Skoda Rally Blog

Well, some progress has been made on the engine front.

Firstly, I’ve found a company in the Czech Republic who do tuning on the Skoda engine, and can do all-in packages, at what seems like a good price. But I’d rather build the engine myself, so I’m looking for getting some choice bits; they do long-stroke cranks at a decent price (?150), which will knock the capacity up to just under 1400cc which is ideal for the rally car – keeping it in the lowest class and yet adding some power. They also say that the head can take 37 and 31 mm valves, which is handy, as the originals are 34 and 30. So I’ll see if I can get that done locally.

Anyway, in the meantime my bits I got from the German company on eBay have arrived – the crank (standard) –

This is a bargain – they’re ?175 here, but this and the liners below cost ?80 including postage. This might not get used though if I go for the long-stroke crank, but anyway, it’s a bargain. Next up was a set of liners and pistons:

Now these were bargains too – a set of pistons and liners is ?175. But here’s the punchline – that’s without rings or gudgeon pins. And I wasn’t expecting to get them, but what turned up? You got it – a set of rings and 4 new gudgeon pins. Which would have cost me ?50 for the rings, and I don’t know how much for the pins. Splendid. So, I got about ?400 worth of stuff for ?80. Ah, good old eBay. Pure luck – no parts have been on there since. And believe me, I’ve checked….

And the other thing is that I have got my MegaSquirt (ECU) kit, and got a bit carried away; I had no intention of building it yet as I haven’t even started on the manifold and didn’t see the point. But a long evening and early morning later, and it’s built, and works like a dream – connects to the laptop, is programmable, and so on. If only the rest of the installation was going to be that easy……