Skoda Rally Blog

Today has been a good day. Mostly!

Firstly, the car is now clean inside – the mud that had been everywhere after the floor incident on WRGB is now pretty much gone, although there was much scrubbing needed in places (the headlining looked like a bomb had gone off), and it’s amazing what you can get at LIDL for £2 – all the cleaning products, as ever, were supplied by the bargain basement organisation! The seats have been re-fitted (for the first time ever, without ANY swearing at all at any point), and I’ve even replaced all the white and grey cable ties with black ones while I had all the rollcage padding off for a scrub. In short, things inside the car are lovely.

There was a shock earlier in the week – the R700 Kumhos I’ve been using for ages have shot up in price from £35 each to £65 plus VAT each! However, I’ve managed to find 8 of them that have 8mm tread, so I’m sticking with them for the Sunseeker – they’re all on the yellow rims, which will at least look nice.

The alloys from the Felicia that I broke ages ago (5 spoke) will now be having the Yoko A048Rs I bought on eBay (for £200, only 5 miles’ use for the set!), but before then they will be painted as they’re a bit scabby, and I’m quite liking yellow wheels. The rest of the paint will be done on Friday.

A sad thing had to happen today – I had to remove the WRGB stickers from the car. My filing cabinet in my studio has a plate from each forest event I’ve done on it, and I managed to get the door plates off without too much stretching, so I should be able to add to its wonderful colourscheme with that iconic sticker now.

However, there is something fundamental missing. I have no gearbox. Not even a spare that is 100%. I don’t know what’s happened, but the guy who picked up my old gearbox (along with the diff that cost £370 and has only been used for WRGB, and the money for the gearkit) has gone AWOL. I can’t get hold of him, despite having phoned every other day and left messages. Which is clearly a problem – apart from anything else, I obviously hope nothing bad has happened, but it leaves me in a bit of a pickle as I have no gearbox to fit. So I’ve been scouring the boards and eBay, etc, and hopefully I’ll be able to turn something up before the middle of next week. Otherwise, well, I have a box, but it’s the one we pulled out of the car at the end of last summer’s 6 events with Paul driving, and it’s not great. But it’s better than pushing the car, I guess.

Anyone with a gearbox, feel free to get in touch!

As an aside, I’m very excited about the Sunseeker now.