Skoda Rally Blog

Before August, I was generally a pretty slack person – had plenty of spare time to get on with this and that, etc. But then I took on a fair bit more work, and I’ve basically had about 1 day in the last couple of months that was free. And I had the last 4 days off, and thought that would be enough to get the Felicia done and MOTd, ready to go.

How wrong I was. Firstly, as the Fav had to go, about half a day was taken up with getting it ready to sell. And then the next couple of days solidly working on the Felicia. Reason? Well, where do I start? Firstly, the driveshafts. Anyone who’s read much of this blog will know that I’ve had driveshaft issues in the past, so I’m keen to make sure they’re tip top. And these were anything but! 3 of the 4 CV boots needed replacing – an outer one that was split, and had been for some time (grease everywhere), and two inners that were completely screwed – one was totally the wrong type, and the other was split. Both the inner CVs fell apart when I went to pull the hubs off, so I was lucky not to lose the large rings or the needle rollers. Later I found that there were lots of bits of needle roller knocking around one of the joints, so clearly this car had been maintained by a moron.

Next up, the front brakes. When driving the car, they seemed a bit poor, and it was no surprise when I saw how rusty the discs were – they were totalled. And the guy who sold it to me told me it was running on EBC greenstuff, but given what I’d seen I was expecting to see some standard pads, but pleased (for once) to see a nearly new set of 1144s instead. The first bit of good news. But split boots on balljoints, rusty bolts, mis-matched bits here and there, the list just goes on and on. I mean, this is a bloody rally car! You’re supposed to look after the thing, aren’t you? I know some people are a bit anal about them and make them look immaculate where there’s no need, but they need to be mechanically sound, don’t they?

Doing that, and replacing the (utterly screwed) top mounts for the struts (which are another set of HP racing ones, oddly, not the Spax ones I thought) took most of the time, as well as fixing the handbrake lever (bodged badly meaning it needed a good hammering to get it working), and then re-fit the seats, and so on…..

So today (MOT day) I only had a bit of time to check everything over, and then look at the back wheels. Both wheel bearings were loose, so I greased ’em up and adjusted them, and hoped it would be OK.

Wrong-ola, Jones! The list of failures wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was more than I was expecting. Firstly, he failed it because the front hoses can touch on the inner arches on full lock. Well, here’s some news, Mr. MOT tester, they do that on my Focus. Both of them, indeed. They are protected by plastic, as are mine. But somehow the Skoda fails and the Focus doesn’t.

The handbrake was a bit sticky, so it failed on that, so new handbrake cables are on the way, as well as new wheelbearings and cylinders as then I can get the whole bloody job done in one go and forget about it, hopefully forever. I hate drum brakes!

The exhaust was “excessively rusty” – it doesn’t leak, and wasn’t holed, so I have no idea what that was about. So I’ve bought a new system, which according to Group N rules you can remove the internals from the second silencer, so that will be Friday evening taken care of.

Finally, it failed because it was running too rich! CO and Lambda readings were too high. Not sure why, so I’ll put the wideband on it and see what gives. Clearly it running rich isn’t a good thing for power, so I’ll have to get it right. Where’s my megasquirt when I want it? I just hope it hasn’t had some crappy eBay resistor bodge to “give it an extra 10bhp” – I’ll never find the bloody thing if it has.

So, I’ve got to go pick up the rest of the bits for the car. Which means I can tear a strip off the guy who sold it to me – he totally lied about the condition of the car, and I don’t like that. Well out of order, as he just said he’d lost the fail certificate but it only needed the handbrake lever doing. Hopefully it should all be done by Sunday and then ready for a re-test.

However, I still have to get it taxed, which could prove difficult as I don’t have the logbook for it, as it was an old one, where you don’t keep a receipt. Damn – this could still scupper my plans for the Tempest, and cost me ?400 into the bargain.