Skoda Rally Blog

It’s been a few days, but a long few days, so I’ll start at the beginning.  Last time out the Seat had the standard head re-fitted and everything in place for the first time since I bought it, and Monday morning meant enough time had passed to get the battery charged up, so it was time to see if it ran.  Before the strip down the engine was running well, and indeed as soon as it was warm it would tick over like a real car.  But it had been a long time, so I was pleased as punch when it fired up on the first turn of the key, and sounded sweet.  Splendid.  However, there were still some bits to re-fit – I’d not fully filled the coolant, or refitted the drivebelts for the alternator/water pump or the power steering, so these went on in short order and I fired it up and left it running; after a couple of minutes of throttle blipping it ticked over quite happily.  The exhaust sounded quite different to when I bought it without a huge hole in it – it’s quite a quiet car.  Or rather it would be, if there wasn’t a problem.  When I bought the car, it came with a spare front pipe (which includes the cat).  I nearly sold it at one point, and I was glad I’d not done so, as the flexible joint on the one on the car had split, so the car had that horrible sound when there’s an exhaust leak near the engine.  Clearly that needed fixing, and it would have been better if I’d spotted it with the head off.  I went to check on the disks which were being machined back to spec, but they weren’t done, and the weather turned, so that was the end of Monday.  On Tuesday I had to work, but on Wednesday I went to pick up the brake discs (which still weren’t done), as I’d taken the bold step of booking the car in for an MOT on Friday.  If you don’t set a deadline, then projects just go on and on, and it was time to get the Seat finished.  I cleaned the discs up with wet and dry and they came up very well.  I then fitted them to the mounting bells to find out the originals had been fitted wrong according to AP’s site, so that was nice!  Cleaning them up, fitting them to the car and refitting the calipers and pads took up the whole morning, and just when I thought I’d finished, I noticed this:

Oh dear!

A couple of cracks in the inner wing.  They were mostly the result of the metal being brittle where it had been seam welded, although there was one small patch that needed new metal as it had rusted.  Not too bad to do, and half an hour later, it looked much better:

Yellow!

Much better and no problem for either MOT or actually driving the car.  I took a precautionary look around the rest of the car but didn’t find anything else like it, so hopefully it was just a minor issue. After that it was time to fix the exhaust.

This was a complete pig of a job.  Whoever designed the downpipe for the Ibiza (or rather the gap between the steering rack and the body) needs to be dispatched.  What could have been a straightforward job was a complete pain to do as getting it out required a mixture of precision and strength which was incredibly difficult to manage with a car jacked up in my drive.  I’m sure on a 4-poster it would have been downgraded to just “I hate this person, and the should suffer a lot”.  I was eventually rewarded with a removed downpipe, and now I had to make one up.  Eventually I took the path of putting the motorsport cat onto the new front pipe, which took a fair bit of grinding and cutting to get it off, but it was OK.  Careful measurement and photography meant I could get the new part made up to the right dimensions (as there was a fair bit of play between the pipes), so I did a few test TIG welds and had to … refit the bloody thing to check it was OK.  This was done, but again was hard getting it in, and harder getting it out.  I fully welded it, and fitted it, and was relieved to find that it all fitted up without issue.  And when the car started….. as quiet as a mouse, at the front anyway.  This was a good thing, but the entire day was taken up!

Thursday was mostly taken up with collecting my Sister from Heathrow, but in the afternoon I changed the front tyres over to the MOT-legal winter tyres which were fitted to one set of tyres for the car, and then adjusting the handbrake cables and final fitting them, and fitting winter tyres.  Once more play was stopped by bad weather and it being pitch black.  Just time for a quick first test drive.  The first thing that hit me was that the clutch is heavy and bites rather viciously.  The second was nearly a roundabout – the steering is just 2 turns from lock to lock, and as a result I rather over-did it when I went round a roundabout, but fortunately corrected in time!  The third was that the brakes needed a good push to work well, but other than that it was OK.  A couple of runs up and down the road, and then I noticed the water temperature was getting a bit high, so I went back home, and found steam coming from under the bonnet!  Not good, and a bit of a surprise as it hadn’t done it when run up to temperature before, but there you go.  It was quickly traced to a not-fully-tightened jubilee clip, and I hoped that no damage had been done – the car didn’t get too hot, thankfully; the joys of proper instrumentation (the car has oil pressure and temperature as well as water temperature, and I think the Skoda should follow suit at some point).

So, today was MOT day, but in the night (as you do) I’d remembered a couple of things I’d not tightened up – just the lambda sensor and coilpack so easy enough – and also needed to sort the wipers out (which cleaned up OK), fit an interior mirror and fit new sill stand guards.  Once more it was raining, but an hour saw all these done, along with the water topped up.  Another test drive showed that all was well.

I hate MOTs.  They are like scrutineering, but even worse.  And as I’d booked it for 2:30 I had a fair bit of waiting about to do, which didn’t help.  But it all went OK.  There were a few advisories on it, nothing serious, and a PASS!  So the Seat is finally ready to drive.  Driving it back I took a few chances to give it some beans, and it goes OK.  The brakes still need a firm push, but I’m hoping they are just bedding in at the moment (although they are non-servo) – they certainly stop OK, and warm up as well.  The hydraulic handbrake is excellent, and the raised gear lever is really good – no more dipping out of sight to change gear, it looks more like one of the early manual-change Focus WRC cars (although obviously isn’t sequential!).  It didn’t miss a beat on the way there or back, and that’s all I can ask for really.  So it looks like a car change for Longmoor will be in order.  How splendid.  All I need to do is put the sumpguard on, get some tyres changed over and give it an oil change.  But that can wait until next week; I’ve not had a moment to myself this week, so I’m going to enjoy Christmas for a few days instead.  Happy Christmas to you if you’re reading this before the day, and even if you’re not, in retrospect.