Skoda Rally Blog

This weekend has seen the final push to get the car done, ready to set off tomorrow. There have been some setbacks, partly because the weather has been beyond belief, and partly because I had to play a gig last night, meaning I couldn’t work after about 4. However, sitting here on the Sunday night, I think we’re pretty much there. There’s about an hour’s worth of work to do to the car tomorrow and a short test drive to see if the one problem I’d found (there was a tapping sound from the upper mounting of the right rear damper which I think I’ve sorted but not driven it yet) is fixed, and also just to check everything finally before loading up.

This weekend’s work has mostly been little things, getting everything tidy inside the car, making all the little things work (such as the horn on the new steering wheel, the toolbag sorted out, the seats bolted in (sounds simple, but took ages as the bolts are hard to get to), harnesses adjusted, extinguisher nozzles mounted), and all of which took a long time. One great thing was that Stu came over and put the rest of the stickers on the car, and I must say I really love the way it looks. I know it’s just a little old Skoda, but I’m really proud of the way it looks – OK it’s got a few rough patches here and there, but it’s an 11 year old rally car, and it won’t look out of place on Thursday’s ceremonial start, or the stages, providing all goes well. I’ll take a picture tomorrow providing it’s not torrential rain again.

We fitted the Terratrip to the recce car, and….. it didn’t work! The wheel bolt sensor is SOOOO picky you have to have less than 1mm clearance for it to work, so a bit of adjustment finally gave us a tripmeter that works. I know it’s not that important and we’ll probably just be making very dodgy notes, but there you go. At least we’ve tried!

I’ve got the service van, loaded and catalogued all the spares that we have, and we’re just about ready to go. Tomorrow isn’t too hard a day (drive to Cardiff, pick up paperwork, go to Swansea, get set up), but it’s the calm before the storm. This is going to be a very, very interesting week.