Skoda Rally Blog

Being a bit nervous, I don’t sleep well when I’m worried. Needless to say I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.

Got up early, as the postman arrived. WITH A CLUTCH! This was amazingly handy, and I took it as a sign, so went out to get on with the car. Got the engine out, and then stripped off the bits I needed for the new install (water pump, alternator brackets, etc), and then cleaned the new engine up – and it came up very well. I swapped some of the covers over to keep it looking nice and clean, and then it was time to look at the clutch. Which uncovered a bit of a surprise. The clutch plate was a bit stuck on (although I’m sure it would have freed off with a bit of work), but behind it was a great sight – a dowelled flywheel and two extra bolts – whoever had built this engine hadn’t been messing about. I then realised that the flywheel had also been lightened considerably. Result! A bit of cleaning up had the new clutch looking pretty (I was too excited to take pictures, silly me), and then putting on the water pump and alternator brackets saw the engine ready to fit. Fitting gearboxes is always a pet peeve of mine, but doing it with the engine out is a piece of cake – a one man job – and it was ready to fit.

Fitting went fairly easily, as you’d expect given that every fastener has been undone since Saturday anyway, so no problems there and within a couple of hours I was going through the final checklist. I filled the engine with the right oil, but it’ll be getting changed after 20 minutes of warming up, as I want to flush everything out. Water in, gearbox oil in, everything torqued, and time to fire it up.

Firstly, with the coil disconnected to get some oil pressure, which came up after a reasonable amount of turning over (given that it would have been bone dry, this is fair enough). Then to see if it would fire. Connected the coils, turned it over. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Connected the laptop and saw there was no RPM signal, and a quick adjustment of the sensor position had it fire up and sound schweet (copyright Eric Cartman). Blipped it a few times and killed it, and checked everything again, checking for leaks, etc., but all was well. Fired it up again, and again it sounded good. Andy’s base map setting is obviously not 100% right for this engine, but it ran a whole load better than the original map, and seemed all good.

I’ve booked it in for another session on Thursday (giving me time to check it over properly and so on), and now it’s time to check everything over again, change the oil and so on, and go for a gentle drive to see if it’s happy. I have the LM-1 fitted in the car,so it’s easy to see if the mixture is wrong, and I’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it will go!