Skoda Rally Blog

So, last Sunday I was supposed to finish building the engine, to keep to my notional “timetable” to get the car done in good time and allow a decent amount of road-based mileage testing before WRGB.

However, I ate something dodgy on Saturday night (no, really, I wasn’t out on the lash, I stayed in) and spent half the night up, and was sick all day Sunday. G-reat, the Jones luck strikes again with another rally car build. Fortunately I was back on track by Tuesday and got the rest of the build done for the most part…

This weekend’s task is to get the car back up to scratch, check out what needs to be fixed/repaired/replaced and get the old engine out and the new engine in, with a standard gearbox for running in and dyno purposes while the LSD gets rebuilt. And at the end of play on Saturday, the following has happened:

Firstly the old engine and box are out, and split. I’ve found out that the box was leaking inside the bellhousing so we were lucky not to lose the clutch as it was quite oily! Could have been a lot worse.

The engine bay is much, MUCH cleaner than it was – it was disgusting, and frankly an embarrassment. I know it’ll get filthy dirty within 200 yards of being on the first stage the car sees this year, but that’s not the point. At the ceremonial start I intend to present a spangly-looking Felicia, inside and out.

Last year we had a couple of nose-dive jumps, which led to the front crossmember being damaged quite badly. This has now been repaired, strengthened, re-welded and painted. As this is where the sumpguard mounts at the front this is quite important, I think, as no doubt there will be more similar damage taken this year (although less so if we do the notes properly!), and the strengthening that I did do probably saved the front end from destruction as it was!

The new engine is built up and ready to install once the flywheel and clutch have been fitted, which is a quick job, and the rest of the car got a good clean off as well, as it’ll have to be MOT-ed before WRGB as well, but this should just be a formality, after all.

The engine mounting is a Skoda Motorsport one (with no voids in the rubber), but the gearbox and rear mounting have never been very sturdy, so I’ve beefed them up with some Sikaflex polyurethane. I previously tried doing this with silicone sealer which wasn’t very strong. If the difficulty of getting it out of the tube bears any relation to the hardness when set, then it’ll be brilliant – it took both hands on the caulking gun lever to get anything out at all.

Tomorrow’s task (to keep on track) is to put the engine in. However, this should only take a couple of hours at worst, so I can hopefully get a lot more done, re-build the driveshafts and get some work done on the engine management wiring – I’m hoping to be able to add a shift light, make the temperature gauge work (depending on the resistance of the standard sensor) and various other things, plus I have to make up a cool air box for the air filter.

Providing I don’t get ill again!