Skoda Rally Blog

After a few weekends where I couldn’t get anything done on the car, I’ve had a bit of time today to get the car back together in one piece.  This meant fitting the front and rear suspension as the first task, and that should be simple enough, but there has been a bit of a problem, and that is the location of the rear shock remote reservoirs; the hoses aren’t long enough to put them in the middle of the beam where they will be safe from (most) harm, hence the breakage before.  To route the hose correctly meant the reservoir would be in a very vulnerable place on the rear axle, so it needed to go elsewhere.  After asking about and trying a few things out, I’ve come to the temporary solution of them being secured along the rear chassis rail, behind the shocks and near the rear bumper.  There’s a convenient slot in the chassis rail already, meaning they could be fitted using a jubilee clip with no drilling, so that was fairly straightforward.  What wasn’t was finding several small missing parts from the upper mounts (which use the standard car parts), but after an hour’s searching in the garage I found the bits I was looking for, stored from another car I broke.  There was also a bit of guidance needed for the rear shock hose to keep them away from the tyre, so this all took a fair bit longer than I’d have liked, but is all looking good.

The front end needed just refitting, which still takes a bit of time as the angles of the struts needs to be right – they need to be in the right place in relation to the hubs so that turning the steering doesn’t make the hoses foul too much, and they also need a fair bit of effort to get them in place as the proflex strut bottoms are slightly bigger than standard so they’re not a straight fit.  A few attempts got them all lined up and fitted, so the car should be ready to go back on its wheels for the first time in a couple of months, aside from…. the front brakes.  Which were in need of new pads, as inspection after Rally GB showed the Mintex 1144 pads had broken up quite badly, so handily I had some EBC GreenStuff pads knocking about (again, after a fair bit of searching), and these didn’t take too long to fit and clean up the calipers, so the brakes should be a lot better than they were.  Wheels back on, sumpguard off, and I thought I’d try to start it up.

As soon as I did, I could smell petrol, and the hose between the tank and the rigid line on the car has broken, leaving a pool of fuel on the floor, and a disgruntled owner.  I don’t have any hose, plus I was feeling pretty sore by this time so I decided it would be best to leave it for the day; the tank needs to come off anyway to let me fit the new tankguard so it’s no big deal; it can be done next weekend, and then the car should be ready for an MOT and then a week of prep before the Sunseeker.