Skoda Rally Blog

When I was 11, I fell out of the tree in my back garden. Below me was a neighbour’s garden, and in it was a six-foot steel spike (about an inch in diameter) which was stuck in the ground, and had a sharp point in it – the kind of thing you’d use to break up hard ground with. It was stuck about 18″ into the ground. When I hit the ground I was aware of two things. Firstly, I was upside-down, and secondly, I couldn’t move. I shouted for my Mum’s help, and she rushed down the garden (fortunately she wasn’t out!). She said what she saw made her feel as sick as she’d ever felt. The reason I couldn’t move was that I’d become stuck on the pole. It had gone down the inside of my t-shirt (at the neck), gone all the way down my back (removing the skin on most of my vertebrae), and between my bum cheeks, and then out the front of my jeans by the fly. It took some lifting me off of it, but she did it, and then went and kicked the old guy’s ass for having that in his garden.

When I don’t win the lottery or anything like that, I always think I used up my allocation of luck that day – an inch the other way and I’d have been at best a cripple, and worst, dead. So I don’t think I’m very lucky.

Yesterday was a momentous day. Got everything together, car running, driveable and ready to go. Even managed to get a session doing the mapping in the afternoon at local Subaru specialists and rolling road types Triton Motorsport. Got the car down there OK (albeit running terribly, as you would expect given the change of engine, inlet and injectors), and after some playing about with the software, started mapping. I am a naturally nervous kind of guy, and I was worried that something would go wrong, but it all seemed to be going OK – Andy had found the original mapping settings were utterly crazy, explaining two things – firstly that my opinion of the person I got the DTA setup from was 100% correct and secondly why the car wouldn’t restart on WRGB and was generally not a happy bunny. Once he’d put some sane base settings into the map, the car ran a LOT sweeter. A few runs were done to map the mixture vs RPM, and then adjust accordingly. We’d only seen about 45bhp, but the ignition timing (and hence power) weren’t set yet. It was looking up, and I started to relax, operating the remote starter (the DTA ECU doesn’t like being turned on and off while connected to the laptop) and also the giant fan for cooling which was unbelievably powerful.

And then Andy looked up worried, and killed the engine. There was no oil pressure, and we’d only been to about 6400rpm. A look at the dipstick showed some particles in the oil. Game over. I was devastated. We got the car off the rollers and although it had some pressure (above 1500rpm), it was clearly not driveable; at the moment there was no knocking noises so nothing too serious had happened, but obviously it would mean a rebuild at best. Andy is a legend as he agreed to tow me home (I couldn’t get hold of anyone at the time), and got me home, and said if I get it sorted out we can do the mapping later in the week, which is a relief as I’d explained about the Rally GB entry closing on Friday and not wanting to put an entry in without a hope of having a car.

First up was pulling the sump off which didn’t take long and revealed a MASS of tiny particles – something had let go in a fairly major way, so this engine was (for the time being) scrap. So, there was a choice – either re-fit the engine the car had in it (which didn’t run that well unless it was on the throttle bodies, clearly not an option for WRGB), or fit another engine I’ve had for a long time which was originally in my Favorit (fortunately they are the same engine, so it’s an easy fit and totally legal). It always went well, and I don’t really know why I removed it aside from it being a bit peaky – there was no leeway with gear selection as the powerband was little more than a gearchange wide, and at the time I wasn’t good enough on gravel to get all that right.

However, it’d been mothballed for 3 years – dry stored and oiled in the appropriate places, but still left in a shed. The clutch looked worse for wear, but fortunately I’d just bought a new one on eBay. It wasn’t due to arrive until Wednesday though, which is not good. The other issue is the front pulley, and fortunately the one I had on the original engine was the right type and size to replace the Fav one, so it was all systems go.

I worked until about 10pm to remove everything from the engine ready to come out tomorrow morning – the engine crane is in the back of the shed and not an option to get out in the dark, plus I was done in.