Skoda Rally Blog

For once, the car is mostly done, a couple of weeks ahead of when it needs to be. The list of jobs to do is fairly short, mostly chasing a small oil leak on the gearbox (which I think should be fairly easy to sort out, being 2 oil seals), re-filling the lubrication on the front left strut (when you assemble the proflex legs they need 80cc of oil in them, and the left one leaked because the sealing washer, er, didn’t!).

Yesterday Paul came over, and we checked a few things on the car, which all seemed OK. There were a couple of things that need doing, but nothing major and no surprises. However, I started the car up then and it didn’t seem too happy. I did the same again today, and it was also rough. And lo and behold, the same problem had resurfaced – a lack of fuel pressure. I thought it may be the pump, but replacing that would be an awkward job, so I tried changing the pressure regulator instead, by replacing the fuel rail (which I’d removed the regulator from and used a remote one) with a standard one. It took a bit of time to do as it’s awkward, but it led to a rock-steady 3 bar fuel pressure, and once the plugs had been cleaned it ran spot on again. Hopefully that’s the back of that problem, and the car will run properly – certainly I felt rather differently about it playing up knowing that in 3 weeks time it’ll be in the Welsh forests (all things having gone to plan).

But to get to those forests, I need a trailer, and again hiring one for the week is something I don’t have money for. So it was time to fix the problems with my trailer – the plastic mudguards had been broken since I bought it and patched up here and there, so I bought some new ones. In addition the “tailgate” was rusty and rubbish, so that needed to be replaced. While these sound like simple things, it was pretty much a day’s work to get all that sorted, although it now works a lot better than before. But there was a problem – while cleaning the tailgate up ready for painting, a sharp edge caught my left hand and cut a 3″ long gash in it at the base of my thumb – the kind of thing you do where you know it’ll be messy and you don’t want to look at it! It bled a lot, and put paid to doing anything much for the rest of the afternoon. Not ideal as I need to be doing stuff, so I’m taking it easy again! Tomorrow should see the wiring finished on the trailer, and then some work on the car, hopefully getting everything finished off.. well, by Tuesday anyway.