Skoda Rally Blog

Every car needs an MOT.  Even a rally car.  Even if you are only using it on “single venue” events which are off the road, it’s usually a requirement for the car to have an MOT, and of course the kind of rallies that I do involve forests and driving inbetween them, which means driving on the roads, and a fully road-legal car.  And therefore an MOT.

Every year I plan to get the MOT done in the Summer, so I’ll have lots of time to work on the car, and nice(ish) weather to do it in. And almost invariably, this fails completely.  Fortunately last Friday wasn’t too bad, and the car seemed mostly OK – I’d checked all the things that I thought could be a problem, and hoped all would be well.

And thankfully it was – the mapping worked well for the emissions test leading to a nice clean exhaust and a test pass, and the car was good in every other respect; having a rare opportunity to inspect the underside while stood up showed that for the most part the car was looking OK for one that had done a bit of forest work; there are a good few dents in the floor but nothing terrible, and no nasty surprises.  The drive to and from the MOT station gave a chance to take in some different road conditions (given that it was a Friday rush hour), so those logged miles will help the map out, and this time it showed a much wider range of engine speed and load was being used.  Still more to do, but getting there; the car was getting far more driveable now, and the last piece of paperwork for the car was complete.

However, there is still a major part of the rally equipment in need of a fix, and that’s the sumpguard.  On the Skoda the engine and box sit quite low compared to many other cars, and as a result the sumpguard is more complex than many (some are just a flat sheet) and also gets a right bashing as a result!  The sumpguard on R477KRU was already secondhand when it was built (having come from “the idiot”), but after 1.6 Rally GBs and a Sunseeker, it was looking very sorry for itself, having cracks in the strengthening bars, and the runners beneath having cracked off:

Cracked sumpguard strengthening brace

...and another crack...

and looking shaky from below as well

As you can imagine, this was better than no sumpguard at all, but not as good as it should be.  So after spending an hour cleaning it off (given that it was covered in gearbox oil and sand, which came out from every crack), I took it to the fabrication place up the road, where a rather unhappy-looking chap quoted me £50 to weld it up, having done the usual sucking in of air through-the-teeth about how crap the sumpguard was, etc., etc.

Amazingly, today (the next day!), he phoned to say it was all done.  And I went to collect it, to find this:

From beneath, nice and strong

And more welding, should be a bit stronger

And even more welding

OK, it’s no oil painting, but it’s a LOT stronger than it was before, so hopefully that will be up to making it through Wareham Forest, amongst other places….