Skoda Rally Blog

Well, I made a big mistake in going to Switzerland. Not that it was a bad time – it wasn’t – just that it’s meant my back is really bad. Ended up being flown home rather than driving. Hopefully that won’t be a long-term issue.

A-n-y-w-a-y, I got my new National A licence back from the MSA. Same number as before, all confirmed to the Sunseeker, so it looks like we’re in.

The Skoda needs to be MOTd, which means a couple of small bits of welding at the end of the sills – everything else is OK, so it should walk through that. That should get done this week, as I’m getting it done by a garage as I don’t have time at the moment, and also I want to give my back a good chance of total recovery!

The next thing is that there are now four cars in B9 (my class), including Mr. & Mrs. Colville. So I think there’s no chance of any honours there – we’ll just be aiming for a finish. But I still want to get the injection working. And I’ve been working on it – I’m about half way through making the inlet manifold which is quite a task – making the plates to bolt to the head took around 3 hours as they’re made from 5mm steel plate, and cutting them takes a long time. And then I’ve had to make pipes that taper from 35mm to 25mm ID, and then weld it all together, which is quite tricky as there’s a lot to juggle. Hopefully I should get it all finished today. After that there’s plumbing in the fuel return which the injection system needs, and replacing the exhaust downpipe with one with a fitting for the oxygen sensor (which needs looking at anyway as I have to make the exhaust more secure to avoid any repeats of the Tempest/Blitz incident), and then the wiring. Oh, and then setting it all up. I reckon it’s a solid week’s work to get it done, and I think it’s just about possible. We’ll see, I guess. If I was totally fit, I’d feel a lot better about it all…..