Skoda Rally Blog

It’s been a while since the Felicia has been used – in fact, I think aside from moving out of the way of the Seat when it was in the ‘Number One’ position in the drive, I don’t think it’s been used since October – once the engine was all sorted out and I’d done some mapping on it, it was put to bed.  However, I have the next couple of weeks off, and one of the things I want to get sorted out is the Skoda – get it MOT-ed and sort out the list of issues it has; in essence get it ready for its next event.

First, there was a problem – not with the Felicia – in that the Ibiza wouldn’t start.  Or do anything.  It had done this before, and the battery was weak when I got it, and hasn’t improved since.  Time for a trip to the MDC and to get a new one, and off it went.  Then, time to get the Skoda out, up on ramps and take a look at a few issues that I knew about.

Getting some long overdue attention

Once I got the bonnet up, I noticed there was a bit of a smell of petrol, and a quick look showed why – there was loads of it leaking out of the fuel pipes, pooling nicely on the inlet manifold:

Oh dear.

Oh dear.  Still, nothing too difficult to fix, so off to the shop up the road to get some more braided steel fuel hose, and all the bits under the bonnet were replaced.  No more leaks there.  A look underneath showed some gearbox oil leaking because the reverse light switch was loose, so that was easily fixed.  Everything else looked OK underneath, so it was run up and left for a few minutes, and nothing else undesirable fell out or off, so that was good.  Everything for the MOT was checked over and seemed OK, all the lights work as they should do, and nothing seemed too bad.  Splendid.

Ages ago I’d made up a list of things to do, and some couldn’t be done as I need parts, but one could be; a while ago I replaced the hoses between the fuel tank and the rigid pipes in the car, and I didn’t think too much about the routing of the pipes, leading them to be in the way of the inspection cover in the car’s floor.  The access to them is really difficult, and to do it properly meant replacing one of the pipes, meaning the tank needed to be dropped down, so the back of the car was up on ramps and then tankguard needed to come off, then the tank dropped down, hoses replaced and all back in place (minus about 4 kilos of stones which were on top of the tankguard).  Sounds simple enough (and it was), but still took over an hour.

The MOT is booked for tomorrow afternoon, so it should be straightforward, aside from one thing – the car has next to no fuel in it, so I’m hoping that after the UK’s panic buying of fuel last week there will be a petrol station nearby that has petrol so that I can actually get to the MOT!