Skoda Rally Blog

So, it’s been a few months since the last entry on here, and that’s been for a number of reasons – firstly, getting over selling the Skoda – not only because I sold a car that I spent a lot of time and money building, but also because it represented the end of a chapter for me, the possibility of doing Rally GB (or indeed any other sizeable International event), which took a while to take in and see what I did in the past for what it actually was – a great achievement and something that very few people are lucky enough to get the chance to do once, let alone four times.

Secondly, I decided to make up for selling the car buy realising a boyhood dream, and buying a Porsche 928 with the money.  Yesterday I sold that car, and while I’m glad I bought it and don’t ever have to go back there again, it didn’t work out in the way I’d have liked; so many things suffer from ‘reality shortfall’ and the 928 was definitely one of those.  The car wasn’t a dog by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t the dream car I’d hoped it would be.

Thirdly, I’ve just been really busy with everyday life, working and spending time with Tammie and the kids, so I have less time to spend in the garage.

Fourth, Rallye Sunseeker has been moved to October 2013 (instead of the usual February), so there hasn’t been any real pressure to get the car done; at the time of finding out about the move it was just about a year away, which made it seem incredibly distant.  Combined with wet weather this meant nothing really has been done.

Now, however, it’s time to get on with it, so I’ve made some progress today on getting the car ready.  The first thing is that the gearbox needs to be rebuilt – it sounded like a bag of spanners when I got the car, and that didn’t get any better over the three events I drove it on.  According to the manual, this should be a fairly easy thing to do, but there were some issues; firstly I couldn’t get the sumpguard off!  Two of the four bolts that hold it in place were solid; no idea why as they were all greased when fitted and all bought at the same time and fitted to the same torque, but there you go.  And as they are recessed allen bolts, removing them was not straightforward.  Fortunately welding bolts to the heads got them free in the end, but it was a lot more work than it needed to be!

Bolts!

Now, according to the manual, it should be possible to remove the gearbox leaving the engine in situ, but after an hour or so of trying, it became apparent that this is not the case – it just wasn’t possible to do it as the subframe was in the way no matter how I tried, so the whole lot needs to come out; this will give me a bit of a leg up with another issue as the exhaust manifold isn’t something I’m happy with, so I’ve decided to change it to something better, and also replace the catalytic converter as it was on its last legs at the last MOT and I’d really like a car that I can MOT anywhere, anywhen as the MSA are clearly becoming far more on the case with things such as emissions.  To that end I have bought this little beauty:

Shiny!

It will need modification to fit (probably a fair bit), but it’s a good starting point, and it was a bargain at just £72 brand new.  I’ve also bought a new cat and bypass pipe (to allow mapping without killing the cat):

Cats!

So hopefully all of that will make life much easier.  In addition, this was all spawned by the incredibly difficult fitting that was done before, so I’m hoping that the modifications will allow it to be fitted to the car with the engine in situ as it was difficult and painful fitting the old downpipe when the engine was in place.

This aside, it was time to get everything ready to get the engine out.  Fortunately the Ibiza’s front end has a bolt-on front panel, so access to everything is much easier once that’s out the way.

The coolant radiator needs beefing up as the car was nearly always running hot when used on the Sunseeker, so I’m going to give the whole cooling system the once-over, but the radiator seems tiny to me – it’s about the same size as the Skoda one, and that’s for a car that has one third the power as standard.  Clearly something’s not right.

A couple of hours’ work left the engine bay stripped and pretty much ready to go, but there’s other stuff in the way in the garage at the moment so I’ve decided that waiting is the best thing to do – hopefully I can get the engine out next weekend, and then start working on the gearbox in the evenings.

In other areas, the driveshafts I ordered in June (no, really!) are still ‘in progress’ so I will chase them up – I did so over Christmas, so hopefully this time I’ll actually get them soon.  I’m going to get rid of the ATB diff and fit a gripper to the car as I think this will help out, plus also find the cause of the uneven camber that has plagued the handling – with the engine out it should be much easier to make accurate measurements and find out what’s adrift (and get it fixed).  There’s also a new cylinder head to go onto the engine, which should see it making more like the 200bhp I’m after, so there’s plenty in store, aside from fixing all the nasty little bodges that I’ve found today on engine brackets and so on!