Skoda Rally Blog

This weekend has involved a fair bit of work on the car. Last weekend the gearbox and suspension were all removed, leaving me with a Felicia up on axle stands looking quite sorry for itself.

As mentioned the other day, the LSD arrived, so first task was to put it into the gearbox from the estate I sacrificed the other week. Now, I’ve never been scared of ripping any part of a car apart, except one – gearboxes. Dunno why, they just seem to be a bogey item for me. But this went reasonably well – removed the 5th gear (which is outside the main casing in its own little house), and then pulled the cases apart, and even managed to get the old diff out without having to remove everything. Undid bolts, removed LSD and as the Haynes book of lies says, reassembly is indeed a reversal of the removal. Took about an hour, which isn’t too bad.

Fitting it, though! I’d fitted a new clutch plate, and it was a very tight fit in the centre of it, and it took three profanity-filled attempts to fit the box before it went in place. After that, everything else seemed quite easy – fitting the new wishbones, new struts, new discs and the hideously expensive (but very good) Mintex M1144 pads.

And then I got a phone call from Gary Hayter, who’d been sorting out my wheels and bumpers, ‘cos I want the car to look spanky for the start, if nothing else. In the time I’ve had it, the front and back bumpers have had a few knocks, with Mr. Burley taking the blame for most of these. So I have some new parts to put on the car –

This picture alone is good reason to never buy a car on eBay without seeing it in person. Photos can lie. The bumper at the top has been on my rally car for several years, possibly even 10. It is, in person, really, really scrappy, and looks fit for Trent’s. The one below is immaculate, shiny, and green. And yet in the photo they only look a bit different!

Here’s the new front bumper – again, looks lovely compared to the old one which will be a trial to remove from the Felicia as it means removing the front grille. Which you can only do by removing the headlights. Which, in turn, can only be removed after removing the indicators. Which would be fine, had I not used silicone sealer to hold the right-hand one in when it lemminged out of the car on the Tempest last year! Oh good. Another Jones bodge comes back to haunt me!

Finally, the wheels – chunky and yellow. Resprayed to match the Felicia Fun ones I also have, although they’re only “both yellow”, no more accurate than that. Never mind – they still look ace.

So, I went for a quick test drive in the car, with the LSD fitted, mostly so I’d sleep tonight if I knew it was OK. OH. MY. GOD. What a transformation! Er, I’m going to have to learn to drive all over again! The big bonus is there is no wheelspin – coming off the top roundabout up the road from me, it’s very easy to wheelspin in an FWD car as the camber means the inner wheel is unloaded and will just spin. Not any more – it just went f-o-r-w-a-r-d-s, nice and quickly. But it’s a bit of a handful in places. Hopefully I’ll adapt to it. I’d better do!

Other than that, welded up the seat rails 100%, welded up the old holes where the harness mounts used to be in the floor, and then painted. Which means at least the car might be driveable for next weekend, so i can do a really long road test, and so on. Nearly on target, sort of.

Tonight’s exciting task? Make a new set of clocks out of the three I have – one has the original speedo, one has a rev counter, and one has a better housing. Between the three lie clocks nirvana. And it’s a clean job I can do indoors with some music on, instead of outside in the cold with some numpty on the radio!

Oh, one more thing – here’s our “moody publicity shot”. Or something.