Skoda Rally Blog

If you don’t know, I’m self-employed, and this year my regular work means I have Friday afternoons free. Which is really handy as it means I can buy stuff that is needed and sort other things out. Although I have to say my Mum is being (as ever) a legend – if I give her a list of things from local suppliers, she’ll get them while I’m at work, which saves days if not weeks.

So, since the last entry, I’ve made up a gear change light which will go on the dashboard, with 3 10mm LEDs, and a switch which will change between “day” and “night” brightnesses. Flash. But aside from that I’ve had the pipes for the oil cooler replaced with crimped on connections which look far better to me, and definitely won’t be coming off (something I was worried about), and also fitted the exhaust properly (all the mountings are now well secured with C-clips and locking nuts on the system). The gearchange linkage has been improved, with the new ‘hybrid’ linkage all TIG-ed up and looking spanky (the paint is drying as I type this). The legends that are Thread and Pipe have made me a nut for the air temperature sensor so I have now fitted it in the cool air box, and a few other little things.

Most importantly I’ve made some progress on the diff. I’ve been contacted by someone on the britishrally forum who seems incredibly knowledgeable about them (and has a lot of experience) and have been making progress with the diff – today I’ve measured the torque needed to turn it over, which is…. sod all! So clearly there is some work needed there, but at least I’ve got a definite measurement and now hopefully I’ll be able to get this sorted as the car was SO much better with it that I don’t want to have to go back to a standard diff.

So, tomorrow should see some improvements made to the car’s mapping – I’ll be rigging up the LM-1 and laptop and see what adjustments I can make with the “dyno box” that I have made up for the ECU. We’ll see…. so far everything has been going reasonably well – every time I go out to the car, progress is made. I have next week off, so hopefully this won’t be a repeat of last year’s week, which was hell on earth.