Skoda Rally Blog

… has a silver lining.  And today’s cloud was being off work!  One of the schools I work at is a boarding school, and they had a dose of a vomiting virus, so they have closed the school.  Which means I get a day off (yay!), but means I don’t get paid (boo!).  However, there is no peace for the wicked, so I thought I’d make some use of today and get some more ticks done on the Ibiza’s “to do list”.  Top of the list was the bias adjuster – I’d made the new plate up for the dashboard and painted it, but it needed fitting, and to do that I also needed to drill a small hole in the bulkhead for the adjuster cable to pass through.  There’s not a lot of room in there to do it, or much access with the roll cage in the way, but thankfully due to a small air drill and clearance under the bonnet drilling the hole was easy enough, as was fitting a grommet and getting the cable through.  With it all screwed in place and connected up, the brakes are now adjustable from the cockpit, should that be necessary.

Bias adjuster in place

That’s the blue knob, which is turned to adjust the bias front and rear.

Under the bonnet

The red cable is the adjuster, which connects to the bias pedalbox which is seen on the left.  Straightforward really (now it works!)

Next up, the terratrip.  While I’d managed to fix the keypad on it, the battery inside it looked fit to explode, so I’d ordered a replacement Ni-Cad one, and fitted it without one in the meantime.  The problem with this was twofold – firstly, whoever fitted the thing in the first place connected it to a switched live, so when you turn the ignition off, the trip meter goes off.  Not a great idea, and secondly without the battery when you turn the engine over it has a tendency to wipe the terratrip memory out.  Taking it all out of the car and apart again was a bit long-winded, and having “lost” the batteries I ordered made the job even longer; I’d actually put them in the “bits to fit” area of the garage and forgotten about it.  Still, easily fixed, and soon enough a permanent live feed (although still cut off by the kill switch for obvious reasons) was wired in, fused and everything.  With it all back together and the battery charged up for a while, it all worked as it should do, keeping time whether the car was on or off.

After the tank exploration last time out, I still had to re-fit the cover for the filler pipe.  This, too, turned out to be remarkably easy, just taking a bit of care to do it had it fitted in a few minutes.  Another thing taken off the list!

Nice tidy tank!

Next up was the guard for the alternator and power steering belt – I have no idea how it was supposed to fit with the sumpguard as it just didn’t fit – whichever you fitted first, the plastic guard just didn’t work properly, and looked more of a danger than a help, so I took it off and cut it down.  Refitting it to the car showed I’d taken a bit too much off, but this was cured by heating it up with a hot air gun and bending it to suit the sumpguard.

While not a watertight seal, it is intended to keep stones out of a critical area, and looks to be doing just that.  I may find a way to fix it to the sumpguard with a couple of screws/rivnuts to ensure it’s easy enough to remove but will stay perfectly in place; the other side has some mudflap material which needs the same treatment as previously it was held on with nuts and bolts (which must have been a real nightmare if you needed to do something quickly!), so when I come to do the oil change at the weekend, it will get all that done to it.

And that is about it!  Doesn’t seem like there’s 5 hours work there, but with all the messing about that’s needed and going to buy parts (three trips to the shops, each time for tiny things), it all adds up.  Still, the list now looks like this:

Which is a bit odd – I’ve done 8 things today, but added 9 to it.  That’s progress for you!  Seriously though, most of those things are straightforward.  I reckon a few hours will see everything ready for the car’s first trip out on Rallye Sunseeker, entry for which was confirmed today by the organisers.  There look to be a few entries in our class, so we will no doubt be slower than everyone else… or will we?