Skoda Rally Blog

Last time anything of significance was posted on here, it was about the front subframe and suspension – the camber of the left front was wrong, and it was hard to measure what was wrong and where.  However, with more investigation and measurement the truth finally made itself clear – the car itself wasn’t bent, but the front hubs had been modified to counter something (I know not what) and as a result were actually off; fitting one from one side to the other had a different camber on it.  Given this and my wish to fit the Proflex suspension I had to the car led me to trying to combine the two projects (get the angles right and fit Proflex) into one – fit the Proflex and sort it while doing that.  To that end I designed some adapters for the suspension to fit the Proflex to the Ibiza’s hubs.  Long story short, I got them made up, had some plates made, measured and made some final ones with a bit of negative camber dialed in as well; after all, this is a rally car, not a daily driver, and a bit of camber will sharpen up the front and with the power steering it won’t mean I have a handful to drive.  The end result of all this work (and some welding by someone else when I realised my limits on 6mm thick plate) was this:

Front adapter for Proflex

This will go round the pin-type Proflex and bolt the hubs to it.  Once I’d got new hubs, suitably modified and with new bearings fitted, it all bolted up OK, and when fitted (actually much later in the story overall, but you get the idea), it looks like this:

Nice and shiny… for how long?

The car now has about 1.25 degree of negative camber on the front end, and the same figure on both sides – there was over a degree of difference between one side and the other before, so it will hopefully be a bit better behaved!

In addition to this, the rear has had Proflex fitted as well; this was a much more straightforward addition as it just involved unbolting the rears, and drilling out a spacer – that was it, as most VAG-group cars seem to share similar dimensions, and the rears of the Ibiza and Felicia are almost identical.  Only the remote canisters needed a mounting and they are snugly fitted in the rear beam, with enough slack to ensure a re-run of day 2 of Rally GB 2010 doesn’t happen!  I really didn’t like the feel of the Bilstein suspension that was fitted to the Ibiza originally – the rear in particular was very lacking in grip – so I hope that the tunability of the Proflex will give an improvement in this area.  Time will tell…