Skoda Rally Blog

Well, on Friday it was time for the Skoda’s annual MOT, so I had it out a few days before just on a quick test drive to make sure everything was OK, and on the face of it it seemed to be.  But the day before, I tried the wipers (which worked on the Tuesday) and they didn’t work at all.  Some quick tests showed that the motor had seized, and fortunately I had a spare one in the shed, and it’s a quick and easy fix, so nothing too much to worry about, but on the day I got home at 1:30 with the MOT booked for 3:30 and thought I’d just do a final check, to make sure none of the wheels had dented rims (I wasn’t sure which ones I’d fitted), and a quick check that everything was bolted up properly.

And it’s a good job I did check it, as the front offside ball joint (on the wishbone) had about 2mm of play in it!  Handily (a) I had a spare in the shed and (b) the bolts were easy to get out, so it only took 10 minutes to swap over, but it was a tense 10 minutes.  The rear wheel bearings had a bit of play too, so I adjusted them, and set off for the MOT.  And it all went well, which was nice, as it’s the least pleasant thing, like scrutineering, but stretched out over about an hour!  Had tea and clearly ate something bad as I felt sick after it, and was completely knocked out for all of Saturday, unable to eat anything at all.  While I didn’t have anything desperate to do on the car, I’d rather have been able to change the rear wheel bearings and replace the worn balljoint and put the wishbone back on (the reason for this being that it’s an original Skoda wishbone and they are a LOT stronger than the pattern ones that I have as spares).  Plus there’s lots of cleaning up and little bits and pieces to do to get it all ready for…

Rallye Sunseeker!  Yes, it’s this Saturday, and it’s looking interesting; we are seeded last (not sure why, but I guess I’m as slow as I’ve been told), and there is the Skoda of the Beckett Brothers plus a 1275 Mini in our class, so we should have some competition.  It’s looking like this will be Paul’s last rally, which I’m gutted about, but I will worry about that after Rallye Sunseeker, as it should be a good event, and with two same-direction runs of the longer stages of the event, it will be slightly WRC-like in that respect (this is because it’s part of the BRC and they have to do recce for the event, and re-arrowing the stage for the recce wasn’t practical).  Anyway, hopefully we should be able to do well in our class, and actually finish as 2009 wasn’t a good year at all, and 2010 was spent with me unable to even walk at the time, so hopefully this will see us do all the stages and make it to Bournemouth Pier for the ceremonial finish, having started in Poole on the Friday night at the Ceremonial Start.

This week I have a few things to sort out, but in particular I want to track down the poor running that we had on Rally GB – I don’t want to spend the day fighting with the car between stages and worrying about reliability, so I hope that the cause will present itself as it was rather elusive in November in Wales!