Skoda Rally Blog

…. another bunch of stuff gets done.

Whenever you do anything it seems that 20% of the work takes 80% of the time – it’s not the big stuff that takes the time, like changing engines, it’s all the little things that do. And that’s been the case this weekend. I’ve been on it Friday afternoon, and all day Saturday and Sunday, and yet it seems like nothing has changed, but in fact I’ve done lots of little things. The exhaust now has a short flexi section in it to relieve some strain on the manifold, and obviously this took a fair while, but it’s nicely TIGed in place, and means fitting the whole system is now a breeze. The rear tailpipe mounting wasn’t particularly clever as it rattled a bit, and now that is also much more secure and doesn’t rattle. Nothing now fouls the exhaust, which is good all round. I’ve even made up a section to put in if the flexi bit fails.

I’ve made a bit more progress with the diff, and have cleaned up a casing ready to build whatever box I end up with into. The big issue is whether or not it’ll be worth using, and this should hopefully be resolved this week. However, stripping a previous box that I’d bought as a spare (and indeed taken to WRGB 2007) showed that it was totally useless. Clutch lever – bent and seized. Mounting studs – bent. OIl – cooked, so the bearings were probably toast. Diff – doesn’t look good either! Out of the entire thing, the ONLY things I saved were some shims for setting the diff and input shaft setup.

Which leads me nicely onto probably the most constructive thing I did on Saturday – a massive trip to the dump, dropping off a HUGE amount of old steel (conrods, liners, gears, allsorts), and a load of oil (from the many changes I seem to have done in the last couple of weeks), and suddenly I had a much more useful garage, which is a huge change (no pictures exist of the garage in previous Rally GB runups, but let’s just say “complete disorganised mess” would cover it nicely).

There was a list of small things to do, which took a lot of time – finishing the plate for the WRC tracker switch (now nicely mounted by the front of Paul’s seat), finishing the intercom helmet setup and testing them (and, oddly finding out that the connections are the wrong way round – mine goes to Paul’s and vice-versa, so I’ll have to re-do that, despite not having changed it since last used!), mountings for the oil cooler (which took hours), a mounting plate for the ECU (which finally can’t slide about, and is well insulated from vibration), and a bunch of other tiny little things.

I’m still waiting for the bearings. It’s really not reassuring when you offer to pay extra (I’d happily have paid for UPS as I could have got the car going already) and the guy says “airmail is the quickest way” – bearing in mind the last set took FIVE WEEKS to turn up. Obviously I can’t wait that long, I’m hoping they’ll be here by Tuesday, and then it should be all systems go. Also the oil pressure gauge had to go back as it suffered from poor supply voltage rejection (turning the lights on dropped the pressure reading by about 1.5 bar) AND poor calibration, so hopefully the next one will be OK – certainly it was good to have a reading rather than just a light, and I think they may become a permanent addition.

Anyway, car aside, the paperwork has arrived for Rally GB – amazingly, unsigned for!!! Anyway, we’re number 98. Which is nice, didn’t expect to get out of the 130s, really. We have the road books, recce numbers, schedule and all the other bumf! What is annoying is, as last year, the military Land Rovers will be tagging along behind the main field on three “National B” events. Anyway, that’ll mean I’ll get caught on long stages, as I’m giving away 8″ of suspension travel and about 180bhp….