Skoda Rally Blog

… it’s coming together!

Today I’ve taken the car on a trip to shake it all down, and so far everything has been OK. Yesterday it passed the re-test for the MOT (which was obviously only a couple of minor things), and driving it there and back showed that the changes we’d made in the fuelling had improved matters a lot. Today’s drive has reinforced that view – obviously it’s quite buzzy as top gear is somewhere between third and fourth on a standard box, but now it’s fuelled properly (and looking at the figures we cut nearly 50% out on some light-throttle load/speed sites), it drives very nicely. There are a few minor tweaks to make, but Friday afternoon should see all of those taken care of, and we should be ready to go.

Another upside, the van situation has been sorted out, and that was the last major piece of the jigsaw to get in place. I’m certainly better prepared than at any time before any rally I’ve done, and a world away from the mess that was last year, so I’m really hoping that my last ever International event (because, let’s face it, unless there is a massive change in my finances, I won’t be buying a HANS device and new helmet and neither will Paul) will be a success. It seems like I’ve worked non-stop to get everything done, and hopefully now I can just ease off before the week proper. There are only a few things to do (including the HID conversion on the lamp pod, which is set for Thursday night), and then it’ll be upon us.

This year, I’m really, really hoping that we’ll get enough time to be able to post more ‘multimedia’ stuff – more pictures and also some video footage. We can put blog entries in via email, so there may be updates in-between stages (just short ones), as both of us can send email from our phones, but we’ll see how that goes. If anyone reads this and takes pictures of the event, can you please PLEASE email them to me so I can put them up? In previous years people have very kindly sent what they’ve done (and one, in particular is a cracking shot, better than any professional ones that I saw), but all is appreciated, even if only as a memento for me so I can bore people in years to come!