as if we have sorted our accomodation for the week at a reasonable price (i.e. something that I can actually afford) although it does mean a bit of a drive each day to get to the service area, the other option is it cost an extra £200 and be nearer, but I just can’t afford it, to be blunt!

Hopefully next weekend should see the car pretty much ready to go, although I have a week off in a few weeks, so that will obviously provide some breathing room if something (inevitably) doesn’t go to plan!