Skoda Rally Blog

OK, there hasn’t been a lot of updating this week, despite me taking the entire week off to do the car.

And there’s a good reason for that. If I was a religious man (I’m not) then I would be totally convinced that God hated me, and wanted me to suffer. Why do I say this? Well, basically, if it can go wrong, it has done, and even if you wouldn’t think it could, it has done. Let’s look at some of the highlights of the build of R477KRU, shall we?

• Custom Cages send me a cage kit with no diagrams or pictures (saying there were none), and offer very little help with the build of the cage. This was bad enough, but then compounded with the paperwork that turned up having what? Yes, diagrams and pictures. Thanks a lot, idiots.
• The cage profiling tool took 5 weeks to turn up
• I lost 3 weeks of working time in the summer due to the wettest summer on record
• I lost 2 weeks of solid work due to my back injury, followed by another 3 weekends with a relapse.
• The engine I bought couldn’t be rebuilt in time due to the pistons taking over 3 months to arrive.
• The brake hoses I ordered took 2 weeks longer to arrive than promised

etc,etc,etc.

So, this week I hoped all that would change.

How wrong I was.

Upside first – I have completed the electrics on the car, for the most part – the extra fuse box and relays are fitted, with switches neatly done in the dashboard, FIA-spec isolator fitted to the car, etc. The extinguisher is mostly fitted, with one more nozzle to be fitted and another pull to be ordered (they supply a 12′ and a 6′ and the 6′ is never long enough). The back suspension is fitted. The front suspension is fitted. The brakes now work (thanks to next-day service from the excellent Speedflow, who were a pleasure to deal with and I should have gone straight there), and the fuel lines are inside. The new engine now runs well on the original manifold.

But the gearbox, oh the gearbox.

For those of you who don’t know, I gave someone I know ?800 and my ‘box with LSD for a C/R straight-cut box. That was in January. Since then I have had silence and excuses, and despite being told it would turn up twice (weeks ago), it didn’t. But it DID turn up on Wednesday, after me fitting a spare so I could at least get things running.

So I fitted it on Thursday morning, and then found out…. It didn’t have any gears. Where 3rd should have been, there was a neutral, and where neutral should have been, the entire box locked up. I only did this turning it over by hand, not on the engine, as I am not crazy. So, out it came. I split the box and found the selectors were wrong, and used the other box (which was only duff as the diff gears had dropped) to model the selectors. It worked fine after 4 hours, so I refitted it and had to work on Friday (as I need the money and also needed a break from 8-hour fruitless days on the car).

Come this morning, I connected the gear linkage and it seemed OK, so I connected everything else up (manifolds, etc), and ran the engine. And was greeted by a hideous screaming sound – loud enough to bring my Mum out from the house! So out it came again, this time for good. I have removed the LSD from the box and put it into the standard box (which then needed to be rebuilt again, twice as the selectors moved during reassembly), and finally (with some help from Paul who has been here all afternoon) got the box back in the car and bolted in place. The lever and linkage are in place, but the gear change seems very notchy, which I can’t account for other than the gears being dry, so hopefully when I put oil in it and run it tomorrow it will work OK. If not, I can’t see what else to do – I don’t have a spare, and I have even less energy.

Oh, and if anyone wonders why the blog has been down all week, it’s ‘cos even my Internet went wrong all week. If anyone has a Felicia or Favorit gearbox that works, please let me know. I’m thinking the box in the car is done in too, and I am, frankly, at my wits’ end. I am tired, sore, and I can barely feel my right hand most of the time. I think my nails will never be clean again. And I have only 4 weeks to get the car running, sorted, MOTd and logbooked. Nothing like a challenge, eh?