Skoda Rally Blog

So, the last outing in the Skoda left it feeling pretty sorry for itself. The engine had had more than enough, and there were (as ever) more things that I wanted to fix or improve on the car. So, simple enough, take the engine out, put a new one in, job done….

… except, of course, it never works out like that. The clutch I ordered to replace the one that was in there turned out to be wrong, so I had to put the old one back in (for the time being), and that all went smoothly. Until I went to put the driveshafts in, and the diff gears had fallen inside the casing, so I had to remove the gearbox, and fix the diff. Another day wasted.

Finally, I got the car running (having forgotten that the in-car camera is constantly powered means the battery goes flat), and took it for a drive. And found it to be a little….. gutless. Not good news. I won’t bore you with the entire details, but let’s just say I’ve checked everything, and I know it’s running as well as it can (perfect air/fuel mixture, clean air filter, new plugs, etc), and it’s still a bit lacking in power. Which is thoroughly disappointing, as I know that finally I’m getting to the point where I want more power! Typical. But it’ll have to do. It should be good on fuel, at least…..

There were other things to do. One of them is to do with Wales Rally GB. To do that, Paul needs to get his licence, and he’s a big chap, so I needed to make the seat movable – forward for me, and back for him. Now, this might sound like a trivial thing, but to do this properly, so it’s a nice job and I’m happy with it, meant almost a day’s work. But had the bonus of meaning I removed all the carpet from the front of the car – much more like a rally car now, and far easier to keep clean. There are a bunch of other things that I’ve done, but I won’t bore you with the details of the starter solenoid, terratrip probe, helmet net and various other little things.

In short, the car is slow. This is me making excuses for my future non-performance against countless faster N1 cars!