Skoda Rally Blog

Before I get to that, I think I’ll just document the immensely stressful car week I’ve had. The car failed it’s re-test, on emissions only. So I thought I’d have to bite the bullet and buy a new catalytic converter. Which I did, although I was a bit surprised that it was ?90+VAT from the local exhaust place, compared with ?200 from the ‘Skoda Spares Specialists’. Hardly impressive. However, the car was gutless, and I thought this was down to it not having the MPi head, which looks the same but flows a lot better as standard. And as I had one, I thought I should fit it. So I did, having cleaned all the valves, the ports, etc. Turned out Skoda gave me the wrong valve stem seals, so I had to rob one off the 1.4 Fabia engine I had lying around – a taste of things to come.

Put it all back together (11pm on Wednesday night), and then drove it the next morning. Ran like a dream, and went so much better, despite having a cat on there, whereas the old one was just a piece of empty tube, hence the poor emissions figure. Took it to the garage to get it checked, and it would be OK for the MOT next day. Driving home, heard a massive rattle, and then it started running on 3 cylinders. OH GOOD! Got home, and found that a valve spring had broken. I’ll cut a long story short, but no-one had any bolts or a head gasket (Pratco ordered the wrong one), so I had to rebuild the head again, using a valve and spring from the Fabia, and the old gaskets. And it was another 11pm job, with Paul fitting ‘his’ seat and fixing this and that. And it passed the MOT. One minor disappointment – it’s the new computerised MOT, and the certificate looks really rubbish! I know that’s irrelevant, but it just looks like a gas bill.

But still lots of things to do, like wiring the pod up properly (thanks Kev), but got everything done and the car on the trailer about 10pm. But I was pretty sure something would go wrong……