Skoda Rally Blog

In short, NO! But “very nearly” covers it better.

There’s been a LOT to do since Friday. Firstly my original MOT was cancelled as the computer had gone down, which is a mare, so I had to re-book elsewhere. It failed, but on two minor things (loose CV boot, typical, and play in the nearside front lower joint), so a re-test will be a formality on Tuesday. Cosmetics aren’t something I’ve spent a huge amount of time on with my cars, but that doesn’t mean to say I don’t want it to look nice at the beginning of the rally if not shortly afterwards (especially if the weather keeps doing what it has been), so the bumpers came off, and were given a coat of “Signal Green”, this time with a primer, so I’m hoping the ‘complimentary jetwash service’ won’t leave us minus paint this time – certainly they seemed a lot better. They’re not the best job in the world, but time was tight, etc…. And they look a LOT better than they did, and all for a total cost of around ?15 for painting 3 bumpers (I have a spare rear).

An oil change was needed, and this seems to have found one of the issues – the oil that came out was like water, so I’ve changed to another brand (one that I’ve used for a long time in the cars before) so that’s another thing less to worry about. The gauges were removed as I didn’t fancy the longevity of the sensor arrangement on rough stages, and it breaking would be terminal. Plus I’d only be worrying about the gauges all the time, so better not to have them. Ignorance/bliss, etc.

However, on Saturday afternoon a disaster occurred. I’d arranged to borrow the service van I’d used before about 6 weeks ago, and phoned the owner to arrange picking it up next weekend. Only to find out he’s sold it and didn’t tell me. I’m hoping the new owner (who is in the hire business) will be willing to hire it to me at a decent rate, but I’m not 100% on this at the moment so I’m quite worried about this, leading to a lack of sleep last night!

Sunday’s task was firstly to sort out the cruise fuelling – the dyno session had set the engine up for full-throttle power runs, but setting up everything else was done with just some rough settings (and making sure there was no detonation anywhere), and this meant that the fuelling on cruise was rich. VERY rich. It should be around 15 parts air to 1 of fuel (by mass) on such light-load sites, and it was around 10 if not worse – at least 33% too much fuel. So, with the laptop, wideband meter, Paul and a clipboard, we set off to make some measurements of what was happening at certain rev/throttle positions, and I’d knocked up a quick calculator in javascript to work out new values for a desired Air/Fuel ratio. This was a bit long-winded (mostly because the old DTA software is a PITA), but a couple of hours saw a much cleaner-running car, and these light-load sites massively reduced in fuel – I’d estimate nearly 50% less in some places, and this means we should be able to achieve a huge 15mpg, which isn’t too bad given the low gearing.

This meant the lambda sensor from the wideband could now be removed and the plug put back in (and it was a mare to get out!), and then it was time for…. the sumpguard. Which took quite a beating on WRGB07 and Sunseeker 08, so it needed some welding. And once I had the MIG set up properly it went pretty well – the three main ribs were re-attached and the sumpguard is a LOT stronger than it was, so that’s a bonus. The rear mountings have been changed for female ones (so the knackered bolts can just be thrown away, rather than a stud which was captive needing fixing), and amazingly… it bolted STRAIGHT on. No mess, no fuss, just worked.

So as it sits on the drive, it’s almost ready to go. I think there’s an afternoon’s work to do on the insides of the car (sorting out camera controls, tidying things up, etc), and then I need to do the HID conversion (a couple of hours’ work, but easily done in an evening, inside, in the warm!), and that’s about it. I had planned to have those two things done by today (in my original scheme), but given the amount of problems I’ve had, I don’t think being half a day behind is the end of the world.

I just hope I can get the van sorted out, otherwise we’re really in the poo.